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Problem for new hires is the onboarding process is very critical to determine if you'll be doing good work or not. Fighting against a code base all the time as

Problem for new hires is the onboarding process is very critical to determine if you'll be doing good work or not. Fighting against a code base all the time as you're left to your own devices is an uphill battle.

hinkley 2y ago
A lot of places end up selecting for their own brand of crazy because of that. The people who think, "this is fine" tend to fit in better. From a team stability perspective that's fine? But echo chambers eventually eat themselves and new perspective can lead to new features or bug fixes.
- polishdude20 2y ago
  Last place I worked was like that. "Just embrace the chaos" but also "your new ideas aren't welcome here"
  - malfist 2y ago
    There's a very delicate balance to walk between chaos that works and a new idea that might be better or it might be worse or bring it's own type of chaos.
    - hinkley 2y ago
      One of my coworkers told me (mostly joking) I wasn't allowed to talk to any more of his team because every person I talked to left. I was trying to recruit people to help me fix the chaos. It's not my fault they decided it would be easier to start over somewhere else once they agreed about all the things that pissed me off.
  - darth_avocado 2y ago
    Unfortunately when you go to a party, you can’t change the music until you’ve told a few jokes that everyone laughed at.
    - meltyness 2y ago
      So fun is proportional to the extent to which the punch bowl has been spiked? Seriously asking.
  - oefrha 2y ago
    Often times your new ideas aren’t new after all. Been there done that, only realized my stupidity as I grew more experienced.
    - hinkley 2y ago
      That's the young kids. Most of us are trying to bring in solutions we already tested elsewhere, so we don't have to regress just because we got a new job. Or get rid of new things that YOU PEOPLE invented when there's a perfectly workable industry standard that isn't festooned with corner cases and no documentation. That is incidentally one of the advantages of contributing fixes back to OSS. At least you don't have to fix the same bugs in your tools again at every job. After a few years you start to forget how you did it.
      - oefrha 2y ago
        And you’re usually not the first one to have brought it up, even though you think you are. So people are wasting time shooting down what they have shot down before, not a great way to introduce yourself.
        hinkley 2y ago
        Not necessarily. Recalcitrance is the flip side of this coin. But it tends to break down when five different people are telling you in five different ways how you’re fucking things up for everybody by being stubborn. I’ve learned to send the new guy to ask instead of parroting back why we aren’t going to be allowed to change something stupid. Because once in a while they disappear for an hour and then come back with news that we’re finally going to fix it. We all have to look at the same code. The person who writes it specifically for their own tastes has an undue advantage over everyone else because the code exactly matches their crazy. But if you write code everyone else can also read, you only slow yourself down a little and double or triple everyone else’s productivity. Or you can keep being the selfish asshole who uses appeals to authority. Don’t be surprised if you start encountering coup attempts.
darth_avocado 2y ago
Problem for new hires is also whether your manager will support the onboarding. If you get throw n to the wolves with 1 month of “onboarding”, you’ll fail even with straightforward codebases. I’ve seen managers who bring you in and ask you, what the you and the team should be doing. And that’s never ended well.
- namaria 2y ago
  > I’ve seen managers who bring you in and ask you, what the you and the team should be doing. And that’s never ended well. Been there. Very personality driven business, making tons of money with prebid. The whole business was a tangled mess. I lasted 3 months and the crazy thing is, the trigger to leave wasn't even the mess and the absolute lack of onboarding or technical leadership. I was willing to help them fix it. But the owner had a habit of yelling at employees and by the 3rd time I witnessed it was happening to me and I quit on the spot.

hinkley 2y ago

A lot of places end up selecting for their own brand of crazy because of that. The people who think, "this is fine" tend to fit in better. From a team stability perspective that's fine? But echo chambers eventually eat themselves and new perspective can lead to new features or bug fixes.

polishdude20 2y ago
Last place I worked was like that. "Just embrace the chaos" but also "your new ideas aren't welcome here"
- malfist 2y ago
  There's a very delicate balance to walk between chaos that works and a new idea that might be better or it might be worse or bring it's own type of chaos.
  - hinkley 2y ago
    One of my coworkers told me (mostly joking) I wasn't allowed to talk to any more of his team because every person I talked to left. I was trying to recruit people to help me fix the chaos. It's not my fault they decided it would be easier to start over somewhere else once they agreed about all the things that pissed me off.
- darth_avocado 2y ago
  Unfortunately when you go to a party, you can’t change the music until you’ve told a few jokes that everyone laughed at.
  - meltyness 2y ago
    So fun is proportional to the extent to which the punch bowl has been spiked? Seriously asking.
- oefrha 2y ago
  Often times your new ideas aren’t new after all. Been there done that, only realized my stupidity as I grew more experienced.
  - hinkley 2y ago
    That's the young kids. Most of us are trying to bring in solutions we already tested elsewhere, so we don't have to regress just because we got a new job. Or get rid of new things that YOU PEOPLE invented when there's a perfectly workable industry standard that isn't festooned with corner cases and no documentation. That is incidentally one of the advantages of contributing fixes back to OSS. At least you don't have to fix the same bugs in your tools again at every job. After a few years you start to forget how you did it.
    - oefrha 2y ago
      And you’re usually not the first one to have brought it up, even though you think you are. So people are wasting time shooting down what they have shot down before, not a great way to introduce yourself.
      - hinkley 2y ago
        Not necessarily. Recalcitrance is the flip side of this coin. But it tends to break down when five different people are telling you in five different ways how you’re fucking things up for everybody by being stubborn. I’ve learned to send the new guy to ask instead of parroting back why we aren’t going to be allowed to change something stupid. Because once in a while they disappear for an hour and then come back with news that we’re finally going to fix it. We all have to look at the same code. The person who writes it specifically for their own tastes has an undue advantage over everyone else because the code exactly matches their crazy. But if you write code everyone else can also read, you only slow yourself down a little and double or triple everyone else’s productivity. Or you can keep being the selfish asshole who uses appeals to authority. Don’t be surprised if you start encountering coup attempts.

darth_avocado 2y ago

Problem for new hires is also whether your manager will support the onboarding. If you get throw n to the wolves with 1 month of “onboarding”, you’ll fail even with straightforward codebases. I’ve seen managers who bring you in and ask you, what the you and the team should be doing. And that’s never ended well.

namaria 2y ago
> I’ve seen managers who bring you in and ask you, what the you and the team should be doing. And that’s never ended well. Been there. Very personality driven business, making tons of money with prebid. The whole business was a tangled mess. I lasted 3 months and the crazy thing is, the trigger to leave wasn't even the mess and the absolute lack of onboarding or technical leadership. I was willing to help them fix it. But the owner had a habit of yelling at employees and by the 3rd time I witnessed it was happening to me and I quit on the spot.