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The one piece of advice I would give myself 15 years ago: In the corporate world be very good at administration. You only need to just be good enough at progra

The one piece of advice I would give myself 15 years ago: In the corporate world be very good at administration. You only need to just be good enough at programming to not get fired. Everybody has opinions on software techniques and nobody measures anything, so it’s really just a popularity/tool game. The only goals are retain employment or promote out of software, being good at software is just a distraction from the goals. If you want to be excellent at programming do it as a hobby and set your expectations right that it’s only a hobby.

ivanjermakov 2y ago
This resonates well with my thinking. Programming I do for money is quite different from programming I do as a hobby. If I wouldn't keep them separate, I would lose passion to it fairly quickly.
bigdict 2y ago
Could you expand a bit on what you mean by administration?
- wavemode 2y ago
  Not OP but I would say, generally non-engineering things that keep the business people happy. Project planning, delegating tasks, dashboards and metrics (customer feedback, if you can acquire it, is a big plus), setting and meeting deadlines, and knowing how to sell yourself. There's that old (and very true) wisdom that if you solve a complex problem in two days, the business people won't think "wow, this guy is so smart and hard-working for solving that in 2 days." They will think "oh, this problem must not have been very hard to solve. Let's assign him extra work." Being a good engineer only gets you so far, career-wise.
- austin-cheney 2y ago
  Writing ample clear documentation, precision of communication, dutifully fulfilling all timesheets, logging of work performed, attending all requested meetings, and always delivering work on time.
  - largelady97 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - austin-cheney 2y ago
      Absolutely. The problem with trying too hard to be a great craftsman is that you become emotionally invested. Most of your peers will not have this and will not understand it. Someone else mentioned becoming a 10x developer and yet being surpassed in your career. That is absolutely very real.
    - wiseowise 2y ago
      > Your advice for being valuable is basically to slave away and follow your masters orders at daily scrum, not leave your box one minute outside of your allocated time , attend all bending over sessions and be pleasant as you take it , say what they want you to say with precision and always be whatever they want you to be i.e a massive people pleasing cuck with no principles that nobody can ever really trust or respect. What the hell did I just read?
      - blipvert 2y ago
        I think that it was the kind of screed that an incel might regurgitate
    - squeaky-clean 2y ago
      All the "10x programmers" I've ever met have been taken advantage of way more and been used as company slaves more than the "clock watchers". I'll "bend over" and be pleasant during a meeting. Then on Friday night I leave work, have a date night with my girlfriend and have to silence Slack because the 10x guy got suckered into working on some odd feature instead of living life. In the end, I get the same salary and the same equity. Who's the person actually being bent over by the industry here?
      - kortilla 2y ago
        You don’t get the same salary and equity as a top performer. Very few companies give flat raises and bonuses without taking into account performance. And if your manager cares about productivity, the 10x programmer is going to take the cake.
- klardotsh 2y ago
  The paperwork matters far more than the actual work. Having your Jira tickets (or whatever) up to date and highly granular, and organized into all the taxonomies of sprints/epics/etc, and of course actually communicating status with teammates, tends to be significantly higher-valued than any actual code you're getting done, at least as far as winning brownie points and promotions are concerned.
largelady97 2y ago
[flagged]
- Throw_Away_1049 2y ago
  You’re right but OP is right too. If you can politic well, you can surpass a 10x programmer due to increased leverage. So, work on both I guess.
feoren 2y ago
I really hate that attitude. It's so self-defeating. The only way to ever advance your career is by becoming a worthless little middle-manager parasite? I'd rather quit. I know that's the common belief: just program long enough that you never have to do it again and then you get a cushy job telling other people what to do and spending hours in worthless meetings coming up with short-sighted "initiatives" to pump up your bullshit metrics so you can climb the ladder-of-shit even higher and play your ridiculous game over and over again while sucking the blood out of the work that real employees are doing. Unfortunately you might even be right that that's the optimal strategy for some kind of psycopathic narcissist who only cares about making as much money for as little work as possible. But some people want to do more with their professional life than to become a slimy little worm parasitizing the hard work of others.
- kortilla 2y ago
  Your attitude towards management is self-defeating too. Good managers make sure people aren’t working on the wrong problems, they clear barriers, and the defend the team from distractions from above.
- myaccountonhn 2y ago
  It doesn’t match my experience. I developed features faster than the rest of my team and implemented a bunch of practices that are not known in the industry. As a result we delivered more and I got promoted. Also be vary of someone saying that just because things aren’t measured it is just an opinion. Most important decisions you make won’t be measurable (a lot will though), that does not mean there aren’t good and bad decisions.

ivanjermakov 2y ago

This resonates well with my thinking. Programming I do for money is quite different from programming I do as a hobby. If I wouldn't keep them separate, I would lose passion to it fairly quickly.

bigdict 2y ago

Could you expand a bit on what you mean by administration?

wavemode 2y ago
Not OP but I would say, generally non-engineering things that keep the business people happy. Project planning, delegating tasks, dashboards and metrics (customer feedback, if you can acquire it, is a big plus), setting and meeting deadlines, and knowing how to sell yourself. There's that old (and very true) wisdom that if you solve a complex problem in two days, the business people won't think "wow, this guy is so smart and hard-working for solving that in 2 days." They will think "oh, this problem must not have been very hard to solve. Let's assign him extra work." Being a good engineer only gets you so far, career-wise.
austin-cheney 2y ago
Writing ample clear documentation, precision of communication, dutifully fulfilling all timesheets, logging of work performed, attending all requested meetings, and always delivering work on time.
- largelady97 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - austin-cheney 2y ago
    Absolutely. The problem with trying too hard to be a great craftsman is that you become emotionally invested. Most of your peers will not have this and will not understand it. Someone else mentioned becoming a 10x developer and yet being surpassed in your career. That is absolutely very real.
  - wiseowise 2y ago
    > Your advice for being valuable is basically to slave away and follow your masters orders at daily scrum, not leave your box one minute outside of your allocated time , attend all bending over sessions and be pleasant as you take it , say what they want you to say with precision and always be whatever they want you to be i.e a massive people pleasing cuck with no principles that nobody can ever really trust or respect. What the hell did I just read?
    - blipvert 2y ago
      I think that it was the kind of screed that an incel might regurgitate
  - squeaky-clean 2y ago
    All the "10x programmers" I've ever met have been taken advantage of way more and been used as company slaves more than the "clock watchers". I'll "bend over" and be pleasant during a meeting. Then on Friday night I leave work, have a date night with my girlfriend and have to silence Slack because the 10x guy got suckered into working on some odd feature instead of living life. In the end, I get the same salary and the same equity. Who's the person actually being bent over by the industry here?
    - kortilla 2y ago
      You don’t get the same salary and equity as a top performer. Very few companies give flat raises and bonuses without taking into account performance. And if your manager cares about productivity, the 10x programmer is going to take the cake.
klardotsh 2y ago
The paperwork matters far more than the actual work. Having your Jira tickets (or whatever) up to date and highly granular, and organized into all the taxonomies of sprints/epics/etc, and of course actually communicating status with teammates, tends to be significantly higher-valued than any actual code you're getting done, at least as far as winning brownie points and promotions are concerned.

largelady97 2y ago

[flagged]

Throw_Away_1049 2y ago
You’re right but OP is right too. If you can politic well, you can surpass a 10x programmer due to increased leverage. So, work on both I guess.

feoren 2y ago

I really hate that attitude. It's so self-defeating. The only way to ever advance your career is by becoming a worthless little middle-manager parasite? I'd rather quit. I know that's the common belief: just program long enough that you never have to do it again and then you get a cushy job telling other people what to do and spending hours in worthless meetings coming up with short-sighted "initiatives" to pump up your bullshit metrics so you can climb the ladder-of-shit even higher and play your ridiculous game over and over again while sucking the blood out of the work that real employees are doing. Unfortunately you might even be right that that's the optimal strategy for some kind of psycopathic narcissist who only cares about making as much money for as little work as possible. But some people want to do more with their professional life than to become a slimy little worm parasitizing the hard work of others.

kortilla 2y ago
Your attitude towards management is self-defeating too. Good managers make sure people aren’t working on the wrong problems, they clear barriers, and the defend the team from distractions from above.
myaccountonhn 2y ago
It doesn’t match my experience. I developed features faster than the rest of my team and implemented a bunch of practices that are not known in the industry. As a result we delivered more and I got promoted. Also be vary of someone saying that just because things aren’t measured it is just an opinion. Most important decisions you make won’t be measurable (a lot will though), that does not mean there aren’t good and bad decisions.