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I would be happy to let go of an employee who bank their employment on the preference of toolings. Hear me out: Toolings are, like the name suggests, a means

I would be happy to let go of an employee who bank their employment on the preference of toolings. Hear me out: Toolings are, like the name suggests, a means to an end. If a web IDE is fast, works reasonably, and can continue improve itself. And the learning curve is friendly to engineers with different background and experience. Everyone should be comfortable to be nudged to use it. And if the tool additionally is a critical product of the organization, everyone should be comfortable to be mandated to use it, because it's now a very valuable source of dogfooding.

dangfang 5y ago
I'd absolutely never work with someone so arrogant (and, for lack of a more polite word, dumb, as you). When I work for someone, I do the work they ask me and in return they pay me AND I get to learn something. For my learning process, I need the work part to be over fast. And that means I need to use stuff that I works best for me. I also need to be able to be able to fulfill my potential and spend time doing actual work (again, using tools that work for me). I don't want to spend a day setting up vscode and then realizing I can never edit as fast on it as vim what with the 300ms latency it adds to every keystroke
- distrill 5y ago
  sounds good, good luck
distrill 5y ago
Yeah, whenever I hear this kind of rhetoric - if my company ever required <some minor annoyance> it's time for a new job - I roll my eyes. Sure, keep pushing yourself out of more companies, there are a lot of good engineers* who will be absolutely as productive as you and who won't be a drain on everyone around them. *it's always engineers making these statements or I only know engineers
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ThePopeOfNope 5y ago
  It works both ways. There are plenty of companies that will happily take productive engineers, without forcing them to use a slow, poor-quality IDE as their main tool, full-time. It's not a minor annoyance if it's the tool you use throughout the day, to do a job for which you are then evaluated. "Tools are just means to an end" is just one of the many rhetorical devices that cushy managers use to eschew responsibility. Of course they're means to an end, but some means are better than others, and usually those with better means end up doing a better job.
- jokethrowaway 5y ago
  There are plenty of engineers but few good ones. Hiring is brutal, especially now, so good developers can afford to be picky and find another semi identical job in almost no time.
  - distrill 5y ago
    I hear you, but I'm suggesting that this trait is part of what differentiates a good engineer. If I'm hiring someone and they have a bunch of recent moves that are stemmed from reasons like "they wanted to use some process that I refused to try" or "they made us go through some training that I thought was a waste of time", then I consider that to be a very risky candidate. There should honestly be some good faith on both sides. It doesn't make sense for a job, in most cases, to be strict about an editor. But it's also not a good move for eng to be walking around talking about all the fragile things they'll quit abruptly for.
    - blueplanet200 5y ago
      > stemmed from reasons like "they wanted to use some process that I refused to try" or "they made us go through some training that I thought was a waste of time", then I consider that to be a very risky candidate. I feel like you're gradually making this hypothetical engineer seem more ridiculous. If someone quit over training or their unwillingness to try scrum, that would be bananas of course. There's an extremely large gap between that and mandating the main tool to use to do your job everyday.
    - jokethrowaway 5y ago
      Totally, I think if something is making you quit it must be pretty annoying - or you wouldn't risk trading the known with the unknown (which can very well end up being worse). I also wouldn't mention the real reason in a future job interview, if it sounds ridiculous. That said, small things can look trivial from the outside and make your life a living hell at the same time.
  - distrill 5y ago
    I'm also not sure I agree that there are few good engineers. I think that's some rhetoric that we all say because we all think we're some of the few good ones. In my experience (FAANG, startups in the valley and startups out of state/country), strong engineering talent is not particularly difficult to find, but finding a good fit is the tricky part. And I would wager that eagerness-to-rage-quit is a pretty good indicator of someone who will have trouble finding teams that they fit on.
- lol768 5y ago
  I wouldn't call it a minor annoyance when it's a way of working you're practicing for 6-8 hours a day. I am best placed to determine what tools I work with best to get work done. You wouldn't get an electrician in to do some work and then decide you can suddenly prescribe the tools they use. I just don't have the patience for this sort of nonsense, there are a dozen clients who won't micromanage the operating system, editor and way of working that I'll be using to get the job done. With that said, obviously it's a two-way street and some willingness to be flexible needs to be shown on both sides. If $client wants me to sync my work with their $uniqueVersionControlSystem then fine, I'm willing to put in the extra effort to try and meet their specific needs within reason. But that doesn't extend to working inside a client-provided VM, using a client-prescribed OS image, using a client-specified IDE or making other such major changes to my established ways of doing business. And in fact any client trying to micromanage this sort of stuff is a massive IR35 working practices red flag over here in the UK. You're better off terminating the agreement and signing something else as a SoftEng contractor.
blueplanet200 5y ago
And I would be happy to end my employment at an employer that mandates what IDE you use. (I would not be surprised that GitHub forces me to use GitHub for development, or Asana uses Asana to track issues, this one is just too far...) No hard feelings or anything. I spend 5-8 hours a day working in my IDE. That's a huge chunk of my life and it matters a lot to me to work how I want. I've also found getting this aspect of my worklife right greatly impacts my overall productivity.
LukeShu 5y ago
> I would be happy to let go of an employee who bank their employment on the preference of toolings. > Toolings are, like the name suggests, a means to an end. It goes both ways. Employees are paid to accomplish an end, and I understand employees who are happy to walk away from an employer that micromanages the means to that end down to preferences in tooling. The reason you quit isn't because you miss Emacs (even if you do), the reason you quit is because your boss doesn't even trust you to choose a text editor. That said, if the thing is your own product, yeah I get it: dogfooding is important. That said, I know of teams at Microsoft who do their (OS-agnostic) work on macOS... at some point accomplishing the end is more important than dogfooding, and you just let the workers use the tools that they're comfortable with.

dangfang 5y ago

I'd absolutely never work with someone so arrogant (and, for lack of a more polite word, dumb, as you). When I work for someone, I do the work they ask me and in return they pay me AND I get to learn something. For my learning process, I need the work part to be over fast. And that means I need to use stuff that I works best for me. I also need to be able to be able to fulfill my potential and spend time doing actual work (again, using tools that work for me). I don't want to spend a day setting up vscode and then realizing I can never edit as fast on it as vim what with the 300ms latency it adds to every keystroke

distrill 5y ago
sounds good, good luck

distrill 5y ago

Yeah, whenever I hear this kind of rhetoric - if my company ever required <some minor annoyance> it's time for a new job - I roll my eyes. Sure, keep pushing yourself out of more companies, there are a lot of good engineers* who will be absolutely as productive as you and who won't be a drain on everyone around them. *it's always engineers making these statements or I only know engineers

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ThePopeOfNope 5y ago
It works both ways. There are plenty of companies that will happily take productive engineers, without forcing them to use a slow, poor-quality IDE as their main tool, full-time. It's not a minor annoyance if it's the tool you use throughout the day, to do a job for which you are then evaluated. "Tools are just means to an end" is just one of the many rhetorical devices that cushy managers use to eschew responsibility. Of course they're means to an end, but some means are better than others, and usually those with better means end up doing a better job.
jokethrowaway 5y ago
There are plenty of engineers but few good ones. Hiring is brutal, especially now, so good developers can afford to be picky and find another semi identical job in almost no time.
- distrill 5y ago
  I hear you, but I'm suggesting that this trait is part of what differentiates a good engineer. If I'm hiring someone and they have a bunch of recent moves that are stemmed from reasons like "they wanted to use some process that I refused to try" or "they made us go through some training that I thought was a waste of time", then I consider that to be a very risky candidate. There should honestly be some good faith on both sides. It doesn't make sense for a job, in most cases, to be strict about an editor. But it's also not a good move for eng to be walking around talking about all the fragile things they'll quit abruptly for.
  - blueplanet200 5y ago
    > stemmed from reasons like "they wanted to use some process that I refused to try" or "they made us go through some training that I thought was a waste of time", then I consider that to be a very risky candidate. I feel like you're gradually making this hypothetical engineer seem more ridiculous. If someone quit over training or their unwillingness to try scrum, that would be bananas of course. There's an extremely large gap between that and mandating the main tool to use to do your job everyday.
  - jokethrowaway 5y ago
    Totally, I think if something is making you quit it must be pretty annoying - or you wouldn't risk trading the known with the unknown (which can very well end up being worse). I also wouldn't mention the real reason in a future job interview, if it sounds ridiculous. That said, small things can look trivial from the outside and make your life a living hell at the same time.
- distrill 5y ago
  I'm also not sure I agree that there are few good engineers. I think that's some rhetoric that we all say because we all think we're some of the few good ones. In my experience (FAANG, startups in the valley and startups out of state/country), strong engineering talent is not particularly difficult to find, but finding a good fit is the tricky part. And I would wager that eagerness-to-rage-quit is a pretty good indicator of someone who will have trouble finding teams that they fit on.
lol768 5y ago
I wouldn't call it a minor annoyance when it's a way of working you're practicing for 6-8 hours a day. I am best placed to determine what tools I work with best to get work done. You wouldn't get an electrician in to do some work and then decide you can suddenly prescribe the tools they use. I just don't have the patience for this sort of nonsense, there are a dozen clients who won't micromanage the operating system, editor and way of working that I'll be using to get the job done. With that said, obviously it's a two-way street and some willingness to be flexible needs to be shown on both sides. If $client wants me to sync my work with their $uniqueVersionControlSystem then fine, I'm willing to put in the extra effort to try and meet their specific needs within reason. But that doesn't extend to working inside a client-provided VM, using a client-prescribed OS image, using a client-specified IDE or making other such major changes to my established ways of doing business. And in fact any client trying to micromanage this sort of stuff is a massive IR35 working practices red flag over here in the UK. You're better off terminating the agreement and signing something else as a SoftEng contractor.

blueplanet200 5y ago

And I would be happy to end my employment at an employer that mandates what IDE you use. (I would not be surprised that GitHub forces me to use GitHub for development, or Asana uses Asana to track issues, this one is just too far...) No hard feelings or anything. I spend 5-8 hours a day working in my IDE. That's a huge chunk of my life and it matters a lot to me to work how I want. I've also found getting this aspect of my worklife right greatly impacts my overall productivity.

LukeShu 5y ago

> I would be happy to let go of an employee who bank their employment on the preference of toolings. > Toolings are, like the name suggests, a means to an end. It goes both ways. Employees are paid to accomplish an end, and I understand employees who are happy to walk away from an employer that micromanages the means to that end down to preferences in tooling. The reason you quit isn't because you miss Emacs (even if you do), the reason you quit is because your boss doesn't even trust you to choose a text editor. That said, if the thing is your own product, yeah I get it: dogfooding is important. That said, I know of teams at Microsoft who do their (OS-agnostic) work on macOS... at some point accomplishing the end is more important than dogfooding, and you just let the workers use the tools that they're comfortable with.