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>I would love to work in an environment where I felt valued as a person but I have yet to find that CAN that even exist? The mercenary approach seems to me the

>I would love to work in an environment where I felt valued as a person but I have yet to find that CAN that even exist? The mercenary approach seems to me the only one that doesn't fall prey to living in a fantasy about how things "Should" be -- there is only the way they are: it's a business relationship. Younger me thought otherwise. I was big into startup culture, enjoyed the comradery of working long hours, taking pride in this thing we were building together. Management was great. Hierarchy was minimal. I felt "valued"... And then we were all let go with a phone call. I remember just being like "...Ohhhhh. Right." It's a business relationship. That's as far as it goes. Anything else is an illusion.

throwawaysleep 4y ago
Not just a business relationship. A fundamentally adversarial business relationship. Every dollar paid to me is a dollar less for the founder/VCs.
JohnBooty 4y ago
> > I would love to work in an environment where > > I felt valued as a person but I have yet to find that > CAN that even exist? Theoretically, yes. Practically... it's always going to be insanely rare. I would be very loyal to a place that helped me grow as a person with continuing education opportunities. I would also be very loyal to a place that had a solid balance of feature delivery versus vs. technical debt management. (I feel this benefits the company in the medium to long run as well, even moreso than the engineers) Those things would not necessarily be hard to achieve and would pay for themselves. Yet nobody actually seems to run their company that way. I guess the fundamental roadblock is that so many things in capitalism force you to think only about the short game. Thinking even 12 months ahead is often viewed as sheer insanity. As an engineer, I understand (at least at a high level) the pressures faced by higher-ups. Keeping the lights on is expensive. Investors want results sooner or later. I wish that product managers and executives expended a fraction of the effort to understand what makes good engineering. Higher-ups often don't have the engineering chops to understand why good engineering processes can be such force multipliers enabling faster delivery in 18, 24, 72, whatever months... and that's okay, but they are also aggressively disinterested in actually understanding the processes that produce the product they are selling. Depressing.
- whstl 4y ago
  Sometimes it's not even about the short game of capitalism. I've seen multiple times undesired meaningless features being highly-prioritized without rhyme or reason because of hunches from some PO, because it was politically good internally for some product manager, or because the designer decided to do some redesign, and no higher-up wanted to intervene and check how important it was. When I saw that happening and I was "the higher up", I had to burn a lot of political capital to get the message from the team across. Modern software development is highly dysfunctional but we somehow refuse to tackle it.
  - JohnBooty 4y ago
    Modern software development is highly dysfunctional but we somehow refuse to tackle it. And it's just unreasonably difficult. Climbing mountains is hard, but not unreasonably hard. We don't intentionally cut people's safety lines and roll boulders down the f'ing mountain at them while they're trying to climb. We don't make them carry bowling balls in their backpacks. Sure, it's pretty rare to hear from anybody that their particular field runs smoothly. But our field. Man oh man. We know what tech debt is, and we know how it affects the time+effort required to achieve a certain velocity. And yet we spend more time shooting ourselves in the feet than doing anything else. Quite honestly I feel that the problem has become massively worse in the last decade, with everybody cargo-culting the highly complex architectures of FAANG companies when in reality much simpler alternatives would be an order of magnitude better.
vsareto 4y ago
>CAN that even exist? Fully remote lifestyle business where everyone's workload is around 12-24 hours a week with $100k+ salaries. Everyone in the company makes around the same amount (CEO to junior). Full transparency for the accounting books. Excess profits get evenly distributed to everyone. No investors to answer to. A job that gives enough time and money to do what you want in life. This is really only for people who are already good at something though.
- wonderwonder 4y ago
  Sign me up. Its essentially the co-op of software businesses.
- rongenre 4y ago
  This is the kind of place I hope to work at after I hit my retirement "number".

throwawaysleep 4y ago

Not just a business relationship. A fundamentally adversarial business relationship. Every dollar paid to me is a dollar less for the founder/VCs.

JohnBooty 4y ago

> > I would love to work in an environment where > > I felt valued as a person but I have yet to find that > CAN that even exist? Theoretically, yes. Practically... it's always going to be insanely rare. I would be very loyal to a place that helped me grow as a person with continuing education opportunities. I would also be very loyal to a place that had a solid balance of feature delivery versus vs. technical debt management. (I feel this benefits the company in the medium to long run as well, even moreso than the engineers) Those things would not necessarily be hard to achieve and would pay for themselves. Yet nobody actually seems to run their company that way. I guess the fundamental roadblock is that so many things in capitalism force you to think only about the short game. Thinking even 12 months ahead is often viewed as sheer insanity. As an engineer, I understand (at least at a high level) the pressures faced by higher-ups. Keeping the lights on is expensive. Investors want results sooner or later. I wish that product managers and executives expended a fraction of the effort to understand what makes good engineering. Higher-ups often don't have the engineering chops to understand why good engineering processes can be such force multipliers enabling faster delivery in 18, 24, 72, whatever months... and that's okay, but they are also aggressively disinterested in actually understanding the processes that produce the product they are selling. Depressing.

whstl 4y ago
Sometimes it's not even about the short game of capitalism. I've seen multiple times undesired meaningless features being highly-prioritized without rhyme or reason because of hunches from some PO, because it was politically good internally for some product manager, or because the designer decided to do some redesign, and no higher-up wanted to intervene and check how important it was. When I saw that happening and I was "the higher up", I had to burn a lot of political capital to get the message from the team across. Modern software development is highly dysfunctional but we somehow refuse to tackle it.
- JohnBooty 4y ago
  Modern software development is highly dysfunctional but we somehow refuse to tackle it. And it's just unreasonably difficult. Climbing mountains is hard, but not unreasonably hard. We don't intentionally cut people's safety lines and roll boulders down the f'ing mountain at them while they're trying to climb. We don't make them carry bowling balls in their backpacks. Sure, it's pretty rare to hear from anybody that their particular field runs smoothly. But our field. Man oh man. We know what tech debt is, and we know how it affects the time+effort required to achieve a certain velocity. And yet we spend more time shooting ourselves in the feet than doing anything else. Quite honestly I feel that the problem has become massively worse in the last decade, with everybody cargo-culting the highly complex architectures of FAANG companies when in reality much simpler alternatives would be an order of magnitude better.

vsareto 4y ago

>CAN that even exist? Fully remote lifestyle business where everyone's workload is around 12-24 hours a week with $100k+ salaries. Everyone in the company makes around the same amount (CEO to junior). Full transparency for the accounting books. Excess profits get evenly distributed to everyone. No investors to answer to. A job that gives enough time and money to do what you want in life. This is really only for people who are already good at something though.

wonderwonder 4y ago
Sign me up. Its essentially the co-op of software businesses.
rongenre 4y ago
This is the kind of place I hope to work at after I hit my retirement "number".