7 ms·
Always be ready to leave (even if you never do)
- BinaryIgor 11mo agoVery wise; have been following this approach since years and I highly recommend it. This one (from the article) is a gem: "I’ll work like I might stay forever, and like I might leave tomorrow" Besides practical benefits of this approach mentioned in the article, it's the attitude that brings you closer to stoicism that just makes your whole life, not only professional one, better.
- sfpotter 11mo ago[flagged]
- sph 11mo agoNo em dashes, but there’s enough “it’s not X, it’s Y” give aways of LLM usage.
- pstuart 11mo agoI've used double dashes for years and now they get automatically turned into em dashes, and I'm not an LLM (that I can tell so far).
- readthenotes1 11mo agoI asked Perplexity to provide a witty reply--but none of the ones provided were amusing enough.
- goopypoop 11mo agothanks
- setopt 11mo agoI manually type en- and em-dashes, which on Mac is easily typed using the Option key and on Linux is easily typed with a Compose key, and even on iOS you just long-press the hyphen key. I had to learn the difference between hyphen, en-dash, and em-dash when typesetting scientific papers and theses in LaTeX, and after that it just doesn’t feel right to not use them "properly".
- MikeTheGreat 11mo agoand I'm not an LLM (that I can tell so far). Maybe ask your doctor to administer a Turing test?
- pstuart 11mo agoI believe the correct test to administer would be the Voight-Kampff test. https://bladerunner.fandom.com/wiki/Voight-Kampff_test https://bladerunner.fandom.com/wiki/Voight-Kampff_test
- ashtakeaway 11mo ago[dead]
- novok 11mo agoThere are em dashes: "I’d been talking openly about my struggles for over a year—lack of motivation, missing promotion, compensation not matching my contributions."
- onraglanroad 11mo agoNo, that's just the way some people write. Where do you think AI learnt to write like that? @dang these complaints about AI are more tedious than any other complaints about the website. Might be time to add something to the "guidelines".
- ptsneves 11mo agoI agree. The complaints about AI are about the form and not the substance, ergo the substance is fine.
- jryle70 11mo agoThis. Such complaints have become so cringe worthy, they drown out any comments with substance.
- seabass 11mo agoStrongly disagree. If you read enough of it the patterns in ai text are so familiar. Take this paragraph for example: > Here’s what surprised me: the practices that made my exit smooth weren’t “exit strategies.” They were professional habits I should have built years earlier—habits that made work better even when I was staying. “It’s not x—it’s y.”, the dashes, the q&a style text from the parent comment, and overall cadence were too hard to look past. So for a counterpoint about the complaints being tedious, I’d say they are nice to preempt the realization that I’m wasting time reading ai output.
- neilv 11mo agoRegardless, people are going to start writing naturally like current LLM output, because that's a lot of what they are reading. A tech doc writer once mentioned how she'd been reading Hunter S. Thompson, and that it was immediately bleeding into her technical writing. So I tried reading some HST myself, and... some open source code documentation immediately got a little punchy. > So for a counterpoint about the complaints being tedious, I’d say they are nice to preempt the realization that I’m wasting time reading ai output. Good point. And if it's actually genuine original text from someone whose style was merely tainted by reading lots of "AI" slop, I guess that might be a reason to prefer reading someone who has a healthier intellectual diet.
- OutOfHere 11mo agoPlease cease and desist from labeling things as AI. If you want to criticize the material, assume good faith and criticize it as if it is written by a human.
- seabass 11mo agoYou can compare the writing style from the earlier articles like this from 2020, pre-GPT. https://andreacanton.dev/posts/2020-02-19-git-mantras/ https://andreacanton.dev/posts/2020-02-19-git-mantras/
- xdfgh1112 11mo agoI guess AI is the new catchall term for "cliched or bad writing"
- dang 11mo agoI agree and believe this is the best way to understand the situation. I posted this in December 2022 because it was already clear we were headed this way: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33950747 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33950747
- greatgib 11mo agoThe best time to document isn’t two weeks before leaving. It’s right now. Clearly AI written or virtue-signaling post, because this doesn't make any sense. If you are leaving it is that you are unhappy with the company, and you owe them nothing and they owe nothing to you, I don't see why you would stress yourself with documenting your work when you are leaving... Their loss if you go. But even more, why a small employee in his right mind would make himself replaceable for the good of the company...
- radley 11mo agoGood habits and reputation carry forward.
- xdfgh1112 11mo agoBefore AI people would still say things like this. "The best time to plant a tree is 10 years ago. The second best time is now". Among the set of such constructs, some are overused by LLM and have become a symbolic of it, but they will still show up in human writing with the same frequency as before.
- andreacanton 11mo agoThank you for your comment. yes, english is not my first language, so I use AI to helping me structure the article, but I've edited and fully reviewed and take responsibility for every word in it. (Anyway I will trust less AI next time, so thank you) What I was trying to say is that if you do less because you don't like where you work, you are losing opportunity to learn skills, or worst: you are learning to do less in general. How can you find a new and better job if you are doing less?
- greatgib 11mo agoThank you for your reply. First, you can do your job but not be overzealous. Second, it is not because you are not "doing more" for your employer that you miss opportunities to learn skills. You can do that for yourself on your personal time to your own benefit. In addition, with what you wrote, it didn't look that like that you were suggesting to learn skills: You said to document what you already know, "transfer" your knowledge, so that it is easier for others in the company to live without you (or get ride of you).
- Ecstatify 11mo agoHonestly, it sounds like the usual clichéd advice. I was expecting something more practical, like doing an interview every six months or something along those lines. Supervisors and HR just smile and nod. Maybe if he had a better relationship with his manager, he would’ve realised sooner that he was just wasting his time. Documentation is like an untested disaster recovery plan. When a major issue happens, you’ll be the one called. You should delegate or automate the task and remove it from your workload, especially if it carries high risk. I’d actually love to read the dark arts equivalent of this article.
- neilv 11mo ago> I was expecting [...] like doing an interview every six months Incidentally, I hear advice like that (especially a variation, of "practice" interviews) on HN, but I really wish people wouldn't do that. Actually, please don't do this resource burning with startups or other SMBs, unless it's clear they want to burn resources. But feel free to burn the resources of FAANGs, who mostly created the idea that interviews should be a series of performance rituals that you have to practice and refresh on. (Though the related phenomenon, of techbro frequent job-hopping, wasn't the fault of FAANGs. It seemed to start during the dotcom boom, pre-Google, especially in the Bay Area, AFAICT, where a lot of people were chasing the most promising rapid IPO. At the time, the rumors/grumbling I was hearing from the Bay Area made me want to do a startup in Cambridge/Boston instead, just to avoid that culture. After the dotcom IPO gold rush ended, it seemed that job-hopping for big pay boosts and promotions became a thing, and that job-hopping culture never went away. But I don't think we'll find much team loyalty anywhere anymore, not from companies nor from colleagues, so that's no longer a reason I'd avoid the Bay Area specifically.)
- bdangubic 11mo agoI don’t think SWEs realize just how many companies out there will look at a resume of a job hopper (even if there is 10 years at FAANG, say 2 at each) and outright reject the candidate on those grounds.
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- bayarearefugee 11mo agoWell written blog post, but its a bit too adjacent to LinkedIn slop-posting in actual message, for me. I can't help but think the real take away is that you should trust your gut and quit a lot sooner and the poster basically wasted a year being jerked around. If you are telling your employer you are unhappy for a whole year and they don't fix the conditions leading to your unhappiness, they are telling you they don't value you enough to make those changes (for the sake of simplicity, I'll just assume the employee's specific points of dissatisfaction were reasonable fixes and not ridiculous asks). You don't owe them a year of soft landing when you quit, in the vast majority of cases they wouldn't have given you anywhere near that if they let you go.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- bitwize 11mo agoRemember that immediately after Mao's Hundred Flowers Campaign, in which the CCP solicited "honest feedback" about how well they were doing, came the Anti-Rightist Campaign, in which the complainers were identified and punished, sometimes executed. If the decision makers are welcoming honest feedback, chances are pretty good it's to put you on a potential troublemaker list so they'll know just who to hand pink slips to at the next round of needed layoffs (if not before). Unless you're prepared to lose your job TODAY, treat your employer like the Roman Empire, and the CEO like Caesar.
- mathattack 11mo agoI’m amazed how many people leave on bad terms. Over any medium and long term time horizon it’s a terrible strategy. You never know who will do a quiet back channel reference, and many times we wind up working for the same people. The other piece of advice about documentation is important beyond leaving for a new job. Many people lose promotions because “who could possibly backfill them?” Creating a high talent well documented organization is a great signal for promotion readiness, and takes a roadblock away from it too.
- tschellenbach 11mo agoYes it's crazy. There's the founders podcast about Elon Musk. Apparently he stayed in good contact with the Paypal people, even though they fired him and later on that relationship saved Spacex.
- mathattack 11mo agoAnd now he appears on their podcast.
- throwuxiytayq 11mo ago[flagged]
- alpineidyll3 11mo agoThe author left out the most important detail: - Before being ready to leave, make sure you either have, or will have, another opportunity or no need for an employer. VERY often (especially in tech!) employers/managers will have employees, not for their labor, but for vanity, to build a pyramid to themselves, or for image reasons. Such people will immediately send you packing for complaining about non-productivity. Your perception of your superior's alignment can easily be wrong. Given that precondition... I agree with the premise.
- andreacanton 11mo agoThank you for sharing this important detail! Yes, I have done it 10 years ago: I've left a job because of burnout without another opportunity. After that, I've panicked for 6 months without a job. Never again: I promised myself to never leave a job if I was without energy.
- weinzierl 11mo ago"Always be ready to leave" Big yes "For a year before leaving, I talked openly with my supervisor and HR about my dissatisfaction" Big, big, big no. Might have worked for OP this time but in general this will backfire drastically. In many European countries this can even reduce the usually robust protections you have as an employee.
- bartvk 11mo agoIt completely depends on the management. Be sure to know them.
- grumbelbart 11mo ago> In many European countries this can even reduce the usually robust protections you have as an employee. Huh, where?
- caminante 11mo agoHuh, why would openly complaining about your job to your boss/HR be protected in a "just cause" regime?
- ahtihn 11mo agoWhy would complaining reduce existing protections.
- caminante 11mo agoYour question makes no sense because nobody said this and if a protection can get reduced, then it's not a real protection, lol.
- theoreticalmal 11mo ago“European countries this can even reduce the usually robust protections you have as an employee.”
- Refreeze5224 11mo agoAbsolutely. You employer is willing and able to fire you and eliminate your healthcare coverage at the drop of a hat with no remorse, and we should all never forget, and always be prepared for that fact.
- rufus_foreman 11mo agoExcept for gross misconduct, COBRA. Yes, you will need to pay for the coverage that the employer was paying for, but that's not "eliminate your healthcare coverage at the drop of a hat with no remorse".
- theoreticalmal 11mo agoAlso don’t forget you can delay paying for COBRA for up to 59 days after loss of employment and still be able to retroactively pay and be covered. It’s a gamble that you get to go back on if you cards break the wrong way
- georgemcbay 11mo agoI agree with the gist of what you are saying wholeheartedly. Always be prepared to be thrown under the bus by your employer, no matter how unlikely it seems... but that isn't really the message of the original blog post beyond the possibility space of the headline. The actual contents are almost the opposite, the blog poster stayed around in their role for an entire year while letting their employer know they were unhappy. I'm all for professionalism when leaving a job. For any full-time position I've held I've always followed the 2 week notice standard as a minimum and have even done part-time work past the 2 week period in a couple of special cases where I understood the burden on the company I was leaving was more than a 2 week transition could handle. ... but I don't see how it counts as being ready to quit at any time if that quitting is the result of the company not being able to fix a job situation you've told them isn't working out for you over the course of an entire year.
- more_corn 11mo agoSome of the best work I’ve ever done has been in preparation for leaving. Documentation, automation, security, reliability. Theres nothing like the clarity of leaving to show the gaps.
- iku 11mo agoWhen I read the title, I was curious: is it about a business setting, or, maybe, about a private relationship / marriage context? As someone, who has walked away from more than one relationship, I see this perfectly applicable and sensible advice in both contexts, really. Thanks.
- idiotsecant 11mo agoAlways being ready to leave a relationship sounds like personality flaw, not sensible advice.
- theoreticalmal 11mo agoBeing willing (even ready) to walk away from marriage completely defeats the point of about half of the intangible benefits of marriage.
- 1970-01-01 11mo agoThey don't mention having a large pile of cash. You really aren't ready to leave at a moment's notice if you're in debt and need to eat.
- throwuxiytayq 11mo agoOh yeah, that’s the other protip: don’t get in debt, maybe?
- adt 11mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_writing#Negative_parallelisms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_writing#...
- andreacanton 11mo agoThank you English is not my first language so I trusted AI for my article. I will study better this behavior
- stack_framer 11mo agoMissing a promotion is extremely challenging. I started working toward a promotion to staff engineer at the beginning of 2023. By the end of the year, my manager said I was ready, but he had been asked to step back into an IC role, so he couldn't start my promotion paperwork. My new manager felt I wasn't ready for promotion, but she claimed I wouldn't have to start over. It felt like starting over though, because it took another year to convince her. During that time I consulted regularly with her and my director of engineering—seeking and taking every possible opportunity to demonstrate that I could operate at the staff level. My manager then spent six months writing an 18-page promotion packet, highlighting my accomplishments, and outlining why I deserved the promotion. The packet was approved by my director of engineering, so they both felt I was ready. It was then presented to an anonymous promotion committee, which ultimately makes the promotion decision. Despite two and a half years of effort, the committee rejected my promotion. They even provided a list of 12 bullet points where they felt I was coming up short. I gave up trying for the promotion, for my mental health. Sheesh.
- caminante 11mo agoTalk to an employment attorney. This sounds like potential "bait and switch" practices that have strung you along for less pay/accumulated earnings. I'm sorry you got such a mixed signal from your engineering tree and the promotion committee. Need to do more research on that promotion committee. This sounds like the committee nightmare that many PhD candidates face.
- einsteinx2 11mo agoSame type of BS happened to me at my last company, which ultimately let to me being extremely unhappy there and leaving. If I hadn’t gone for the promotion at all I’d probably still be there. I’ll never understand why companies as an almost universal rule make it as difficult as possible to get promoted or get a raise but will hire less qualified outsiders for those positions at higher pay without blinking an eye.
- TwoNineFive 11mo agoSome good advice but terrible form. Some of you software people have a loud, pretentious, and arrogant ego problem. With self-serving advertblogs like this, I always imagine that Simpsons episode where Bart has a pot on his head and is banging two pans together, yelling "I AM SO GREAT, I AM SO GREAT, EVERYBODY LOVES ME, I AM SO GREAT!" lol
- andreacanton 11mo agoThank you for your comment. This wasn't my intention, but I'll consider this aspect in future.