17 ms·

I'd just like to comment on these points on a 30 year perspective... Point 4 - incompetent people. They are great. When they fuck up, which they do often, you

• hardware2win 3y ago
  >Point 5 - meetings are great if remote. You can sit there muted on a zoom call for hours tweaking with your bike or playing games on your other computer. You dont have to tell people about it...
  • baz00 3y ago
    What is valued is presence and contributions. That doesn't necessarily require attention for the entire meeting. I'm not going to live forever so I would rather expend that wasted 80% on something that I value. The outcome of the meeting is always the same!
    • nextlevelwizard 3y ago
      Sounds like you are part of the problem
      • baz00 3y ago
        Unlikely. I don't create meetings. I get invited to them. They are mostly unnecessary and have a net negative return of investment. I mean lucky if any of them have an agenda, minutes or an action and rarely does the facilitator actually have any conceptual knowledge of the subject. The meeting exists to service the facilitator's personal value and the naïve process model, not the business, the staff or the customers.
        • hardware2win 3y ago
          Why just dont attend them? Im invited to like 10 of meetings each week Nobody expects me to attend those where im not really important or need to discuss stuff
          • baz00 3y ago
            Because that means I have to justify not being a "team player" then. And I can't be bothered with that. I'm not creating conflict for the sake of it.
        • nextlevelwizard 3y ago
          Just stop attending then and do actual work and raise it up with whoever you report to. You are just as guilty for blindly accepting this behavior and then fucking around. Either do your job or do something else.
      • benhurmarcel 3y ago
        What problem?
        • nextlevelwizard 3y ago
          If you can’t identify it, then you are definitely part of the problem
    • Hamuko 3y ago
      I've asked my coworkers to cancel a biweekly meeting that in my mind creates no value. That meeting still lives on, so I don't feel guilty about reading news or clipping my nails while it happens.
      • matwood 3y ago
        Have you asked what value they see in the meeting?
        • Hamuko 3y ago
          I think they decided to end the conversation there and then when I suggested axing the meeting, so I didn't bother. I just show up every two weeks muted and get noted as an attendee on some pointless meeting document. No skin off my back since I don't own equity.
        • Tainnor 3y ago
          Not GP, but I once asked my engineering colleagues if I was the only one who doesn't pay attention in the bi-weekly all-hands because most of the information is irrelevant to me (e.g. what new marketing strategies we're using). Some admitted that they would do some work on the side, but some also said "well, those people also want to have a chance to share what they did". I found this remark puzzling and illuminating at the same time. Apparently, for some people, meetings aren't about productivity but about satisfying psychological needs.
  • teeray 3y ago
    My retention from any audio is simply better if I’m doing something other than staring at the screen. On meetings that I’ve listened to while taking a walk, I can think back to specific things on my walk and recall exactly what was being discussed, sometimes months or years later. This holds true for doing housework, yardwork etc. There’s some spatial component of memory that wakes up while I do that. It might look like I’m not paying attention to the meeting at all, but I’m actually paying more attention and getting chores done. Win-win.
  • nunez 3y ago
    And you wonder why execs are pushing RTO so hard
    • baz00 3y ago
      That's mostly because all that empty office space looks bad and it's worth nothing now.
• HunterWare 3y ago
  So much truth in such a dense format. =)
• quickthrower2 3y ago
  I love that I work somewhere with no incompetent people (or rarely) as it makes working a lot more fun. You spend most of the day solving real problems.
  • baz00 3y ago
    I had a couple of jobs like that. I looked back and worked out they weren't real problems. They were problems invented to sell solutions for that made money. Supremely productive but alas pointless too. I eventually developed a philosophy of passive capitalist nihilism. I can't change anything meaningful so I will use the accumulation of capital as a coping mechanism to deal with that.
    • quickthrower2 3y ago
      There are no “real” problems if you have water food and shelter and your family and friends are safe etc. Everything is consumerist driven. Driven by desires. But my current job they are building something worthwhile and I believe a lot of companies are. But the FAANGs might feel less like that. But let’s say you work for Splunk or Shopify or a government portal or writing drone software or whatever I think it is useful.
      • BurningFrog 3y ago
        Desires are real though.
  • ljf 3y ago
    That is how I feel in my current team/department - but I always worry that if you don't know who the incompetent person on a team is...
    • quickthrower2 3y ago
      That is why I hanker and breed plenty of imposter syndrome :-)
  • 3y ago
• mk89 3y ago
  Thanks for sharing your valuable point of view. Unfortunately TV shows, media and being a nerd at home while everyone else was having fun created the myth of the brilliant software engineer that is saving the world through coding - in some cases it was therapeutic or a way to be "different". Reality is that the software industrialization (which happened after 2000 I believe?) didn't give a damn about those nerds or 10x engineers or whatever: they want decent people that can be replaced as needed. Not necessarily in a cynical way but in a way that every other field works - employees should not become a risk. When that happens, you as a manager have failed miserably.
  • baz00 3y ago
    Yes that's a fair perspective. They wanted fungible staff. The only way to add personal value is to be as non fungible as possible which means being an expert on niche things that the fungible folk aren't. That is usually domain specific concerns and intricacies. But really I haven't changed the world. I've made it a lot worse. I caused the loss of thousands of jobs. I took money from bastards and con men in return to make things to make the world worse. I celebrated the demise of competitors and their staff going hungry. And I only did this all because my official qualification didn't pay as much. At least I'm honest.
    • Guid_NewGuid 3y ago
      You've obviously hit a sore spot for some people. The system is built to capture value (not create it) while externalising as much damage and cost as possible. The sooner one accepts that the less deluded one needs to be. There's no company 'mission'. The only mission is try to find a way to survive and prosper under hegemonic capitalism.
      • munksbeer 3y ago
        > The system is built to capture value (not create it) while externalising as much damage and cost as possible. What system?
        • 3y ago
• hoagsobject 3y ago
  >estimates are always wrong so don't put too much effort into it. What people value is how long you spend making up lies so spend some time on it! Why people always say this? In my team we have never missed an estimate of what we have planned. I also don't remember it in other projects where team does take time for planning. What is so hard that people find estimating their work?
  • Clubber 3y ago
    You can make any deadline if you pad enough.
    • matwood 3y ago
      Which, when you ask enough questions, is what most stakeholders want.
      • creshal 3y ago
        Unless the budget is limited, and estimates have to be "optimized" to meet political goals. At that point, disengage and waste as little time as possible on making up shit.
    • pbmonster 3y ago
      Careful, available budget will always be spent, available time will always be filled.
  • not_the_fda 3y ago
    Sometimes the spec of wants to be built is just some notes on a napkin with a whole lot of ambiguity. Sometimes the "estimate" was already predetermined to meet some arbitrary marking goal.
  • baz00 3y ago
    It's easy on small teams on small products. Eventually, as capitalism demands eternal growth, they grow to the point that the complexities and hack jobs that were used to deliver previous estimates impact them. Then no one wants to turn up with a realistic estimate. Eventually all the estimates become lies because of the incalculable complexity of the estimation process that results from the complexity of the product and your options are usually to try and lie and deliver late, but not later than other teams in the org. Every org I've worked for ends up like this. There is a lot or intellectual dishonesty out there. It used to bother me. It doesn't now. I just don't partake in it.
• jefc1111 3y ago
  I don't think all of this applies in a small outfit. Some of it, sure... Politics is less of an issue in smaller companies. Disconnecting is perhaps actually harder in small companies, idk. Incompetent people can't easily find a place in small companies I reckon, unless, unless everyone is incompetent, in which case the company won't be around for long!
  • baz00 3y ago
    Fair points there. Although I have worked for a number of very small companies (startups) that have been successful and totally incompetent, at least one to the order of having the CEO threatened with jail time by the authorities.
  • eschneider 3y ago
    If anything, politics is MORE of an issue in smaller companies, but it usually plays out differently. Be aware of what's going on and _be involved_ or prepare to get blindsided at some point.
  • alphager 3y ago
    Strongly disagree. The smaller the company is, the more political it is. Because now there's no layer to appeal to or to inject sanity; it's the way of the owner or the highway. Being on the right side of the owner is the most important thing and if you're on the right side, you can be as incompetent as you want (see: son of the owner is an idiot, but is the second in command).
    • dasil003 3y ago
      Sorry you’ve been burned by nepotism and incompetent leadership. That’s not the root of politics though. Politics is about decision making processes and power dynamics that emerge in large groups. This becomes difficult regardless of competence because power and control become decoupled due the bandwidth limits of single humans, and so the methods of influence and direction become more manipulative and/or more draconian.
    • jefc1111 3y ago
• barelyauser 3y ago
  Point 10: don't this makes you a target? Being part of the tribe might be painful, but getting thrown into the jungle alone is a hell of a lot worse.
  • creshal 3y ago
    It makes you a target if you position yourself as a faction of one that tries to influence decision making. That's a contest you're not going to win, 99% of the time. If you just go with the flow, and are reasonably competent, changes in faction dynamics usually wash over you. You end up taking orders from someone else, every now and then, but if blame needs to be pinned on someone, there tend to be juicier targets.
    • baz00 3y ago
      Exactly that.
  • orwin 3y ago
    No, if you're competent and have good soft skills, you can survive a purge even if you did not take a side. I was hired at my previous job by a departing manager who just lost his struggle against our new manager. I managed to finish my job, extend the solution to other teams (as mine went from 12 devs, a handful of Indian support, an Indian QA and PM, to a dev and two level2 support). It was probably my most painful job yet, I regressed, I didn't really 'finish' in the sense that it lacked documentation, good CD pipeline and minor tweaking to make it more efficient, and I hated the last months with my whole being. But politics didn't touch me.
• paganel 3y ago
  > Nothing matters so don't get too wrapped up in it or upset about it. The "it is what it is" way of looking at things, I wish more people in this industry would embrace this. It more probably won't get one to 600k yearly comps while working at FANGs, but at the same time is a lot more healthy for one's psyche in the medium to long term (and for the psyches of those close to that person, like family and very close friends).
• demondemidi 3y ago
  Here’s my one key observation after 35 years: Whenever someone refers to planning as “lies” and whines about “politics” … you can be sure they are a difficult person who blames everyone but themself.
  • baz00 3y ago
    I think you'll find I blame myself for these issues. I just do not deny that they are issues.
  • Wilya 3y ago
    I blame everyone else and myself equally. But I'll stop whining about politics when I'll stop witnessing well-behaved but incompetent people turn projects to failures.
  • benterix 3y ago
    > Whenever someone refers to planning as “lies” I believe it's all about size. Small tasks can be estimated fairly precisely, with 30% margin maybe. But some people extend this logic to huge projects and this simply doesn't work. I give you example: I was once asked to estimate the amount of work needed to migrate a huge org from on-prem to one of the public clouds. Without even knowing what kinds of app they were running. I said I can only do a very rough estimate and there are too many variables to be precise. But they insisted and hired someone else to do this job with the precision of half-day! Needless to say, their estimates were too optimistic because they could only include what they knew. By design, they couldn't measure the things they know nothing about because these issues haven't appeared yet. Last time I checked, they are still migrating and I have a feeling they will finish around the time I had originally planned, that is the second quarter of 2024.
    • martincmartin 3y ago
      When you estimate small tasks, most of the estimates will be accurate, but once in a while, you'll overlook something and a small task turns into a big task, e.g. you need to switch APIs or the customer wanted something that sounded similar but turns out to be much more complicated under the hood. So it's not a Gaussian distribution, it's that once in a while a task blows up.
• konschubert 3y ago
  Wow I’m sorry, it seems like you really had a bad experience.
  • baz00 3y ago
    I had good ones too. But they didn't pay as much.
• strikelaserclaw 3y ago
  Here is something i encountered, sometimes higher ups will put arbitrarily deadlines and act like the entire business depends on you meeting that deadline for a project and after that deadline passes no one seems to care that much about your product, they even allow you more time to do it "right".
  • psiops 3y ago
    That some top-tier management practices you experienced there. I expect your productivity*quality sky-rocketed.
  • datadrivenangel 3y ago
    Spanish theory of management! The more they push the more they get!
• aleph_minus_one 3y ago
  > Point 10 - The only soft skill is politics. Any sufficiently large organisation employs many politicians. The best way to deal with politicians is analyse the factions and stay neutral. No one can drag you to their side then. Staying neutral does not only have the meaning "be diplomatic" or "don't give an opinion", but can also mean "treat all factions equally", which includes the case "treat all of the people who make political attempts with open hate". This way, also no one can drag you to their side. :-)
  • baz00 3y ago
    Definitely correct. I'm glad you extrapolated that point.
• cj 3y ago
  Whenever I see comments like this I feel bad for the commenter. For all the opportunity and different companies to choose from in tech, to not enjoy your job after 30 years probably means you picked the wrong career path. It’s not healthy to have this much disdain and displeasure around your work. It’s never too late to consider a career change.
  • mihaitodor 3y ago
    Spot on! After 16 years, I'm looking to get back to academia and do a PhD. I felt like I don't enjoy what I'm doing for far too long, even though I changed jobs about 8 times.
  • andygeorge 3y ago
    Agreed. I'm "only" 20 years into my career and, while it has ebbed and flowed, it's also something I love and am thankful I get to do for a living.
  • subjectsigma 3y ago
    They might just have a different perspective than you. I complain about my job a lot. People say to me, “Wow, you must absolutely despise it.” The truth is that if I absolutely despised it I would have left a long time ago. I just have no reason to talk about the good parts. I focus on problems because I want to improve on them.
    • deebosong 3y ago
      > I focus on problems because I want to improve on them. Does this work, though? Does the complaining lead to improvements? I'm posing the question as a challenge, and also out of curiosity. And I'm of the school of thought that it's necessary to acknowledge reality, but, complaining to the point where people think I despise what I'm complaining about may indicate that another approach may be necessary (such as finding practical solutions and giving yourself options that you can test out). Apologies if being presumptuous.
      • subjectsigma 3y ago
• maxrecursion 3y ago
  Point 9 - Eventually you do become able to disconnect from your job. One day the fucks just run out. Embrace that early on and save yourself a lot of stress. This is the most important life lesson anyone can learn, but I think it can only be learned by going through a flaming dumpster fire that burns all those fucks away. You can't get that confidence and no fucks given attitude on your own, at least not for most people. You have to go through the shit and earn it.
• crabbone 3y ago
  Just to comment on incompetent people. There are kinds of incompetence. It also makes a huge difference where in the hierarchy they are. Incompetent boss will not let you save the day, but will make you take the blame, for example. Here's an example of incompetence I deal with every day. The head of R&D department either pretends not to understand or is genuinely this stupid as to engage in the following process over and over: * We release a program with many defects due to the short development and testing cycle, but especially due to poor (or missing) planning. * Customers complain they cannot achieve what they want using our program. * R&D lead bravely rushes to "extinguish the fire" by adding new feature to work around the customers' complaint. * Because the feature was never properly planned it creates multiple new issues while coming late to the testing stage. * We burn past the deadline, and eventually have to release still half-baked. * Customers complain again... There's no place in this scenario where any of the underlings can swoop in and save the day, because saving the day would be to tell the R&D head that he needs to go through due process of planning his contributions and coordinating with other department heads, esp. the QA. But nobody can, because this will be judged as insubordination and violators will be fired. Over half of the underlings are on work visa, not to mention that the company is almost exclusively filling its niche. So, nobody wants to speak up out of fear of being fired. On the other hand, such incompetence only lowers morale, leading to most underlings losing interest in the subject matter and doing the absolute minimum to hold the job. You'd think it's a miracle such a dysfunctional company keeps sailing... but, I have this to tell you. This is not the first company of this kind I met in my life. All companies of this kind that I've met by the time I've met them were over 20 years old, profitable, big, fearlessly looking into the future...
• vsareto 3y ago
  How sure are you they are incompetent vs. just not giving any fucks/disconnected from the job and there to get paid (it's objective one after all!) This seems a little inconsistent to me. Is it really their fault if the industry says they are qualified and gives them a job when they are incompetent?
  • baz00 3y ago
    Well the people who don't give any fucks want to make their life easier so they do a minimally competent job and are usually supremely skilled avoiding pain. The disconnected people don't actually do any work at all. The incompetents cruise in, full of ego, poop everywhere and expect everyone else to clean it up and take responsibility for it. I don't mind that job because it's an open ended task. As for it being their fault, no it's not really, you're right. But management need butts on seats apparently so standards will be reduced until they are full. Also many incompetent people, when faced with enough pain, will turn into competent people and eventually stop giving a fuck too.
• Tangurena2 3y ago
  I think that one very important issue got left out: always be learning. The colleagues that ended up having to change careers were ones who refused to keep current with technology. Or who treated education like a vaccine: "get it" once and never again. "Learning how to learn" is probably the most important skill one learns in college, yet it is treated as a side issue (if at all). So many tech stacks have ended up on the "dustheap of history", yet we have to constantly learn new ones.
• colonelpopcorn 3y ago
  "It's nothing personal, it's just business"
• andai 3y ago
  Truly the love of money is the root of all evil...
• jmyeet 3y ago
  > Point 4 - incompetent people. They are great. I used to think this too but it rarely works that way in reality. Why? Because, as Roger Sterling put it, "Half the time this business comes down to 'I don't like this guy'". Incompetent people survive because, for whatever reason, they're liked that decision makers, who may themselves be inccmpetent. Or it may be they're just similar in outlook, background or interests. It doesn't matter. Or they may be politically savvy enough to take credit for things that work and deflect blame when they don't. I've seen teams spend a half on something, not launch anything, make a post about "we learned a lot" and get praised for thier "achievements". > Point 5 - meetings are great if remote. For many people, myself included, this is still incredibly distracting. You can't switch off entirely.
• lencastre 3y ago
  Money, Assignment, and Team — if any of these two are shitty then find a new job. But be honest with yourself.
• notac23 3y ago
  Learning point 9 early will save you a lot of pain. I'd add this: Care about your job, do your best, learn, grow. It'll serve your career and it'll serve your happiness/satisfaction. HOWEVER, accept that things will go wrong/dumb decisions will be made, and it's not all up to you to fix. If other people make dumb moves, you don't have to die on the hill. Let others fail, it's good for them too. I promise you that nobody will actually care after it's over. It's not worth the mental agony.
• BeetleB 3y ago
  > The only soft skill is politics. This statement is void of content - virtually a tautology. All soft skills are politics. Politics is large in scope. You do a favor for your friend? That is politics of the "good" kind.
• StillBored 3y ago
  For a software engineer, these are great points to follow if the goal is to be the incompetent person on the team in a few years... Personally, while I find myself frequently in too many meetings or spending way too much time with email, or $DEITY, git rebasing to satisfy some power-hungry gatekeeper it is the little side projects that save my sanity. While many are the equivalent of throwing paint on a canvas, it is cathartic. So maybe the one good thing to come out of the google mgmt style that everyone seems to have copied (not the side project bit, all the other garbage) is the 20% time.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• loeg 3y ago
  Jaded and cynical as hell.