4 ms·

Interesting read, and it’s so common. I suppose for most places, the way to grow is to hop around often?

toomuchtodo 5y ago
> I suppose for most places, the way to grow is to hop around often? Yes. It is very unlikely (but not impossible, there's always exceptions) you'll grow your income and skills at a single org as fast as you would switching jobs every 2-3 years. Large percentage gains in comp, new stacks and environments to learn. Similar experience to working at a consulting firm, but with way more upside (versus grinding and then burning out). "Vote with your feet" as the saying goes. If you're managing someone talented similar to the person mentioned in the post, either empower them internally or help them into their next role, because they're leaving regardless if the relationship isn't mutually beneficial. Talented folks (such as Alice in this example) have options. https://hn.algolia.com/?q=job+hopping https://hn.algolia.com/?q=job+hopping
rektide 5y ago
You gain money & perhaps some rank, but I reciprocally think the Alice's of the world will mostly encounter the same sad problems again and again and again, will rarely find paths of wholehearted engagement. Maybe they'll eventually luck into a high empowerment spot, a calling where they are unoccluded & can do the joyous good work. Good luck Alice & Alices.
- feoren 5y ago
  This is the part everyone seems to miss when they say: just leave your job and go somewhere else. Go where? The vast majority of companies out there are doing virtually nothing, solving easy problems badly, run by narrow-minded narcissists, and trying to get their share of the dark-patterns pie by out-scummying each other with better adware, better privacy invasions, better user-addiction strategies. They're wannabe middlemen trying to do as little as possible to take their 2% of some other transaction. They're worthless, parasitic enterprises who write shitty code on a shitty stack with shitty developers and shitty managers and no willpower to change any of it. How does shuffling around which logo is on the building you walk into supposed to fix any of these problems?
  - rektide 5y ago
    I broadly agree, highly. I do think it's at least worth considering a framing, that most product & orgs are closer to sales- their whole objevtive is to land new money, to find huge new revenue sources. There's some market competition, but even within markets the focus on competing via new big banner big splashes far overwhelms the deeper level of caring that engineers & those further down see. Dissonance, more dissonance. The org generally lacks the ability to understand what is really possible, the value of what it can do, the knowledge of what it is. I do think there's hella shady terrible exploitative behaviors, and plenty of gloryhounding only interested in new splashy features, but underneath this all, tech is super impervious & they just have no clue. And how could they? I have the hardest time imagining how even the best intended company can have a hope of having anyone with an iota of power make a reasonable & informed decision- the org has to play pretend, operate as if it understands anything, because the fact that it knows as pathetically little about what it is & how it works is unmanageable. For small orgs this can be avoided, but so quickly fiefs spring up & we start limiting our scope, learning go think only of less, & not the whole.

> I suppose for most places, the way to grow is to hop around often? Yes. It is very unlikely (but not impossible, there's always exceptions) you'll grow your income and skills at a single org as fast as you would switching jobs every 2-3 years. Large percentage gains in comp, new stacks and environments to learn. Similar experience to working at a consulting firm, but with way more upside (versus grinding and then burning out). "Vote with your feet" as the saying goes. If you're managing someone talented similar to the person mentioned in the post, either empower them internally or help them into their next role, because they're leaving regardless if the relationship isn't mutually beneficial. Talented folks (such as Alice in this example) have options. https://hn.algolia.com/?q=job+hopping https://hn.algolia.com/?q=job+hopping

rektide 5y ago

You gain money & perhaps some rank, but I reciprocally think the Alice's of the world will mostly encounter the same sad problems again and again and again, will rarely find paths of wholehearted engagement. Maybe they'll eventually luck into a high empowerment spot, a calling where they are unoccluded & can do the joyous good work. Good luck Alice & Alices.

feoren 5y ago
This is the part everyone seems to miss when they say: just leave your job and go somewhere else. Go where? The vast majority of companies out there are doing virtually nothing, solving easy problems badly, run by narrow-minded narcissists, and trying to get their share of the dark-patterns pie by out-scummying each other with better adware, better privacy invasions, better user-addiction strategies. They're wannabe middlemen trying to do as little as possible to take their 2% of some other transaction. They're worthless, parasitic enterprises who write shitty code on a shitty stack with shitty developers and shitty managers and no willpower to change any of it. How does shuffling around which logo is on the building you walk into supposed to fix any of these problems?
- rektide 5y ago
  I broadly agree, highly. I do think it's at least worth considering a framing, that most product & orgs are closer to sales- their whole objevtive is to land new money, to find huge new revenue sources. There's some market competition, but even within markets the focus on competing via new big banner big splashes far overwhelms the deeper level of caring that engineers & those further down see. Dissonance, more dissonance. The org generally lacks the ability to understand what is really possible, the value of what it can do, the knowledge of what it is. I do think there's hella shady terrible exploitative behaviors, and plenty of gloryhounding only interested in new splashy features, but underneath this all, tech is super impervious & they just have no clue. And how could they? I have the hardest time imagining how even the best intended company can have a hope of having anyone with an iota of power make a reasonable & informed decision- the org has to play pretend, operate as if it understands anything, because the fact that it knows as pathetically little about what it is & how it works is unmanageable. For small orgs this can be avoided, but so quickly fiefs spring up & we start limiting our scope, learning go think only of less, & not the whole.