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> you'll need to work on POCs (new products) in your off-time. Most of these companies don't schedule innovation. Like, your personal time? For company product

> you'll need to work on POCs (new products) in your off-time. Most of these companies don't schedule innovation. Like, your personal time? For company products?

eof 4y ago
I’ve never worked at a huge org. I assume though that there is a hypocrisy between what you are asked to do (trivial small things) and what is rewarded (big bold changes).
nnadams 4y ago
I can second this one. Not necessarily your personal time but at least once your assigned work is on track or completed. Not rare to hear people say "this past weekend I was playing around..." though. If you have a good idea for a feature, product, or a new system to improve your team, it's unlikely there will be time in the schedule for it. In my experience you spend your extra time playing around, show it off, and wait for a decision maker to take interest. Like the original comment said, I've personally never seen someone be assigned time to innovate from scratch. Once a POC already exists folks jump on the bandwagon though.
ajkjk 4y ago
That's nonsense. They're hard work but they're not, like, that hard. Depends on the team of course. But people get weird ideas like this from forums/external discussion. nobody things that at the actual jobs.
- tsuujin 4y ago
  I spent a decade working in Bay Area tech. I guarantee you the culture absolutely demanded that “personal time” simply didn’t exist. You worked at work, you worked some more at home, you came into the office on weekends, and when you weren’t working you were expected to be studying to keep on the bleeding edge of incoming tech. I have been verbally shamed for wanting to spend time with my wife and kids rather than work. This is why I refuse to work in any Bay Area tech today.
  - Der_Einzige 4y ago
    How do we square this circle with the amount of grifting and doing nothing that seemed to dominate some companies? Google and Microsoft were known as tech retirement homes to rest and vest at. We have the stupid TikTok videos to prove it too. How is it that some get so overworked and others do none?
  - thesandlord 4y ago
    I've also spent a decade in Bay Area tech, and have never been asked or seen any of my coworkers feel this pressure, both at big tech (Google/Stripe) and at tiny startups. Of course there are crunch times, but the majority of the time WLB was great. In fact, there are definitely a group of folks who seem to be permanently coasting. There are bad companies and bad teams, but saying all of tech in the bay area operates this way is just wrong.
    - kodah 4y ago
      I would say it's a aspect of Bay Area tech that is uniquely common in Bay Area tech, but exists abroad at lesser frequencies. Downplaying it given the amount of people who come out to talk about this very thing, as you are doing, also is just wrong.
      - tsuujin 4y ago
        People feel the need to defend Bay Area tech for whatever reason. I’ve been trying to tell people for years that my experiences at multiple companies, and talking to many, many other devs I met in the area and at conferences, indicate a serious problem in tech that we need take address. There are always people who will come out and say “well I didn’t have that experience so it doesn’t exist”.
        ajkjk 4y ago
        It's not really defending Bay Area tech. It's kinda the opposite. I have lot of problems with Bay Area tech, but I'll jump to shoot down hyperbolic criticisms that don't reflect most people's experiences because they' make it harder to _actually_ criticize them, in a 'crying wolf' sense. The top-level post in this thread is just _wrong_ as a general statement (well, at least the bit "you'll need to work on POCs (new products) in your off-time. Most of these companies don't schedule innovation' for instance"), although there may be specific instances where those are true, and pretending like it isn't means that people's criticisms of these companies are criticizing them for fictional grievances instead of real ones, which makes those criticisms far weaker and easier to fend off.
friedman23 4y ago
If you build something great in your free time and decide to give it to the company you work for you are a fool...
- inductive_magic 4y ago
  It's not that one-dimensional. Two things come to my mind: - innovations may require significant resources (think data or compute) - making a dent in the profitability of a multi-bn $ org should enable a very comfortable life unless you're wasting your hand (in which case you probably wouldn't make it on your own either)
  - friedman23 4y ago
    > making a dent in the profitability of a multi-bn $ org should enable a very comfortable life Life does not work like this, the world isn't about "should" it's about "is" and "can". So if you create something that makes the company 10% more money, at best you can expect a promotion and a small one time bonus that is a fraction of a percent of that 10% recurring revenue growth you just generated for the company you work for. That is the best scenario. The alternate scenario is verbal recognition with 0 reward and if you work in a truly dysfunctional organization you can expect outright retaliation at some small frequency.
    - inductive_magic 4y ago
      My position is rooted in a blog-post I've read a couple years ago, 'don't call yourself a programmer' (well worth the read). Core assumption: be visible and associated with profit -> good things will come your way. How much this works will depend on your hand and the table. Personally, I don't feel drawn to dysfunctional/bloated [...] environments at all and have no FAANG experience, so I can't claim to estimate the agency in those environments, but I would assume it to be >0. [0] https://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pr...
tmaly 4y ago
In Fintech it is not uncommon to work on the weekend a few times a year to hit deadlines.

> you'll need to work on POCs (new products) in your off-time. Most of these companies don't schedule innovation. Like, your personal time? For company products?

eof 4y ago

I’ve never worked at a huge org. I assume though that there is a hypocrisy between what you are asked to do (trivial small things) and what is rewarded (big bold changes).

nnadams 4y ago

I can second this one. Not necessarily your personal time but at least once your assigned work is on track or completed. Not rare to hear people say "this past weekend I was playing around..." though. If you have a good idea for a feature, product, or a new system to improve your team, it's unlikely there will be time in the schedule for it. In my experience you spend your extra time playing around, show it off, and wait for a decision maker to take interest. Like the original comment said, I've personally never seen someone be assigned time to innovate from scratch. Once a POC already exists folks jump on the bandwagon though.

ajkjk 4y ago

That's nonsense. They're hard work but they're not, like, that hard. Depends on the team of course. But people get weird ideas like this from forums/external discussion. nobody things that at the actual jobs.

tsuujin 4y ago
I spent a decade working in Bay Area tech. I guarantee you the culture absolutely demanded that “personal time” simply didn’t exist. You worked at work, you worked some more at home, you came into the office on weekends, and when you weren’t working you were expected to be studying to keep on the bleeding edge of incoming tech. I have been verbally shamed for wanting to spend time with my wife and kids rather than work. This is why I refuse to work in any Bay Area tech today.
- Der_Einzige 4y ago
  How do we square this circle with the amount of grifting and doing nothing that seemed to dominate some companies? Google and Microsoft were known as tech retirement homes to rest and vest at. We have the stupid TikTok videos to prove it too. How is it that some get so overworked and others do none?
- thesandlord 4y ago
  I've also spent a decade in Bay Area tech, and have never been asked or seen any of my coworkers feel this pressure, both at big tech (Google/Stripe) and at tiny startups. Of course there are crunch times, but the majority of the time WLB was great. In fact, there are definitely a group of folks who seem to be permanently coasting. There are bad companies and bad teams, but saying all of tech in the bay area operates this way is just wrong.
  - kodah 4y ago
    I would say it's a aspect of Bay Area tech that is uniquely common in Bay Area tech, but exists abroad at lesser frequencies. Downplaying it given the amount of people who come out to talk about this very thing, as you are doing, also is just wrong.
    - tsuujin 4y ago
      People feel the need to defend Bay Area tech for whatever reason. I’ve been trying to tell people for years that my experiences at multiple companies, and talking to many, many other devs I met in the area and at conferences, indicate a serious problem in tech that we need take address. There are always people who will come out and say “well I didn’t have that experience so it doesn’t exist”.
      - ajkjk 4y ago
        It's not really defending Bay Area tech. It's kinda the opposite. I have lot of problems with Bay Area tech, but I'll jump to shoot down hyperbolic criticisms that don't reflect most people's experiences because they' make it harder to _actually_ criticize them, in a 'crying wolf' sense. The top-level post in this thread is just _wrong_ as a general statement (well, at least the bit "you'll need to work on POCs (new products) in your off-time. Most of these companies don't schedule innovation' for instance"), although there may be specific instances where those are true, and pretending like it isn't means that people's criticisms of these companies are criticizing them for fictional grievances instead of real ones, which makes those criticisms far weaker and easier to fend off.

friedman23 4y ago

If you build something great in your free time and decide to give it to the company you work for you are a fool...

inductive_magic 4y ago
It's not that one-dimensional. Two things come to my mind: - innovations may require significant resources (think data or compute) - making a dent in the profitability of a multi-bn $ org should enable a very comfortable life unless you're wasting your hand (in which case you probably wouldn't make it on your own either)
- friedman23 4y ago
  > making a dent in the profitability of a multi-bn $ org should enable a very comfortable life Life does not work like this, the world isn't about "should" it's about "is" and "can". So if you create something that makes the company 10% more money, at best you can expect a promotion and a small one time bonus that is a fraction of a percent of that 10% recurring revenue growth you just generated for the company you work for. That is the best scenario. The alternate scenario is verbal recognition with 0 reward and if you work in a truly dysfunctional organization you can expect outright retaliation at some small frequency.
  - inductive_magic 4y ago
    My position is rooted in a blog-post I've read a couple years ago, 'don't call yourself a programmer' (well worth the read). Core assumption: be visible and associated with profit -> good things will come your way. How much this works will depend on your hand and the table. Personally, I don't feel drawn to dysfunctional/bloated [...] environments at all and have no FAANG experience, so I can't claim to estimate the agency in those environments, but I would assume it to be >0. [0] https://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pr...

tmaly 4y ago

In Fintech it is not uncommon to work on the weekend a few times a year to hit deadlines.