5 ms·

I have a meta question here, am always curious when seemingly competent engineer such as yourself put up with this kind of management. It is unbearable to work

by ak_111 2y ago

I have a meta question here, am always curious when seemingly competent engineer such as yourself put up with this kind of management. It is unbearable to work for someone who doesn't appreciate your work let alone belittles truly hard-earned achievements, for example that statement when he demanded you get 4000% rather than 2000% that you achieved would have made me quit on the spot. Further from the sounds of it this sounds like a random finance company and with your skills you could have easily walked into any tech/finance company so I am curious why you remained at this company and didn't quit sooner?

ryandrake 2y ago
Not OP, but I worked for a similar founder. The only work he wanted software engineers to do was writing code, and not just that... only 1. code that added a customer visible feature or 2. code that fixed a major, customer-facing bug that a customer actually complained about. Fixes for bugs not discovered by customers? No. Performance improvements? No, not even visible ones. Refactorings? No. Technical debt cleanup? No. Build speedups? No. Update the code to work on a recent compiler? No. It gets better! Version control? No. Bug tracker? No. Unit tests? No. I had to implement the above three on my free time. Standing up dedicated build and test infrastructure? LOL get real. Eventually, I was able to argue for a few of these, but it was always a fight. The reason I stayed was that the hiring market is not always that great, and it tends to be much harder to find a new job than HN would have you believe. This idea that most of us can simply "walk into any" company and get a job is fiction in all but the hottest job markets.
- Kache 2y ago
  I don't understand these kinds of leadership/management. What they want clearly isn't a tech company. They don't want technical wisdom, insight, nor vision. Why bother hiring in-house SWE's at all? They should just stick with consultants and contactors.
browningstreet 2y ago
Keeping it slightly abstract because enough people can figure out company/time/place from what I wrote… I had something to accomplish before I left. I made a mark in the niche we were operating in. Beyond that I’m reluctant to be more specific.
rendaw 2y ago
I guess as CTO you're already at the top, but if the owner thinks you're doing bad work and you have to fight for resources despite meeting reasonable goals, what's the actual payoff working there? You'd be paddling upstream forever, I can't imagine the owner would agree to bonuses or promotions, and I'd reasonably expect the owner would be looking for a replacement CTO at the end of that.

by ak_111 2y ago

ryandrake 2y ago

Not OP, but I worked for a similar founder. The only work he wanted software engineers to do was writing code, and not just that... only 1. code that added a customer visible feature or 2. code that fixed a major, customer-facing bug that a customer actually complained about. Fixes for bugs not discovered by customers? No. Performance improvements? No, not even visible ones. Refactorings? No. Technical debt cleanup? No. Build speedups? No. Update the code to work on a recent compiler? No. It gets better! Version control? No. Bug tracker? No. Unit tests? No. I had to implement the above three on my free time. Standing up dedicated build and test infrastructure? LOL get real. Eventually, I was able to argue for a few of these, but it was always a fight. The reason I stayed was that the hiring market is not always that great, and it tends to be much harder to find a new job than HN would have you believe. This idea that most of us can simply "walk into any" company and get a job is fiction in all but the hottest job markets.

Kache 2y ago
I don't understand these kinds of leadership/management. What they want clearly isn't a tech company. They don't want technical wisdom, insight, nor vision. Why bother hiring in-house SWE's at all? They should just stick with consultants and contactors.

browningstreet 2y ago

Keeping it slightly abstract because enough people can figure out company/time/place from what I wrote… I had something to accomplish before I left. I made a mark in the niche we were operating in. Beyond that I’m reluctant to be more specific.

rendaw 2y ago

I guess as CTO you're already at the top, but if the owner thinks you're doing bad work and you have to fight for resources despite meeting reasonable goals, what's the actual payoff working there? You'd be paddling upstream forever, I can't imagine the owner would agree to bonuses or promotions, and I'd reasonably expect the owner would be looking for a replacement CTO at the end of that.