23 ms·

In software, when an engineer exits the team

187 points by solidist 5y ago

julianh95 5y ago
I enjoyed reading this. _As an engineer_, I have always had trouble with determining how to go about putting in my notice. I know that it’s “just business”, however I still get consumed by how my manager at the time will take it. Reading this gives me a sense of relief and I hope it helps when that time rolls around again.
- bravetraveler 5y ago
  As did I, it was refreshing to see this. I'm not necessarily in software engineering (operations/architecture), but the weight on my manager(s) at times has been what's kept me here. Not always directly on them, but the vacuum they mention. Everyone on my team is a champion of their realm, and I can't help but assume the worst if I were to leave. I might not love the place, but the people and the core of what we do - absolutely. Sometimes it indeed just isn't the right time.
- corobo 5y ago
  I'm feeling somewhat guilty right now and all I've done is chucked out a few resumes and booked in a few interviews Fact is though I wouldn't be looking if the company was as loyal to me as vice versa I guess. I actually really like the job and the people but I need to at least keep up with inflation to avoid feeling like a clown haha
  - hondo77 5y ago
    You do not owe your employer loyalty. The only thing you owe your employer is an honest day's work for a day's pay. That's it.
  - DoreenMichele 5y ago
    Those feelings are from wiring that makes sense in a small tribe of about 150 people where the social contract will involve mutual loyalty. It easily goes bad places if it is one-sided. Good luck with your job hunt.
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- pitched 5y ago
  Leaving a company is a six-week process where you give your notice four weeks in, after all your loose ends are already cleaned up. Part of that first section is finding out from both your manager and HR how they expect/want to get notice. There’s no way to do that without foreshadowing a bit, which also makes things easier when the time comes.
  - swader999 5y ago
    It's faster if you just put a bag of popcorn in the office microwave for way too long.
- bigiain 5y ago
  As a manager, one of the great joys of my job is watching people I've trained and mentored grow and outgrow my organisation, and leave to take on far better roles that are more exciting and challenging that anything I can offer them if they stay. It's also one of the biggest challenges to me, replacing those people, who are often top performers on my teams. But that's my job. It's what I do for this organisation. "As an engineer" I hope you never consider holding your own career progress back just to make that part of my job easier. If that's a serious problem for me, then that's because I failed at _my_ job. I need to have contingency plans and succession plans and we both need you to not be irreplaceable. When I've got my ducks in a row, my reaction is "Right, time to accelerate $otherDev's seniority, temporarily move those @responsibilies to @colleagues with a handover, and call up HR/recruiting to hire in someone with @skillset. Let's plan some celebratory drinks." When you're ready, and when a great opportunity presents itself, do not spend a second worrying about how I'll need to deal with you leaving. While you've probably just made a whole bunch more work for me as I scrabble to fill the gap you're leaving, I will genuinely be happy for you and proud of you for getting there. (And I will try my hardest to communicate that pride and happiness much better than I show my frustration and stress as I do the hard parts of my job.)
  - mountainriver 5y ago
    Found a good one!
  - spaetzleesser 5y ago
    "As a manager, one of the great joys of my job is watching people I've trained and mentored grow and outgrow my organisation, and leave to take on far better roles that are more exciting and challenging that anything I can offer them if they stay. " That's the correct attitude. View your team as a pipeline that produces top people. It's much more rewarding to work that way.
- conductr 5y ago
  I either don’t care at all and am glad to be out or I care so much that I tell my manager ahead that I’m dusting off my resume and starting the hunt. In the later, the team has a head start finding and onboarding my replacement. As we all know, the main issue here is that the customary 2 week notice is insufficient time to find your replacement. If it’s truly just about money or something like that, it also gives them an opportunity to give you what you feel is fair or they know what is going to happen if they don’t.
- spaetzleesser 5y ago
  "however I still get consumed by how my manager at the time will take it." Usually nobody really in management cares unless they are complete psychos. And the team will not miss you much either because other people usually step up. People who leave are forgotten quickly.
ctrlp 5y ago
Large hierarchical orgs are surely one of the circles of hell. The way the whole manager-culture setup warps peoples minds never fails to amaze me.
virtuous_signal 5y ago
> But rarely do I find something to keep the person on, their mind already made up. I respect that. When I close the video meeting, I settle. My mind is racing. “Can I try something to bring the person back?” It's interesting reading this, as I have always been too -- shy? underconfident? I don't know -- to ever mention my job search to my manager, until I got an offer and accepted it. I worry about it being obvious that the time off I request is for interviewing and perhaps them placing obstacles in my way. I wonder if it's ever a good idea to mention a job search when one doesn't have any offers in hand yet.
- arcticbull 5y ago
  IMO no, it's never a good idea. Once you announce your intention to leave, you've broken trust with your employer and manager. Why assign the good projects to someone with one foot out the door? If they decide not to leave, was it because they want to be here, or because nobody wanted them? Are they going to leave in a few months anyways? It's like when your significant other says they want to break up with you - "no, please I can change!" is never the right next step. You can end up together, but spend at least 3 months apart first.
  - chrononaut 5y ago
    It sounds like you experienced a situation where that trust never existed in the first place? I've been on teams where on more than one occasion colleagues have mentioned to me one day that they were thinking of leaving, and then a couple weeks later when I asked them about it they mentioned that they raised the explicit thoughts of departure with their manager (as well as their concerns that lead to it) with respective changes manifesting that kept them on the team for a number of years. In the model you mention, it seems like it would never be worthwhile to retain employees who have an offer and are at that point announcing their departure? Edit: I am not sure why what I am saying is controversial. Either a person has a trusted relationship with their manager, or the they don't. I've had managers for whom I trusted and others I did not. It can also be assessed on how they treat others who report to them as well as how they speak of others of others on adjacent teams. Concerns can and should be raised over time, and not just bottled up and delivered at the end. A good manager should be probing for them as well. There's obviously risk involved in any conversation, but I disagree with "it's never a good idea."
panny 5y ago
>No one is irreplaceable, and no one is an island. I've watched a business fall apart slowly after the only developer on the legacy project left. Nobody knows the old framework, nobody wants to waste time learning something that won't advance their career, and finding an existing person familiar with it is search for a needle in a haystack. A developer can find a new position in a matter of weeks. A business takes months to fill a position, then months more to ramp up as the new hire has to learn the unfamiliar code base. In a market with lots of competition, it can be catastrophic, but management has the mindset that we're all cogs until it's too late.
- perryizgr8 5y ago
  If someone is so irreplaceable and integral, the company should be paying over and above market rate to ensure they don't look outside.
- msandford 5y ago
  There is such a thing as "key man insurance" or person. It pays out if a person leaves or dies or what have you. It depends on management recognizing a person's importance so they can purchase the policy before someone leaves.
- iamthemonster 5y ago
  In this type of case, the lack of succession planning is the root cause. The problem with succession planning is that management think that it applies to them, even though their skillset is more transferable and their roles are much more malleable, whereas it really needs to apply more to the specialists.
- seneca 5y ago
  > management has the mindset that we're all cogs until it's too late I hate reading this. Not because I think people who say it are wrong, but because so many engineers have had experiences that lead them to believe it. During my management career, I risked my own standing in a company more than once to back up people in my org. If a manager isn't willing to risk their own skin to make sure their team is treat with dignity and respect they aren't a leader, they're just a politician.
deathanatos 5y ago
So, author, you claim to see the breakup coming. Yet, at the moment the employee gives their notice: > find levers to negotiate The time during which you "see it coming", when I the employee am asking more … pointed questions, usually about the company, how its run, the team's responsibilities or work or pay etc. … that, that is when you have the levers to negotiate. That is when you are still the BATNA. But by the time I'm giving you notice, those levers are gone.¹ I also am pretty sure the last manager I gave notice to did not see it coming. He had a very quizzical look when I asked for the 1-on-1 mentioned in the article. He too, tried to fight what was by then destiny. ¹just in case someone tries to argue "everyone has a price": yeah, I'd agree. But I've not had anyone offer it, and by that time, it's far too high because of what you'd be asking. (Me to renege on a deal, me to stick with something I'm dissatisfied with, and it'd be a "pay replacing happiness" sort of an offer, which is why it'd be costly. You've had the chance to change the "happiness" part, and usually, the demonstration has been "we're unwilling to address those grievances") (Also, too often, I think, the "problems" run deeper than the authority of the direct manager has control over. My last manager was in that situation: there was very little I think he could actually do. And that, in itself, is a problem.)
- scottLobster 5y ago
  > (Also, too often, I think, the "problems" run deeper than the authority of the direct manager has control over. My last manager was in that situation: there was very little I think he could actually do. And that, in itself, is a problem.) Yep. Particularly at larger companies your immediate manager can often do little more than perhaps offer a mild pay raise or slightly alter working conditions. I'm currently planning on leaving some time in the next couple of years (sticking around for family reasons in the near-term) because I've realized our business model isn't what I thought it was when I joined, and that engineering really is a cost center past a certain baseline, which explains the utterly mediocre equipment/procedures and lack of leadership/low morale. I'd rather work somewhere where engineering is a profit center. Nothing my immediate manager can do about that.
  - geodel 5y ago
    > because I've realized our business model isn't what I thought it was when I joined, and that engineering really is a cost center past a certain baseline, which explains the utterly mediocre equipment/procedures ... This is a good point. I am seeing about same thing at work. Over obsession with Agile processes, tracking hours, third rate light duty computers, rigid working hours and so on. Many good engineers have already left instead banging head against "process" wall. And funnily today managers saying on call that they are finding difficult to hire and people are leaving left and right.
lmilcin 5y ago
> Or the baffling outcome, their asks were all achieved as they exit. It is not baffling. It is self respect. I don't like important stuff that has not been completed. If I spent months on an important work it would feel like giving up. I would feel like a fraud abandoning it and letting it go to waste, because of my own decision. And so I try to focus one last time and push hard to have quality closure. An interesting observation is how your focus suddenly improves when you have made your decision. You know all your long term plans no longer make any sense and so you stop worrying. You can finally have quality rest at home as various problems prevent you from achieving peace of mind. You know you can ignore bullshit. Or it suddenly stops being irritating anymore because you know you will not have to deal with it for long. You know you can finally say no to all distractions.
- aero142 5y ago
  I read this as, everything the leaving employee was complaining about and said they wanted finally happened, but they still chose to leave. I'm not sure which is right.
  - corobo 5y ago
    The phrase too little too late comes to mind As the current top comment says: if they knew about it weeks in advance, why was it only after resignation was handed in they thought "oh wait I could try salvaging this" People don't quit jobs, they quit managers
  - lmilcin 5y ago
    I read this in context of another sentence: "And for those that care, a burst of contributions.
kodah 5y ago
I'm a lead software engineer on a polyglot team that requires broad knowledge and in-depth knowledge on distributed computing. If I can give any advice to engineering managers when someone quits: If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. The last three people that have left my team are people I know personally. Hearing an engineering manager berate and degrade someone who I have been through incidents, significant refactors, mentoring, debates, and late night delivery with is a new experience entirely. The first time it happened I had to talk the engineering manager down from making someone a non-rehire, the second time I didn't even bother. My judgement of them was fully passed on to the company and the leaders above this engineering manager that gave them accolades and excuses. Most of the time when I leave a team it's because something either in the management chain like a process or a manager themselves failed me on such a deep level that the hope that gets me out of my bed that says, "We'll do something great today!" has departed me. This post reads to me like that is inevitable, but it is not. If you listen, ask questions without assumptions or judgements, and act as an enabler instead of a Lord or Lady then you'll strike long careers out of engineers. They may leave out of better bonuses or incentives, but they at least won't leave because of you, and one takes a substantial more amount enticing than the other.
- lolmazon 5y ago
  Amazon employee spotted.
- ransom1538 5y ago
  People should leave. Engineers do better learning new systems - learning from new people. You should leave every three years. I don't cry when an engineer leaves - they should!
- rpmisms 5y ago
  Also worth remembering: Managers directly influence the performance of developers. If you don't have anything nice to say, it's not necessarily your fault, but you should ask the departing dev if they feel you got them what they needed.
  - 5y ago
SilverRed 5y ago
>But this role wasn’t a fit, and the timing was off. The environment was not correct. The work didn’t have the impact they wanted, finding their dream job instead. Perhaps I was ineffective at communications, championing above, or slow at sponsoring elsewhere This seems to miss the most obvious reason. That they found more money elsewhere. Of every developer I have seen leave, their primary motivation was a higher pay. Having a team you like is nice and all, but owning a house or being able to go on nicer holidays is better. The company I worked at this year is falling apart because all of the actual talent has found higher paying jobs and all that is left is the juniors who will struggle to keep things running.
- malandrew 5y ago
  And the few that don’t leave for higher pay, leave to go work with those that left for higher pay or because morale is low because of people leaving. By my estimates from hundreds of informal exit interviews I have done with colleagues that have left, I’d wager 60-70% left for higher pay or due to second or third order effects caused by those that left for higher pay. Half of the remaining engineers left to pursue new opportunities. Almost always these were engineers whose first job out of school is at the current company and they hit 4 years. Many of these won’t cite pay, but almost all got offers way higher than what their first employer out of school is paying them four years later. Those that left because of a bad manager were in the minority. Most engineers frustrated over a bad manager transfer teams within the company instead of leaving the company.
  - alfiedotwtf 5y ago
    > Those that left because of a bad manager were in the minority hehe I've seen the complete opposite - a whole dev team rise up to get rid of the manager. And when the manager didn't leave, it was set in stone that most of the devs left within weeks.
  - laurent92 5y ago
    > out of hundreds of exit interviews Datapoint here, I didn’t say the truth at my exit interview. I left because I was angry my team lead wouldn’t help me reach a new level in my career, but I pretended it was for higher pay. Blaming it on my manager would have been useless and closed doors if I wanted to rehire in the higher position. Saying it wouldn’t have given them an opportunity to fix it, because I needed to learn skills to become a team lead, which I hadn’t, so they couldn’t have just promoted me.
FpUser 5y ago
I gave notices (verbal) twice during my employment in the 90s (On my own since 2000). In neither case I was eager to leave but I've felt that my remuneration had fallen too much comparatively to a market rate. In both cases I first went and got an offer for much better money and then asked my CEO to match it (we both understood what will happen if he will not). In both cases the offer was matched and the case settled.
karaterobot 5y ago
A tangent: I think it would be a smoother transition we extended the professional expectation of giving two weeks notice to employees before they are let go. I'm more or less serious. As it stands, employees give at least two weeks notice to employers before quitting, and employers give no notice whatsoever. The benefit of the employee giving notice (from the company's perspective) is that management has a little time to move people around and try to cover for the missing person. The benefit from the offboarding employee's perspective is that they won't get a bad reference for their next job. But, if an employee is leaving because they've found a new job (the most common case, I think) then they probably don't need a reference from this position, because they have their next job lined up already. Maybe it would be nice to have one later, but it's not strictly needed. At most, it's a weak enticement. The obvious argument against giving notice to employees from a management perspective is that the employee will either sabotage the company, not do any work, or just take two weeks of vacation. However, this is the case where the employee would actually need a good reference from their current company, because they do not already have a job lined up. If anything, you'd expect them to be less likely to behave badly than they would be in the typical case, where they find their next job and put in their two weeks notice afterward, because they need that reference. When a company lays off an employee, they never give any notice, and the team with the missing team member is left to figure out what to do about it. Even though this can be a major disruption to the team, we don't typically hold it against the company: it's just how things are done. But, should it be? Of course, the other reason to lay someone off without notice is that you can't afford to pay their salary for even two more weeks, but that's another situation. I'm talking about when someone is being laid off because of pro-active downsizing, or because they're not living up to their potential, or whatever.
- paxys 5y ago
  From my experience at several (large, well-paying) software companies, I feel like this is already the case. Employees who leave voluntarily will usually give as much notice as they can. There is no fixed guidance or expectation, but just good form to tell at least your manager as soon as you have made a decision. It isn't uncommon for people to publicly announce their departure 6-8 weeks in advance. For people who are fired for bad performance, there is usually a PIP or other probationary period which would count as notice. For layoffs, there will be severance (2-3 months is common). The only time I have seen abrupt departures is for entirely unavoidable reasons – theft, sexual harassment, family issues, visas.
democracy 5y ago
The default expectation is: people are not going to stay long in your company. It's a given. What you can do to improve things it a bit: 1) pay a bit over market rate (5-10% is ok) 2) create a culture where approachability, kindness and responsibility are more important than anything else 3) offer (but don't enforce) specific workplace settings 4) offer (but don't enforce) work-from-home/work-from-office balance 5) periodically encourage people - feedback is very important
- astockwell 5y ago
  This is a solid list, and it is true. (Kindness/Responsibility) If I’m well paid, but someone is a full-on jerk to me/my team (particularly if they are at a very high level — in fact the higher the level the smaller the slight needs to be to have big impact), I will start to look, and it’s only a matter of time until more money finds me. (Balance) If my wife starts telling me she misses me, or that my kids miss me, or asking why I couldn’t come to the performance, I will start to look, and it’s only a matter of time until more money finds me. If I’m paid under market.. we’ll, I’m gonna find out soon, and then I will start to look… One I didn’t see in your list is working to align people with work they want to do. Not always easy, but something can always be done, and the effort to try is almost as important as the result. If I’m stuck doing meaningless work, or never able to complete something, or (worst of all) watch the new hires come in and do my projects because I’m stuck working outages, I will start to look…
- 015a 5y ago
  Agreed. On Office vs Remote: This is a really, really difficult one. The company I just left moved to a remote-priority hybrid model, where the office was "heavily suggested" two days a week and "absolutely optional" every other day. As you could imagine, those two statements mean the same thing; its optional every day. I left because I love the office. I love the separation between work and home. I love the drive in; getting time to listen to podcasts or new music. Most of all, I love the company; I love collaborating in person, spontaneous low-stakes communication about little issues in their dev environments or problem solving, stuff that would never make it into Slack, but we're better off talking about it. Not enough of the team feels the same way, so most days it was just me and maybe 3 or 4 other people (out of a dozen+). So, I left to find a company that was more aligned with what I want. But, here's the ironic part: in the frank conversations I had with other team members, many are on the opposite side of the fence. The two-day-a-week "heavily recommended" was too much office time. They want full remote. Some of them were bold enough to just do it; management (and COVID) isn't at the place right now to enforce too harshly. Many still feel guilty about it; how there are people like me going in most days, which is aligned with the corporate mandate, and they're not doing it. One person left, citing this as a deciding reason. Point being, I think any model can work; full office, full remote, or hybrid. No matter what companies do, there will be churn, because every choice is different in some way to what employees have either gotten used to (remote during pandemic -> full office) or what employees miss (full office pre-pandemic -> remote). And if you choose hybrid, you seriously need to enforce it; if you enforce it, some people will be unhappy with the model you pick, but that's better than not enforcing it and causing everyone to be unhappy. On Positive Feedback: For me, it feels the best if its specific feedback not on the basic completion of tasks, but on the quality of completion. Not "Thank you so much for staying late to help with that customer issue", but "The way you solved that customer issue was pretty creative man, thanks for jumping in on that." That feels so much better (for me). One of the big things I took too long to learn, and am still trying to improve in, is understanding how valuable positive peer feedback is. Not just approving great PRs with zero feedback or a "LGTM" "+1" ":thumbsup:"; I love putting line comments in that say genuine positive things I feel about lines, like "That's an awesome solution" or "I didn't know you could do that in typescript" or "I really like this, I'm definitely going to start doing that". The first hurdle I had to cross was, actually, having these thoughts more often; to reframe PR reviews from "its how we control risk on production merges" toward "its an opportunity to help the submitter improve their code" and even further into "its an opportunity for me to stay up-to-date on how the entire codebase is evolving, and how other devs solve problems." Be specific, and be genuine. If I can't give genuine positive feedback, then either: the person I'm giving feedback to isn't really living up to any positive feedback, or in my experience more commonly: I'm not seeing the good in their work and effort, and its my responsibility to improve my ability to recognize it, so I can actually be genuine.
craftydevil 5y ago
That's not the only problem here, when we stay with same company our salary and revision are less when compare to later hire. So money matters. Also new tech and knowledge are also lacking.
- Raed667 5y ago
  I was going to comment exactly this. Looking at this part: > I could have improved the environment, the work, the team — myself. I write the conclusions down to be taken care of, reflecting on what I’ve learned. From my personal experience, most people leave because it is almost impossible to get a significant raise internally versus changing jobs.
newshorts 5y ago
Work is work, folks get too involved. I don’t think it’s healthy to take it personally if someone chooses to leave the team. In fact I’ve never understood this. My role as a manager is to ensure you grow enough to move on to something better. That’s the contract, you give your best to the team while you’re here and we try our damndest to find good opportunities for you regardless of what it means for us. I just have no misconceptions about our relationship, you’re here to push it and I’m here to challenge you to do that.
daemonhunter 5y ago
When I first saw this I figured it was going to be about what it does to the team, that managers don't seem to get. I was told once, after losing half the team, that they didn't want to lose momentum.
jongorer 5y ago
Whoever wrote this sounds like an awful manager: extremely self-centered and mixes poor rationalizations with pseudo empathy so as to seem as a decent person. In other words, I find that managers with that much... personality are the hardest to manage (harhar!); they can be extremely flippant in their behavior and unpredictable with demands. Maybe they take the job too seriously? You just need to keep push some boxes around on zenhub and send some emails my dude, this isn't the crusade and you sure ain't no knight (lmao).
ochronus 5y ago
Beautifully written - I don't necessarily mean the content, but the quality of writing. Have you tried writing more serious things (I mean more than blog posts)?
pololee 5y ago
> I wasn’t expecting those intense feelings when walking away the first time. They don’t write that in any of the books I read. I want to make a movie to capture the feelings :)
yosito 5y ago
I'm a senior engineer with over a decade of experience. Most engineering jobs I've left, it was because the manager viewed themselves as an authority with power to force me to do things their way rather than as an enabler who would trust my expertise and help remove blockers to getting things done. In those roles, I'd spend more time chasing the managers' scattered thoughts through endless link trails deep in the bowels of Slack and Jira than actually doing engineering work. When I left, and the managers asked me for feedback, I always told them that everything had been great and I had just accepted a new opportunity. Leaving is not the time to burn bridges.
- zensavona 5y ago
  In my ~9 years of experience, most engineering jobs I've stayed have been because the manager was an enabler who trusted my experience and would help remove blockers to getting things done. I know we like to shit on engineering managers a lot here at HN but having worked with great managers, terrible managers and playing the role for a short stint myself (a humbling experience, where I was not happy with my own performance), I realise the critical role a good manager can play to bring out the best in the team, and conversely how a bad one can bring out the worst.
  - zerocount 5y ago
    In my ~13 years of experience, I've never worked under a manager who enabled or trusted me. I've always left a job because of new management, a policy instituted by a manager, or because the manager made me work on holidays, or being available to clients on my vacation. Generally, it's the 'shit on the employee in the name of the client' that pisses me off. I'm of the opinion now that managers are a waste of resources and amount to baby-sitters who attend meetings, approve time off, and try to get me to work more. I haven't met a manager yet who made a positive contribution to a project. There's a reason people shit on them!
    - itistricky 5y ago
      There are such managers (enablers who trust you). The irony is that usually you get them on doomed ships that refuse to change their ways anyway.
andresp 5y ago
Another article where managers show how detached they are and just regurgitate empty manager speak about how emotional and empathetic they are. No single mention to promotions. For some reason companies prefer to waste money and time hiring and training replacements rather than having proper career progression internally. For most developers leaving is the new career progression. Open your eyes. Reality is shouting in your face. The dozens of dubious management books by "experts" are just making you feel good about not tackling the problem.
- bartread 5y ago
  Oh, come on: I found the piece a bit woolly, but you're making an awfully big assumption there. Just because the author didn't talk about promotions doesn't mean they don't happen or that the company concerned doesn't have a "proper career progression internally". They may well have a "proper career progression": they might even have multiple career tracks for engineers (we do). You simply don't know. Either way, it doesn't matter: turnover will still happen because there are often fewer of the more senior positions available than there are of the less senior. This is less of an issue in rapidly growing companies, because there are generally plenty of opportunities to progress. It's natural for people to move on to new roles with new companies from time to time and, as a manager and a leader, is something I'm supportive of when it happens. There are many reasons they do this, progression being one, but money often being another. Of course, I don't deny that plenty of companies exist that don't consider progression, or have any structures in place to facilitate it, but from the information we have here you can't infer that's the case for this company.
geraldbauer 5y ago
Here's a real-world story of getting "exited" of my humble self - more a programmer (or code monkey) than an "engineer" really - see The Strange Case of Mammad Kabiri @ Uniqa Software Service. [1] [1] https://github.com/bigkorupto/mammad-kabiri-uniqa https://github.com/bigkorupto/mammad-kabiri-uniqa
- fxtentacle 5y ago
  You should rename the article, I guess. Like this, it my first impression was that it would be another one of those posts where some random outsourcing employee complains that Google didn't hire them. How about: "Wage theft by Uniqa Software Service and harrassment by Mammad Kabiri" It might also make sense to point out that this is an EU court, because everyone knows that means worker protections actually have teeth. In the US getting fired like that is no issue in at-will states. "EU court trial: Wage theft by Uniqa Software Service, Harrassment by Mammad Kabiri" That's a good summary in my opinion. Also, unrelatedly: Your text reads to me as if you could gain by improving your self-marketing. "code monkey" doesn't exactly sound like "that one guy we'll treat super nicely because we are afraid he might leave". But you certainly want to be in the latter category in your manager's mind. And chances are, after 10 years of working, you will have invaluable experience that helps your team. So it's probably mostly a matter of advertising your skills correctly.
bob229 5y ago
Meh, weird prose

187 points by solidist 5y ago

I enjoyed reading this. _As an engineer_, I have always had trouble with determining how to go about putting in my notice. I know that it’s “just business”, however I still get consumed by how my manager at the time will take it. Reading this gives me a sense of relief and I hope it helps when that time rolls around again.

bravetraveler 5y ago
As did I, it was refreshing to see this. I'm not necessarily in software engineering (operations/architecture), but the weight on my manager(s) at times has been what's kept me here. Not always directly on them, but the vacuum they mention. Everyone on my team is a champion of their realm, and I can't help but assume the worst if I were to leave. I might not love the place, but the people and the core of what we do - absolutely. Sometimes it indeed just isn't the right time.
corobo 5y ago
I'm feeling somewhat guilty right now and all I've done is chucked out a few resumes and booked in a few interviews Fact is though I wouldn't be looking if the company was as loyal to me as vice versa I guess. I actually really like the job and the people but I need to at least keep up with inflation to avoid feeling like a clown haha
- hondo77 5y ago
  You do not owe your employer loyalty. The only thing you owe your employer is an honest day's work for a day's pay. That's it.
- DoreenMichele 5y ago
  Those feelings are from wiring that makes sense in a small tribe of about 150 people where the social contract will involve mutual loyalty. It easily goes bad places if it is one-sided. Good luck with your job hunt.
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pitched 5y ago
Leaving a company is a six-week process where you give your notice four weeks in, after all your loose ends are already cleaned up. Part of that first section is finding out from both your manager and HR how they expect/want to get notice. There’s no way to do that without foreshadowing a bit, which also makes things easier when the time comes.
- swader999 5y ago
  It's faster if you just put a bag of popcorn in the office microwave for way too long.
bigiain 5y ago
As a manager, one of the great joys of my job is watching people I've trained and mentored grow and outgrow my organisation, and leave to take on far better roles that are more exciting and challenging that anything I can offer them if they stay. It's also one of the biggest challenges to me, replacing those people, who are often top performers on my teams. But that's my job. It's what I do for this organisation. "As an engineer" I hope you never consider holding your own career progress back just to make that part of my job easier. If that's a serious problem for me, then that's because I failed at _my_ job. I need to have contingency plans and succession plans and we both need you to not be irreplaceable. When I've got my ducks in a row, my reaction is "Right, time to accelerate $otherDev's seniority, temporarily move those @responsibilies to @colleagues with a handover, and call up HR/recruiting to hire in someone with @skillset. Let's plan some celebratory drinks." When you're ready, and when a great opportunity presents itself, do not spend a second worrying about how I'll need to deal with you leaving. While you've probably just made a whole bunch more work for me as I scrabble to fill the gap you're leaving, I will genuinely be happy for you and proud of you for getting there. (And I will try my hardest to communicate that pride and happiness much better than I show my frustration and stress as I do the hard parts of my job.)
- mountainriver 5y ago
  Found a good one!
- spaetzleesser 5y ago
  "As a manager, one of the great joys of my job is watching people I've trained and mentored grow and outgrow my organisation, and leave to take on far better roles that are more exciting and challenging that anything I can offer them if they stay. " That's the correct attitude. View your team as a pipeline that produces top people. It's much more rewarding to work that way.
conductr 5y ago
I either don’t care at all and am glad to be out or I care so much that I tell my manager ahead that I’m dusting off my resume and starting the hunt. In the later, the team has a head start finding and onboarding my replacement. As we all know, the main issue here is that the customary 2 week notice is insufficient time to find your replacement. If it’s truly just about money or something like that, it also gives them an opportunity to give you what you feel is fair or they know what is going to happen if they don’t.
spaetzleesser 5y ago
"however I still get consumed by how my manager at the time will take it." Usually nobody really in management cares unless they are complete psychos. And the team will not miss you much either because other people usually step up. People who leave are forgotten quickly.

ctrlp 5y ago

Large hierarchical orgs are surely one of the circles of hell. The way the whole manager-culture setup warps peoples minds never fails to amaze me.

virtuous_signal 5y ago

> But rarely do I find something to keep the person on, their mind already made up. I respect that. When I close the video meeting, I settle. My mind is racing. “Can I try something to bring the person back?” It's interesting reading this, as I have always been too -- shy? underconfident? I don't know -- to ever mention my job search to my manager, until I got an offer and accepted it. I worry about it being obvious that the time off I request is for interviewing and perhaps them placing obstacles in my way. I wonder if it's ever a good idea to mention a job search when one doesn't have any offers in hand yet.

arcticbull 5y ago
IMO no, it's never a good idea. Once you announce your intention to leave, you've broken trust with your employer and manager. Why assign the good projects to someone with one foot out the door? If they decide not to leave, was it because they want to be here, or because nobody wanted them? Are they going to leave in a few months anyways? It's like when your significant other says they want to break up with you - "no, please I can change!" is never the right next step. You can end up together, but spend at least 3 months apart first.
- chrononaut 5y ago
  It sounds like you experienced a situation where that trust never existed in the first place? I've been on teams where on more than one occasion colleagues have mentioned to me one day that they were thinking of leaving, and then a couple weeks later when I asked them about it they mentioned that they raised the explicit thoughts of departure with their manager (as well as their concerns that lead to it) with respective changes manifesting that kept them on the team for a number of years. In the model you mention, it seems like it would never be worthwhile to retain employees who have an offer and are at that point announcing their departure? Edit: I am not sure why what I am saying is controversial. Either a person has a trusted relationship with their manager, or the they don't. I've had managers for whom I trusted and others I did not. It can also be assessed on how they treat others who report to them as well as how they speak of others of others on adjacent teams. Concerns can and should be raised over time, and not just bottled up and delivered at the end. A good manager should be probing for them as well. There's obviously risk involved in any conversation, but I disagree with "it's never a good idea."

panny 5y ago

>No one is irreplaceable, and no one is an island. I've watched a business fall apart slowly after the only developer on the legacy project left. Nobody knows the old framework, nobody wants to waste time learning something that won't advance their career, and finding an existing person familiar with it is search for a needle in a haystack. A developer can find a new position in a matter of weeks. A business takes months to fill a position, then months more to ramp up as the new hire has to learn the unfamiliar code base. In a market with lots of competition, it can be catastrophic, but management has the mindset that we're all cogs until it's too late.

perryizgr8 5y ago
If someone is so irreplaceable and integral, the company should be paying over and above market rate to ensure they don't look outside.
msandford 5y ago
There is such a thing as "key man insurance" or person. It pays out if a person leaves or dies or what have you. It depends on management recognizing a person's importance so they can purchase the policy before someone leaves.
iamthemonster 5y ago
In this type of case, the lack of succession planning is the root cause. The problem with succession planning is that management think that it applies to them, even though their skillset is more transferable and their roles are much more malleable, whereas it really needs to apply more to the specialists.
seneca 5y ago
> management has the mindset that we're all cogs until it's too late I hate reading this. Not because I think people who say it are wrong, but because so many engineers have had experiences that lead them to believe it. During my management career, I risked my own standing in a company more than once to back up people in my org. If a manager isn't willing to risk their own skin to make sure their team is treat with dignity and respect they aren't a leader, they're just a politician.

deathanatos 5y ago

So, author, you claim to see the breakup coming. Yet, at the moment the employee gives their notice: > find levers to negotiate The time during which you "see it coming", when I the employee am asking more … pointed questions, usually about the company, how its run, the team's responsibilities or work or pay etc. … that, that is when you have the levers to negotiate. That is when you are still the BATNA. But by the time I'm giving you notice, those levers are gone.¹ I also am pretty sure the last manager I gave notice to did not see it coming. He had a very quizzical look when I asked for the 1-on-1 mentioned in the article. He too, tried to fight what was by then destiny. ¹just in case someone tries to argue "everyone has a price": yeah, I'd agree. But I've not had anyone offer it, and by that time, it's far too high because of what you'd be asking. (Me to renege on a deal, me to stick with something I'm dissatisfied with, and it'd be a "pay replacing happiness" sort of an offer, which is why it'd be costly. You've had the chance to change the "happiness" part, and usually, the demonstration has been "we're unwilling to address those grievances") (Also, too often, I think, the "problems" run deeper than the authority of the direct manager has control over. My last manager was in that situation: there was very little I think he could actually do. And that, in itself, is a problem.)

scottLobster 5y ago
> (Also, too often, I think, the "problems" run deeper than the authority of the direct manager has control over. My last manager was in that situation: there was very little I think he could actually do. And that, in itself, is a problem.) Yep. Particularly at larger companies your immediate manager can often do little more than perhaps offer a mild pay raise or slightly alter working conditions. I'm currently planning on leaving some time in the next couple of years (sticking around for family reasons in the near-term) because I've realized our business model isn't what I thought it was when I joined, and that engineering really is a cost center past a certain baseline, which explains the utterly mediocre equipment/procedures and lack of leadership/low morale. I'd rather work somewhere where engineering is a profit center. Nothing my immediate manager can do about that.
- geodel 5y ago
  > because I've realized our business model isn't what I thought it was when I joined, and that engineering really is a cost center past a certain baseline, which explains the utterly mediocre equipment/procedures ... This is a good point. I am seeing about same thing at work. Over obsession with Agile processes, tracking hours, third rate light duty computers, rigid working hours and so on. Many good engineers have already left instead banging head against "process" wall. And funnily today managers saying on call that they are finding difficult to hire and people are leaving left and right.

lmilcin 5y ago

> Or the baffling outcome, their asks were all achieved as they exit. It is not baffling. It is self respect. I don't like important stuff that has not been completed. If I spent months on an important work it would feel like giving up. I would feel like a fraud abandoning it and letting it go to waste, because of my own decision. And so I try to focus one last time and push hard to have quality closure. An interesting observation is how your focus suddenly improves when you have made your decision. You know all your long term plans no longer make any sense and so you stop worrying. You can finally have quality rest at home as various problems prevent you from achieving peace of mind. You know you can ignore bullshit. Or it suddenly stops being irritating anymore because you know you will not have to deal with it for long. You know you can finally say no to all distractions.

aero142 5y ago
I read this as, everything the leaving employee was complaining about and said they wanted finally happened, but they still chose to leave. I'm not sure which is right.
- corobo 5y ago
  The phrase too little too late comes to mind As the current top comment says: if they knew about it weeks in advance, why was it only after resignation was handed in they thought "oh wait I could try salvaging this" People don't quit jobs, they quit managers
- lmilcin 5y ago
  I read this in context of another sentence: "And for those that care, a burst of contributions.

kodah 5y ago

I'm a lead software engineer on a polyglot team that requires broad knowledge and in-depth knowledge on distributed computing. If I can give any advice to engineering managers when someone quits: If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. The last three people that have left my team are people I know personally. Hearing an engineering manager berate and degrade someone who I have been through incidents, significant refactors, mentoring, debates, and late night delivery with is a new experience entirely. The first time it happened I had to talk the engineering manager down from making someone a non-rehire, the second time I didn't even bother. My judgement of them was fully passed on to the company and the leaders above this engineering manager that gave them accolades and excuses. Most of the time when I leave a team it's because something either in the management chain like a process or a manager themselves failed me on such a deep level that the hope that gets me out of my bed that says, "We'll do something great today!" has departed me. This post reads to me like that is inevitable, but it is not. If you listen, ask questions without assumptions or judgements, and act as an enabler instead of a Lord or Lady then you'll strike long careers out of engineers. They may leave out of better bonuses or incentives, but they at least won't leave because of you, and one takes a substantial more amount enticing than the other.

lolmazon 5y ago
Amazon employee spotted.
ransom1538 5y ago
People should leave. Engineers do better learning new systems - learning from new people. You should leave every three years. I don't cry when an engineer leaves - they should!
rpmisms 5y ago
Also worth remembering: Managers directly influence the performance of developers. If you don't have anything nice to say, it's not necessarily your fault, but you should ask the departing dev if they feel you got them what they needed.
- 5y ago

SilverRed 5y ago

>But this role wasn’t a fit, and the timing was off. The environment was not correct. The work didn’t have the impact they wanted, finding their dream job instead. Perhaps I was ineffective at communications, championing above, or slow at sponsoring elsewhere This seems to miss the most obvious reason. That they found more money elsewhere. Of every developer I have seen leave, their primary motivation was a higher pay. Having a team you like is nice and all, but owning a house or being able to go on nicer holidays is better. The company I worked at this year is falling apart because all of the actual talent has found higher paying jobs and all that is left is the juniors who will struggle to keep things running.

malandrew 5y ago
And the few that don’t leave for higher pay, leave to go work with those that left for higher pay or because morale is low because of people leaving. By my estimates from hundreds of informal exit interviews I have done with colleagues that have left, I’d wager 60-70% left for higher pay or due to second or third order effects caused by those that left for higher pay. Half of the remaining engineers left to pursue new opportunities. Almost always these were engineers whose first job out of school is at the current company and they hit 4 years. Many of these won’t cite pay, but almost all got offers way higher than what their first employer out of school is paying them four years later. Those that left because of a bad manager were in the minority. Most engineers frustrated over a bad manager transfer teams within the company instead of leaving the company.
- alfiedotwtf 5y ago
  > Those that left because of a bad manager were in the minority hehe I've seen the complete opposite - a whole dev team rise up to get rid of the manager. And when the manager didn't leave, it was set in stone that most of the devs left within weeks.
- laurent92 5y ago
  > out of hundreds of exit interviews Datapoint here, I didn’t say the truth at my exit interview. I left because I was angry my team lead wouldn’t help me reach a new level in my career, but I pretended it was for higher pay. Blaming it on my manager would have been useless and closed doors if I wanted to rehire in the higher position. Saying it wouldn’t have given them an opportunity to fix it, because I needed to learn skills to become a team lead, which I hadn’t, so they couldn’t have just promoted me.

FpUser 5y ago

I gave notices (verbal) twice during my employment in the 90s (On my own since 2000). In neither case I was eager to leave but I've felt that my remuneration had fallen too much comparatively to a market rate. In both cases I first went and got an offer for much better money and then asked my CEO to match it (we both understood what will happen if he will not). In both cases the offer was matched and the case settled.

karaterobot 5y ago

A tangent: I think it would be a smoother transition we extended the professional expectation of giving two weeks notice to employees before they are let go. I'm more or less serious. As it stands, employees give at least two weeks notice to employers before quitting, and employers give no notice whatsoever. The benefit of the employee giving notice (from the company's perspective) is that management has a little time to move people around and try to cover for the missing person. The benefit from the offboarding employee's perspective is that they won't get a bad reference for their next job. But, if an employee is leaving because they've found a new job (the most common case, I think) then they probably don't need a reference from this position, because they have their next job lined up already. Maybe it would be nice to have one later, but it's not strictly needed. At most, it's a weak enticement. The obvious argument against giving notice to employees from a management perspective is that the employee will either sabotage the company, not do any work, or just take two weeks of vacation. However, this is the case where the employee would actually need a good reference from their current company, because they do not already have a job lined up. If anything, you'd expect them to be less likely to behave badly than they would be in the typical case, where they find their next job and put in their two weeks notice afterward, because they need that reference. When a company lays off an employee, they never give any notice, and the team with the missing team member is left to figure out what to do about it. Even though this can be a major disruption to the team, we don't typically hold it against the company: it's just how things are done. But, should it be? Of course, the other reason to lay someone off without notice is that you can't afford to pay their salary for even two more weeks, but that's another situation. I'm talking about when someone is being laid off because of pro-active downsizing, or because they're not living up to their potential, or whatever.

paxys 5y ago
From my experience at several (large, well-paying) software companies, I feel like this is already the case. Employees who leave voluntarily will usually give as much notice as they can. There is no fixed guidance or expectation, but just good form to tell at least your manager as soon as you have made a decision. It isn't uncommon for people to publicly announce their departure 6-8 weeks in advance. For people who are fired for bad performance, there is usually a PIP or other probationary period which would count as notice. For layoffs, there will be severance (2-3 months is common). The only time I have seen abrupt departures is for entirely unavoidable reasons – theft, sexual harassment, family issues, visas.

democracy 5y ago

The default expectation is: people are not going to stay long in your company. It's a given. What you can do to improve things it a bit: 1) pay a bit over market rate (5-10% is ok) 2) create a culture where approachability, kindness and responsibility are more important than anything else 3) offer (but don't enforce) specific workplace settings 4) offer (but don't enforce) work-from-home/work-from-office balance 5) periodically encourage people - feedback is very important

astockwell 5y ago
This is a solid list, and it is true. (Kindness/Responsibility) If I’m well paid, but someone is a full-on jerk to me/my team (particularly if they are at a very high level — in fact the higher the level the smaller the slight needs to be to have big impact), I will start to look, and it’s only a matter of time until more money finds me. (Balance) If my wife starts telling me she misses me, or that my kids miss me, or asking why I couldn’t come to the performance, I will start to look, and it’s only a matter of time until more money finds me. If I’m paid under market.. we’ll, I’m gonna find out soon, and then I will start to look… One I didn’t see in your list is working to align people with work they want to do. Not always easy, but something can always be done, and the effort to try is almost as important as the result. If I’m stuck doing meaningless work, or never able to complete something, or (worst of all) watch the new hires come in and do my projects because I’m stuck working outages, I will start to look…
015a 5y ago
Agreed. On Office vs Remote: This is a really, really difficult one. The company I just left moved to a remote-priority hybrid model, where the office was "heavily suggested" two days a week and "absolutely optional" every other day. As you could imagine, those two statements mean the same thing; its optional every day. I left because I love the office. I love the separation between work and home. I love the drive in; getting time to listen to podcasts or new music. Most of all, I love the company; I love collaborating in person, spontaneous low-stakes communication about little issues in their dev environments or problem solving, stuff that would never make it into Slack, but we're better off talking about it. Not enough of the team feels the same way, so most days it was just me and maybe 3 or 4 other people (out of a dozen+). So, I left to find a company that was more aligned with what I want. But, here's the ironic part: in the frank conversations I had with other team members, many are on the opposite side of the fence. The two-day-a-week "heavily recommended" was too much office time. They want full remote. Some of them were bold enough to just do it; management (and COVID) isn't at the place right now to enforce too harshly. Many still feel guilty about it; how there are people like me going in most days, which is aligned with the corporate mandate, and they're not doing it. One person left, citing this as a deciding reason. Point being, I think any model can work; full office, full remote, or hybrid. No matter what companies do, there will be churn, because every choice is different in some way to what employees have either gotten used to (remote during pandemic -> full office) or what employees miss (full office pre-pandemic -> remote). And if you choose hybrid, you seriously need to enforce it; if you enforce it, some people will be unhappy with the model you pick, but that's better than not enforcing it and causing everyone to be unhappy. On Positive Feedback: For me, it feels the best if its specific feedback not on the basic completion of tasks, but on the quality of completion. Not "Thank you so much for staying late to help with that customer issue", but "The way you solved that customer issue was pretty creative man, thanks for jumping in on that." That feels so much better (for me). One of the big things I took too long to learn, and am still trying to improve in, is understanding how valuable positive peer feedback is. Not just approving great PRs with zero feedback or a "LGTM" "+1" ":thumbsup:"; I love putting line comments in that say genuine positive things I feel about lines, like "That's an awesome solution" or "I didn't know you could do that in typescript" or "I really like this, I'm definitely going to start doing that". The first hurdle I had to cross was, actually, having these thoughts more often; to reframe PR reviews from "its how we control risk on production merges" toward "its an opportunity to help the submitter improve their code" and even further into "its an opportunity for me to stay up-to-date on how the entire codebase is evolving, and how other devs solve problems." Be specific, and be genuine. If I can't give genuine positive feedback, then either: the person I'm giving feedback to isn't really living up to any positive feedback, or in my experience more commonly: I'm not seeing the good in their work and effort, and its my responsibility to improve my ability to recognize it, so I can actually be genuine.

craftydevil 5y ago

That's not the only problem here, when we stay with same company our salary and revision are less when compare to later hire. So money matters. Also new tech and knowledge are also lacking.

Raed667 5y ago
I was going to comment exactly this. Looking at this part: > I could have improved the environment, the work, the team — myself. I write the conclusions down to be taken care of, reflecting on what I’ve learned. From my personal experience, most people leave because it is almost impossible to get a significant raise internally versus changing jobs.

newshorts 5y ago

Work is work, folks get too involved. I don’t think it’s healthy to take it personally if someone chooses to leave the team. In fact I’ve never understood this. My role as a manager is to ensure you grow enough to move on to something better. That’s the contract, you give your best to the team while you’re here and we try our damndest to find good opportunities for you regardless of what it means for us. I just have no misconceptions about our relationship, you’re here to push it and I’m here to challenge you to do that.

daemonhunter 5y ago

When I first saw this I figured it was going to be about what it does to the team, that managers don't seem to get. I was told once, after losing half the team, that they didn't want to lose momentum.

jongorer 5y ago

Whoever wrote this sounds like an awful manager: extremely self-centered and mixes poor rationalizations with pseudo empathy so as to seem as a decent person. In other words, I find that managers with that much... personality are the hardest to manage (harhar!); they can be extremely flippant in their behavior and unpredictable with demands. Maybe they take the job too seriously? You just need to keep push some boxes around on zenhub and send some emails my dude, this isn't the crusade and you sure ain't no knight (lmao).

ochronus 5y ago

Beautifully written - I don't necessarily mean the content, but the quality of writing. Have you tried writing more serious things (I mean more than blog posts)?

pololee 5y ago

> I wasn’t expecting those intense feelings when walking away the first time. They don’t write that in any of the books I read. I want to make a movie to capture the feelings :)

yosito 5y ago

I'm a senior engineer with over a decade of experience. Most engineering jobs I've left, it was because the manager viewed themselves as an authority with power to force me to do things their way rather than as an enabler who would trust my expertise and help remove blockers to getting things done. In those roles, I'd spend more time chasing the managers' scattered thoughts through endless link trails deep in the bowels of Slack and Jira than actually doing engineering work. When I left, and the managers asked me for feedback, I always told them that everything had been great and I had just accepted a new opportunity. Leaving is not the time to burn bridges.

zensavona 5y ago
In my ~9 years of experience, most engineering jobs I've stayed have been because the manager was an enabler who trusted my experience and would help remove blockers to getting things done. I know we like to shit on engineering managers a lot here at HN but having worked with great managers, terrible managers and playing the role for a short stint myself (a humbling experience, where I was not happy with my own performance), I realise the critical role a good manager can play to bring out the best in the team, and conversely how a bad one can bring out the worst.
- zerocount 5y ago
  In my ~13 years of experience, I've never worked under a manager who enabled or trusted me. I've always left a job because of new management, a policy instituted by a manager, or because the manager made me work on holidays, or being available to clients on my vacation. Generally, it's the 'shit on the employee in the name of the client' that pisses me off. I'm of the opinion now that managers are a waste of resources and amount to baby-sitters who attend meetings, approve time off, and try to get me to work more. I haven't met a manager yet who made a positive contribution to a project. There's a reason people shit on them!
  - itistricky 5y ago
    There are such managers (enablers who trust you). The irony is that usually you get them on doomed ships that refuse to change their ways anyway.

andresp 5y ago

Another article where managers show how detached they are and just regurgitate empty manager speak about how emotional and empathetic they are. No single mention to promotions. For some reason companies prefer to waste money and time hiring and training replacements rather than having proper career progression internally. For most developers leaving is the new career progression. Open your eyes. Reality is shouting in your face. The dozens of dubious management books by "experts" are just making you feel good about not tackling the problem.

bartread 5y ago
Oh, come on: I found the piece a bit woolly, but you're making an awfully big assumption there. Just because the author didn't talk about promotions doesn't mean they don't happen or that the company concerned doesn't have a "proper career progression internally". They may well have a "proper career progression": they might even have multiple career tracks for engineers (we do). You simply don't know. Either way, it doesn't matter: turnover will still happen because there are often fewer of the more senior positions available than there are of the less senior. This is less of an issue in rapidly growing companies, because there are generally plenty of opportunities to progress. It's natural for people to move on to new roles with new companies from time to time and, as a manager and a leader, is something I'm supportive of when it happens. There are many reasons they do this, progression being one, but money often being another. Of course, I don't deny that plenty of companies exist that don't consider progression, or have any structures in place to facilitate it, but from the information we have here you can't infer that's the case for this company.

geraldbauer 5y ago

Here's a real-world story of getting "exited" of my humble self - more a programmer (or code monkey) than an "engineer" really - see The Strange Case of Mammad Kabiri @ Uniqa Software Service. [1] [1] https://github.com/bigkorupto/mammad-kabiri-uniqa https://github.com/bigkorupto/mammad-kabiri-uniqa

fxtentacle 5y ago
You should rename the article, I guess. Like this, it my first impression was that it would be another one of those posts where some random outsourcing employee complains that Google didn't hire them. How about: "Wage theft by Uniqa Software Service and harrassment by Mammad Kabiri" It might also make sense to point out that this is an EU court, because everyone knows that means worker protections actually have teeth. In the US getting fired like that is no issue in at-will states. "EU court trial: Wage theft by Uniqa Software Service, Harrassment by Mammad Kabiri" That's a good summary in my opinion. Also, unrelatedly: Your text reads to me as if you could gain by improving your self-marketing. "code monkey" doesn't exactly sound like "that one guy we'll treat super nicely because we are afraid he might leave". But you certainly want to be in the latter category in your manager's mind. And chances are, after 10 years of working, you will have invaluable experience that helps your team. So it's probably mostly a matter of advertising your skills correctly.

bob229 5y ago

Meh, weird prose