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It's unlikely that a FAANG company will arrange such a situation for me, and given our current deadlines, it is unlikely that my manager will agree. I just wan

It's unlikely that a FAANG company will arrange such a situation for me, and given our current deadlines, it is unlikely that my manager will agree. I just want to write code. I hate the days when all I do is sit in meetings for pre meetings for pre meetings or write docs about docs about docs. edit: clarified on docs and meetings a bit.

NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
Wait, I don't understand. You want to write code but you don't want to bother documenting it or expressing its design? I must say that any coder who won't document their code is detrimental to the world of software engineering. It is Job Number One to accurately document, from the start, what your code does and what it's supposed to do. If a SWE can't write a design document, comment their code, accurately describe source commits, and at least assist a technical writer in writing the manual for the app/tool/framework, then that SWE should be fired and re-educated. I have strong feelings about this, but I find that an enduring problem in my experience as an end-user is poor documentation of just about everything I use. I mean, vendors don't even bother bundling the manual anymore, not even as a PDF. It comes in little WWW help-files that are like tasting baby food. I will always harken back to the 80s when my family purchased two Commodore computers, and they had the best documentation ever. That user manual explained the 6502/6510 architecture, the memory layout, sprites and sound, as well as BASIC programming. I learned those computers inside and out, because they were well-documented. Hardly anything lives up to that now.
- PartiallyTyped 3y ago
  It seems that I didn’t communicate my feelings properly. I enjoy documenting and reading code. I also enjoy reading design documents that are very technical in nature and actually motivate the decisions and direction. I even read research papers on my free time. I also enjoy writing such documents and respective code. My issue is that I spent 4-5 days writing a darn excellent document on the proof of concept that I had built for a service we are supposed to launch this fall with a code freeze on September 1st. And today I had to spend all day writing yet another document summarizing what I had written in the first one so that I can have a discussion with other principals to get their comments (I got great comments from 2 in the presentation and follow up discussions), just to get an approval and the go ahead to productionise what I had already built that was shown to work. No other approach exists, no other poc exists, and most of my time is now fragmented because of the meetings. No other engineer working on this had an approach that could actually work for reasons I explained in yet another document, the more seniors had claimed they’d need a month to get the poc done. I did it in far less time, and had it all well documented. That was the most fun I have had in a while. Upper management (2-skip manager) gave me lots of praise and blew off another meeting he had to stay on for the additional questions and discussion, and scheduled another full on 1h meeting with me alone to discuss it further.

NoZebra120vClip 3y ago

Wait, I don't understand. You want to write code but you don't want to bother documenting it or expressing its design? I must say that any coder who won't document their code is detrimental to the world of software engineering. It is Job Number One to accurately document, from the start, what your code does and what it's supposed to do. If a SWE can't write a design document, comment their code, accurately describe source commits, and at least assist a technical writer in writing the manual for the app/tool/framework, then that SWE should be fired and re-educated. I have strong feelings about this, but I find that an enduring problem in my experience as an end-user is poor documentation of just about everything I use. I mean, vendors don't even bother bundling the manual anymore, not even as a PDF. It comes in little WWW help-files that are like tasting baby food. I will always harken back to the 80s when my family purchased two Commodore computers, and they had the best documentation ever. That user manual explained the 6502/6510 architecture, the memory layout, sprites and sound, as well as BASIC programming. I learned those computers inside and out, because they were well-documented. Hardly anything lives up to that now.

PartiallyTyped 3y ago
It seems that I didn’t communicate my feelings properly. I enjoy documenting and reading code. I also enjoy reading design documents that are very technical in nature and actually motivate the decisions and direction. I even read research papers on my free time. I also enjoy writing such documents and respective code. My issue is that I spent 4-5 days writing a darn excellent document on the proof of concept that I had built for a service we are supposed to launch this fall with a code freeze on September 1st. And today I had to spend all day writing yet another document summarizing what I had written in the first one so that I can have a discussion with other principals to get their comments (I got great comments from 2 in the presentation and follow up discussions), just to get an approval and the go ahead to productionise what I had already built that was shown to work. No other approach exists, no other poc exists, and most of my time is now fragmented because of the meetings. No other engineer working on this had an approach that could actually work for reasons I explained in yet another document, the more seniors had claimed they’d need a month to get the poc done. I did it in far less time, and had it all well documented. That was the most fun I have had in a while. Upper management (2-skip manager) gave me lots of praise and blew off another meeting he had to stay on for the additional questions and discussion, and scheduled another full on 1h meeting with me alone to discuss it further.