11 ms·

Just some red flags. No big deal. Just ignore them

donw 6y ago
It boggles my mind how companies do not take onboarding seriously. This is the best opportunity you have to set your people up for success, bar none. Plus, many of the things your company should do to build a great onboarding experience can also be leveraged to make it easy to do things like "move people between teams", "expand into a new office", and "hire great people". Done properly, this is cheap as hell.
- cammil 6y ago
  I don't think the incentives are there, and it's probably reasonably difficult to do well.
- pedrocr 6y ago
  This sounds like an example of someone taking it seriously by actually putting in the effort to build the elaborate program but then failing miserably at making it effective. That's not at all an unusual experience for HR processes in my experience. There's far too little feedback built into those kinds of processes so they rarely know if they are doing well or not.
  - mrweasel 6y ago
    HR honestly have no business getting involved in hirering or onboarding. Most people working in HR aren’t qualified for it. HR should be limited to gathering enough info to ensure that you’re being paid and perhaps managing how much vacation you have left. It’s a service organisation. I had one HR drone complain about developers being bad at logging time. We told her that the system sucked and made it to hard to correctly enter your hours. She the proceede to demo how easy it was by entering her hours for the week. Basically: HR stuff = 37 hours. She had no clue that the average developer had more tasks during one day, each requirering it’s code, that she had during a full month. HR, especially in large companies, are clueless about the actual work being done. Personally I no longer participate in personality test. If one is required during the interview process I decline and leave. It always HR that require the test, never the people you’d actually work for. For onboard: The people I’ve onboarded for different companies all get the first day to settle in, setup their computer, find the coffeemaker and just look around. Day two you get a real assignment, ideally something you can fix and have in production before four o’clock. After that it’s just progressively harder tasks until you can manage on your own.
    - elric 6y ago
      > I no longer participate in personality test. If one is required during the interview process I decline and leave. I do this as well. I've had companies send me online personality tests with seriously invasive questions. With no explanations as to the purpose, no guarantees regarding data protection. Just a quick "fill this out to see if you're a match". I'm sure it's designed to carefully skirt around anything that's overtly illegal, but fuck that. They go on my shitlist.
- gulfie 6y ago
  They do take it seriously. It's just like the Nigerian prince scams. The insanity acts as a filter. What you get out the other side doesn't know or doesn't care that they are being misused.
  - toohotatopic 6y ago
    Is this a conscious decision or an evolutionary thing where only those companies survive that happen to treat their employees like this?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- elric 6y ago
  It's something I've been struggling with. It would be nice if there were a one-size-fits-all onboarding script. The company I work for has grown from 3 (founders included!) to over 30 in the time I've been there. When you're tiny, and someone new joins, there's no need for formal onboarding, osmosis sort of does its thing. This worked reasonably well until we reached ~10 butts in seats. Unfortunately, this 10 people mark was also where pressure started to ramp up. More customers, tighter deadlines, bigger workloads, and a struggle to survive -- because at this point the first round of financing was spent, and we needed to prove our worth to future investors. Everyone was stressed and overworked. Basically, there was no time for onboarding. Which is stupid, because it's an activity that pays dividends in the sort-of-short term. Once we reached the 30 people mark, we were able to breathe a little easier in regards to workload. We're still growing. Onboarding is starting to become a thing. Where things aren't automated, they're being documented. We at least try to make time for introductions. It's far from perfect. It needs to improve. But it's hard. And I should probably take a moment to apologize to hire ten through thirty for what must have been a shitty first few months for them.
  - HenryBemis 6y ago
    I will repeat from another point of view: when you were 10 we had enough workload for 15 but we didn't get the extra 5 until we got to the "need 20" (or whatever number). So you have always been overworked and overworking your staff and you preferred that they all work on 120-140% instead of 80-90% that would give space for better quality. I get it that numbers are ruthless, but workload, quality, documentation (not speaking only about onboarding documentation) etc. also got "numbers" on them if one cares to measure. It is only the £€¥$ numbers matter.
    - elric 6y ago
      Oh yes you're absolutely right. And while I'm only an engineer and have no "real" say in how the company is run, and no remuneration except for my monthly paycheck, I've definitely been part of the problem. I work crazy hours, I'm totally addicted to the problem-solution "high" feedback loop. There have definitely been times when I've thought some people weren't pulling their weight. But with the passage of time, I've mellowed a bit and I've come to realize the importance of downtime and all those hard to quantify things. For the most part, my employer has treated people pretty well. Workload has been high, but flexibility has always been high as well. Along with $$$. Working here has definitely given me an appreciation for the hard work it takes to get a company off the ground.
FiloSottile 6y ago
I can't believe how casual and normal "there was a dog in this room" is made out to be in American work culture. I have a potentially lethal dog allergy, so that's a room, a floor, an office I could not be in at all. Maybe I couldn't even take the job, so that the pets could have my spot in the company directory. I realize I have almost all the other privileges but this really doesn't make me feel welcome in a workplace, and I don't understand how pets in the office isn't considered an anti-inclusive practice. I guess it doesn't matter now. Previously: https://twitter.com/FiloSottile/status/1116418872519929859 https://twitter.com/FiloSottile/status/1116418872519929859
- WWLink 6y ago
  lol, I can relate. I worked at a company that moved to a nice big new office. They replaced the carpets and the ceiling tiles, and I still had nasty allergies for the first few weeks. Place used to be owned by a dog friendly business. OMG dude you should've seen when we went on the tour of the place lmao. The carpets were stained with pee and poop and it was sooooooooo disgusting.
- rainyMammoth 6y ago
  I'm not a fan of dogs either. I have had what looked like a dog attacking me in the past in an office and I was being told that I should not worry because it is usually "friendly". I really hope that this whole dog at the office madness stops sooner than later. Hopefully WFH is going to resolve this.
  - pmiller2 6y ago
    Regardless of how you feel about dogs (I love them and would be thrilled if I worked in an office with one or more dogs), no reasonable office dog policy would allow an animal that attacks people. That's just wrong.
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      I think a problem is that some people feel the dog is attacking them, when the owner thinks the dog is being playful. That's how people get upset about dogs in my experience.
hayksaakian 6y ago
More context for the OP: https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/02/29/poof/ https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/02/29/poof/
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- FearNotDaniel 6y ago
  Nobody needs to spend inordinate amounts of time rewriting 18-year-old C++ code just to put appointments in their diary. FFS use GCal or Outlook like any normal human being. Or if decades-old technology turns you on, use a Filofax or a PalmPilot. The reason I mention this is that nearly every post I read by this author, who seems unaccountably popular on HN, stinks of some tech-fetishist with poor communication skills who insists on doing everything by the most difficult and convoluted means possible. This is not the sort of attitude we should be idolizing in an entrepreneurial culture. I would love to be a fly on the wall in the HR meetings and hear the other side of the story, because I would certainly not want someone like this on my team, however gifted or experienced they are.
  - mjburgess 6y ago
    > tech-fetishist with poor communication skills who insists on doing everything by the most difficult and convoluted means possible > unaccountably popular ...Hacker news?
  - vikasg 6y ago
    +1 In a startup you want to actively screen for candidates like this. Someone who idolizes technological "purity" above all else and looks down on business will never be happy at a startup that needs to get shit done quickly. It's a lose-lose situation. They'll eventually grow resentful and quit, or you'll have to manage them out. Better to avoid the whole thing in the first place, no matter how great a programmer they are otherwise.
    - mellow2020 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
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narraturgy 6y ago
The process described here is one that would honestly have me walking out the door. I don't say that from a place of "this isn't worth my time" or a similar feeling grounded in self-worth and healthy ego--the aimless, direction-less, utter lack of structure or clear direction on how to proceed while being deluged in busywork would leave me so anxious and adrift that I know I wouldn't be able to return to that place. The concept of "working" for three days before my direct supervisor even noticed my presence is so foreign to me that I truly have no idea how I'd function, unless it was to sit in a corner and panic about not knowing how to start doing the job I was (supposedly) hired for. As someone trying to figure out how to turn my diploma into a job despite intense impostor syndrome, this tale is absolutely harrowing.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- fossuser 6y ago
  I think this is a bit of an overreaction. In practice the first day or two doesn't matter that much, you're getting your laptop - meeting some people, signing into some accounts. I don't think this is really that big of a deal in the scheme of things.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
    It's a pretty strong indicator, the best companies I've worked for were really good at welcoming me. The worst were awful.
    - pmiller2 6y ago
      I agree with this. I've had everything from "here's a laptop, have fun setting everything up," to a comprehensive intro to the company and basic systems that took about half a day, along with an assigned new hire mentor and a set of starter tickets to work on for my first couple of weeks. At the first place, it took me 3 weeks to get to the point where I could submit my first pull request. At the second, I obviously wasn't fully productive right away, but I wrote real code and merged it into production within my first week.
sergiotapia 6y ago
I don't care how many years you have on the job, not knowing the CEO's face/name of a company you're just joining is weird.
- Aloha 6y ago
  I work for a 200 person company, I didn't figure out who the CEO was for about two weeks from when I was hired
  - artsyca 6y ago
    My biggest peeve is that everyone dresses the same and I know I'm an outlier but it would be super helpful to be able to identify people's rank based on their outfits but I guess this isn't the army, huh? Edit: by dress I mean the older sense of the word: The older sense survives in military dress ranks "align columns of troops." We've gone so anti-corporate that we don't even know who the leadership is any more it's a rotten proposition that serves the worst of both worlds
  - dkersten 6y ago
    As a counterpoint, I work for a 1500 company and was told/shown who the management and such were in my first week. I guess it depends on the company, you and your boss.
    - Aloha 6y ago
      I think it depends on how layered the company is, I have never interacted with someone above the VP/Director level, my job just doesnt call for it.
      - dkersten 6y ago
        I haven't interacted with the executive team either, but I still know who they key people are.
  - sergiotapia 6y ago
    How do you accept a job at a company where you don't know who the CEO is?
tzs 6y ago
> You're making lots of mistakes, despite having decades of typing experience at relatively high speeds. It’s amazing how small a keyboard difference can throw you way off. I had an Apple Magic Keyboard and could type on it high speed with high accuracy. I wanted a numeric keypad and bigger arrow keys so got an Apple Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad. The latter is pretty much the former with extra space on the right for the keypad. The letters and punctuation keys are the same in size, location, and feel. If you are just banging out text or code, there should be virtually no difference between the two. In reality, I could barely type on the keypad version. It took a couple days to get decent on it. Even after a couple weeks I was having trouble with punctuation, making coding slow.
- pmiller2 6y ago
  I need an ergo keyboard to avoid RSI. The first one I tried was this monster $300 Kinesis Advantage keyboard, which I picked because it was the most highly rated one on Amazon, it looked cool, and I thought it would solve my problem. It did not. I could barely type letters on it, and some of the common programming characters, like [{}] were in the "wrong" spot relative to where my fingers thought they should be. I sent that bad boy back in under a week and settled on the MS Ergo Sculpt. It has a standard layout that works great for me, and I credit it with keeping me in the industry for the past 3 years, and, hopefully, far beyond.
  - manuform 6y ago
    The Kinesis has been my workhorse for the last 4 years and now I have 2 (one at the office). I think with any reprogramming it takes a while to settle in; when I switched over to this from a standard keyboard was also when I took the plunge to relearn touch typing with the Colemak layout - productivity plunge as I struggled to do even 15WPM. Now I'm at 82-90WPM.
    - pmiller2 6y ago
      Yeah, that's the thing. When I bought it, I was starting down the path to permanent disability if I didn't do something. And, I couldn't afford to be at 1/10 or 1/4 typing speed, because I still needed to produce at work. The Kinesis would actually have been fine, if I could have figured out how to get the programming-related characters to map properly to my brain. Typing on it was such a WTF experience for me that I couldn't continue, and it turned me off even trying to reprogram it. But, the Ergo Sculpt was just like "plug it in. Go." The only weirdness I've experienced with it is that some of them work fine with the Macbook Pro, and some of them don't. It seems to have to do with what model the USB transmitter is, but I don't have a big enough sample to know for sure. I was lucky the first one I bought just worked, because otherwise I probably would have sent it back and gotten a different one. I did have to do a return / swap on the second one I ordered (one for home, and one for the office). When either of them die, they will get replaced with something similar, if not the exact model.
rainyMammoth 6y ago
In my experience the first few days of onboarding is the only time when it's easy to meet new faces in a company. You will always remember the couple of people that onboarded together with you. Looks like going through a bunch of nonsense together successfully bounds people. That's the only real benefit of those onboarding few days. I usually roll my eyes through most of the high level presentations that are full of Koolaid, politically correctness or even straight up made up as you typically discover after a couple weeks/months.
im3w1l 6y ago
I dunno, most of it didn't sound that bad. I guess anything becomes stressful under time pressure.
meddlin 6y ago
I really wish companies would start asking for anonymous, unbiased reviews of this process. I've had a few companies come close, but they made it clear the answers were (or seemed to be) heavily filtered. Their onboarding processes all sucked. Please stop with the cute HR nonsense. I'm not a kid. I don't need your cute program. We don't need someone reading 10 pages from your legally unenforceable handbook from a projector. Keep your gift bag; the squeeze ball is stupid and you didn't pick the pen. (Have you ever given a gift?) If you're going to lean into the sterile corporate decor, then at least hand me a clipboard and let me fill out paperwork just like I'm at the doctor's office. If it sounds salty; it's supposed to. I hope a C-level, or business owner, takes it to heart. I'm not trying to beat you down. This first-impression is important--I took 10 minutes on a Saturday at 2:50AM to let you know. I've seen your "all-hands", your quarterlies, your launches, and your totally-not-Christmas parties. You already know how to do better.
- xiphias2 6y ago
  ,,I really wish companies would start asking for anonymous, unbiased reviews of this process'' Google does this, but then changes only things that are not against its current politics.
- pmiller2 6y ago
  You lost me at "anonymous." I treat every single one of those stupid surveys as if everyone in the whole company was watching me fill it out. I never leave free response comments, because I don't want to be identified by my words. Maybe it's paranoid, but it's worked for me so far. And, yes, if other people think the same as me, then it's surely biased the data a bit, as well.
  - meddlin 6y ago
    "Anonymous" is a bit much to ask for this, yes. I'm really just asking for the company to--for once--lower its defenses so we can have a conversation. Air the frustrations without fear of immediate professional retaliation. If a company, manager, exec, or leader can't exercise that kind of humility, then quite frankly they don't deserve the position.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
naringas 6y ago
the curious thing about such flags is that they are obvious in retrospect but somewhat imperceptible when you needed to notice them
- elric 6y ago
  I think this is down to being nervous for a large part. Maybe you could have noticed some of these red flags when you were interviewing at the company. But you're in a new environment, with new people, being bombarded with questions. Sometimes you're there because your current job is a giant shitstorm you want to walk away from. It's easy to miss things in that state. That goes both ways, of course. When I'm hiring I sometimes dimiss red flags because I think "they're just nervous, they're not really this dumb". But sometimes they are.
matsemann 6y ago
I also think this shows a few red flags of the author. Definitely not a team player, runs from boring stuff (instead of challenging it or trying to fix it), and then hides in a corner a few days instead of actually talking to the manager (who thought the person was busy a few days with the onboarding, so naturally didn't show them a desk yet).
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- stingraycharles 6y ago
  It’s just a cultural fit issue. Different people have different personalities / preferences, and what may be one person’s “red flag” may be the other person’s preference.
  - twblalock 6y ago
    Not all preferences are reasonable. I've seen multiple posts by the author of this piece and I wouldn't want to work with that person. I've worked with people who have similar personalities, and it's just not worth it. You can find competent people who are easier to get along with.
    - Lammy 6y ago
      What does worth it mean to you? I worked relatively near the author of this post in the past, and she’s totally brilliant. Saved our company’s ass over and over again. I personally learned a ton from her and still look up to her immensely even though she left behind a mean (anonymous) complaint about me and probably thinks not very highly of me :p
      - pedro2 6y ago
        How old are you? I’m in my thirties and if someone left a mean anonymous note about me I would be pissy about that for a few years before I’d find it mildly amusing. Congrats! (in case there is doubt: not being sarcastic)
FearNotDaniel 6y ago
"CEO". "These people". Fortunately I have questions in my developer interviews that filter out the snarky techier-than-thou types in favour of those who actually take an interest in the business whose success their tech skills are supposed to be supporting.
- number6 6y ago
  That sounds interesting, how do you do it? Which questions do you ask? What shows you that someone is interested in your business?
  - pron 6y ago
    Back when I did hiring interviews I used to ask people to familiarize themselves a little bit with the organization (could be the whole company or just a team, depending on size) before the interview, and then ask them why they want to work here. This is so important that I would even ask applicants to answer this specific question in their cover-letter.
    - slyall 6y ago
      I'm not sure that works in the majority of jobs. If you are the world's 27th largest CRM vendor then how would you expect a programmer to answer that question? There is a good chance that after a couple of years they will be as passionate about the CRM market is you are but 99% of the companies out there are not Google or somewhere people lust to work at.
      - pron 6y ago
        I don't mean why do you want to work at this particular company more than all other companies, but why do you want to work here at all? What is it that you find appealing here? This is also a good meta-question. Even after I write to a candidate to say that they will be asked this, you'd be surprised how many are unprepared. I remember one guy who told me, when I asked him, that he's interviewing at so many places that it's unreasonable to expect him to know any specifics about this company. I wondered if he thought it reasonable, given how many people I was interviewing, that I try to know anything specific about him. Unsurprisingly, that answer is the only thing I remember about him.
hackily 6y ago
This sounds suspiciously like the onboarding experience I had at my company. In particular, Duo for 2 factor and LastPass, and the curl command to start downloading a bunch of stuff. FWIW I thought it was pretty streamlined, better than what I'd had in the past.
- philjohn 6y ago
  I was stoked when we moved to Duo at work - no more having to type in an 8 digit code off my phone, just tap "accept" on the push notification on my phone or watch and I'm in. It's such a great solution to make 2FA as seamless as possible.
gregjor 6y ago
A story of entitlement and expecting a job to work like a kindergarten classroom. No matter how far companies go to cater to their privileged tech hires they get ridiculed, taken advantage of, discarded. Ask why these ridiculous onboarding processes exist in the first place.
- chapelierfou 6y ago
  You are the problem.
  - lubonay 6y ago
    Ad hominem to you too!
- brailsafe 6y ago
  Doesn't seem like they went even as far as to get a desk. Who are you defending?
  - rumanator 6y ago
    > Doesn't seem like they went even as far as to get a desk. In the last onboarding I endured, I was only assigned a desk after I finished after the process ended. Considering how the author claims that she unilaterally decided to skip the onboarding process and instead to present herself unannounced to what she assumed might be her workspace then it's better to take the accusations with a grain of salt.
    - brailsafe 6y ago
      Seems like your process sucked too.
      - rumanator 6y ago
        That comment makes as much sense as whining that an onboarding process sucked because you were scheduled to start on a specific day instead of when you felt like it.
maltelandwehr 6y ago
The biggest red flag is the author.
- maxden 6y ago
  Agreed. Any how can they write something like this: "they had claimed (and lied) that "your manager will be able to see the results of this". First of all, I doubt that was true."
alexashka 6y ago
Hah :) Pretty funny - what is the motivation for posting it for the whole world to see? Is Rachel just so good at her job that she can get away with it or what? I understand why people vent, I don't quite understand how it doesn't catch up to them and teach them a lesson in discretion. I remember commenting on another one of Rachel's rants a couple of years ago it must've been - I can see that the rants have gotten more brazen, it's as if she feels she can do no wrong in the tech scene :D I'm almost tempted to subscribe to her blog to see where this zero-f's-given trainwreck leads.
mister_hn 6y ago
Although it might feel weird as onboarding, as developer you should get used to use commands like curl or be able to set your development environment by typing in the console. Those who rely only on simple installers are the one classified as red-flags
- toyg 6y ago
  I think the point of that paragraph is that it’s busywork: just type this magic incantation to do things that some sysadmin could do (and probably should have done) for you in advance, without any real explanation of why or what you’re doing it. She knows what curl is.
  - heyoni 6y ago
    I bet it was homebrew.
- jmcgough 6y ago
  She was commenting on the security concerns around using curl to download and run programs.
  - 8192kjshad09- 6y ago
    I don't think so, there are no security concerns. Using curl is no more dangerous than downloading and executing an installer https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/213401/is-curl-something-sudo-bash-a-reasonably-safe-installation-method https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/213401/is-curl-...
    - cygx 6y ago
      Depends on whether the mechanism you're comparing it to has a cryptographic verfification step, or not. On the flip side, a script may be short enough to manually audit.
- Dayshine 6y ago
  Are you sure curl installation scripts are better than vanilla installers + shared config files?
kbenson 6y ago
I should probably stop reading her posts when they are submitted (I think I skipped the last few). Invariably I agree with portions of what she says, but it's always couched in what I view as a very poor attitude. I get it. She's a jaded bay area developer. I sure hope it's mostly just a persona for her blog, because otherwise why put yourself through such misery? She obviously doesn't respect anything about the companies she's working for, if her writing is anything to go by, and she's obviously in demand enough to get jobs at big companies. I think she would be happier if she looked for a different class of employer. If that's hard to find here, move somewhere else. Do what you have to to be happy. > As for why I didn't recognize the CEO: I had just started, and it's not like I memorize names and faces of these people. Hello, stalker-ville or ass-kisser-ville, and I am neither. That's just great. I'll just be over here, being a "stalker" and "ass kisser" because I want to know who I'm working for before I join a company. But that's just me, I'm sure I'm being overly cautious. It's not like a bunch of developers have joined horrible companies helmed by horrible people that have instilled a horrible corporate culture before because they didn't pay attention to that... Right?
- probably_wrong 6y ago
  > I sure hope it's mostly just a persona for her blog, because otherwise why put yourself through such misery? I don't follow her blog enough to fill in the details, but if I understand correctly this is from a job she hated and left recently-ish due to how bad everything was [1]. So she's not putting up with it, but rather giving retrospectives on a bad couple of years. [1] http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/03/04/annoyed/ http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/03/04/annoyed/
  - kbenson 6y ago
    Honestly, that link reads like I remember all the posts of hers I remember reading. In summary: - stuff sucks here, but I fight the good fight, and do the right thing even though others don't always - I say the truth, publish it even, but people don't want to hear it. Sometimes people people are so unappreciative they actually say mean things to me. Sometimes they even put it in writing! - I have enough clout I can ignore some of the normal procedures and policies for the betterment of all. Some people aren't appreciative of this. Some of those people are managers, even my manager. Those are all the bad people though. - they try to force me to change, but screw them. This is obviously their problem. I'll stand by my principles by walking out and into some other high position at another company, where they appreciate when I call the management bozos... After a few posts like that, it starts to to feel like maybe a big chunk of the problem might be her. At this point, I really hope someone will come out and point out how there were all these positive posts I missed over the last few years. That's entirely possible. The HN selection filter (which is how I see these) might be biased towards a certain type of article of hers, and I might have missed some/most that made it here. I would rather rather be wrong in any of numerous ways than actually have her be as miserable and miserable to be around as she sounds at this point.
ramraj07 6y ago
Who is this person, why is their weird holier than thou writing constantly upvoted? Did they secretly invent the internet?
- alain_gilbert 6y ago
  I would say it's probably because many (quieter) people can relate to the stories.
  - ramraj07 6y ago
    That really is sad. Reading through this post, it's clear that this company is one of those "hip" places that tries to be cool, but of course comes off as slightly lame. Lamer still is this person who complains about it. They want you to name a dog, just go ahead and name an effing dog! How hard is that? Unless they are asking you to wear a toga on day two just go ahead with what is clearly a process trying hard to please everyone and not complain about simple things?
    - yesbabyyes 6y ago
      > They want you to name a dog, just go ahead and name an effing dog! How hard is that? The way I read it, HR gave a "test" where you're supposed to find employees (and their dogs) in some internal company directory, with a time limit. And stated that the "results" from this test would be shared with the participants' respective managers. Silly games at work can be OK at times, but what is the point of this, really? I don't think it's "lame" to "complain" about; venting is good, and IMO calling out some of the bullshit with your name attached to it is gutsy, not "lame".
- fruffy 6y ago
  I do not know why this writing is always upvoted. I find the blog insufferable. It has this kind of style which makes grand narratives about minor nuisances and seems to warp what really happened. HN loves it for some reason.
- marvin 6y ago
trashburger 6y ago
If the author didn't want to do the work to learn the ins and outs of the company she's being hired by (and yes, almost every company has a few quirks in their internal systems), why did she even apply? Did she ask for a non-terrible laptop? Was she rejected? The article doesn't mention this. Did she _ask_ for a desk? If they're onboarding many people at once, there's always a chance something can get missed. I think a lack of communication was the main problem here.
- spery 6y ago
  Not defending her but 'asking' for a desk sounds ridiculous. Should she also ask for a chair? Power outlet? Access to toilet?
  - thiht 6y ago
    You shouldn't have to ask for a desk, it should be there when you start. But if it's not, you should definitely ask for one, not wait in the corner until one magically appears.
    - pas 6y ago
      So, how come no one greeted and guided her from her team? (Not friends from other teams.) The team lead, the manager? (Whatever those mean, of course.) This whole company sounds like a sitcom.
    - rumanator 6y ago
      > You shouldn't have to ask for a desk, it should be there when you start. If the author decided unilaterally to skip the onboarding process and appear unexpectedly and unannounced at somewhere she assumed would be her workspace then she wasn't there when she was supposed to start. Would it also make any sense if the author whined about the company not providing her with a computer if she happened to also skip that part of the onboarding process?
  - trashburger 6y ago
    Of course they should be provided. The problem is that onboarding processes usually are so complicated that the organizers forget things. It's okay to remind them.
neoplatonian 6y ago
This post is actually written in retrospect with bitterness, so I'd avoid reading too much into it: either as red flags on the author or the company. Memories and lived experiences get colored in hindsight by what happened after. For example, there must have definitely been positives that attracted the author to the company, but they are diminished in memory, crowded out by bitterness.
- brailsafe 6y ago
  I wouldn't be so dismissive, and have found it interesting to see how negative most top-level commenters have been. I think it's valuable to look back at the first few bits of information that could have tipped you off early to a negative experience later on. That's how we learn what not to do next time. I think there's a lot more in this post than you might get at first read. For example, a lot of people are interpreting it as bitter, and it seems to be, but it also communicates some level of unmet basic hopes for the new position. It seems to me like optimism carried her through this period, that only in retrospect were signs that it wasn't meant to be. Likewise, many people are missing the fact that this is a retrospective at all. Without knowing any further context, this story could have literally taken place at any point in her career, and I'm sure many developers on here have similar stories.
  - mjburgess 6y ago
    Or, in lieu of being able to offer any substantive criticisms is looking to rationalise her failure by locating it with the company as early as possible.
    - brailsafe 6y ago
      That's an awfully uncharitable view, especially to assume she failed in any way. I don't get the sense that the point of the blog post was to levy substantive criticism at an unnamed company. Regardless, would you say it's irrational or, to use some words from others: arrogant, techier-than-thou, entitled, autistic, to conclude in retrospect that there were early signs of the company and you not being a good fit? Seems pretty reasonable. It's implied and stated how she tends to react to the process she was tasked with.
aww_dang 6y ago
How many people opt-out of this kind of culture and become self-employed? The theory of specialization and collaboration increasing productivity is fine, but look at all of the time lost for this nonsense. Imagine paying the salaries of these disaffected employees as they Svejk their way through the workday. Think of the overhead for the office space, medical and paid leave for all of these people. I also wonder about the value of those who are compliant and obedient. Not sure that those qualities go hand in hand with innovation and critical thinking. Solo-entrepreneurship limits the kinds of problems you can solve, but the ones you do select can be low maintenance, passive income situations. After building up a portfolio like this, there is no need to build resumes, learn buzzwords or tolerate the nonsense described in this article. Your surplus of free time can be invested in creating more revenue streams.
hnarn 6y ago
I wonder what kind of negative feedback employees would have in a company where this person was the CEO. Judging by the tone and entitlement of the author I assume they think there wouldn’t be any.
lifeisstillgood 6y ago
Instead of bugs per LOC or anything else, the single biggest metric a CEO needs to watch is employee gripes per work day. Goes up in a particular area - get in there and fix something. It's like metal on metal for a engine operator, CEOs need to listen for that grating sound. And as such I will defend to the death an employee's right to moan and bitch about working conditions.
smitty1e 6y ago
Rachel comes off as someone with vast chops who is better suited to a start-up than a large corporation. I had a somewhat similar experience of being at a consultancy that is great for people right out of college. Made me feel a trifle old and ready to get to a place that was more work-horse and less show-horse.
LeonB 6y ago
I felt so stressed reading this.
zhdc1 6y ago
She's getting a lot of flak on here, but I kind of sympathize with her. Multiday onboarding programs, unfamiliar (bad?) IT, and inflated expectations aren't particularly fun to deal with.
bjornlouser 6y ago
"... You start feeling very old ..." I hear you calling me. And oh, the ringing gladness of your voice! And on my career’s grave the mossy grass is green: At the stand-up, do you behold me? Standing here, Hearing your voice through all the corporate hell between.
dirtnugget 6y ago
The first days in a company can really mark everything. I can feel her. Last time I felt like that I ran out after 3 months and ended up freelancing ever since. Maybe she should try that.
fullito 6y ago
What an attitude :( If you don't like a company, you have 3 options: 1. Try to change it, if that doesn't work -> quit without complaining. It is not your company 2. If you don't wanna change it 2.1 quit 2.2 accept how it is You should not complain and complain and complain. You only make it worse for people who either like their jobs (for whatever reasons you can't see or understand) or they have, in comparision to you, no other choice. I'm not perfect in this, i'm more the 'i complain and start changing things'. Really shitty old git hosting solution, 6 weeks later it was replaced by me with gitlab. Onboarding procedures might be shit, but you should be smart enough to handle situations like this. Do i care if i have a desk at the first week? No, i will just work less efficient and if the sitatuion doesn't change i either ask around and take care of it or i quit. And with quitting i don't mean rage quit i mean 'hey so yeah super sry about this but i have the feeling that we are not a good match.' quit.
SergeAx 6y ago
> You're making lots of mistakes, despite having decades of typing experience at relatively high speeds In Japan it was a duty of samurai to bring a sword to the service. For last 10 years I'm bringing my own keyboard and mouse to every new job.
Jabbles 6y ago
So this is Lyft?
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lifeisstillgood 6y ago
On the other hand this is being done soooo badly across the board there must be a saas opportunity here :-)
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donw 6y ago

It boggles my mind how companies do not take onboarding seriously. This is the best opportunity you have to set your people up for success, bar none. Plus, many of the things your company should do to build a great onboarding experience can also be leveraged to make it easy to do things like "move people between teams", "expand into a new office", and "hire great people". Done properly, this is cheap as hell.

cammil 6y ago
I don't think the incentives are there, and it's probably reasonably difficult to do well.
pedrocr 6y ago
This sounds like an example of someone taking it seriously by actually putting in the effort to build the elaborate program but then failing miserably at making it effective. That's not at all an unusual experience for HR processes in my experience. There's far too little feedback built into those kinds of processes so they rarely know if they are doing well or not.
- mrweasel 6y ago
  HR honestly have no business getting involved in hirering or onboarding. Most people working in HR aren’t qualified for it. HR should be limited to gathering enough info to ensure that you’re being paid and perhaps managing how much vacation you have left. It’s a service organisation. I had one HR drone complain about developers being bad at logging time. We told her that the system sucked and made it to hard to correctly enter your hours. She the proceede to demo how easy it was by entering her hours for the week. Basically: HR stuff = 37 hours. She had no clue that the average developer had more tasks during one day, each requirering it’s code, that she had during a full month. HR, especially in large companies, are clueless about the actual work being done. Personally I no longer participate in personality test. If one is required during the interview process I decline and leave. It always HR that require the test, never the people you’d actually work for. For onboard: The people I’ve onboarded for different companies all get the first day to settle in, setup their computer, find the coffeemaker and just look around. Day two you get a real assignment, ideally something you can fix and have in production before four o’clock. After that it’s just progressively harder tasks until you can manage on your own.
  - elric 6y ago
    > I no longer participate in personality test. If one is required during the interview process I decline and leave. I do this as well. I've had companies send me online personality tests with seriously invasive questions. With no explanations as to the purpose, no guarantees regarding data protection. Just a quick "fill this out to see if you're a match". I'm sure it's designed to carefully skirt around anything that's overtly illegal, but fuck that. They go on my shitlist.
gulfie 6y ago
They do take it seriously. It's just like the Nigerian prince scams. The insanity acts as a filter. What you get out the other side doesn't know or doesn't care that they are being misused.
- toohotatopic 6y ago
  Is this a conscious decision or an evolutionary thing where only those companies survive that happen to treat their employees like this?
  - deleted 6y ago
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elric 6y ago
It's something I've been struggling with. It would be nice if there were a one-size-fits-all onboarding script. The company I work for has grown from 3 (founders included!) to over 30 in the time I've been there. When you're tiny, and someone new joins, there's no need for formal onboarding, osmosis sort of does its thing. This worked reasonably well until we reached ~10 butts in seats. Unfortunately, this 10 people mark was also where pressure started to ramp up. More customers, tighter deadlines, bigger workloads, and a struggle to survive -- because at this point the first round of financing was spent, and we needed to prove our worth to future investors. Everyone was stressed and overworked. Basically, there was no time for onboarding. Which is stupid, because it's an activity that pays dividends in the sort-of-short term. Once we reached the 30 people mark, we were able to breathe a little easier in regards to workload. We're still growing. Onboarding is starting to become a thing. Where things aren't automated, they're being documented. We at least try to make time for introductions. It's far from perfect. It needs to improve. But it's hard. And I should probably take a moment to apologize to hire ten through thirty for what must have been a shitty first few months for them.
- HenryBemis 6y ago
  I will repeat from another point of view: when you were 10 we had enough workload for 15 but we didn't get the extra 5 until we got to the "need 20" (or whatever number). So you have always been overworked and overworking your staff and you preferred that they all work on 120-140% instead of 80-90% that would give space for better quality. I get it that numbers are ruthless, but workload, quality, documentation (not speaking only about onboarding documentation) etc. also got "numbers" on them if one cares to measure. It is only the £€¥$ numbers matter.
  - elric 6y ago
    Oh yes you're absolutely right. And while I'm only an engineer and have no "real" say in how the company is run, and no remuneration except for my monthly paycheck, I've definitely been part of the problem. I work crazy hours, I'm totally addicted to the problem-solution "high" feedback loop. There have definitely been times when I've thought some people weren't pulling their weight. But with the passage of time, I've mellowed a bit and I've come to realize the importance of downtime and all those hard to quantify things. For the most part, my employer has treated people pretty well. Workload has been high, but flexibility has always been high as well. Along with $$$. Working here has definitely given me an appreciation for the hard work it takes to get a company off the ground.

FiloSottile 6y ago

I can't believe how casual and normal "there was a dog in this room" is made out to be in American work culture. I have a potentially lethal dog allergy, so that's a room, a floor, an office I could not be in at all. Maybe I couldn't even take the job, so that the pets could have my spot in the company directory. I realize I have almost all the other privileges but this really doesn't make me feel welcome in a workplace, and I don't understand how pets in the office isn't considered an anti-inclusive practice. I guess it doesn't matter now. Previously: https://twitter.com/FiloSottile/status/1116418872519929859 https://twitter.com/FiloSottile/status/1116418872519929859

WWLink 6y ago
lol, I can relate. I worked at a company that moved to a nice big new office. They replaced the carpets and the ceiling tiles, and I still had nasty allergies for the first few weeks. Place used to be owned by a dog friendly business. OMG dude you should've seen when we went on the tour of the place lmao. The carpets were stained with pee and poop and it was sooooooooo disgusting.
rainyMammoth 6y ago
I'm not a fan of dogs either. I have had what looked like a dog attacking me in the past in an office and I was being told that I should not worry because it is usually "friendly". I really hope that this whole dog at the office madness stops sooner than later. Hopefully WFH is going to resolve this.
- pmiller2 6y ago
  Regardless of how you feel about dogs (I love them and would be thrilled if I worked in an office with one or more dogs), no reasonable office dog policy would allow an animal that attacks people. That's just wrong.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    I think a problem is that some people feel the dog is attacking them, when the owner thinks the dog is being playful. That's how people get upset about dogs in my experience.

hayksaakian 6y ago

More context for the OP: https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/02/29/poof/ https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/02/29/poof/

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FearNotDaniel 6y ago
Nobody needs to spend inordinate amounts of time rewriting 18-year-old C++ code just to put appointments in their diary. FFS use GCal or Outlook like any normal human being. Or if decades-old technology turns you on, use a Filofax or a PalmPilot. The reason I mention this is that nearly every post I read by this author, who seems unaccountably popular on HN, stinks of some tech-fetishist with poor communication skills who insists on doing everything by the most difficult and convoluted means possible. This is not the sort of attitude we should be idolizing in an entrepreneurial culture. I would love to be a fly on the wall in the HR meetings and hear the other side of the story, because I would certainly not want someone like this on my team, however gifted or experienced they are.
- mjburgess 6y ago
  > tech-fetishist with poor communication skills who insists on doing everything by the most difficult and convoluted means possible > unaccountably popular ...Hacker news?
- vikasg 6y ago
  +1 In a startup you want to actively screen for candidates like this. Someone who idolizes technological "purity" above all else and looks down on business will never be happy at a startup that needs to get shit done quickly. It's a lose-lose situation. They'll eventually grow resentful and quit, or you'll have to manage them out. Better to avoid the whole thing in the first place, no matter how great a programmer they are otherwise.
  - mellow2020 6y ago

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narraturgy 6y ago

The process described here is one that would honestly have me walking out the door. I don't say that from a place of "this isn't worth my time" or a similar feeling grounded in self-worth and healthy ego--the aimless, direction-less, utter lack of structure or clear direction on how to proceed while being deluged in busywork would leave me so anxious and adrift that I know I wouldn't be able to return to that place. The concept of "working" for three days before my direct supervisor even noticed my presence is so foreign to me that I truly have no idea how I'd function, unless it was to sit in a corner and panic about not knowing how to start doing the job I was (supposedly) hired for. As someone trying to figure out how to turn my diploma into a job despite intense impostor syndrome, this tale is absolutely harrowing.

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fossuser 6y ago
I think this is a bit of an overreaction. In practice the first day or two doesn't matter that much, you're getting your laptop - meeting some people, signing into some accounts. I don't think this is really that big of a deal in the scheme of things.
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- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  It's a pretty strong indicator, the best companies I've worked for were really good at welcoming me. The worst were awful.
  - pmiller2 6y ago
    I agree with this. I've had everything from "here's a laptop, have fun setting everything up," to a comprehensive intro to the company and basic systems that took about half a day, along with an assigned new hire mentor and a set of starter tickets to work on for my first couple of weeks. At the first place, it took me 3 weeks to get to the point where I could submit my first pull request. At the second, I obviously wasn't fully productive right away, but I wrote real code and merged it into production within my first week.

sergiotapia 6y ago

I don't care how many years you have on the job, not knowing the CEO's face/name of a company you're just joining is weird.

Aloha 6y ago
I work for a 200 person company, I didn't figure out who the CEO was for about two weeks from when I was hired
- artsyca 6y ago
  My biggest peeve is that everyone dresses the same and I know I'm an outlier but it would be super helpful to be able to identify people's rank based on their outfits but I guess this isn't the army, huh? Edit: by dress I mean the older sense of the word: The older sense survives in military dress ranks "align columns of troops." We've gone so anti-corporate that we don't even know who the leadership is any more it's a rotten proposition that serves the worst of both worlds
- dkersten 6y ago
  As a counterpoint, I work for a 1500 company and was told/shown who the management and such were in my first week. I guess it depends on the company, you and your boss.
  - Aloha 6y ago
    I think it depends on how layered the company is, I have never interacted with someone above the VP/Director level, my job just doesnt call for it.
    - dkersten 6y ago
      I haven't interacted with the executive team either, but I still know who they key people are.
- sergiotapia 6y ago
  How do you accept a job at a company where you don't know who the CEO is?

tzs 6y ago

> You're making lots of mistakes, despite having decades of typing experience at relatively high speeds. It’s amazing how small a keyboard difference can throw you way off. I had an Apple Magic Keyboard and could type on it high speed with high accuracy. I wanted a numeric keypad and bigger arrow keys so got an Apple Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad. The latter is pretty much the former with extra space on the right for the keypad. The letters and punctuation keys are the same in size, location, and feel. If you are just banging out text or code, there should be virtually no difference between the two. In reality, I could barely type on the keypad version. It took a couple days to get decent on it. Even after a couple weeks I was having trouble with punctuation, making coding slow.

pmiller2 6y ago
I need an ergo keyboard to avoid RSI. The first one I tried was this monster $300 Kinesis Advantage keyboard, which I picked because it was the most highly rated one on Amazon, it looked cool, and I thought it would solve my problem. It did not. I could barely type letters on it, and some of the common programming characters, like [{}] were in the "wrong" spot relative to where my fingers thought they should be. I sent that bad boy back in under a week and settled on the MS Ergo Sculpt. It has a standard layout that works great for me, and I credit it with keeping me in the industry for the past 3 years, and, hopefully, far beyond.
- manuform 6y ago
  The Kinesis has been my workhorse for the last 4 years and now I have 2 (one at the office). I think with any reprogramming it takes a while to settle in; when I switched over to this from a standard keyboard was also when I took the plunge to relearn touch typing with the Colemak layout - productivity plunge as I struggled to do even 15WPM. Now I'm at 82-90WPM.
  - pmiller2 6y ago
    Yeah, that's the thing. When I bought it, I was starting down the path to permanent disability if I didn't do something. And, I couldn't afford to be at 1/10 or 1/4 typing speed, because I still needed to produce at work. The Kinesis would actually have been fine, if I could have figured out how to get the programming-related characters to map properly to my brain. Typing on it was such a WTF experience for me that I couldn't continue, and it turned me off even trying to reprogram it. But, the Ergo Sculpt was just like "plug it in. Go." The only weirdness I've experienced with it is that some of them work fine with the Macbook Pro, and some of them don't. It seems to have to do with what model the USB transmitter is, but I don't have a big enough sample to know for sure. I was lucky the first one I bought just worked, because otherwise I probably would have sent it back and gotten a different one. I did have to do a return / swap on the second one I ordered (one for home, and one for the office). When either of them die, they will get replaced with something similar, if not the exact model.

rainyMammoth 6y ago

In my experience the first few days of onboarding is the only time when it's easy to meet new faces in a company. You will always remember the couple of people that onboarded together with you. Looks like going through a bunch of nonsense together successfully bounds people. That's the only real benefit of those onboarding few days. I usually roll my eyes through most of the high level presentations that are full of Koolaid, politically correctness or even straight up made up as you typically discover after a couple weeks/months.

im3w1l 6y ago

I dunno, most of it didn't sound that bad. I guess anything becomes stressful under time pressure.

meddlin 6y ago

I really wish companies would start asking for anonymous, unbiased reviews of this process. I've had a few companies come close, but they made it clear the answers were (or seemed to be) heavily filtered. Their onboarding processes all sucked. Please stop with the cute HR nonsense. I'm not a kid. I don't need your cute program. We don't need someone reading 10 pages from your legally unenforceable handbook from a projector. Keep your gift bag; the squeeze ball is stupid and you didn't pick the pen. (Have you ever given a gift?) If you're going to lean into the sterile corporate decor, then at least hand me a clipboard and let me fill out paperwork just like I'm at the doctor's office. If it sounds salty; it's supposed to. I hope a C-level, or business owner, takes it to heart. I'm not trying to beat you down. This first-impression is important--I took 10 minutes on a Saturday at 2:50AM to let you know. I've seen your "all-hands", your quarterlies, your launches, and your totally-not-Christmas parties. You already know how to do better.

xiphias2 6y ago
,,I really wish companies would start asking for anonymous, unbiased reviews of this process'' Google does this, but then changes only things that are not against its current politics.
pmiller2 6y ago
You lost me at "anonymous." I treat every single one of those stupid surveys as if everyone in the whole company was watching me fill it out. I never leave free response comments, because I don't want to be identified by my words. Maybe it's paranoid, but it's worked for me so far. And, yes, if other people think the same as me, then it's surely biased the data a bit, as well.
- meddlin 6y ago
  "Anonymous" is a bit much to ask for this, yes. I'm really just asking for the company to--for once--lower its defenses so we can have a conversation. Air the frustrations without fear of immediate professional retaliation. If a company, manager, exec, or leader can't exercise that kind of humility, then quite frankly they don't deserve the position.

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naringas 6y ago

the curious thing about such flags is that they are obvious in retrospect but somewhat imperceptible when you needed to notice them

elric 6y ago
I think this is down to being nervous for a large part. Maybe you could have noticed some of these red flags when you were interviewing at the company. But you're in a new environment, with new people, being bombarded with questions. Sometimes you're there because your current job is a giant shitstorm you want to walk away from. It's easy to miss things in that state. That goes both ways, of course. When I'm hiring I sometimes dimiss red flags because I think "they're just nervous, they're not really this dumb". But sometimes they are.

matsemann 6y ago

I also think this shows a few red flags of the author. Definitely not a team player, runs from boring stuff (instead of challenging it or trying to fix it), and then hides in a corner a few days instead of actually talking to the manager (who thought the person was busy a few days with the onboarding, so naturally didn't show them a desk yet).

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stingraycharles 6y ago
It’s just a cultural fit issue. Different people have different personalities / preferences, and what may be one person’s “red flag” may be the other person’s preference.
- twblalock 6y ago
  Not all preferences are reasonable. I've seen multiple posts by the author of this piece and I wouldn't want to work with that person. I've worked with people who have similar personalities, and it's just not worth it. You can find competent people who are easier to get along with.
  - Lammy 6y ago
    What does worth it mean to you? I worked relatively near the author of this post in the past, and she’s totally brilliant. Saved our company’s ass over and over again. I personally learned a ton from her and still look up to her immensely even though she left behind a mean (anonymous) complaint about me and probably thinks not very highly of me :p
    - pedro2 6y ago
      How old are you? I’m in my thirties and if someone left a mean anonymous note about me I would be pissy about that for a few years before I’d find it mildly amusing. Congrats! (in case there is doubt: not being sarcastic)

FearNotDaniel 6y ago

"CEO". "These people". Fortunately I have questions in my developer interviews that filter out the snarky techier-than-thou types in favour of those who actually take an interest in the business whose success their tech skills are supposed to be supporting.

number6 6y ago
That sounds interesting, how do you do it? Which questions do you ask? What shows you that someone is interested in your business?
- pron 6y ago
  Back when I did hiring interviews I used to ask people to familiarize themselves a little bit with the organization (could be the whole company or just a team, depending on size) before the interview, and then ask them why they want to work here. This is so important that I would even ask applicants to answer this specific question in their cover-letter.
  - slyall 6y ago
    I'm not sure that works in the majority of jobs. If you are the world's 27th largest CRM vendor then how would you expect a programmer to answer that question? There is a good chance that after a couple of years they will be as passionate about the CRM market is you are but 99% of the companies out there are not Google or somewhere people lust to work at.
    - pron 6y ago
      I don't mean why do you want to work at this particular company more than all other companies, but why do you want to work here at all? What is it that you find appealing here? This is also a good meta-question. Even after I write to a candidate to say that they will be asked this, you'd be surprised how many are unprepared. I remember one guy who told me, when I asked him, that he's interviewing at so many places that it's unreasonable to expect him to know any specifics about this company. I wondered if he thought it reasonable, given how many people I was interviewing, that I try to know anything specific about him. Unsurprisingly, that answer is the only thing I remember about him.

hackily 6y ago

This sounds suspiciously like the onboarding experience I had at my company. In particular, Duo for 2 factor and LastPass, and the curl command to start downloading a bunch of stuff. FWIW I thought it was pretty streamlined, better than what I'd had in the past.

philjohn 6y ago
I was stoked when we moved to Duo at work - no more having to type in an 8 digit code off my phone, just tap "accept" on the push notification on my phone or watch and I'm in. It's such a great solution to make 2FA as seamless as possible.

gregjor 6y ago

A story of entitlement and expecting a job to work like a kindergarten classroom. No matter how far companies go to cater to their privileged tech hires they get ridiculed, taken advantage of, discarded. Ask why these ridiculous onboarding processes exist in the first place.

chapelierfou 6y ago
You are the problem.
- lubonay 6y ago
  Ad hominem to you too!
brailsafe 6y ago
Doesn't seem like they went even as far as to get a desk. Who are you defending?
- rumanator 6y ago
  > Doesn't seem like they went even as far as to get a desk. In the last onboarding I endured, I was only assigned a desk after I finished after the process ended. Considering how the author claims that she unilaterally decided to skip the onboarding process and instead to present herself unannounced to what she assumed might be her workspace then it's better to take the accusations with a grain of salt.
  - brailsafe 6y ago
    Seems like your process sucked too.
    - rumanator 6y ago
      That comment makes as much sense as whining that an onboarding process sucked because you were scheduled to start on a specific day instead of when you felt like it.

maltelandwehr 6y ago

The biggest red flag is the author.

maxden 6y ago
Agreed. Any how can they write something like this: "they had claimed (and lied) that "your manager will be able to see the results of this". First of all, I doubt that was true."

alexashka 6y ago

Hah :) Pretty funny - what is the motivation for posting it for the whole world to see? Is Rachel just so good at her job that she can get away with it or what? I understand why people vent, I don't quite understand how it doesn't catch up to them and teach them a lesson in discretion. I remember commenting on another one of Rachel's rants a couple of years ago it must've been - I can see that the rants have gotten more brazen, it's as if she feels she can do no wrong in the tech scene :D I'm almost tempted to subscribe to her blog to see where this zero-f's-given trainwreck leads.

mister_hn 6y ago

Although it might feel weird as onboarding, as developer you should get used to use commands like curl or be able to set your development environment by typing in the console. Those who rely only on simple installers are the one classified as red-flags

toyg 6y ago
I think the point of that paragraph is that it’s busywork: just type this magic incantation to do things that some sysadmin could do (and probably should have done) for you in advance, without any real explanation of why or what you’re doing it. She knows what curl is.
- heyoni 6y ago
  I bet it was homebrew.
jmcgough 6y ago
She was commenting on the security concerns around using curl to download and run programs.
- 8192kjshad09- 6y ago
  I don't think so, there are no security concerns. Using curl is no more dangerous than downloading and executing an installer https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/213401/is-curl-something-sudo-bash-a-reasonably-safe-installation-method https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/213401/is-curl-...
  - cygx 6y ago
    Depends on whether the mechanism you're comparing it to has a cryptographic verfification step, or not. On the flip side, a script may be short enough to manually audit.
Dayshine 6y ago
Are you sure curl installation scripts are better than vanilla installers + shared config files?

kbenson 6y ago

I should probably stop reading her posts when they are submitted (I think I skipped the last few). Invariably I agree with portions of what she says, but it's always couched in what I view as a very poor attitude. I get it. She's a jaded bay area developer. I sure hope it's mostly just a persona for her blog, because otherwise why put yourself through such misery? She obviously doesn't respect anything about the companies she's working for, if her writing is anything to go by, and she's obviously in demand enough to get jobs at big companies. I think she would be happier if she looked for a different class of employer. If that's hard to find here, move somewhere else. Do what you have to to be happy. > As for why I didn't recognize the CEO: I had just started, and it's not like I memorize names and faces of these people. Hello, stalker-ville or ass-kisser-ville, and I am neither. That's just great. I'll just be over here, being a "stalker" and "ass kisser" because I want to know who I'm working for before I join a company. But that's just me, I'm sure I'm being overly cautious. It's not like a bunch of developers have joined horrible companies helmed by horrible people that have instilled a horrible corporate culture before because they didn't pay attention to that... Right?

probably_wrong 6y ago
> I sure hope it's mostly just a persona for her blog, because otherwise why put yourself through such misery? I don't follow her blog enough to fill in the details, but if I understand correctly this is from a job she hated and left recently-ish due to how bad everything was [1]. So she's not putting up with it, but rather giving retrospectives on a bad couple of years. [1] http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/03/04/annoyed/ http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/03/04/annoyed/
- kbenson 6y ago
  Honestly, that link reads like I remember all the posts of hers I remember reading. In summary: - stuff sucks here, but I fight the good fight, and do the right thing even though others don't always - I say the truth, publish it even, but people don't want to hear it. Sometimes people people are so unappreciative they actually say mean things to me. Sometimes they even put it in writing! - I have enough clout I can ignore some of the normal procedures and policies for the betterment of all. Some people aren't appreciative of this. Some of those people are managers, even my manager. Those are all the bad people though. - they try to force me to change, but screw them. This is obviously their problem. I'll stand by my principles by walking out and into some other high position at another company, where they appreciate when I call the management bozos... After a few posts like that, it starts to to feel like maybe a big chunk of the problem might be her. At this point, I really hope someone will come out and point out how there were all these positive posts I missed over the last few years. That's entirely possible. The HN selection filter (which is how I see these) might be biased towards a certain type of article of hers, and I might have missed some/most that made it here. I would rather rather be wrong in any of numerous ways than actually have her be as miserable and miserable to be around as she sounds at this point.

ramraj07 6y ago

Who is this person, why is their weird holier than thou writing constantly upvoted? Did they secretly invent the internet?

alain_gilbert 6y ago
I would say it's probably because many (quieter) people can relate to the stories.
- ramraj07 6y ago
  That really is sad. Reading through this post, it's clear that this company is one of those "hip" places that tries to be cool, but of course comes off as slightly lame. Lamer still is this person who complains about it. They want you to name a dog, just go ahead and name an effing dog! How hard is that? Unless they are asking you to wear a toga on day two just go ahead with what is clearly a process trying hard to please everyone and not complain about simple things?
  - yesbabyyes 6y ago
    > They want you to name a dog, just go ahead and name an effing dog! How hard is that? The way I read it, HR gave a "test" where you're supposed to find employees (and their dogs) in some internal company directory, with a time limit. And stated that the "results" from this test would be shared with the participants' respective managers. Silly games at work can be OK at times, but what is the point of this, really? I don't think it's "lame" to "complain" about; venting is good, and IMO calling out some of the bullshit with your name attached to it is gutsy, not "lame".
fruffy 6y ago
I do not know why this writing is always upvoted. I find the blog insufferable. It has this kind of style which makes grand narratives about minor nuisances and seems to warp what really happened. HN loves it for some reason.
marvin 6y ago

trashburger 6y ago

If the author didn't want to do the work to learn the ins and outs of the company she's being hired by (and yes, almost every company has a few quirks in their internal systems), why did she even apply? Did she ask for a non-terrible laptop? Was she rejected? The article doesn't mention this. Did she _ask_ for a desk? If they're onboarding many people at once, there's always a chance something can get missed. I think a lack of communication was the main problem here.

spery 6y ago
Not defending her but 'asking' for a desk sounds ridiculous. Should she also ask for a chair? Power outlet? Access to toilet?
- thiht 6y ago
  You shouldn't have to ask for a desk, it should be there when you start. But if it's not, you should definitely ask for one, not wait in the corner until one magically appears.
  - pas 6y ago
    So, how come no one greeted and guided her from her team? (Not friends from other teams.) The team lead, the manager? (Whatever those mean, of course.) This whole company sounds like a sitcom.
  - rumanator 6y ago
    > You shouldn't have to ask for a desk, it should be there when you start. If the author decided unilaterally to skip the onboarding process and appear unexpectedly and unannounced at somewhere she assumed would be her workspace then she wasn't there when she was supposed to start. Would it also make any sense if the author whined about the company not providing her with a computer if she happened to also skip that part of the onboarding process?
- trashburger 6y ago
  Of course they should be provided. The problem is that onboarding processes usually are so complicated that the organizers forget things. It's okay to remind them.

neoplatonian 6y ago

This post is actually written in retrospect with bitterness, so I'd avoid reading too much into it: either as red flags on the author or the company. Memories and lived experiences get colored in hindsight by what happened after. For example, there must have definitely been positives that attracted the author to the company, but they are diminished in memory, crowded out by bitterness.

brailsafe 6y ago
I wouldn't be so dismissive, and have found it interesting to see how negative most top-level commenters have been. I think it's valuable to look back at the first few bits of information that could have tipped you off early to a negative experience later on. That's how we learn what not to do next time. I think there's a lot more in this post than you might get at first read. For example, a lot of people are interpreting it as bitter, and it seems to be, but it also communicates some level of unmet basic hopes for the new position. It seems to me like optimism carried her through this period, that only in retrospect were signs that it wasn't meant to be. Likewise, many people are missing the fact that this is a retrospective at all. Without knowing any further context, this story could have literally taken place at any point in her career, and I'm sure many developers on here have similar stories.
- mjburgess 6y ago
  Or, in lieu of being able to offer any substantive criticisms is looking to rationalise her failure by locating it with the company as early as possible.
  - brailsafe 6y ago
    That's an awfully uncharitable view, especially to assume she failed in any way. I don't get the sense that the point of the blog post was to levy substantive criticism at an unnamed company. Regardless, would you say it's irrational or, to use some words from others: arrogant, techier-than-thou, entitled, autistic, to conclude in retrospect that there were early signs of the company and you not being a good fit? Seems pretty reasonable. It's implied and stated how she tends to react to the process she was tasked with.

aww_dang 6y ago

How many people opt-out of this kind of culture and become self-employed? The theory of specialization and collaboration increasing productivity is fine, but look at all of the time lost for this nonsense. Imagine paying the salaries of these disaffected employees as they Svejk their way through the workday. Think of the overhead for the office space, medical and paid leave for all of these people. I also wonder about the value of those who are compliant and obedient. Not sure that those qualities go hand in hand with innovation and critical thinking. Solo-entrepreneurship limits the kinds of problems you can solve, but the ones you do select can be low maintenance, passive income situations. After building up a portfolio like this, there is no need to build resumes, learn buzzwords or tolerate the nonsense described in this article. Your surplus of free time can be invested in creating more revenue streams.

hnarn 6y ago

I wonder what kind of negative feedback employees would have in a company where this person was the CEO. Judging by the tone and entitlement of the author I assume they think there wouldn’t be any.

lifeisstillgood 6y ago

Instead of bugs per LOC or anything else, the single biggest metric a CEO needs to watch is employee gripes per work day. Goes up in a particular area - get in there and fix something. It's like metal on metal for a engine operator, CEOs need to listen for that grating sound. And as such I will defend to the death an employee's right to moan and bitch about working conditions.

smitty1e 6y ago

Rachel comes off as someone with vast chops who is better suited to a start-up than a large corporation. I had a somewhat similar experience of being at a consultancy that is great for people right out of college. Made me feel a trifle old and ready to get to a place that was more work-horse and less show-horse.

LeonB 6y ago

I felt so stressed reading this.

zhdc1 6y ago

She's getting a lot of flak on here, but I kind of sympathize with her. Multiday onboarding programs, unfamiliar (bad?) IT, and inflated expectations aren't particularly fun to deal with.

bjornlouser 6y ago

"... You start feeling very old ..." I hear you calling me. And oh, the ringing gladness of your voice! And on my career’s grave the mossy grass is green: At the stand-up, do you behold me? Standing here, Hearing your voice through all the corporate hell between.

dirtnugget 6y ago

The first days in a company can really mark everything. I can feel her. Last time I felt like that I ran out after 3 months and ended up freelancing ever since. Maybe she should try that.

fullito 6y ago

What an attitude :( If you don't like a company, you have 3 options: 1. Try to change it, if that doesn't work -> quit without complaining. It is not your company 2. If you don't wanna change it 2.1 quit 2.2 accept how it is You should not complain and complain and complain. You only make it worse for people who either like their jobs (for whatever reasons you can't see or understand) or they have, in comparision to you, no other choice. I'm not perfect in this, i'm more the 'i complain and start changing things'. Really shitty old git hosting solution, 6 weeks later it was replaced by me with gitlab. Onboarding procedures might be shit, but you should be smart enough to handle situations like this. Do i care if i have a desk at the first week? No, i will just work less efficient and if the sitatuion doesn't change i either ask around and take care of it or i quit. And with quitting i don't mean rage quit i mean 'hey so yeah super sry about this but i have the feeling that we are not a good match.' quit.

SergeAx 6y ago

> You're making lots of mistakes, despite having decades of typing experience at relatively high speeds In Japan it was a duty of samurai to bring a sword to the service. For last 10 years I'm bringing my own keyboard and mouse to every new job.

Jabbles 6y ago

So this is Lyft?

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lifeisstillgood 6y ago

On the other hand this is being done soooo badly across the board there must be a saas opportunity here :-)

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