5 ms·

Why do you need to argue (whatever that means to you)? Just take a ticket, do the work, and check out mentally at the end of the day.

refulgentis 2y ago
EM = engineering manager. Re: arguing and why not just avoid it: During my brief (7 year) sojourn at one place that was not-my-company (Google), you end up with a mix of personalities, and it's very hard to convince people who believe there's a Right Way to do things that there is no Right Way, so you just sort of have to muddle through figuring out how to be productive without irritating people, or as an EM, leaving them thinking you're negligent. Conversely, theoretically, it's hard to convince people who are slopping through and rushing code to slow down. (in practice, this wasn't a problem at Google, but it's worth mentioning for completeness.) Case study: 6 person team. 1 EM who ended up doing 20% of the code, 1 me who did 60%, 2 who did 10% each, only do things when directly asked, and they couldn't find an excuse to kick the can down the road due to "ambiguity" that was product/design's fault, and then two who, in all seriousness, never contributed code to this year-long project: 1 who wanted OOP-to-the-max InjectedFoobarManagerFactory, another who definitely didn't want anything like that, but didn't really have an alternate proposal, they just loved explaining endlessly and authoritatively why anything else brought up was bad. (what did they do if they weren't contributing? the first would write vaguely productive "experiments" for other teams, that obviously wouldn't ship, in the code repo they were used to. took them 18-24 months to make their first code contribution to our actual code repo, the other wandered off to some other random project in the org. EM was new and out 3/4 of the project for new child leave)
- Ethee 2y ago
  To add to this, it feels to me like SWEs have the biggest egos as well without a related checking mechanism. In other engineering disciplines getting something wrong very often comes back to you as the engineer, in SWE it feels like there are so many abstractions people like to point fingers at instead. "It's not my code that's the issue, its X implementation's fault" the amount of times I've heard something similar to this is too often.
  - refulgentis 2y ago
    100%. I don't know what to call it other than coddling, but there was very, very, very, little true responsibility. Safety in the herd: don't let the people who got the stuff done get too up in their heads about it, via their design had issues at the end of the day, and conversely, if I did deliver something of low quality, it was someone else's design that was the problem. All the firing BS in from mid-2022 in this industry was poorly motivated, and a lot of the initial wave was used for settling political scores, and there's a lot still there. But I hope in the long run it engenders a stronger sense of needing to have some sort of shared reality and responsibility.
  - quicklime 2y ago
    You might be right that SWEs have the biggest egos compared to other engineering disciplines. When I've worked with mechanical and electrical engineers, that was the case. But where I work now, the biggest egos are easily the people around the SWEs - especially architects and product owners. Is that not the case where you work?
- withinboredom 2y ago
  > it's very hard to convince people who believe there's a Right Way to do things that there is no Right Way I worked with a guy who claimed they'd worked at Google (probably not you, fwiw). They were SO SURE there WAS ONE TRUE WAY, and I'm 90% sure the actual definition was "whatever way this guy [me] wants to do it is not the TRUE WAY." I almost quit dealing with that guy, but I ended up wandering to some other random project in the org. Dude was whack though. I'll never forget when we hired a guy and he was saying "if the hiring team thinks he's good enough, he's clearly not because they hired this guy [pointing at me]." Fuck that guy. I might not be the best coder in any room, but I'm a pretty solid engineer.
  - shrimp_emoji 2y ago
    In the immortal words of Dell, if you're the best coder in the room, change rooms.
    - NSHkr_hn 2y ago
      You’re a pretty evil person for putting down a homeless and ruined person. You’re now immortalized for your words and perspective.
      - refulgentis 2y ago
        I don't think so, I don't know what you're talking about about
      - shrimp_emoji 2y ago
        In the immortal words of that one guy, "From my perspective, the Jedi are evil!"
        NSHkr_hn 2y ago
        You’re a fucking scumbag. You deserve a hard lesson and if we were face to face, you’d receive a hard lesson.
hkt 2y ago
This is a dramatically unpleasant way to live, though. Op is asking out of a desire to have a fulfilling life and clearly isn't finding fulfilment in SWE.
- palata 2y ago
  The keywords were: "check out mentally at the end of the day". You can have a fulfilling life out of work. It doesn't mean that you have to be miserable at work, but it's also important to realize that "being productive" is not the only way to live. Those who make a fortune with software generally don't work on improving society; on the contrary they generally are bigger contributors to the problem. Whether they realize it and accept it in exchange for the cash or actually think they deserve that kind of money is a different question.
obvustroweh 2y ago
I’m not OP and I ask myself that question daily? I have a job that is financially viable at a small, good, profitable firm… that has less stellar engineering management (not bad people wise)… and I care deeply about my craft. I’m a child hood coder with also a deep “Protestant Work Ethic.” I have semi-checked out at work, it’s mentally taxing to know the systems could be better. I also know after 5 years my hard work and going the extra mile” will not be rewarded so I coast with my above-average reviews… but I feel guilt and mental anguish and stress and worry I’ll be found for a fraud (not imposter syndrome way, in a “I could do better and will be punished for not” way) For some of us it’s a passion not a paycheck. Although the pay is nice.
rqtwteye 2y ago
That's a very unsatisfying way to work. I like software design and architecture and even arguing about it as long as people do it in good faith. That's what makes the job interesting to me. I think I would get depressed if I just checked off tickets every day.
armada651 2y ago
Some people have this unfortunate affliction where they went into SWE with a passion for programming and want something more fulfilling out of a job than resolving a few tickets and then checking out mentally. Hopefully they'll be cured of that one day, perhaps the next performance review cycle will finally rid them of any remaining illusions.
tunesmith 2y ago
These employees, or at least one style of these employees, are super-frustrating to work with as well. Like, I have no problem with someone who is in the ticket flow, is conscientious about their work, tries to understand the business purpose, anticipates and asks some unanswered questions, and takes care to truly finish the work. Then, you know, sure, work your eight (or six), take your breaks, and leave it out of your brain all other times. But the other style is all-too-common: Do only what's listed in the ticket, and the laziest possible interpretation at that. If something is undefined, well, that's their problem, if they realize it, they can schedule another ticket. Don't ask questions, don't collaborate, don't do anything extra and then if pressed, say phrases like, "Well they didn't say.." or "well, they didn't ask..." Take no ownership. Those people suck.
- bongodongobob 2y ago
  I completely disagree. The more you hand hold the users, the less they'll try. You have to half-ass and close some tickets and make them reopen. If they don't get any pushback or frustration from not following protocol, they'll continue to do it. Any decent manager should understand and have your back on those kind of requests.
meristohm 2y ago
Fair question. Not OP, but I'll add that I prefer to do work that matches what I value, not just go get a paycheck and make other people richer. Taken to an extreme, I'm happiest when I forage for food to augment what we buy on my spouse's salary and my part-time local utility work. I'm privileged to live on land that supports this practice, and to not do work that I don't agree with. We don't have much of a savings, but we're rich in other ways, notably community, clean water, ~clean air when the wind isn't blowing in from the highway and the neighbors aren't running their various engines, and a sense of purpose. I considered being a software engineer but after reading HN for years I burned out on that dream and instead focus on land & water stewardship, activism towards the same, and building walking-distance community.
treesknees 2y ago
You're being downvoted but I mean this does work for some people. I definitely have coworkers who treat their work as purely transactional. Their goal isn't to be promoted or get frustrated at their job, it's to receive a paycheck and health insurance and get home to their families or hobbies. That's certainly a valid approach in any job scenario (not just SWE.) I'm not quite at the level you've described, but I certainly have elements of it. I've been in the same role for ~10 years and have pretty much maxed out the expected raises/promotions of the role. It's not as satisfying as something brand new, but my pay to effort ratio is pretty ideal and I can work on side projects and learn new things on my own.
einpoklum 2y ago
Because "they" are writing the code all wrong and crooked!
cbanek 2y ago
I think it's a lot more usual to have your ticket and then your whole damn team decides to argue for hours on how you should do it, just because your manager lets it happen. This happened with my last job and it really pushed me out. The reason why people argue so much is that the stakes have never been lower - they don't do the work, or the thinking, or the fixing. It's just really easy to "have input" and then the environment makes you follow that "input" because "we're a team".
slotrans 2y ago
"take a ticket and do the work" doesn't describe ANY software job I've ever had it's all meetings, design docs, fighting in PR comments, agile ceremonies, etc etc building things / fixing bugs is maybe 10% of the work
nunez 2y ago
Easier said than done.

refulgentis 2y ago

EM = engineering manager. Re: arguing and why not just avoid it: During my brief (7 year) sojourn at one place that was not-my-company (Google), you end up with a mix of personalities, and it's very hard to convince people who believe there's a Right Way to do things that there is no Right Way, so you just sort of have to muddle through figuring out how to be productive without irritating people, or as an EM, leaving them thinking you're negligent. Conversely, theoretically, it's hard to convince people who are slopping through and rushing code to slow down. (in practice, this wasn't a problem at Google, but it's worth mentioning for completeness.) Case study: 6 person team. 1 EM who ended up doing 20% of the code, 1 me who did 60%, 2 who did 10% each, only do things when directly asked, and they couldn't find an excuse to kick the can down the road due to "ambiguity" that was product/design's fault, and then two who, in all seriousness, never contributed code to this year-long project: 1 who wanted OOP-to-the-max InjectedFoobarManagerFactory, another who definitely didn't want anything like that, but didn't really have an alternate proposal, they just loved explaining endlessly and authoritatively why anything else brought up was bad. (what did they do if they weren't contributing? the first would write vaguely productive "experiments" for other teams, that obviously wouldn't ship, in the code repo they were used to. took them 18-24 months to make their first code contribution to our actual code repo, the other wandered off to some other random project in the org. EM was new and out 3/4 of the project for new child leave)

Ethee 2y ago
To add to this, it feels to me like SWEs have the biggest egos as well without a related checking mechanism. In other engineering disciplines getting something wrong very often comes back to you as the engineer, in SWE it feels like there are so many abstractions people like to point fingers at instead. "It's not my code that's the issue, its X implementation's fault" the amount of times I've heard something similar to this is too often.
- refulgentis 2y ago
  100%. I don't know what to call it other than coddling, but there was very, very, very, little true responsibility. Safety in the herd: don't let the people who got the stuff done get too up in their heads about it, via their design had issues at the end of the day, and conversely, if I did deliver something of low quality, it was someone else's design that was the problem. All the firing BS in from mid-2022 in this industry was poorly motivated, and a lot of the initial wave was used for settling political scores, and there's a lot still there. But I hope in the long run it engenders a stronger sense of needing to have some sort of shared reality and responsibility.
- quicklime 2y ago
  You might be right that SWEs have the biggest egos compared to other engineering disciplines. When I've worked with mechanical and electrical engineers, that was the case. But where I work now, the biggest egos are easily the people around the SWEs - especially architects and product owners. Is that not the case where you work?
withinboredom 2y ago
> it's very hard to convince people who believe there's a Right Way to do things that there is no Right Way I worked with a guy who claimed they'd worked at Google (probably not you, fwiw). They were SO SURE there WAS ONE TRUE WAY, and I'm 90% sure the actual definition was "whatever way this guy [me] wants to do it is not the TRUE WAY." I almost quit dealing with that guy, but I ended up wandering to some other random project in the org. Dude was whack though. I'll never forget when we hired a guy and he was saying "if the hiring team thinks he's good enough, he's clearly not because they hired this guy [pointing at me]." Fuck that guy. I might not be the best coder in any room, but I'm a pretty solid engineer.
- shrimp_emoji 2y ago
  In the immortal words of Dell, if you're the best coder in the room, change rooms.
  - NSHkr_hn 2y ago
    You’re a pretty evil person for putting down a homeless and ruined person. You’re now immortalized for your words and perspective.
    - refulgentis 2y ago
      I don't think so, I don't know what you're talking about about
    - shrimp_emoji 2y ago
      In the immortal words of that one guy, "From my perspective, the Jedi are evil!"
      - NSHkr_hn 2y ago
        You’re a fucking scumbag. You deserve a hard lesson and if we were face to face, you’d receive a hard lesson.

hkt 2y ago

This is a dramatically unpleasant way to live, though. Op is asking out of a desire to have a fulfilling life and clearly isn't finding fulfilment in SWE.

palata 2y ago
The keywords were: "check out mentally at the end of the day". You can have a fulfilling life out of work. It doesn't mean that you have to be miserable at work, but it's also important to realize that "being productive" is not the only way to live. Those who make a fortune with software generally don't work on improving society; on the contrary they generally are bigger contributors to the problem. Whether they realize it and accept it in exchange for the cash or actually think they deserve that kind of money is a different question.

obvustroweh 2y ago

I’m not OP and I ask myself that question daily? I have a job that is financially viable at a small, good, profitable firm… that has less stellar engineering management (not bad people wise)… and I care deeply about my craft. I’m a child hood coder with also a deep “Protestant Work Ethic.” I have semi-checked out at work, it’s mentally taxing to know the systems could be better. I also know after 5 years my hard work and going the extra mile” will not be rewarded so I coast with my above-average reviews… but I feel guilt and mental anguish and stress and worry I’ll be found for a fraud (not imposter syndrome way, in a “I could do better and will be punished for not” way) For some of us it’s a passion not a paycheck. Although the pay is nice.

rqtwteye 2y ago

That's a very unsatisfying way to work. I like software design and architecture and even arguing about it as long as people do it in good faith. That's what makes the job interesting to me. I think I would get depressed if I just checked off tickets every day.

armada651 2y ago

Some people have this unfortunate affliction where they went into SWE with a passion for programming and want something more fulfilling out of a job than resolving a few tickets and then checking out mentally. Hopefully they'll be cured of that one day, perhaps the next performance review cycle will finally rid them of any remaining illusions.

tunesmith 2y ago

These employees, or at least one style of these employees, are super-frustrating to work with as well. Like, I have no problem with someone who is in the ticket flow, is conscientious about their work, tries to understand the business purpose, anticipates and asks some unanswered questions, and takes care to truly finish the work. Then, you know, sure, work your eight (or six), take your breaks, and leave it out of your brain all other times. But the other style is all-too-common: Do only what's listed in the ticket, and the laziest possible interpretation at that. If something is undefined, well, that's their problem, if they realize it, they can schedule another ticket. Don't ask questions, don't collaborate, don't do anything extra and then if pressed, say phrases like, "Well they didn't say.." or "well, they didn't ask..." Take no ownership. Those people suck.

bongodongobob 2y ago
I completely disagree. The more you hand hold the users, the less they'll try. You have to half-ass and close some tickets and make them reopen. If they don't get any pushback or frustration from not following protocol, they'll continue to do it. Any decent manager should understand and have your back on those kind of requests.

meristohm 2y ago

Fair question. Not OP, but I'll add that I prefer to do work that matches what I value, not just go get a paycheck and make other people richer. Taken to an extreme, I'm happiest when I forage for food to augment what we buy on my spouse's salary and my part-time local utility work. I'm privileged to live on land that supports this practice, and to not do work that I don't agree with. We don't have much of a savings, but we're rich in other ways, notably community, clean water, ~clean air when the wind isn't blowing in from the highway and the neighbors aren't running their various engines, and a sense of purpose. I considered being a software engineer but after reading HN for years I burned out on that dream and instead focus on land & water stewardship, activism towards the same, and building walking-distance community.

treesknees 2y ago

You're being downvoted but I mean this does work for some people. I definitely have coworkers who treat their work as purely transactional. Their goal isn't to be promoted or get frustrated at their job, it's to receive a paycheck and health insurance and get home to their families or hobbies. That's certainly a valid approach in any job scenario (not just SWE.) I'm not quite at the level you've described, but I certainly have elements of it. I've been in the same role for ~10 years and have pretty much maxed out the expected raises/promotions of the role. It's not as satisfying as something brand new, but my pay to effort ratio is pretty ideal and I can work on side projects and learn new things on my own.

einpoklum 2y ago

Because "they" are writing the code all wrong and crooked!

cbanek 2y ago

I think it's a lot more usual to have your ticket and then your whole damn team decides to argue for hours on how you should do it, just because your manager lets it happen. This happened with my last job and it really pushed me out. The reason why people argue so much is that the stakes have never been lower - they don't do the work, or the thinking, or the fixing. It's just really easy to "have input" and then the environment makes you follow that "input" because "we're a team".

slotrans 2y ago

"take a ticket and do the work" doesn't describe ANY software job I've ever had it's all meetings, design docs, fighting in PR comments, agile ceremonies, etc etc building things / fixing bugs is maybe 10% of the work

nunez 2y ago

Easier said than done.