6 ms·

Maybe I'm missing a core piece from this article, but it leaves out quite a bit of agency from the employee. I never understand pieces like this that rail again

by snide 3y ago

Maybe I'm missing a core piece from this article, but it leaves out quite a bit of agency from the employee. I never understand pieces like this that rail against employers, but also seem to cast the employees in such a helpless light. If you're stuck in a situation where you're not getting great feedback on what to work on, that seems like a great time to just build things and experiment on your own. Do it within the rails of the corporate environment you're in, or hell do it outside and put that energy into something else. Just because someone doesn't provide a map, doesn't mean you can't escape the labyrinth and get creative.

Gorbzel 3y ago
> it leaves out quite a bit of agency from the employee Good catch. Of course it does, as the easiest and most lazy trend in software engineering thinkpieces is to blame middle management. Keep in mind that 90% of the article (itself “fake work” as another commenter pointed out) has nothing to do with managers. The only substantiated mention there is from a gaggle of “strategic” academics at overpriced universities, i.e. those part of what is currently the biggest scam industry of them all. Nonetheless, the causes here are so glaringly obvious that the article somehow still calls out 1) overhiring endorsed from the very top and 2) infantile responses from engineers who take absolutely no responsibility for their circumstances or trying to make things better. And yet, there’s absolutely no accountability for either of those groups. C-suite is rewarded by the market, fueled by culture that fetishes misguided views of developers. Nowhere is this worse than HN, where engineers can do no wrong. Yet speaking of make work, completely pointless arguements and “Show HN”s building a CRUD API client app for the thousandth time predominate. These (lazy/pointless) projects are then evidence that these super talented minds deserve $200k+ jobs where, yet again, managers have to deal with their egos and it’s the manager’s fault when shockingly these “individual contributors” have no idea how to contribute value to a project or in many cases even act like an adult.
- intelVISA 3y ago
  You don't pay someone $200k to churn out CRUD - there's plenty of lowcode solutions like Flask for that! I somewhat agree, though, the core issue with "paying for business value" is how difficult it is to really define that across an org.
  - somsak2 3y ago
    >You don't pay someone $200k to churn out CRUD I've got some bad news for you about what 90% of FAANG work is like
    - intelVISA 3y ago
      sure, but in most cases they're hired to deprive competition, not build products, your avg. shop doesn't have that luxury.
whatyesaid 3y ago
I guess the employee raising the concern may risk having their role made redundant by going to management. I guess the only option really is switching teams. The other problem is that often they have too many people already. That's why layoffs had basically no impact.
marcelr 3y ago
You must see that this is _a ton_ more work, that could easily conflict with other team interests. Let alone the more typical experience of getting a scolding for not sticking to the agenda (which I've experienced many times). All this work that could be better directed by someone who has a bigger picture view & vision for how teams should work together -- good management.
NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
> If you're stuck in a situation where you're not getting great feedback on what to work on, that seems like a great time to just build things and experiment on your own. Such projects could certainly lead to all sorts of career successes... if someone high above you recognizes the value of the project as measured my immediate marketability and profit. But in the other 99.99% of cases, it just looks bad. "The rest of everyone is over here doing real work, but snide's over in the corner fucking around with someone no one told him to work on. Does he think he's better than everyone else?" With rare exception, it's just not a good look. To even begin to guess which projects might be that 0.01% that would get you noticed in a good way often requires having worked there years anyway, wheedling yourself into conversations your pay grade has no right to be in. And if you can do that, why work on the project at all? Wheedling itself is a far more certain path to career success than Thomas-Edison-ing some killer app.
- lupire 3y ago
  Thomas Edison was one of the worlds greatest wheedlers of all time, the Steve Jobs of his era, stealing credit from every engineer he could find and browbeat.
ProfMeowsworth 3y ago
I’d expect from someone making 300kUSD a year to come up with their own ideas instead of spinning their wheels. Reading the article and some of the comments here, that seems to be an unpopular opinion, at least in tech.
- ericmcer 3y ago
  It can be pretty stifling on giant teams to make any actual change. Sure it sounds romantic to sit down with a cup of coffee and write some amazing code that makes things better. The reality is writing documents, hunting down code owners and stakeholders, organizing meetings and running into tons of adversity just so you can attempt something very risky as it is impossible to have full context on everything.
- cmrdporcupine 3y ago
  Consider that companies like these can afford to pay $300k USD precisely to just spin their wheels, because they simply don't want them going elsewhere where they might compete...
  - ticviking 3y ago
    That’s been my theory for a long time now. They don’t care what devs do as long as nobody else can hire them
    - cmrdporcupine 3y ago
      This equation changed this year, I think. The pendulum is swinging the other way. I suspect we'll see a lot more PIPs at Google. So glad I got out of there before it got ugly.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    Sounds to me like they aren't paying enough for talent if they can afford to leave it unused. Very similar to landlords being able to afford leaving a property empty rather than lowering the rent.
- 3y ago
cmrdporcupine 3y ago
That doesn't always (or usually) work in some of these BigCorps. It's not that they don't give you freedom to go ... do stuff -- they often do -- but there are also are often very concrete boundaries about who is allowed to actually have the stuff they do go into any kind of production codebase. And very rigorous review processes, etc. and often the first question in a code review on something exotic and new at a place like Google is: Where is the PRD / design doc for this? (aka who approved this).. They are often not environments promoting spontaneous contributions, especially not not at the L3/L4/L5 aka lower part of the promotion ladder. That and corporate survival / promo at these places really depends on "demonstrating impact", which, well, at the lower levels... can come down to sticking with doing what someone more senior than you expected you to do, taking ownership of it, and etc etc. The reality is that many of the people spinning their wheels like this should just leave and go find a new job. But that's awfully hard to do when you are making sometimes twice as much as what a more "meaningful" job in e.g. a startup or small company can offer. Or when you're on an H1B, or you need certain medical care, etc. etc. etc.
- snide 3y ago
  I appreciate your comment and think it's very truthful (speaking as someone who has worked in a bunch of different environments). I think your last point though is the most important. There's still personal agency in the situation (though you do give realistic outliers when it can be tough). I think it's mostly the tone I don't like about this article. It speaks to a defeastism that feels infectious at the moment. It feels very contrary to the normal spirit of communities like HN, which overall I've witnessed being someone positive.
- mike_hearn 3y ago
  It was many years ago but when I was at Google I started a new project in my 20% time and then took it all the way to production, it's still there and handles millions of requests per second because it's integrated into many of their biggest products (it wasn't a standalone thing). Yes, I had to write design docs, do PRDs, do privacy reviews, get launch approvals and many other things. Sometimes I had to integrate the project with other people's codebases myself. But, so what? These things had a purpose. The design doc for this project was dozens of pages printed out, it was my pride and joy. I recall reading at the time comments on HN saying things like, 20% projects don't really exist, or that it's impossible to launch things at Google because of all the approvals you need. And then I went back to launching a 20% project into production. If you do really care about making a project fly then filling out forms, getting people on board and getting approvals won't stop you.
matrix_overload 3y ago
Tried that. Your colleagues, and some managers, will immediately see you as a threat (how dare you have something to show when we don't) and will start treating you as a personal enemy. Sabotaging every thing you are trying to do, trying to blame you for every failure, and overloading you with completely useless work. Nope, fish rots from the head. If everyone around you is useless, there are good reasons for it, and best you can do is find another place where these reasons won't apply.
- arbitrage 3y ago
  You are narrating my life back to me right now, and it's creepy and weird. I'm sorry that you've experienced this horrible treadmill of despair, as well. It doesn't get better.
  - matrix_overload 3y ago
    Nah, I'm a tough and a cynical dude. I used my time at BigCo to practice the skill sets I needed, saved some money and jumped ship to running my own business. It's hard, but it's infinitely more rewarding than the rat race.

by snide 3y ago

Gorbzel 3y ago

> it leaves out quite a bit of agency from the employee Good catch. Of course it does, as the easiest and most lazy trend in software engineering thinkpieces is to blame middle management. Keep in mind that 90% of the article (itself “fake work” as another commenter pointed out) has nothing to do with managers. The only substantiated mention there is from a gaggle of “strategic” academics at overpriced universities, i.e. those part of what is currently the biggest scam industry of them all. Nonetheless, the causes here are so glaringly obvious that the article somehow still calls out 1) overhiring endorsed from the very top and 2) infantile responses from engineers who take absolutely no responsibility for their circumstances or trying to make things better. And yet, there’s absolutely no accountability for either of those groups. C-suite is rewarded by the market, fueled by culture that fetishes misguided views of developers. Nowhere is this worse than HN, where engineers can do no wrong. Yet speaking of make work, completely pointless arguements and “Show HN”s building a CRUD API client app for the thousandth time predominate. These (lazy/pointless) projects are then evidence that these super talented minds deserve $200k+ jobs where, yet again, managers have to deal with their egos and it’s the manager’s fault when shockingly these “individual contributors” have no idea how to contribute value to a project or in many cases even act like an adult.

intelVISA 3y ago
You don't pay someone $200k to churn out CRUD - there's plenty of lowcode solutions like Flask for that! I somewhat agree, though, the core issue with "paying for business value" is how difficult it is to really define that across an org.
- somsak2 3y ago
  >You don't pay someone $200k to churn out CRUD I've got some bad news for you about what 90% of FAANG work is like
  - intelVISA 3y ago
    sure, but in most cases they're hired to deprive competition, not build products, your avg. shop doesn't have that luxury.

whatyesaid 3y ago

I guess the employee raising the concern may risk having their role made redundant by going to management. I guess the only option really is switching teams. The other problem is that often they have too many people already. That's why layoffs had basically no impact.

marcelr 3y ago

You must see that this is _a ton_ more work, that could easily conflict with other team interests. Let alone the more typical experience of getting a scolding for not sticking to the agenda (which I've experienced many times). All this work that could be better directed by someone who has a bigger picture view & vision for how teams should work together -- good management.

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago

> If you're stuck in a situation where you're not getting great feedback on what to work on, that seems like a great time to just build things and experiment on your own. Such projects could certainly lead to all sorts of career successes... if someone high above you recognizes the value of the project as measured my immediate marketability and profit. But in the other 99.99% of cases, it just looks bad. "The rest of everyone is over here doing real work, but snide's over in the corner fucking around with someone no one told him to work on. Does he think he's better than everyone else?" With rare exception, it's just not a good look. To even begin to guess which projects might be that 0.01% that would get you noticed in a good way often requires having worked there years anyway, wheedling yourself into conversations your pay grade has no right to be in. And if you can do that, why work on the project at all? Wheedling itself is a far more certain path to career success than Thomas-Edison-ing some killer app.

lupire 3y ago
Thomas Edison was one of the worlds greatest wheedlers of all time, the Steve Jobs of his era, stealing credit from every engineer he could find and browbeat.

ProfMeowsworth 3y ago

I’d expect from someone making 300kUSD a year to come up with their own ideas instead of spinning their wheels. Reading the article and some of the comments here, that seems to be an unpopular opinion, at least in tech.

ericmcer 3y ago
It can be pretty stifling on giant teams to make any actual change. Sure it sounds romantic to sit down with a cup of coffee and write some amazing code that makes things better. The reality is writing documents, hunting down code owners and stakeholders, organizing meetings and running into tons of adversity just so you can attempt something very risky as it is impossible to have full context on everything.
cmrdporcupine 3y ago
Consider that companies like these can afford to pay $300k USD precisely to just spin their wheels, because they simply don't want them going elsewhere where they might compete...
- ticviking 3y ago
  That’s been my theory for a long time now. They don’t care what devs do as long as nobody else can hire them
  - cmrdporcupine 3y ago
    This equation changed this year, I think. The pendulum is swinging the other way. I suspect we'll see a lot more PIPs at Google. So glad I got out of there before it got ugly.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  Sounds to me like they aren't paying enough for talent if they can afford to leave it unused. Very similar to landlords being able to afford leaving a property empty rather than lowering the rent.
3y ago

cmrdporcupine 3y ago

That doesn't always (or usually) work in some of these BigCorps. It's not that they don't give you freedom to go ... do stuff -- they often do -- but there are also are often very concrete boundaries about who is allowed to actually have the stuff they do go into any kind of production codebase. And very rigorous review processes, etc. and often the first question in a code review on something exotic and new at a place like Google is: Where is the PRD / design doc for this? (aka who approved this).. They are often not environments promoting spontaneous contributions, especially not not at the L3/L4/L5 aka lower part of the promotion ladder. That and corporate survival / promo at these places really depends on "demonstrating impact", which, well, at the lower levels... can come down to sticking with doing what someone more senior than you expected you to do, taking ownership of it, and etc etc. The reality is that many of the people spinning their wheels like this should just leave and go find a new job. But that's awfully hard to do when you are making sometimes twice as much as what a more "meaningful" job in e.g. a startup or small company can offer. Or when you're on an H1B, or you need certain medical care, etc. etc. etc.

snide 3y ago
I appreciate your comment and think it's very truthful (speaking as someone who has worked in a bunch of different environments). I think your last point though is the most important. There's still personal agency in the situation (though you do give realistic outliers when it can be tough). I think it's mostly the tone I don't like about this article. It speaks to a defeastism that feels infectious at the moment. It feels very contrary to the normal spirit of communities like HN, which overall I've witnessed being someone positive.
mike_hearn 3y ago
It was many years ago but when I was at Google I started a new project in my 20% time and then took it all the way to production, it's still there and handles millions of requests per second because it's integrated into many of their biggest products (it wasn't a standalone thing). Yes, I had to write design docs, do PRDs, do privacy reviews, get launch approvals and many other things. Sometimes I had to integrate the project with other people's codebases myself. But, so what? These things had a purpose. The design doc for this project was dozens of pages printed out, it was my pride and joy. I recall reading at the time comments on HN saying things like, 20% projects don't really exist, or that it's impossible to launch things at Google because of all the approvals you need. And then I went back to launching a 20% project into production. If you do really care about making a project fly then filling out forms, getting people on board and getting approvals won't stop you.

matrix_overload 3y ago

Tried that. Your colleagues, and some managers, will immediately see you as a threat (how dare you have something to show when we don't) and will start treating you as a personal enemy. Sabotaging every thing you are trying to do, trying to blame you for every failure, and overloading you with completely useless work. Nope, fish rots from the head. If everyone around you is useless, there are good reasons for it, and best you can do is find another place where these reasons won't apply.

arbitrage 3y ago
You are narrating my life back to me right now, and it's creepy and weird. I'm sorry that you've experienced this horrible treadmill of despair, as well. It doesn't get better.
- matrix_overload 3y ago
  Nah, I'm a tough and a cynical dude. I used my time at BigCo to practice the skill sets I needed, saved some money and jumped ship to running my own business. It's hard, but it's infinitely more rewarding than the rat race.