6 ms·

> I can almost guarantee that you’re just at the wrong company. Even if this is true (which it most likely is), there's no guarantee the company you move to (i

> I can almost guarantee that you’re just at the wrong company. Even if this is true (which it most likely is), there's no guarantee the company you move to (in your quest of finding "the right company") won't either a) also be the wrong company again right off the bat or b) become the wrong company again. I've kind of just given up. I've accepted I'm basically a "technical plumber". Take data from this system/vendor in this format, convert it to another, make low six figures, have benefits, try to focus on life outside of work.

digitalsushi 4y ago
Three years ago I was stuck at a huge fortune 100 with all the ceremonies, business language, and paycheck collectors. I started to shop around. I found an amazing place, a company that was a software company not not a company that happened to write some software. The interviews went amazing, everything was Star Trek utopian future amazing, it was like the fantasy I had about where I wanted to work had manifested. I got a job offer, and took it immediately. The first day of work, no one on my team was there to let me in, so I hung out in the lobby for several hours waiting for anyone brave enough to get me to the badge people so I could open the door on my own. By five months in, I'd not had a manager check in yet, no one on the team would talk to me, and I realized I was a professional bench warmer. I'd been bamboozled, body-snatched from my boring, process-jammed, low-progress IT job. Fortunately the fortune 100 took me back. I hadn't burned any bridges on my way out, and my seat was still warm. My cube was still there, my gear all waiting for me to just log right back in 6 months later like I was simply on a long break. Three years later I'm still here. I'm terrified to go looking again cause I can't have my heart broken twice so soon. I have no idea how to interview well enough to detect a trap. I think my age has a lot to do with it (I'm in my mid 40s and I average about 7 years per company so I don't experiment a lot with this). I think that your strategy is the same as mine and that you should be rewarded for sticking with it, because there's success in it even if you're not constantly being entertained by solving the big interesting problems. Running a little personal infrastructure to learn the next big platform/language/thing is always a great hobby for people who can do a little more work outside of work, and just having interests that don't earn you anything at all are the most rewarding for finding brief moments of happiness.
- kodah 4y ago
  Ageism does occur in this industry, but I've mostly heard it around associating various levels with age or years of experience. For instance, at a financial product company I worked for I saw a man who went on to become a Googler get cut from our interview because he "had too much experience to be a senior". For context, most of his background had been in contracting and he'd only recently really invested himself in DS&A knowledge (the kind larger firms look for). The kind of companies he had worked for put his skills cumulatively around Senior but he'd been in the industry a long time. There's "innocent sounding" explanation for the managers decision to cut the interview, but they're all tainted with some form of ageism.
- rco8786 4y ago
  I’m really confused. What was the motivation of the hiring company here?
  - nerdile 4y ago
    More context at https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=29969359 https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=29969359
    - gedy 4y ago
      I'm still kinda confused - did you have no work to do at all? Or you just were expecting some collaborative team work that's not there? I agree lack of communication seems extreme, but if you are working that's not exactly bench warming.
    - drdec 4y ago
      You should have asked to go remote and avoid the state taxes.
    - slt2021 4y ago
      pls name a company, I want a job at that company
      - 4y ago
fldldosn 4y ago
I'm in the same boat, and I just want to say: we should try to be grateful. For the vast majority of people, what matters in life is what is outside of work, and maybe it's because I grew up in an impoverished rural area but earning low six figures to do a fairly simple job for a few decades and not breaking our bodies doing a physical trade, working remotely.. I think about my ancestors a lot, toiling in fields and fighting in horrific wars We have it good, we really do
commandlinefan 4y ago
> in your quest of finding "the right company"...basically just a technical plumber I've come to a sort of depressing realization, 30 years into this career: the kind of companies that _will hire me_ are usually not the "right" company. I'm not even a plucky bootcamp self-motivator, I'm a state-school CS grad who's never worked for Google, Facebook or Amazon. The hiring processes that don't filter me out are the sorts of employment processes that demand hour-by-hour status updates in the form of up-front-estimate timesheets and 24/7 on-call. Oh, well, I might actually make enough money to retire some day.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- meowtastic 4y ago
  I have the same issue. I hate leetcode, am a good communicator and want to always connect what I build to the value it delivers to customers. But the companies that care about this the most are startups, and I've had some really bad experiences.
  - roeles 4y ago
    Thanks for this. I have observed the same thing. I wonder if anyone on HN has insights into how to find companies that focus on customer value.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
wpietri 4y ago
Yeah, the older I get, the more I'm able to see how companies could be so much better, so much more effective. But that's not something executives really want most of the time. So I think what will eventually drive me to retire is not getting tired of making things, but an inability to put up with the gap between what's possible and what's actually going on.
- nullsense 4y ago
  This. The most succinct way I've ever heard it formulated is the quote "not everyone, in the final analysis, actually wants their problem solved"
  - wpietri 4y ago
    Yeah, that's been a hard lesson for me to learn. When the nominal purpose differs greatly from the POSIWID purpose, I find it very frustrating. Very human, of course, and if that were all it was I could work with it. But at least in American business culture we musn't talk about POSIWID purposes. It'd be so much easier for me if we could just say, "Ok, grandboss, we recognize the most important thing for you here is you looking amazing to your boss so you can climb the ladder. But we'd all like to also get some work done for our users, so how can we make everybody happy?"
ugh123 4y ago
True, but thats why you should network with current and former engineers at the company to get the real dirt
fijiaarone 4y ago
I’ve worked at every company. The grass is always brown — when there is any — and the septic tank stinks.

digitalsushi 4y ago

Three years ago I was stuck at a huge fortune 100 with all the ceremonies, business language, and paycheck collectors. I started to shop around. I found an amazing place, a company that was a software company not not a company that happened to write some software. The interviews went amazing, everything was Star Trek utopian future amazing, it was like the fantasy I had about where I wanted to work had manifested. I got a job offer, and took it immediately. The first day of work, no one on my team was there to let me in, so I hung out in the lobby for several hours waiting for anyone brave enough to get me to the badge people so I could open the door on my own. By five months in, I'd not had a manager check in yet, no one on the team would talk to me, and I realized I was a professional bench warmer. I'd been bamboozled, body-snatched from my boring, process-jammed, low-progress IT job. Fortunately the fortune 100 took me back. I hadn't burned any bridges on my way out, and my seat was still warm. My cube was still there, my gear all waiting for me to just log right back in 6 months later like I was simply on a long break. Three years later I'm still here. I'm terrified to go looking again cause I can't have my heart broken twice so soon. I have no idea how to interview well enough to detect a trap. I think my age has a lot to do with it (I'm in my mid 40s and I average about 7 years per company so I don't experiment a lot with this). I think that your strategy is the same as mine and that you should be rewarded for sticking with it, because there's success in it even if you're not constantly being entertained by solving the big interesting problems. Running a little personal infrastructure to learn the next big platform/language/thing is always a great hobby for people who can do a little more work outside of work, and just having interests that don't earn you anything at all are the most rewarding for finding brief moments of happiness.

kodah 4y ago
Ageism does occur in this industry, but I've mostly heard it around associating various levels with age or years of experience. For instance, at a financial product company I worked for I saw a man who went on to become a Googler get cut from our interview because he "had too much experience to be a senior". For context, most of his background had been in contracting and he'd only recently really invested himself in DS&A knowledge (the kind larger firms look for). The kind of companies he had worked for put his skills cumulatively around Senior but he'd been in the industry a long time. There's "innocent sounding" explanation for the managers decision to cut the interview, but they're all tainted with some form of ageism.
rco8786 4y ago
I’m really confused. What was the motivation of the hiring company here?
- nerdile 4y ago
  More context at https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=29969359 https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=29969359
  - gedy 4y ago
    I'm still kinda confused - did you have no work to do at all? Or you just were expecting some collaborative team work that's not there? I agree lack of communication seems extreme, but if you are working that's not exactly bench warming.
  - drdec 4y ago
    You should have asked to go remote and avoid the state taxes.
  - slt2021 4y ago
    pls name a company, I want a job at that company
    - 4y ago

fldldosn 4y ago

I'm in the same boat, and I just want to say: we should try to be grateful. For the vast majority of people, what matters in life is what is outside of work, and maybe it's because I grew up in an impoverished rural area but earning low six figures to do a fairly simple job for a few decades and not breaking our bodies doing a physical trade, working remotely.. I think about my ancestors a lot, toiling in fields and fighting in horrific wars We have it good, we really do

commandlinefan 4y ago

> in your quest of finding "the right company"...basically just a technical plumber I've come to a sort of depressing realization, 30 years into this career: the kind of companies that _will hire me_ are usually not the "right" company. I'm not even a plucky bootcamp self-motivator, I'm a state-school CS grad who's never worked for Google, Facebook or Amazon. The hiring processes that don't filter me out are the sorts of employment processes that demand hour-by-hour status updates in the form of up-front-estimate timesheets and 24/7 on-call. Oh, well, I might actually make enough money to retire some day.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
meowtastic 4y ago
I have the same issue. I hate leetcode, am a good communicator and want to always connect what I build to the value it delivers to customers. But the companies that care about this the most are startups, and I've had some really bad experiences.
- roeles 4y ago
  Thanks for this. I have observed the same thing. I wonder if anyone on HN has insights into how to find companies that focus on customer value.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

wpietri 4y ago

Yeah, the older I get, the more I'm able to see how companies could be so much better, so much more effective. But that's not something executives really want most of the time. So I think what will eventually drive me to retire is not getting tired of making things, but an inability to put up with the gap between what's possible and what's actually going on.

nullsense 4y ago
This. The most succinct way I've ever heard it formulated is the quote "not everyone, in the final analysis, actually wants their problem solved"
- wpietri 4y ago
  Yeah, that's been a hard lesson for me to learn. When the nominal purpose differs greatly from the POSIWID purpose, I find it very frustrating. Very human, of course, and if that were all it was I could work with it. But at least in American business culture we musn't talk about POSIWID purposes. It'd be so much easier for me if we could just say, "Ok, grandboss, we recognize the most important thing for you here is you looking amazing to your boss so you can climb the ladder. But we'd all like to also get some work done for our users, so how can we make everybody happy?"

ugh123 4y ago

True, but thats why you should network with current and former engineers at the company to get the real dirt

fijiaarone 4y ago

I’ve worked at every company. The grass is always brown — when there is any — and the septic tank stinks.