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> It's disempowering to feel like you're never able to make a decision yourself, despite supposedly being hired for your expertise in the field. I'm going thro

> It's disempowering to feel like you're never able to make a decision yourself, despite supposedly being hired for your expertise in the field. I'm going through exactly this at the moment. For reasons HN will probably consider fiction, my superiors have started treating me as a toddler that needs oversight on every single decision that needs to be made. It's something I've been dealing with in therapy, and the way I was able to explain it to her was by saying that I feel like the monkey in the infinite monkey theorem. Never thinking about what you're producing (if you can call it producing at all), just pressing buttons. It makes me wonder what the point of having me even is, considering they spend so much time solving all my problems for me. I've come really close to saying "ok, go ahead and let me know when it's done" during 40 minute meetings where every minute detail of what I'm supposed to do is discussed by 3 people.

Trasmatta 5y ago
I feel this deeply. I had an extremely similar situation at my last job. My current job is quite a bit better at least, but I still deal with it here. I guess there's a reason the phrase "code monkey" exists. Jonathan Coulton said it pretty well: Code Monkey have boring meeting With boring manager Rob Rob say Code Monkey very diligent But his output stink His code not “functional” or “elegant” What do Code Monkey think? Code Monkey think maybe manager want to write god damned login page himself https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEBld6I_AKs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEBld6I_AKs
- burntoutfire 5y ago
  I personally much prefer this version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUbp_d2DkYU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUbp_d2DkYU
heurist 5y ago
Leave that company immediately and find something that gives you room to breathe.
- Kaze404 5y ago
  Thank you. That's currently the plan :)
watwut 5y ago
So, you do scrum?
- Kaze404 5y ago
  No. We do "do whatever for 3 weeks and work 12 hour days on the week before a deadline comes". Maybe there's a name for that :p
  - watwut 5y ago
    "Procrastination driven development" maybe?
tangjurine 5y ago
tell us the reason! can't be as bad as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27454589 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27454589
- Kaze404 5y ago
  I usually wouldn't mind, but my theory involves personal information that would make me very easily identifiable. I'm not hiding my online identity by any means, but when it comes to work related things I'd rather not give the impression like I'm throwing dirt on any specific person. What I talked about in my comment is much more of a systemic issue from my perspective, and I feel like a coworker reading it knowing it was written by me could take it personally. Edit: you're right though, it's definitely nothing like that. 1 job is more than enough for me :D
marcus_holmes 5y ago
I hate being treated as "just the nerd who pushes the nerd-buttons to make the thing we want work", as if the important part of the work was having the idea and not the execution. One reason they do this is usually around control. A lot of people feel like they have to be in control of everything in order to be safe. There may be ways you can make them feel safe without needing them to be in control. Another reason is that until the thing is built, there's nothing to do, so everyone gets involved in that. This happens a lot in startups where they have a "build it and they will come" attitude. It's not true; building a sales/marketing channel doesn't actually need a product at the start, and there's a ton of stuff that needs doing while the product is being built. But it can be difficult explaining this to new founders. Good luck :)
- MonaroVXR 5y ago
  > "building a sales/marketing channel doesn't actually need a product at the start..." Never knew this, can you tell more about it?
  - marcus_holmes 5y ago
    The technique of building the funnel to point to a "sign up for our mailing list and we'll let you know when the product is ready!" link. You get valuable customer insight from the funnel, and if your marketing funnel is working right then you'll get interested customers in your mailing list. If it's not then you can iterate on it, and find something that works (or fail fast if you can't find anything that works).
    - mikeshi42 5y ago
      I'm curious if you still see this working well these days, or what techniques you use to make it work well. I've historically found those types of pages quite useless when we're in a time that anyone can throw up a page to try to validate vaporware and no one wants to give out emails. I have a feeling that advice was great 10 years ago, and not so great now.
sunny3 5y ago
I think I'm in a similar situation and try to find out how to cope with it. The strategy I'm thinking about is - realizing what's happening (as you have articulated wonderfully), anchoring my self-worth else where (writing code / designing original solutions -> pushing what ever that's being discussed by those 3 people to an executable conclusion), finishing and delivering this project asap. I guess the next step for me is to figure out how to avoid going into such situations (I entered the situation because I was joining a team in an area that I wasn't familiar with and decided to work on an existing project whose owner has a very strong presence and I didn't clarify the specific work item / boundaries clearly in the beginning).
- Kaze404 5y ago
  Seems like you got a plan! How to avoid this situation in the future is also something I've talked about in therapy, and while I haven't reached a conclusion on that, a major takeaway from my session is that it's sometimes beneficial to not rationalize uncommon situations, as that can lead to self doubt and unnecessary guilt. Even if we do get into a similar situation in the future, we'll be much better prepared to not only deal with it, but to identify it before it necessarily becomes a problem. To me that's the important bit.

Trasmatta 5y ago

I feel this deeply. I had an extremely similar situation at my last job. My current job is quite a bit better at least, but I still deal with it here. I guess there's a reason the phrase "code monkey" exists. Jonathan Coulton said it pretty well: Code Monkey have boring meeting With boring manager Rob Rob say Code Monkey very diligent But his output stink His code not “functional” or “elegant” What do Code Monkey think? Code Monkey think maybe manager want to write god damned login page himself https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEBld6I_AKs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEBld6I_AKs

burntoutfire 5y ago
I personally much prefer this version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUbp_d2DkYU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUbp_d2DkYU

heurist 5y ago

Leave that company immediately and find something that gives you room to breathe.

Kaze404 5y ago
Thank you. That's currently the plan :)

watwut 5y ago

So, you do scrum?

Kaze404 5y ago
No. We do "do whatever for 3 weeks and work 12 hour days on the week before a deadline comes". Maybe there's a name for that :p
- watwut 5y ago
  "Procrastination driven development" maybe?

tangjurine 5y ago

tell us the reason! can't be as bad as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27454589 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27454589

Kaze404 5y ago
I usually wouldn't mind, but my theory involves personal information that would make me very easily identifiable. I'm not hiding my online identity by any means, but when it comes to work related things I'd rather not give the impression like I'm throwing dirt on any specific person. What I talked about in my comment is much more of a systemic issue from my perspective, and I feel like a coworker reading it knowing it was written by me could take it personally. Edit: you're right though, it's definitely nothing like that. 1 job is more than enough for me :D

marcus_holmes 5y ago

I hate being treated as "just the nerd who pushes the nerd-buttons to make the thing we want work", as if the important part of the work was having the idea and not the execution. One reason they do this is usually around control. A lot of people feel like they have to be in control of everything in order to be safe. There may be ways you can make them feel safe without needing them to be in control. Another reason is that until the thing is built, there's nothing to do, so everyone gets involved in that. This happens a lot in startups where they have a "build it and they will come" attitude. It's not true; building a sales/marketing channel doesn't actually need a product at the start, and there's a ton of stuff that needs doing while the product is being built. But it can be difficult explaining this to new founders. Good luck :)

MonaroVXR 5y ago
> "building a sales/marketing channel doesn't actually need a product at the start..." Never knew this, can you tell more about it?
- marcus_holmes 5y ago
  The technique of building the funnel to point to a "sign up for our mailing list and we'll let you know when the product is ready!" link. You get valuable customer insight from the funnel, and if your marketing funnel is working right then you'll get interested customers in your mailing list. If it's not then you can iterate on it, and find something that works (or fail fast if you can't find anything that works).
  - mikeshi42 5y ago
    I'm curious if you still see this working well these days, or what techniques you use to make it work well. I've historically found those types of pages quite useless when we're in a time that anyone can throw up a page to try to validate vaporware and no one wants to give out emails. I have a feeling that advice was great 10 years ago, and not so great now.

sunny3 5y ago

I think I'm in a similar situation and try to find out how to cope with it. The strategy I'm thinking about is - realizing what's happening (as you have articulated wonderfully), anchoring my self-worth else where (writing code / designing original solutions -> pushing what ever that's being discussed by those 3 people to an executable conclusion), finishing and delivering this project asap. I guess the next step for me is to figure out how to avoid going into such situations (I entered the situation because I was joining a team in an area that I wasn't familiar with and decided to work on an existing project whose owner has a very strong presence and I didn't clarify the specific work item / boundaries clearly in the beginning).

Kaze404 5y ago
Seems like you got a plan! How to avoid this situation in the future is also something I've talked about in therapy, and while I haven't reached a conclusion on that, a major takeaway from my session is that it's sometimes beneficial to not rationalize uncommon situations, as that can lead to self doubt and unnecessary guilt. Even if we do get into a similar situation in the future, we'll be much better prepared to not only deal with it, but to identify it before it necessarily becomes a problem. To me that's the important bit.