13 ms·

Work on What Matters

493 points by wholien 6y ago

soared 6y ago
I was effectively forced to accept a new job due to not being able to pay my rent after COVID. This role is entirely snacking and preening, so it is mildly fulfilling because I get to close ~7 jiras every day. But, I haven’t learned much and am never challenged. While it slows my career trajectory, I am now able to spend way way less time on work and way more time on other things. What the other things are.. time will tell.
- azhenley 6y ago
  I sometimes wonder whether I would enjoy having a job like that, rather than one that takes all my mental and creativity energy, even if it means less pay and prestige. I could stop working at all hours and potentially do creative endeavors like write a book.
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
  I had a job like that for a long time (I was a manager). Since I didn't have a "shower clause" in my employment contract, I was free to do a lot of open-source work. It came out nicely. The work I did has become a worldwide standard. Now that I'm out of that position, I have returned to doing what I want to do. There has been some "snacking," except it's really healthy snacks, because every project I do -even the experimental ones- is done in "ship mode."
  - feteru 6y ago
    What is a "shower clause" in this context?
    - NhanH 6y ago
      All your intellectual output (include during the shower) belongs to the company by default and you have to ask for permission for the company to sign away it.
    - ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
      That’s the clause that says your employer owns every idea that you come up with in the shower. These often go way beyond the “anything done with company equipment or on company time” thing, which is actually already handled by standard employment law. https://dilbert.com/strip/2006-05-20 https://dilbert.com/strip/2006-05-20
      - sizzle 6y ago
        How is this legal?
        ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
        Sometimes, it’s not. But you’ll still need to go to court to fight it, and that makes it effective.
        hansvm 6y ago
        A sufficient amount of lobbying and precedent from underfunded defendants will make a lot of things legal (in the US). In some states like CA, shower clauses are void except for a few explicit carveouts (the ones you might expect -- do personal projects on your own time and dime, and don't directly compete with your employer), but in, e.g., a lot of east coast states shower clauses are stronger and more commonly enforced. Even when unenforceable though, you still have the threat of a court case; your employer can attempt to argue that your personal project falls into one of the exceptions that would grant them ownership of your IP, and a court case is sufficiently painful that it's a bit of a punishment in its own right even if you would win. Also as a practical matter, some companies have shower clauses that additionally stipulate the company can allow you to retain IP on your personal projects if you ask permission. That could be abused, but for large enough companies that touch enough industries that can work out in your favor because a loose interpretation of the law would actually grant them ownership of your IP anyway, but if they have a policy of generally allowing side hustles then the fact that they've explicitly signed over any ownership claims to you will give you a strong leg up (and peace of mind) in any potential court cases -- potentially allowing them to be thrown out before they start.
Pfhreak 6y ago
I don't think I agree with the "Stop Snacking" advice. We all go through times where we need a boost to our sense of accomplishment, it can put the wind in our sails to address bigger problems. Sometimes snarfing up a bunch of snack tasks can make all the difference in the world. Yes, you shouldn't solely be a snacker, probably, but I think it's counterproductive to think of engineers as highly autonomous, robotic units that can view each task selection in total isolation. Previous, unrelated tasks can influence your ability to complete your current task. The weight of future tasks can pull you down.
- apetresc 6y ago
  I think the author specifically addresses your point: > It’s ok to spend some of your time on snacks to keep yourself motivated between bigger accomplishments, but you have to keep yourself honest about how much time you’re spending on high-impact work versus low-impact work. In senior roles, you’re more likely to self-determine your work and if you’re not deliberately tracking your work, it’s easy to catch yourself doing little to no high-impact work.
  - hedberg10 6y ago
    Does anybody else think work in bigger companies is just snacking and only snacking? With the faint hope that all 20.000 employees' snacking somehow is more then the sum of all parts and assembles to a high impact 10 story Powerranger/Gundam? People sit on their niche, defend it to the death and let it take up all their time. That's how it was in every big organisation I've seen. Understandably so, people didn't want to be seen as lazy or expendable, they wanted to defend their self-worth. That's how you get to Parkinson's law and the cult of busyness (and stress, lots of stress, even though there was no reason for it, it's just work, maybe explaining the increase in depression/burnout).
- jimbob45 6y ago
  I save my snackers for the end of the day when my brain is shot during time that wouldn’t be useful for my bigger tasks. I see the author’s point though and broadly agree.
- 6y ago
oilman 6y ago
This seems like great advice, and it resonates with me. I've seen people make a big impact by following this path. > It’s ok to spend some of your time on snacks to keep yourself motivated between bigger accomplishments, but you have to keep yourself honest about how much time you’re spending on high-impact work versus low-impact work. In senior roles, you’re more likely to self-determine your work and if you’re not deliberately tracking your work, it’s easy to catch yourself doing little to no high-impact work. In my own personal experience, that boost of actually accomplishing something right now instead of slowly starting the process of impactfully pushing another rock up a hill is very tempting. Does anyone have any experience or recommendations for effectively tracking your own work and putting yourself in the right headspace to tackle these more long lived impactful tasks? This mental game seems to me to be one of the huge factors that determine outcomes. I tend to have some challenges with attention at the best of times. My interests tend to run hot and cold. I can make a huge impact and move a project significantly forward when I get into it and hyperfocus on it. But other times managing to focus my attention on a tasks that I know would be high impact is mental torture.
- wholien 6y ago
  Definitely agree on snacking being very seductive - it makes you feel useful and doing stuff, but when you zoom out, it's usually very inconsequential The mental game is very important. Definitely hard to work on the things that actually matter - they are usually difficult, new, more intricate to setup, etc. What I've found to work is to "just start on it" - starting is the hardest part. Telling yourself you'll do 15 minutes of it or something, so you will actually start. Usually, when the 15 minutes are up, I won't be stopping. The inertia goes from "not going it" to "doing it" and it's hard to change ha
  - jakub_g 6y ago
    Trick that often works for me: create a ticket in JIRA, explain well what has to be done, how, document gotchas etc.; assign to yourself; if it's a code ticket, create a local branch with ticket number. I usually procrastinate when it's not clear what exactly has to be done and how, and writing it down somewhere helps immensely.
mooreds 6y ago
This was a great post. I think it is tilted more toward engineers in larger orgs, where there are many teams, but I still appreciated all of it. The preening and snacking advice was spot on. However, the last paragraph was a bit jarring. You'll be judged by: > your prestige, the prestige of the titles you’ve had and companies you’ve worked at, your backchannel reputation, and how you present in your interview process. But only the third one (backchannel reputation) is affected by all the other advice. You can be a preener at Uber or Google and you'll probably have a better chance of being hired at a FANG than someone like me who has worked for smaller companies most of his career. That said, my goal after two decades is to find a company where I'm happy rather than clawing after the most prestige, so perhaps I'm misreading what he's saying.
- renewiltord 6y ago
  I believe part of the magic of the FANG process is that it actually doesn't matter where you come from for likelihood of hire. It probably matters because they can level set but for hiring you have to knock out the interviews, which are the same whether you've worked at Google or Billabong Valley Software.
  - majormajor 6y ago
    Yeah, the focus on the specific interview in the moment has both upsides and downsides. It can be frustrating and arbitrary but it also avoids some traditional in-group shenanigans and unfairness that is common in a lot of places. "I have to study all this crap even though I've done X, Y, and Z already" on one hand; "I can study independently and prepare for this interview even though I don't currently work at Google" on the other. That said: names still help - if someone's on the fence then saying something like "they didn't do that great but based on their projects at Google I think they probably just had a bad day" isn't uncommon - but it's far from a requirement, which is a good thing.
jennyyang 6y ago
At my previous company, I worked on high impact, very low visibility work. I was working directly with operations teams around the world in order to enable features that needed to be tweaked globally. It was vital for teams in their specific geography to work properly, but no one beyond those teams and my direct manager understood what I was doing. I enjoyed it because it was literally enabling functionality across countries around the world which was great for our customers and our company. During that time, the team around me dissolved due to severe attrition, leaving a skeleton crew of developers and I was the last remaining developer working on this specific project. During performance review time, I was told I wasn't performing at an adequate level because the number of code reviews I performed was very low. When I pointed out that I was the only person on my team, so no one came to me for code reviews their response was that I should have sought out code to review on my own. I quit soon after.
- divbzero 6y ago
  I sympathize with situations like this. If anyone reading is in a similar boat, asking for positive written feedback from the teams you work with and including that in your performance review is one way to get recognized for high impact low visibility work. It sucks that you have to go out of your way to gain recognition and it won’t always work but that can be how it is in large companies.
  - dasil003 6y ago
    This is good advice, I'll add one more thing: make sure your manager values what you are doing. If they do not then you are headed for trouble regardless. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that your manager relationship is probably the single most important factor to optimize for in any job. If you don't have mutual trust and respect it will lead to distortions, and in the worst cases can create long-term psychological corruption leaving one cynical and unable to trust their own better instincts.
    - idiocrat 6y ago
      Yes, and you should always work the manager's manager. This is a win-win for everybody in the line.
hibbelig 6y ago
This seems quite abstract. What kind of career level is this article talking about?
- theptip 6y ago
  This whole site is dedicated to articles on how to reach the Staff Engineer level (i.e. on the IC track, above Senior Engineer). From the site's front page: > The transition into Staff Engineer, and its further evolutions like Principal Engineer, remains particularly challenging and undocumented. What are the skills you need to develop to reach Staff Engineer? What skills do you need to succeed after you've reached it? How do most folks reach this role? What can companies do to streamline the path to Staff Engineer? Will you enjoy being a Staff Engineer or toil for years for a role that doesn't suit you? > The StaffEng project aims to collect the stories of folks who are operating in Staff, Principal or Distinguished Engineer roles.
Tainnor 6y ago
Ah, the last company I worked for had a lot of people optimising for low-impact-high-visibility work... in fact, it was probably often negative-impact. A lot of people who were just trying to protect their turf, try to establish insane and counterproductive "standards" for all teams, constantly reinvent the wheels instead of trying to look for mature, off-the-shelf solutions (I'm not against rolling your own where necessary, but you can really overdo it), etc. Just one example was that they had this one template for Spring Boot projects that you weren't allowed to deviate from; in particular, you weren't allowed to fundamentally change the build process, which was one of the most insane things ever: it would pull in other scripts from other git repositories at build time, which in turn would transitively pull in other scripts etc., which just led to a build you didn't understand anymore and some settings were impossible to override. Also, you could only build the project with an internet connection and from within the office network... I'm sure whoever wrote that thought they were being really clever.
- mdifrgechd 6y ago
  It's interesting, I think I would broadly characterize a lot of the preening work as administrative type tasks, like writing down a process for something as you say, or making a style guide, or a maintaining a table of something, etc. And what I have observed happens is that some people (higher ups) assume that this kind of administration is actually "management" or "leadership" and promote people, who themselves think that administration is leadership, etc. The solution is probably to work somewhere else, but I think the root cause is the bundling of admin or coordination type work with seniority and leadership, where somehow it is assumed that because you're a better administrator that e.g. technical direction should also rest with you.
  - Tainnor 6y ago
    It was definitely a problem deep within the company culture and due to the failure of management to really understand and recognise engineering talent. Visibility and impact being different things is a problem everywhere, but most other companies I worked for did a better job at least trying to distinguish between the two. And I don't mind if a company recognises that administrative and organisational tasks are important; if you can really act as a multiplier by making other people more efficient, that is actually valuable. The problem is when you don't try to find out if these things really make people more efficient or are just petty ways for some people to build their little kingdoms.
Swizec 6y ago
My favorite quote to think about: What’s the biggest problem in your field and why aren’t you working on it? Hamming knew how to make you think
courtf 6y ago
I tried to do this sort of thing for many years, with mixed results. One constant is that no matter the outcome of my efforts, whether something I built made the company money or was a waste, there was seldom any kind of conclusion or major takeaway. Making an impact has rarely helped me, not with promotions or prestige or even with getting a raise. Impact has been disconnected from any sort of return almost everywhere I have worked. What does get rewarded is your social network and your ability to present yourself in a pleasing manner. Even the concept of "career growth" seems like a relic from a bygone age, as if it were possible to measure a human's value to their company on some linear scale, when in fact the vast majority of "growth" along that scale simply results in a schedule packed with inane, endless meetings. Meetings in which social network and presentation come to dominate a structure that can be accurately described as a primitive pecking order. The value of expertise rapidly decays in rooms where no one actually does anything anymore. The advice in this article seems to be that if you just keep your head down and focus on making these impacts, someone, someday is sure to notice. It might take 20 years of being a doormat for the politicians, but you'll have retained your dignity (just perhaps not your keen sense of irony). And on that fabled judgement day, when at last your patience and diligence are recognized by a panel of wizened software elders, you will have earned passage into programmer Valhalla (another dev job, almost certainly reporting to another politician). My advice, would be to completely ignore all the performative speeches given by HR and others up in the hierarchy about values and goals and whatnot, because what tends to win the day in any group of humans larger than a handful hasn't changed in thousands of years: power. You either have it, or you must ultimately become a sycophant. Anyone outside that binary can be safely ignored, regardless of their impact, and plenty of companies do indeed blunder along on pure momentum, essentially forever, happy to ignore or absorb any accidental impacts originating from the fringes. As the article itself states, few care about company-wide success, only about whether they will personally benefit in some manner. It's a boring, reductive game in the end, but the good news is that it's really no one's fault, this is just how humans operate. Rather than appealing to the better angels of our nature, as this article nobly attempts, I posit it is better to accept the situation for what it is and make your peace with being stuck at whatever position in the hierarchy you can stomach sleazing your way into. The author would rather have you be an idealist, forever searching for the right group of leaders that will value your principles and your hard work. Feels a bit like titling at windmills to me, and perhaps as though the author is fluffing up their portfolio of "leaderly things I have said" in preparation for their next presentation.
yboris 6y ago
Sounds very related: https://80000hours.org/ https://80000hours.org/ 80,000 hours is roughly how much we'll spend in our lives at work. If we focus that energy and attention well, we can accomplish a lot of good in the world. See: Effective Altruism
hinkley 6y ago
>Stop chasing ghosts The flipside of ghosts is 'This time will be different'. Eventually you get tired of watching the same avalanche play out in slow motion over and over again. There's a lot of reasons people stay, and a lot of reasons people leave. I may argue for things I don't even care that much about, because I want or need the people who do care, and if they're hamstrung or quit, then I'll be in the same boat soon enough. What some people call 'ghosts' are dots that they will never connect. I'm sure you know someone who complains about their 'bad luck' all the time, but many in your circle can list all the ways they're self-sabotaging. You've all but given up because the person won't take advice, maybe even avoiding you or certain topics because they don't want a lecture. But you're supposed to clean up their messes because that's what friends do. Most of us are somewhere on that spectrum, and everyone you talk to has a different narrative about why someone bailed or why a plan failed.
three_legs 6y ago
The guidance staffeng.com provides is very useful, but is there something similar for one level below? I am nearly a senior engineer by title at my company (one level below it) - where can I look for guidance on getting to senior?
- necubi 6y ago
  Generally getting to senior is much more straightforward than moving past that. In a Google-style system, senior is the terminal level, which everyone is expected to reach. So there should be clear guidelines and a lot of examples of others who have been promoted there. I can't speak for every company, but generally for a senior promotion you just need to prove that you are a competent developer and can be trusted to deliver medium-sized projects (e.g., 3 developers for a quarter) from design to release without much or any oversight. If you're not getting those opportunities, you need to talk to your manager about that.
  - nullsense 6y ago
    That seems to be mostly it, though I've found there's a little bit more to it. Namely, not presenting your raw unfiltered thoughts and opinions as much but presenting them through more of a "party line" filter.
- nullsense 6y ago
  The Managers Path is a good book. It gives guidance through all career stages.
metachor 6y ago
The vast majority of software companies are not producing things that matter beyond the scope of capital accumulation.
- soared 6y ago
  That is not what the article is about. The article is about choosing what projects to do to do at work, not the usual “things that matter” schtick.
- imgabe 6y ago
  Other than outright thievery is there any way to accumulate capital with providing something that matters to someone?
  - mlthoughts2018 6y ago
    I guess it depends if you believe psychological manipulation or deliberately facilitating addiction count as thievery. Regardless, “customers buy your product in a marketplace” absolutely does not indicate or have really any connection with “providing something that matters to someone.”
    - imgabe 6y ago
      Do you believe people routinely buy things that don't matter to them? Do you buy things that don't matter to you?
      - mlthoughts2018 6y ago
        Yes and yes. Saying otherwise would be like the foolish attitude “advertising doesn’t work on me.” Everyone in developed nations buys tons of shit they don’t want, like or need, from sheer ad manipulation and repetition. Tobacco companies literally employed chemistry PhDs to discover how to add ammonia to make uptake of nicotine more rapid, to literally physically addict you to their product. Companies spend capital T Trillions a year on corporate research in branding, impulse packaging, habit formation, etc. etc.
mlthoughts2018 6y ago
This article puts up some pretense but it’s all over the place and very inconsistent. Overall it’s a pretty bad article and pretty heavy on arrogance. Often new leaders are hired because they are unique specialists in a needed technology or new capability area. I’ve worked in companies that had to hire billing experts, SOX compliance experts, machine learning experts, embedded systems experts, and so on - to lead fairly big initiatives and drastically restructure an engineering organization. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t hire them to pursue a program in their specialization (what they are uniquely good at) but then also turn around and act suspicious that they are “snacking” or “preening” or deliberately seeking high visibility projects for credit. On top of this, how juvenile do you have to be to think of your colleagues this way and generalize complex motivations and difficult prioritization into little cartoon phrases like snacking or preening. That speaks to a lot of negativity and arrogance on part of the author or anyone who would adopt these views. Maybe that other team needs to solve a low effort, low reward task because last year they were forced to lay off a trusted teammate and everyone’s morale is terrible, and they need a quick win. Maybe that project you arrogantly believe is all about “visibility” is actually required for some compliance reasons you aren’t aware of. Stop wasting time with these judgments and perhaps take an attitude of trusting your colleagues and believing they are sincere, and especially trusting their judgment in their project areas of specialization.
Rafuino 6y ago
I'm just done with a view that "what matters" is what makes more money for senior executives and shareholders.
- nicbou 6y ago
  Yep. The article casually mentions that you sacrifice more of your personal life for your career, then just carries on like it's no big deal. Most of us won't build stuff that matters, and even for those who do, it probably won't matter matter enough to sacrifice your personal life. You are not your job.
  - KSteffensen 6y ago
    The article is aimed at people who have made the life choice of less personal time vs more work/pay. Presumably these people have thought about things and consciously made that decision. There is no reason to tell them they have made the wrong choice.
- lovecg 6y ago
  “More money” is a very narrow view. Companies care about all sorts of things. Money, power, prestige (some open source projects, publicity). But yeah in general if you’re working for someone it doesn’t hurt to make sure your work matters to them, no?
noisy_boy 6y ago
> I had a recent discussion with someone who argued that new senior leaders deliberately push for major changes even though they suspect the efforts will fail. Such changes make the organization increasingly dependent on the new leader, and also ensures anything that does go well gets attributed to the new leader directly rather than their team. If this is your approach to leadership, please know that you’re awful and take the time to work on yourself until the well-being and success of an entire company matters to you more than being perceived as essential. Be that as it may, this is more common than rare and these things influence how optics-focused mid-level leaders behave that report to those senior leaders. And most hands-on folk work under such mid-level leaders. Unless you are a star performer, it may not be easy to avoid this as opportunities are getting scarcer in these times for most folks.
neillyons 6y ago
Good advice but there is more than one way to succeed. I'll link to the Zoo analogy which explains this further https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=469940 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=469940
a_imho 6y ago
I had a recent discussion with someone who argued that new senior leaders deliberately push for major changes even though they suspect the efforts will fail. Such changes make the organization increasingly dependent on the new leader, and also ensures anything that does go well gets attributed to the new leader directly rather than their team. If this is your approach to leadership, please know that you’re awful and take the time to work on yourself until the well-being and success of an entire company matters to you more than being perceived as essential. Hate the company culture, not the player. If there is no accountability for incompetence or even malice, whose fault is that? The success of the company matters way less than the happiness of your immediate boss.
swiley 6y ago
I would expect better advice is probably work on what makes you happy. Sometimes doing impactful things can be very fulfilling but it generally means using some very boring and unpleasant technology (cough puppet cough) I think most people just want to do something different than what they're currently doing every now and then.
WJW 6y ago
> Such changes make the organization increasingly dependent on the new leader, and also ensures anything that does go well gets attributed to the new leader directly rather than their team. If this is your approach to leadership, please know that you’re awful and take the time to work on yourself until the well-being and success of an entire company matters to you more than being perceived as essential. Something tells me that this person is rather more idealistic than you would expect from someone branding themselves as a "staff engineer". People who have such an approach to leadership don't give two hoots about the opinion of their line-level subordinates or about the actual amount of value generated. The only thing that matters is the opinion of the person who will decide on their next promotion, either inside the company or somewhere else.
luord 6y ago
Recently I was hired for a new job and my very first task was a considerably big undertaking for an entirely new feature of the application. I felt a bit overwhelmed, and was considering asking for something simpler like bug fixes so I could get familiar with the code first, but ultimately decided that I could make a better impression and a bigger impact with this project. After reading this, I suppose I can say that I was considering asking for a snack, so I'm glad I chose to stick with the new feature. I just hope I actually pull it off.
- truekojo 6y ago
  You will. Do the work of breaking this down into snack sizes and just get started

493 points by wholien 6y ago

I was effectively forced to accept a new job due to not being able to pay my rent after COVID. This role is entirely snacking and preening, so it is mildly fulfilling because I get to close ~7 jiras every day. But, I haven’t learned much and am never challenged. While it slows my career trajectory, I am now able to spend way way less time on work and way more time on other things. What the other things are.. time will tell.

azhenley 6y ago
I sometimes wonder whether I would enjoy having a job like that, rather than one that takes all my mental and creativity energy, even if it means less pay and prestige. I could stop working at all hours and potentially do creative endeavors like write a book.
ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
I had a job like that for a long time (I was a manager). Since I didn't have a "shower clause" in my employment contract, I was free to do a lot of open-source work. It came out nicely. The work I did has become a worldwide standard. Now that I'm out of that position, I have returned to doing what I want to do. There has been some "snacking," except it's really healthy snacks, because every project I do -even the experimental ones- is done in "ship mode."
- feteru 6y ago
  What is a "shower clause" in this context?
  - NhanH 6y ago
    All your intellectual output (include during the shower) belongs to the company by default and you have to ask for permission for the company to sign away it.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
    That’s the clause that says your employer owns every idea that you come up with in the shower. These often go way beyond the “anything done with company equipment or on company time” thing, which is actually already handled by standard employment law. https://dilbert.com/strip/2006-05-20 https://dilbert.com/strip/2006-05-20
    - sizzle 6y ago
      How is this legal?
      - ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
        Sometimes, it’s not. But you’ll still need to go to court to fight it, and that makes it effective.
      - hansvm 6y ago
        A sufficient amount of lobbying and precedent from underfunded defendants will make a lot of things legal (in the US). In some states like CA, shower clauses are void except for a few explicit carveouts (the ones you might expect -- do personal projects on your own time and dime, and don't directly compete with your employer), but in, e.g., a lot of east coast states shower clauses are stronger and more commonly enforced. Even when unenforceable though, you still have the threat of a court case; your employer can attempt to argue that your personal project falls into one of the exceptions that would grant them ownership of your IP, and a court case is sufficiently painful that it's a bit of a punishment in its own right even if you would win. Also as a practical matter, some companies have shower clauses that additionally stipulate the company can allow you to retain IP on your personal projects if you ask permission. That could be abused, but for large enough companies that touch enough industries that can work out in your favor because a loose interpretation of the law would actually grant them ownership of your IP anyway, but if they have a policy of generally allowing side hustles then the fact that they've explicitly signed over any ownership claims to you will give you a strong leg up (and peace of mind) in any potential court cases -- potentially allowing them to be thrown out before they start.

Pfhreak 6y ago

I don't think I agree with the "Stop Snacking" advice. We all go through times where we need a boost to our sense of accomplishment, it can put the wind in our sails to address bigger problems. Sometimes snarfing up a bunch of snack tasks can make all the difference in the world. Yes, you shouldn't solely be a snacker, probably, but I think it's counterproductive to think of engineers as highly autonomous, robotic units that can view each task selection in total isolation. Previous, unrelated tasks can influence your ability to complete your current task. The weight of future tasks can pull you down.

apetresc 6y ago
I think the author specifically addresses your point: > It’s ok to spend some of your time on snacks to keep yourself motivated between bigger accomplishments, but you have to keep yourself honest about how much time you’re spending on high-impact work versus low-impact work. In senior roles, you’re more likely to self-determine your work and if you’re not deliberately tracking your work, it’s easy to catch yourself doing little to no high-impact work.
- hedberg10 6y ago
  Does anybody else think work in bigger companies is just snacking and only snacking? With the faint hope that all 20.000 employees' snacking somehow is more then the sum of all parts and assembles to a high impact 10 story Powerranger/Gundam? People sit on their niche, defend it to the death and let it take up all their time. That's how it was in every big organisation I've seen. Understandably so, people didn't want to be seen as lazy or expendable, they wanted to defend their self-worth. That's how you get to Parkinson's law and the cult of busyness (and stress, lots of stress, even though there was no reason for it, it's just work, maybe explaining the increase in depression/burnout).
jimbob45 6y ago
I save my snackers for the end of the day when my brain is shot during time that wouldn’t be useful for my bigger tasks. I see the author’s point though and broadly agree.
6y ago

oilman 6y ago

This seems like great advice, and it resonates with me. I've seen people make a big impact by following this path. > It’s ok to spend some of your time on snacks to keep yourself motivated between bigger accomplishments, but you have to keep yourself honest about how much time you’re spending on high-impact work versus low-impact work. In senior roles, you’re more likely to self-determine your work and if you’re not deliberately tracking your work, it’s easy to catch yourself doing little to no high-impact work. In my own personal experience, that boost of actually accomplishing something right now instead of slowly starting the process of impactfully pushing another rock up a hill is very tempting. Does anyone have any experience or recommendations for effectively tracking your own work and putting yourself in the right headspace to tackle these more long lived impactful tasks? This mental game seems to me to be one of the huge factors that determine outcomes. I tend to have some challenges with attention at the best of times. My interests tend to run hot and cold. I can make a huge impact and move a project significantly forward when I get into it and hyperfocus on it. But other times managing to focus my attention on a tasks that I know would be high impact is mental torture.

wholien 6y ago
Definitely agree on snacking being very seductive - it makes you feel useful and doing stuff, but when you zoom out, it's usually very inconsequential The mental game is very important. Definitely hard to work on the things that actually matter - they are usually difficult, new, more intricate to setup, etc. What I've found to work is to "just start on it" - starting is the hardest part. Telling yourself you'll do 15 minutes of it or something, so you will actually start. Usually, when the 15 minutes are up, I won't be stopping. The inertia goes from "not going it" to "doing it" and it's hard to change ha
- jakub_g 6y ago
  Trick that often works for me: create a ticket in JIRA, explain well what has to be done, how, document gotchas etc.; assign to yourself; if it's a code ticket, create a local branch with ticket number. I usually procrastinate when it's not clear what exactly has to be done and how, and writing it down somewhere helps immensely.

mooreds 6y ago

This was a great post. I think it is tilted more toward engineers in larger orgs, where there are many teams, but I still appreciated all of it. The preening and snacking advice was spot on. However, the last paragraph was a bit jarring. You'll be judged by: > your prestige, the prestige of the titles you’ve had and companies you’ve worked at, your backchannel reputation, and how you present in your interview process. But only the third one (backchannel reputation) is affected by all the other advice. You can be a preener at Uber or Google and you'll probably have a better chance of being hired at a FANG than someone like me who has worked for smaller companies most of his career. That said, my goal after two decades is to find a company where I'm happy rather than clawing after the most prestige, so perhaps I'm misreading what he's saying.

renewiltord 6y ago
I believe part of the magic of the FANG process is that it actually doesn't matter where you come from for likelihood of hire. It probably matters because they can level set but for hiring you have to knock out the interviews, which are the same whether you've worked at Google or Billabong Valley Software.
- majormajor 6y ago
  Yeah, the focus on the specific interview in the moment has both upsides and downsides. It can be frustrating and arbitrary but it also avoids some traditional in-group shenanigans and unfairness that is common in a lot of places. "I have to study all this crap even though I've done X, Y, and Z already" on one hand; "I can study independently and prepare for this interview even though I don't currently work at Google" on the other. That said: names still help - if someone's on the fence then saying something like "they didn't do that great but based on their projects at Google I think they probably just had a bad day" isn't uncommon - but it's far from a requirement, which is a good thing.

jennyyang 6y ago

At my previous company, I worked on high impact, very low visibility work. I was working directly with operations teams around the world in order to enable features that needed to be tweaked globally. It was vital for teams in their specific geography to work properly, but no one beyond those teams and my direct manager understood what I was doing. I enjoyed it because it was literally enabling functionality across countries around the world which was great for our customers and our company. During that time, the team around me dissolved due to severe attrition, leaving a skeleton crew of developers and I was the last remaining developer working on this specific project. During performance review time, I was told I wasn't performing at an adequate level because the number of code reviews I performed was very low. When I pointed out that I was the only person on my team, so no one came to me for code reviews their response was that I should have sought out code to review on my own. I quit soon after.

divbzero 6y ago
I sympathize with situations like this. If anyone reading is in a similar boat, asking for positive written feedback from the teams you work with and including that in your performance review is one way to get recognized for high impact low visibility work. It sucks that you have to go out of your way to gain recognition and it won’t always work but that can be how it is in large companies.
- dasil003 6y ago
  This is good advice, I'll add one more thing: make sure your manager values what you are doing. If they do not then you are headed for trouble regardless. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that your manager relationship is probably the single most important factor to optimize for in any job. If you don't have mutual trust and respect it will lead to distortions, and in the worst cases can create long-term psychological corruption leaving one cynical and unable to trust their own better instincts.
  - idiocrat 6y ago
    Yes, and you should always work the manager's manager. This is a win-win for everybody in the line.

hibbelig 6y ago

This seems quite abstract. What kind of career level is this article talking about?

theptip 6y ago
This whole site is dedicated to articles on how to reach the Staff Engineer level (i.e. on the IC track, above Senior Engineer). From the site's front page: > The transition into Staff Engineer, and its further evolutions like Principal Engineer, remains particularly challenging and undocumented. What are the skills you need to develop to reach Staff Engineer? What skills do you need to succeed after you've reached it? How do most folks reach this role? What can companies do to streamline the path to Staff Engineer? Will you enjoy being a Staff Engineer or toil for years for a role that doesn't suit you? > The StaffEng project aims to collect the stories of folks who are operating in Staff, Principal or Distinguished Engineer roles.

Tainnor 6y ago

Ah, the last company I worked for had a lot of people optimising for low-impact-high-visibility work... in fact, it was probably often negative-impact. A lot of people who were just trying to protect their turf, try to establish insane and counterproductive "standards" for all teams, constantly reinvent the wheels instead of trying to look for mature, off-the-shelf solutions (I'm not against rolling your own where necessary, but you can really overdo it), etc. Just one example was that they had this one template for Spring Boot projects that you weren't allowed to deviate from; in particular, you weren't allowed to fundamentally change the build process, which was one of the most insane things ever: it would pull in other scripts from other git repositories at build time, which in turn would transitively pull in other scripts etc., which just led to a build you didn't understand anymore and some settings were impossible to override. Also, you could only build the project with an internet connection and from within the office network... I'm sure whoever wrote that thought they were being really clever.

mdifrgechd 6y ago
It's interesting, I think I would broadly characterize a lot of the preening work as administrative type tasks, like writing down a process for something as you say, or making a style guide, or a maintaining a table of something, etc. And what I have observed happens is that some people (higher ups) assume that this kind of administration is actually "management" or "leadership" and promote people, who themselves think that administration is leadership, etc. The solution is probably to work somewhere else, but I think the root cause is the bundling of admin or coordination type work with seniority and leadership, where somehow it is assumed that because you're a better administrator that e.g. technical direction should also rest with you.
- Tainnor 6y ago
  It was definitely a problem deep within the company culture and due to the failure of management to really understand and recognise engineering talent. Visibility and impact being different things is a problem everywhere, but most other companies I worked for did a better job at least trying to distinguish between the two. And I don't mind if a company recognises that administrative and organisational tasks are important; if you can really act as a multiplier by making other people more efficient, that is actually valuable. The problem is when you don't try to find out if these things really make people more efficient or are just petty ways for some people to build their little kingdoms.

Swizec 6y ago

My favorite quote to think about: What’s the biggest problem in your field and why aren’t you working on it? Hamming knew how to make you think

courtf 6y ago

I tried to do this sort of thing for many years, with mixed results. One constant is that no matter the outcome of my efforts, whether something I built made the company money or was a waste, there was seldom any kind of conclusion or major takeaway. Making an impact has rarely helped me, not with promotions or prestige or even with getting a raise. Impact has been disconnected from any sort of return almost everywhere I have worked. What does get rewarded is your social network and your ability to present yourself in a pleasing manner. Even the concept of "career growth" seems like a relic from a bygone age, as if it were possible to measure a human's value to their company on some linear scale, when in fact the vast majority of "growth" along that scale simply results in a schedule packed with inane, endless meetings. Meetings in which social network and presentation come to dominate a structure that can be accurately described as a primitive pecking order. The value of expertise rapidly decays in rooms where no one actually does anything anymore. The advice in this article seems to be that if you just keep your head down and focus on making these impacts, someone, someday is sure to notice. It might take 20 years of being a doormat for the politicians, but you'll have retained your dignity (just perhaps not your keen sense of irony). And on that fabled judgement day, when at last your patience and diligence are recognized by a panel of wizened software elders, you will have earned passage into programmer Valhalla (another dev job, almost certainly reporting to another politician). My advice, would be to completely ignore all the performative speeches given by HR and others up in the hierarchy about values and goals and whatnot, because what tends to win the day in any group of humans larger than a handful hasn't changed in thousands of years: power. You either have it, or you must ultimately become a sycophant. Anyone outside that binary can be safely ignored, regardless of their impact, and plenty of companies do indeed blunder along on pure momentum, essentially forever, happy to ignore or absorb any accidental impacts originating from the fringes. As the article itself states, few care about company-wide success, only about whether they will personally benefit in some manner. It's a boring, reductive game in the end, but the good news is that it's really no one's fault, this is just how humans operate. Rather than appealing to the better angels of our nature, as this article nobly attempts, I posit it is better to accept the situation for what it is and make your peace with being stuck at whatever position in the hierarchy you can stomach sleazing your way into. The author would rather have you be an idealist, forever searching for the right group of leaders that will value your principles and your hard work. Feels a bit like titling at windmills to me, and perhaps as though the author is fluffing up their portfolio of "leaderly things I have said" in preparation for their next presentation.

yboris 6y ago

Sounds very related: https://80000hours.org/ https://80000hours.org/ 80,000 hours is roughly how much we'll spend in our lives at work. If we focus that energy and attention well, we can accomplish a lot of good in the world. See: Effective Altruism

hinkley 6y ago

>Stop chasing ghosts The flipside of ghosts is 'This time will be different'. Eventually you get tired of watching the same avalanche play out in slow motion over and over again. There's a lot of reasons people stay, and a lot of reasons people leave. I may argue for things I don't even care that much about, because I want or need the people who do care, and if they're hamstrung or quit, then I'll be in the same boat soon enough. What some people call 'ghosts' are dots that they will never connect. I'm sure you know someone who complains about their 'bad luck' all the time, but many in your circle can list all the ways they're self-sabotaging. You've all but given up because the person won't take advice, maybe even avoiding you or certain topics because they don't want a lecture. But you're supposed to clean up their messes because that's what friends do. Most of us are somewhere on that spectrum, and everyone you talk to has a different narrative about why someone bailed or why a plan failed.

three_legs 6y ago

The guidance staffeng.com provides is very useful, but is there something similar for one level below? I am nearly a senior engineer by title at my company (one level below it) - where can I look for guidance on getting to senior?

necubi 6y ago
Generally getting to senior is much more straightforward than moving past that. In a Google-style system, senior is the terminal level, which everyone is expected to reach. So there should be clear guidelines and a lot of examples of others who have been promoted there. I can't speak for every company, but generally for a senior promotion you just need to prove that you are a competent developer and can be trusted to deliver medium-sized projects (e.g., 3 developers for a quarter) from design to release without much or any oversight. If you're not getting those opportunities, you need to talk to your manager about that.
- nullsense 6y ago
  That seems to be mostly it, though I've found there's a little bit more to it. Namely, not presenting your raw unfiltered thoughts and opinions as much but presenting them through more of a "party line" filter.
nullsense 6y ago
The Managers Path is a good book. It gives guidance through all career stages.

metachor 6y ago

The vast majority of software companies are not producing things that matter beyond the scope of capital accumulation.

soared 6y ago
That is not what the article is about. The article is about choosing what projects to do to do at work, not the usual “things that matter” schtick.
imgabe 6y ago
Other than outright thievery is there any way to accumulate capital with providing something that matters to someone?
- mlthoughts2018 6y ago
  I guess it depends if you believe psychological manipulation or deliberately facilitating addiction count as thievery. Regardless, “customers buy your product in a marketplace” absolutely does not indicate or have really any connection with “providing something that matters to someone.”
  - imgabe 6y ago
    Do you believe people routinely buy things that don't matter to them? Do you buy things that don't matter to you?
    - mlthoughts2018 6y ago
      Yes and yes. Saying otherwise would be like the foolish attitude “advertising doesn’t work on me.” Everyone in developed nations buys tons of shit they don’t want, like or need, from sheer ad manipulation and repetition. Tobacco companies literally employed chemistry PhDs to discover how to add ammonia to make uptake of nicotine more rapid, to literally physically addict you to their product. Companies spend capital T Trillions a year on corporate research in branding, impulse packaging, habit formation, etc. etc.

mlthoughts2018 6y ago

This article puts up some pretense but it’s all over the place and very inconsistent. Overall it’s a pretty bad article and pretty heavy on arrogance. Often new leaders are hired because they are unique specialists in a needed technology or new capability area. I’ve worked in companies that had to hire billing experts, SOX compliance experts, machine learning experts, embedded systems experts, and so on - to lead fairly big initiatives and drastically restructure an engineering organization. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t hire them to pursue a program in their specialization (what they are uniquely good at) but then also turn around and act suspicious that they are “snacking” or “preening” or deliberately seeking high visibility projects for credit. On top of this, how juvenile do you have to be to think of your colleagues this way and generalize complex motivations and difficult prioritization into little cartoon phrases like snacking or preening. That speaks to a lot of negativity and arrogance on part of the author or anyone who would adopt these views. Maybe that other team needs to solve a low effort, low reward task because last year they were forced to lay off a trusted teammate and everyone’s morale is terrible, and they need a quick win. Maybe that project you arrogantly believe is all about “visibility” is actually required for some compliance reasons you aren’t aware of. Stop wasting time with these judgments and perhaps take an attitude of trusting your colleagues and believing they are sincere, and especially trusting their judgment in their project areas of specialization.

Rafuino 6y ago

I'm just done with a view that "what matters" is what makes more money for senior executives and shareholders.

nicbou 6y ago
Yep. The article casually mentions that you sacrifice more of your personal life for your career, then just carries on like it's no big deal. Most of us won't build stuff that matters, and even for those who do, it probably won't matter matter enough to sacrifice your personal life. You are not your job.
- KSteffensen 6y ago
  The article is aimed at people who have made the life choice of less personal time vs more work/pay. Presumably these people have thought about things and consciously made that decision. There is no reason to tell them they have made the wrong choice.
lovecg 6y ago
“More money” is a very narrow view. Companies care about all sorts of things. Money, power, prestige (some open source projects, publicity). But yeah in general if you’re working for someone it doesn’t hurt to make sure your work matters to them, no?

noisy_boy 6y ago

> I had a recent discussion with someone who argued that new senior leaders deliberately push for major changes even though they suspect the efforts will fail. Such changes make the organization increasingly dependent on the new leader, and also ensures anything that does go well gets attributed to the new leader directly rather than their team. If this is your approach to leadership, please know that you’re awful and take the time to work on yourself until the well-being and success of an entire company matters to you more than being perceived as essential. Be that as it may, this is more common than rare and these things influence how optics-focused mid-level leaders behave that report to those senior leaders. And most hands-on folk work under such mid-level leaders. Unless you are a star performer, it may not be easy to avoid this as opportunities are getting scarcer in these times for most folks.

neillyons 6y ago

Good advice but there is more than one way to succeed. I'll link to the Zoo analogy which explains this further https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=469940 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=469940

a_imho 6y ago

I had a recent discussion with someone who argued that new senior leaders deliberately push for major changes even though they suspect the efforts will fail. Such changes make the organization increasingly dependent on the new leader, and also ensures anything that does go well gets attributed to the new leader directly rather than their team. If this is your approach to leadership, please know that you’re awful and take the time to work on yourself until the well-being and success of an entire company matters to you more than being perceived as essential. Hate the company culture, not the player. If there is no accountability for incompetence or even malice, whose fault is that? The success of the company matters way less than the happiness of your immediate boss.

swiley 6y ago

I would expect better advice is probably work on what makes you happy. Sometimes doing impactful things can be very fulfilling but it generally means using some very boring and unpleasant technology (cough puppet cough) I think most people just want to do something different than what they're currently doing every now and then.

WJW 6y ago

> Such changes make the organization increasingly dependent on the new leader, and also ensures anything that does go well gets attributed to the new leader directly rather than their team. If this is your approach to leadership, please know that you’re awful and take the time to work on yourself until the well-being and success of an entire company matters to you more than being perceived as essential. Something tells me that this person is rather more idealistic than you would expect from someone branding themselves as a "staff engineer". People who have such an approach to leadership don't give two hoots about the opinion of their line-level subordinates or about the actual amount of value generated. The only thing that matters is the opinion of the person who will decide on their next promotion, either inside the company or somewhere else.

luord 6y ago

Recently I was hired for a new job and my very first task was a considerably big undertaking for an entirely new feature of the application. I felt a bit overwhelmed, and was considering asking for something simpler like bug fixes so I could get familiar with the code first, but ultimately decided that I could make a better impression and a bigger impact with this project. After reading this, I suppose I can say that I was considering asking for a snack, so I'm glad I chose to stick with the new feature. I just hope I actually pull it off.

truekojo 6y ago
You will. Do the work of breaking this down into snack sizes and just get started