5 ms·

> I've almost been fired for saying something like this (that my goal was to perform well in my current role). Find a better job, that place sucks.

giantg2 5y ago
People keep saying that based on other issues I've had, yet I don't see anything better. Plus, I'd have to start over since most of my experience is in obscure tech like Neoxam and Filenet. Basically, all my options suck and this one happens to suck the least. It's a sad reality, but life is full of suffering and overall my life has less suffering than many others in the world.
- comp_throw7 5y ago
  You keep saying this as if all potential future employers already know everything about you and specifically want to avoid it. You know what you do with legacy/niche tech that isn't interesting to most employers? You can _leave it off your resume_. (Which is not to say you shouldn't include your experience with ECM platforms - there are multiple extremely large, well-paying tech companies in that domain, or in domains where that kind of experience is valuable to them!) Do you know literally any mainstream language? Java, C#, C++, Python, Javascript, Ruby, Go? Congratulations, that's enough to both get you interviewed and also a prerequisite to being able to pass those interviews. Here's how you see something better: you go to LinkedIn > Jobs > Search: "Senior Software Engineer", Location: "Remote". Every single result will pay more than what you're currently earning, sometimes by integer multiples. Some of them won't even rely on Leetcode-like questions for their interviews, though you should still absolutely spend ~50-100 hours practicing (though 20 hours is probably enough to get a handle on the most critical stuff, i.e. common string/array manipulations, tree traversal, etc). If you think it's not worth spending 50 hours to increase your lifetime income by millions of dollars, that's obviously your call, but it'd be the depression talking, not a sober evaluation of the trade-offs, or whether you can even find 50 hours somewhere (you can; if you didn't have some slack somewhere, then some random happenstance would've knocked your feet out from under you over the last year or two, and since that hasn't happened that means you have non-zero buffer). If you want I will personally help you tailor your resume to be attractive to recruiters and hiring managers while being completely honest about your experience and competencies. Feel free to email me: comp_throw7@protonmail.com.
- joelbluminator 5y ago
  Ok sorry to hear. I don't know that tech but hopefully something will pop up eventually. Is your whole org like that or just your current manager? Cos you can always try switching teams
  - giantg2 5y ago
    I have switched teams/departments a few times. The policies are supposed to be standard across the enterprise (set by HR). The processes that HR get directly involved with tend to be pretty consistent. Promotions are one of those processes, and they strictly set a bunch of parameters like the raise being 7%. There are a bunch of policies that don't directly involve HR in the workflow and those tend to vary from department to department. An example of this would be how you're evaluated at year end - they set policies like not allowing story point comparisons between developers, but there's no enforcement. So far 2 of 3 departments have directly violated HR policies in one or more areas, usually related to performance management or setting requirements that conflict with HR policy. The third department is fairly new to me. I haven't noticed anything like policy violations yet. Unfortunately, there's very little opportunity. Context switching, expectations to be full stack in multiple stacks, and managers playing musical chairs with which team owns which system has been tough. Basically, I'm told I'm off track because I'm slow. They agree that I'm slow because of the constant context switching which also doesn't allow me to build expertise. They also said that there's nothing they can do about the context switching. So I take this to mean that I should switch to a team with less context switching so that I can build the expertise and get faster. The problem is they won't let me go now. We have 4 open positions on the team. Some of them have been open for over 2 months and they can't fill them (not really a surprise based on the type of work). When our tech lead leaves in the next week or two, that will make me the most experienced and highest grade dev on the team - I've only been in this team for about 1.5 years (normally a lot of time, but not for juggling stacks and systems - like half the systems I knew for the first part if my stint are now owned by other teams) and I'm only a midlevel. There's only two other devs - a junior who has been here for a year fresh out of college (performs well though) and a contractor whose term is up in about 2 months (and can't be extended). So I'm literally being told by my boss that the team environment is not conducive to my growth as a dev or for my career development, but that I'm not allowed to go to another team because our team is in crisis. That I'm too valuable to lose, but that I'm deserving of a less than average rating.

giantg2 5y ago

People keep saying that based on other issues I've had, yet I don't see anything better. Plus, I'd have to start over since most of my experience is in obscure tech like Neoxam and Filenet. Basically, all my options suck and this one happens to suck the least. It's a sad reality, but life is full of suffering and overall my life has less suffering than many others in the world.

comp_throw7 5y ago
You keep saying this as if all potential future employers already know everything about you and specifically want to avoid it. You know what you do with legacy/niche tech that isn't interesting to most employers? You can _leave it off your resume_. (Which is not to say you shouldn't include your experience with ECM platforms - there are multiple extremely large, well-paying tech companies in that domain, or in domains where that kind of experience is valuable to them!) Do you know literally any mainstream language? Java, C#, C++, Python, Javascript, Ruby, Go? Congratulations, that's enough to both get you interviewed and also a prerequisite to being able to pass those interviews. Here's how you see something better: you go to LinkedIn > Jobs > Search: "Senior Software Engineer", Location: "Remote". Every single result will pay more than what you're currently earning, sometimes by integer multiples. Some of them won't even rely on Leetcode-like questions for their interviews, though you should still absolutely spend ~50-100 hours practicing (though 20 hours is probably enough to get a handle on the most critical stuff, i.e. common string/array manipulations, tree traversal, etc). If you think it's not worth spending 50 hours to increase your lifetime income by millions of dollars, that's obviously your call, but it'd be the depression talking, not a sober evaluation of the trade-offs, or whether you can even find 50 hours somewhere (you can; if you didn't have some slack somewhere, then some random happenstance would've knocked your feet out from under you over the last year or two, and since that hasn't happened that means you have non-zero buffer). If you want I will personally help you tailor your resume to be attractive to recruiters and hiring managers while being completely honest about your experience and competencies. Feel free to email me: comp_throw7@protonmail.com.
joelbluminator 5y ago
Ok sorry to hear. I don't know that tech but hopefully something will pop up eventually. Is your whole org like that or just your current manager? Cos you can always try switching teams
- giantg2 5y ago
  I have switched teams/departments a few times. The policies are supposed to be standard across the enterprise (set by HR). The processes that HR get directly involved with tend to be pretty consistent. Promotions are one of those processes, and they strictly set a bunch of parameters like the raise being 7%. There are a bunch of policies that don't directly involve HR in the workflow and those tend to vary from department to department. An example of this would be how you're evaluated at year end - they set policies like not allowing story point comparisons between developers, but there's no enforcement. So far 2 of 3 departments have directly violated HR policies in one or more areas, usually related to performance management or setting requirements that conflict with HR policy. The third department is fairly new to me. I haven't noticed anything like policy violations yet. Unfortunately, there's very little opportunity. Context switching, expectations to be full stack in multiple stacks, and managers playing musical chairs with which team owns which system has been tough. Basically, I'm told I'm off track because I'm slow. They agree that I'm slow because of the constant context switching which also doesn't allow me to build expertise. They also said that there's nothing they can do about the context switching. So I take this to mean that I should switch to a team with less context switching so that I can build the expertise and get faster. The problem is they won't let me go now. We have 4 open positions on the team. Some of them have been open for over 2 months and they can't fill them (not really a surprise based on the type of work). When our tech lead leaves in the next week or two, that will make me the most experienced and highest grade dev on the team - I've only been in this team for about 1.5 years (normally a lot of time, but not for juggling stacks and systems - like half the systems I knew for the first part if my stint are now owned by other teams) and I'm only a midlevel. There's only two other devs - a junior who has been here for a year fresh out of college (performs well though) and a contractor whose term is up in about 2 months (and can't be extended). So I'm literally being told by my boss that the team environment is not conducive to my growth as a dev or for my career development, but that I'm not allowed to go to another team because our team is in crisis. That I'm too valuable to lose, but that I'm deserving of a less than average rating.