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> Broadly speaking my job as a programmer is to turn repetitive activities into processes and code. If I’m still “working hard” a year in you should really wond

by tomc1985 5y ago

> Broadly speaking my job as a programmer is to turn repetitive activities into processes and code. If I’m still “working hard” a year in you should really wonder about my capabilities. As much as I want to agree with this, what I've found happens if I do a particularly good job is... more work. More projects. I have "bandwidth" available to help out in new areas. When I left my last job my manager and I put together a spreadsheet listing all the projects I headed, and it was something like two pages long in excel. Everyone who saw it had their eyes bulge at the size, and I left because I was being really overworked. But god damn it, the only reason I want to work hard is so that I don't have to in the future! I'm seriously considering leaving tech because of this.

hinkley 5y ago
You get a better idea of what’s going on when you see beyond the one or two projects that used to occupy your time. That can be interesting in a lot of ways, not the least of which is figuring out that some of the problems you “solved” are just thinking too small and thus picking away at a much bigger issue. Since I get bored easily, I usually value that sort of opportunity. Usually. If I turn into the cleanup man I start to become sour on the idea of people making messes for others to clean up and then I start looking for an exit.
- tomc1985 5y ago
  You're right, in that it's great to be always given new work and interesting projects. But unless the completed work can be handed off to someone else what happens (at least in my case) is that I spend more and more of time making adjustments to past work, either due to requirements changes, competition, feature requests, or bug fixes (which is thankfully pretty rare for me) These things typically arrive in addition to whatever new project my manager has me on, and the more projects under my belt the less time I get working on what they want me working on, and spend more time firefighting. Towards the end of that job I spent almost my entire day firefighting
cududa 5y ago
I’ve slowly been making my exit from pure tech for this exact reason. 2011 got hired as the “tech guy” for an artist that was winning Grammy’s left and right, breaking world records for sales/ streams/ whatever, with an explicit part of the deal they let me sit in on marketing meetings to learn marketing. Was able to take “marketing” (really more social science), engineering and design to epidemiology, eventually wrap that together to work in politics, now back on infectious disease (COVID vaccinations). I find “tech skills” just being something in my toolbox to enable me to tackle infinitely more rewarding projects.
errantspark 5y ago
I've found the best strategy here is to do rate control on your work on the interface between you and your job. I essentially just try to constantly overperform slightly and any gap that widens between my capability and the demands of the job remains hidden unless it's strategically useful to me. I won't get paid twice as much if I can do my job in half the time, I just get another half of work. If I use the gap between their demands and my capability carefully I can spend only a portion of it to get raises/promotions and spend the rest on fucking off at lunch and just generally having a chill relaxed time.
- tomc1985 5y ago
  Yeah I've adopted that strategy for my current employer. It is exhausting in its own way and difficult to maneuver without being blatantly dishonest.
  - wallacoloo 5y ago
    Seems to me that you & GP both have an unhealthy relationship with your employer. I guess that’s the norm for a lot of us here, I just hate that the generally accepted solution is to hack around it rather than fix (or attempt to fix) that unhealthy relationship.
    - tomc1985 5y ago
      What's to fix? It seems like the prevailing business culture is to optimize the shit out of everything, and for managers it means getting the most work that you can out of the employees that you have. No matter where I go I am expected to work my ass off. I would burn all of that down, if I could, because that principle needs to change. But then that's "leaving money on the table", and we just can't have that...
      - wallacoloo 5y ago
        > No matter where I go I am expected to work my ass off. > ... > But then that's "leaving money on the table", and we just can't have that... Sounds to me like you expect to not have to "work your ass off", but also maximize your pay. I just don't see why you would expect these things to be compatible. There are plenty of opportunities to work 30-hour weeks, if that's what you want. But you're not gonna be making FAANG-level comp -- for good reason: you're giving you employer less, so they give you less in return. If you and I worked at the same company, and you were putting out half the output as me, then I would expect to get twice the comp as you. You're trying to bypass this -- produce half the output as me but still get the same pay. I just don't see why you think that's justified. If you want to work 30 hours, then take one of the many jobs that accommodate that (hmu if you legitimately can't find one) and accept the pay cut. If you don't want to make that sacrifice, that's on you. That's my $.02, anyway.

hinkley 5y ago

You get a better idea of what’s going on when you see beyond the one or two projects that used to occupy your time. That can be interesting in a lot of ways, not the least of which is figuring out that some of the problems you “solved” are just thinking too small and thus picking away at a much bigger issue. Since I get bored easily, I usually value that sort of opportunity. Usually. If I turn into the cleanup man I start to become sour on the idea of people making messes for others to clean up and then I start looking for an exit.

tomc1985 5y ago
You're right, in that it's great to be always given new work and interesting projects. But unless the completed work can be handed off to someone else what happens (at least in my case) is that I spend more and more of time making adjustments to past work, either due to requirements changes, competition, feature requests, or bug fixes (which is thankfully pretty rare for me) These things typically arrive in addition to whatever new project my manager has me on, and the more projects under my belt the less time I get working on what they want me working on, and spend more time firefighting. Towards the end of that job I spent almost my entire day firefighting

cududa 5y ago

I’ve slowly been making my exit from pure tech for this exact reason. 2011 got hired as the “tech guy” for an artist that was winning Grammy’s left and right, breaking world records for sales/ streams/ whatever, with an explicit part of the deal they let me sit in on marketing meetings to learn marketing. Was able to take “marketing” (really more social science), engineering and design to epidemiology, eventually wrap that together to work in politics, now back on infectious disease (COVID vaccinations). I find “tech skills” just being something in my toolbox to enable me to tackle infinitely more rewarding projects.

errantspark 5y ago

I've found the best strategy here is to do rate control on your work on the interface between you and your job. I essentially just try to constantly overperform slightly and any gap that widens between my capability and the demands of the job remains hidden unless it's strategically useful to me. I won't get paid twice as much if I can do my job in half the time, I just get another half of work. If I use the gap between their demands and my capability carefully I can spend only a portion of it to get raises/promotions and spend the rest on fucking off at lunch and just generally having a chill relaxed time.

tomc1985 5y ago
Yeah I've adopted that strategy for my current employer. It is exhausting in its own way and difficult to maneuver without being blatantly dishonest.
- wallacoloo 5y ago
  Seems to me that you & GP both have an unhealthy relationship with your employer. I guess that’s the norm for a lot of us here, I just hate that the generally accepted solution is to hack around it rather than fix (or attempt to fix) that unhealthy relationship.
  - tomc1985 5y ago
    What's to fix? It seems like the prevailing business culture is to optimize the shit out of everything, and for managers it means getting the most work that you can out of the employees that you have. No matter where I go I am expected to work my ass off. I would burn all of that down, if I could, because that principle needs to change. But then that's "leaving money on the table", and we just can't have that...
    - wallacoloo 5y ago
      > No matter where I go I am expected to work my ass off. > ... > But then that's "leaving money on the table", and we just can't have that... Sounds to me like you expect to not have to "work your ass off", but also maximize your pay. I just don't see why you would expect these things to be compatible. There are plenty of opportunities to work 30-hour weeks, if that's what you want. But you're not gonna be making FAANG-level comp -- for good reason: you're giving you employer less, so they give you less in return. If you and I worked at the same company, and you were putting out half the output as me, then I would expect to get twice the comp as you. You're trying to bypass this -- produce half the output as me but still get the same pay. I just don't see why you think that's justified. If you want to work 30 hours, then take one of the many jobs that accommodate that (hmu if you legitimately can't find one) and accept the pay cut. If you don't want to make that sacrifice, that's on you. That's my $.02, anyway.