23 ms·
Working in Silicon Valley was fun. Now it's just another miserable corporate gig
- otabdeveloper4 3y agoProfessional tip: work isn't meant to be fun. (If it was fun then it wouldn't be called "work".)
- usrnm 3y agoIt doesn't have to be miserable either
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> work isn't meant to be fun Neither is leisure. Doesn’t mean it can’t be.
- momirlan 3y agoit's called "work" because it earns a living. don't give up finding fun work, it exists.
- dohaeris 3y agoThis, although I hate the phrase “earn a living.” The right not to preventably and painfully die should be unconditional. True, in a state of nature, we would all have to work to survive, but we also wouldn’t have to obey anyone’s so-called “property rights” either. We could just use our hunting spears on the people trying to block our access to resources. If society expects us to follow rules, as it needs us to do in some fashion, then it should offer basic protection.
- badpun 3y ago> The right not to preventably and painfully die should be unconditional. Take it up with the creator of the Universe, as those are the rules they've chosen - valueable things, such as food, heat or shelter, do not just materialize in front of people out of thin air. They need to be grown or made, and it requires work.
- catchnear4321 3y agoeveryone understands the base rules. you aren’t doing anything more than rudely restating the current state of things. if you don’t want a replicator, that’s fine. just get out of the way please. there’s work to be done.
- badpun 3y agoThe OP's stance was that the right for people to have essential stuff for free should be granted NOW, not in some hypothetical future scenario.
- catchnear4321 3y agoso as immediate is impossible, what’s the next step? to grit one’s teeth?
- badpun 3y agoI did not consider what's the next step, as that wasn't the subject of discussion.
- catchnear4321 3y agoso there is the gap. you think them unrelated.
- badpun 3y agoI just don't think there's anything in particular that we could we doing that we aren't doing already. It's not like the whole capitalist enterprise is not working towards maximizing efficiency across the board. This might eventually, at some people in the future, bring us genuine abundancy. The point is, we're working on it already.
- dohaeris 3y agoYou clearly didn’t read my argument. What you describe is exactly how it works in a state of nature, but in a state of nature there are no rules. You don’t have to obey anyone’s so-called “property rights.” You can just spear the people you don’t like. I personally don’t want to live (would probably die) that way, but if society is going to impose rules on us, it needs to offer something better than the state of nature. Right now it really doesn’t; it has 100 times the resources but offers only artificial scarcity and make-work to keep the wagecucks in line.
- DrThunder 3y ago” The right not to preventably and painfully die should be unconditional." This is a silly statement. You might as well say Superman powers ought to be unconditional. Whose rights get to be trampled to give you this unconditional right to do nothing while receiving "free" stuff? Anyone with your mindset is an out of touch elitist. SOMEONE will still have to provide you food, electricity, medical etc. So, what you're saying is you actually want a slave class that provides YOU the right to not "earn a living".
- momirlan 3y agoit's called communism, and it's not pretty - i grew up there
- chx 3y agoWhat an odd statement. "Meant to be" ? I often have fun at work, cracking a hard bug for me is fun and yet I would never go in if I weren't paid. And my employer thinks I provide value for them and pays for this indeed.
- vrc 3y agoThe issue is that the modern work place markets itself as flexible and fun to blur the boundaries people should be able to maintain.
- mpalczewski 3y agoI’m most productive when I’m having fun. There’s always going to be not fun shit. Is on you to find the fun and on the employer to make it possible. Otherwise I’m unable to give my best.
- JKCalhoun 3y agoWorking at Apple was about as fun as I would expect a job to be when I started in 1995. It only got better the first decade working there (as I became more proficient and began to feel I knew what I was doing). It started to suck though as the company inverted and became top-down again. Management experimented with "agile" development, required a certain percentage of code coverage with BS unit-tests, code reviews became a thing, teams started insisting on style guidelines.... I was just thinking today that I would not recommend to my daughters to go into the software industry. The Golden Age, as far as I'm concerned, came and went. It was long before Covid though.
- danesparza 3y agoI started work in the early 90's as well. I'm genuinely curious: You don't think unit tests are a good thing? Or code reviews? Or style guidelines? Or is it just a matter of how those things were implemented that rubs you the wrong way?
- francisofascii 3y agoMany people have fun solving business problems and working toward goals. It is dopamine feedback loop. It a a win-win for the employee and company. When leadership starts throwing in roadblocks to achieving the goals or goes overboard with hours, it goes from fun to miserable. It is a simple concept, really.
- catchnear4321 3y ago> work isn’t meant to be fun that tired joke just reinforces the silly notion that individuals should just put up with things for money, and probably even be grateful for it. laying it all out, that’s quite funny.
- otabdeveloper4 3y ago> silly notion that individuals should just put up with things for money Well, yes. If you enjoy doing it then you'll do it for free. No need to pay you.
- catchnear4321 3y agothat’s silly. why do it for free if someone needs the thing done and is willing to pay? they pay you for what they view as work, and you do what you view as play. is that such a wild notion for you?
- lambda_garden 3y agoIndeed. You get paid to deliver more value to someone than you cost them (or someone else might cost them!) Whether or not you have fun has little to do with it.
- catchnear4321 3y agoyou seem to miss that humans aren’t cogs, and a motivated human can perform better than a demotivated one. having fun can actually increase value produced. so, yes, it very much has something to do with it.
- brigadier132 3y agoIm pretty sure work isnt meant to be anything other than a way to earn money. So it can be fun there is nothing inherent in jt that prevents it from being so
- theideaofcoffee 3y agoEvery time. This refrain is so worn out. Here's another professional tip, since apparently they're all equally weighted: there's no reason why someone has to fritter away life, potential and shouldn't strive to find fulfillment and enjoyment in their trade. Sartre was probably right too--having the right people around makes all the difference, more so if you're knee-deep in the shit. I've experienced both ends of the spectrum: the work is the easiest you could imagine, but excruciating only because of the handful of vile people I worked with, on the other hand I pushed myself up against my limit every day but it was worth it because we were in it together.
- add-sub-mul-div 3y agoWork was fun for me (at least to some meaningful extent that it isn't anymore) for 20 years. You can't count on it to be fun and you're not entitled to it being fun, but rather than giving up there should also be accountability for the fact that it's terrible now when it doesn't have to be.
- HumblyTossed 3y agoThis is one of those sentiments that needs to go away. It's so... Reaganomicsy.
- plutoh28 3y agoSorry, but I’ll choose to not be miserable in this life and I’ll instead look for the joys in my work rather than view it as some miserable grind 24/7.
- helen___keller 3y agoMy 2c: I would feel a lot more free to explore more interesting roles (ie startups, and anything other than “big corporate” roles) if the Housing Sword of Damocles weren’t hanging over my head Rent and housing prices only go up. To work at a startup I would expect a 30-50% liquid compensation hit. There goes my dream of raising my children in a decent house. Edit: that said, I don’t think this sufficiently explains why around the pandemic specifically, my job satisfaction took a hit (like with many others)
- catchnear4321 3y agostartups are increasingly becoming sources of “small corporate” roles.
- dohaeris 3y agoStartups tend to be the worst of both worlds. All the process of big companies and al the risk and turmoil of small ones. Not worth it except to be a founder or executive. Anything else, you should instead get a big company job, get a promotion or two, and use the name and momentum to get something with real upside.
- kemiller 3y agoThere are startups and there are "startups". Lots of medium-sized (>150 people) companies call themselves startups but are filled with big company people and their big company practices, held up in many cases by a steady stream of VC. Real startups don't use bigco process.
- coffeebeqn 3y agoWhat do you consider small? I feel like it’s just the luck of the draw if a company has decent management at all levels or not. Small startups ( I would say under 50 people ) rarely have a lot of process and hierarchy
- solatic 3y agoDon't forget health insurance! Larger companies have larger risk pools and can afford better health insurance with lower premiums and co-pays for employees than small startups can. Especially as workers get older (and that experience becomes more valuable for startups), the value of healthcare can become a surprisingly large percentage of compensation. Source: I have family close to retirement age that had significant health issues in the past year, and they estimated that their insurance paid probably $200,000 in the last year alone. Works for a BigCo, not in Silicon Valley.
- happytiger 3y agoThis is, and the article points it out, the direct result of an excess number of managers and the explosion of management after the pandemic. Silicon Valley was amazing because you could actually DO things and make an impact, but too much hiring added useless layers to the system. American management theory always tries to do this every tech cycle. That doesn’t work well with technical craft.
- davidivadavid 3y agoHacker News really is like clockwork. Random "tech" industry problem? Gotta be "managers" or "designers." Engineers can do no wrong.
- stuff4ben 3y agoEngineers do the work to make the magic happen. Too much middle management adds fat and gets in the way of work getting done. I say this as a GenXer who has been on both sides and is currently an engineer again. I have no beef with designers.
- robertakarobin 3y agoThey're not mutually exclusive. Plenty of managers have engineering backgrounds. What is generally mutually exclusive is managers and individual contributors. It may be that if individual contributors did all the decision-making then the outcome would be different; it may be that it would be exactly the same. We can't really know, for the same reason we can't know how society would be different if we elected "normal people" to Congress instead of "politicians."
- happytiger 3y agoEngineers do plenty wrong. But they typically don’t lead the effort, they implement the ideas and plans of designers and managers. So tradition in society is to put the burden of success or failure at the feet of those who do the planning. If you have someone buying the wrong seeds or not ordering fertilizer on time, it makes all the work on the farm a failure.
- JKCalhoun 3y ago
- dohaeris 3y ago[flagged]
- vinceguidry 3y agoI do. He wasn't banned for being a prophet, he was banned for being intensely odious.
- dohaeris 3y agoYour opinion of him is irrelevant to, well, everything.
- HumblyTossed 3y agoMichael? That you?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- brodouevencode 3y agoOdious isn't an opinion, it's a fact: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10017538 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10017538
- chasd00 3y agoFtfa “I have been looking for over a year now. 25 years in IT. Sent out more than 900 applications. …” Just some advice to those starting a career. You need to build a professional network. After 25 years a new job should be a phone call or cup of coffee away. You should never even have to think about applications after two decades in the industry.
- badpun 3y agoYou should still apply if you're interested in jobs at the high end of salary distribition.
- bognition 3y agoEven better, leverage your network. LinkedIn is a good mine for getting soft introductions. One of the biggest challenges is getting FaceTime with a hiring manager. if there’s a job you want, find someone who knows someone at that business and get 20 minutes with them. Once you have an internal advocate the entire process is much smoother.
- danesparza 3y agoAgreed. These aren't handed out via networking. You may not even realize that a higher tier of salary exists if you don't start looking for it.
- skywal_l 3y agoThe Venn diagram of the people who would recommend me and I would want to work with and the companies I would want to work for is very small at best.
- richk449 3y agoWhy is that?
- local_crmdgeon 3y agoI'd recommend soul searching if this is the case. You might be a prima donna.
- zb1plus 3y agoAnybody else feeling the only way to have any measure of freedom in your life these days is to run your own business? I would rather be a the whim of customers than some manager.
- afavour 3y agoMy longer term dream has always been to be self-employed but the US makes that difficult. Health insurance for my family alone is a dream killer.
- helen___keller 3y agoWhat I’ve seen work is a two income family where one is self employed and the other works a “boring, stable” job with health insurance. YMMV, as always healthcare and insurance in the US is a load of crap
- afavour 3y agoYeah, if I ever do achieve it I suspect that’ll be the path to doing so. It does surprise me there’s no political will to change things. Having to provide healthcare is a burden to employers, it prevents workers from pursuing their entrepreneurial dreams… you’d think both sides of the aisle would want change. But alas.
- solatic 3y ago> I would rather be a the whim of customers than some manager You'd rather give up the clarity that comes from working for a single person who you can ask exactly what they want, get near-instant feedback on whether it makes them happy, so that you can work for some fickle, amorphous, faceless people who you have little control over whether or not they keep paying you in the future, forcing you to constantly hunt for more, even paying large sums of money (i.e. marketing) to find them? There's lots of great reasons to run your own business, but if your frame of mind is that you're working "for" your customers, that's definitely not one of them. Successful founders fall in love with solving a problem that many potential customers have, not with working for their customers. It's not the same thing.
- theplatman 3y ago[flagged]
- m3kw9 3y agoan effect of tech companies growing too large but not revenue, so "changes were needed" says the share holders.
- bdcravens 3y agoThey're right.
- the-dude 3y agoNobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded. - Yogi Berra
- alephnerd 3y agoIs it just me or are there a lot of "Old Man Yells at Cloud" type stories and comments on HN? I've lived in the SV bubble for most of my life (my ABCs were Altavista, Brocade, and Compaq) and based on my memory looking at my parent's career experiences, it almost always was a corporate experience. I vaguely remember older neckbeards at my dad's office complaining about how the 70s and 80s in tech were amazing, and I'm sure their mentors in turn rued for the days of Bell Labs and National Labs in turn. In 2023, the 90s and 2000s are roughly the same distance that Reagan and Carter were back then.
- op00to 3y agoWhen I was at a .EDU that had a long history of computing (my desk in the 00s was in a 40ish year old "data center"), I heard the same bullshit from the greybeards. Then, when I went to work for a software company, I heard the same bullshit from the DEC alumni. I experienced this myself in seeing my last job go from awesome to another corporate borefest over 10 years. I think this is a natural way that things tend to go, and if you like the dynamic environment, you have to jump to what you think is the next interesting, new thing.
- brodouevencode 3y agoMaybe it's cyclical, but honestly I think the valley's days are done. There will be a new technology hub and it will be somewhere else.
- local_crmdgeon 3y agoI agree and it's been replaced by Austin and NYC. The valley refused to fix its problems, so the money is leaving. There's a limit to vandalism and "tech bros fuck off" that people will take, particularly when a huge chunk of "tech bros" are immigrants. You don't see the same animosity in NYC or Austin, so that's where the talent has gone.
- alephnerd 3y ago> "tech bros fuck off" I'm on the younger end (20s-early 30s) in SF and I remember stuff like that as a kid (Genentech buses) but haven't seen such stuff in our Gen Z/Millenial bubble. Tbf we mostly live in Mission Bay, Marina, Nob Hill, Richmond, Sunset, Potrero Hill, Dogpatch, Duboce Triangle, etc and the kinds of people who'd say that seem to be "boomers" in the Mission+Potrero+Dogpatch who continue to insist on calling Cesar Chavez "Army St", think grunge and flannels are still hip, and don't have much love for TikTok, KWave, Anime, or Boba. If you love the former, then there definitely is a place for you in Austin, Denver, ATL, etc.
- brodouevencode 3y agoUnpopular opinion: Elon did the right thing wrt the reorganization of Twitter/X. The valley became (and still is) an echo chamber of fringe and often anti-western ideals. NYC had a little of this too, but the valley was especially egregious. When employees started needing safe spaces and HR department size was disproportionate to engineering staff size in every other domain the valley jumped the shark. It became less about building things and more about coddling employees. They invited all that corporate overhead in. Then there's the forever present techno-elitism that came from SV. So, they can cry me a river.
- exabrial 3y agoPrecisely.
- ugjka 3y agoElon is only interested to be in the news cycle 24/7 so that his meme stocks do good
- brodouevencode 3y agoThere are plenty of reasons to be critical of Elon, but the reorg at Twitter - removing all the cruft - is what every bigger-than-100-employees-company in the valley needs.
- bdcravens 3y agoI dislike Elon's politics like many do, but this kind of dismissive dehumanizing is ridiculous. Most of Elon wealth is in TSLA, hardly a meme stock. Twitter cost $44B, much of which is debt-financed, and required serious action and revenue building to make good on.
- bdcravens 3y agoUnpopular, but correct. I can't imagine that if anyone else had purchased the company that there would have been a different result. At times I see X struggle and perhaps they cut a bit too deep on the technical side of things. However, so many companies have some much fluff on the payroll. A lot of evangelists, developer pursuing passion open source projects, conference swag product purchasing experts, assistant to the director of SQL editor tooling, etc.
- zubairq 3y agoThis article really rings true for me
- anarticle 3y agoAt my place some ennui was caused by a flood of terrible candidates, with huge demands, some of which managed to get hired! Couple that with product telling data science to "do what we're asking for" when all signs point to the idea having zero signal in the data. Fun! We had a reckoning when we laid off half of middle management and got back to work, restructured product to be a little less aggressive and more involved in feedback loops. Much of the adversarial stuff went away when we removed the two people driving it. The culture was essentially reset, and as an org we are doing much better. As for the hires that don't read logs, I guess we're stuck with them until they learn or leave. It's tough on your coworkers when you've new people that "have some experience" but clearly zero skill or intuition.
- joedissmeyer 3y agoIt seems to me that almost all upper management, and even many working as a manager inside the technology or I.T. departments, simply treat their tech workers and departments as arms of the finance department proper. Over time, every management decision is eventually made to only support the prime finance goals which is HIGHLY RISK AVERSE so decisions are made to avoid all risk at all costs -- at the expense of more "human-based" decisions like employee satisfaction, process improvements, experimentation or innovation. When this happens to highly-technical people like doctors or engineers, it tends to impact overall job satisfaction because training, experimentation, and innovation goes away usually because management starts saying "No" way too much. "Hey boss, can I try this new process? It might make our department happy." "No that costs too much." "Hey boss, can I learn this new programming language? It might making our jobs easier and faster to do." "Nope, there is no budget." The language spoken from the manager to the team member is "finance speak" which the subordinate employee usually has absolutely no idea how to communicate to the boss. So when a member of the team asks the boss for something interesting to do, the boss just starts saying "no". Every. Single. Time. This effectively trains their teams to never ask to do interesting work. So they stop asking... and the job becomes mundane and boring. And when the job is boring you start losing meaning in the job. And when you don't have meaningful (or fun) work to do, you just don't care anymore and eventually hit apathy. Then the mistakes start happening, and the employee turnover comes. I do think we need to figure out better ways to run our companies. Profits (while important) _cannot_ be the ONLY goal because it just isn't sustainable for the long-term at all. We all know that balance is needed. Food for thought.
- mmcconnell1618 3y agoThis is a direct outgrowth of the Shareholder Primacy theory which is what many MBA students are taught. A business has many stakeholders and obligations and at some points in the past, employees and community were valued in balance with shareholders. Corporations provided pensions and acted for the good of the community in addition to making a profit for shareholders. Once you embrace that your primary reason to exist is to enrich shareholders, everything lines up under the CFO. CEO pay packages are now typically weighted to incentivize the CEO to maximize shareholder value too because so much of their compensation is in stock. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareholder_primacy#:~:text=Shareholder%20primacy%20is%20a%20theory,to%20all%20other%20corporate%20stakeholders https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareholder_primacy#:~:text=Sh....
- barryrandall 3y agoWorking for a startup is more fun than working for a financial instrument. Startups take risks, fund wild ideas, and gleefully embrace failure. Financial instruments need to hit their numbers, avoid risks, and only pursue projects with a thoroughly analyzed business case.
- Havoc 3y agoEnd of free money era