4 ms·

> I'd go further and say you're not a senior if your code isn't good you shouldn't be a senior. You say that until you are tasked with doing impossible - three

by Ygg2 11mo ago

> I'd go further and say you're not a senior if your code isn't good you shouldn't be a senior. You say that until you are tasked with doing impossible - three lines, all perpendicular, five green, two anti-green, seven in ten or more dimensions, any color; while customer only uses purple lines. Last guy that worked on it committed seppuku. Rest of team is in mental ward. Your only team member is guy that programmed his entire life in PHP, and doesn't know backend's language. Just teach him. Documentation, is spread between Jira, wiki, Markdown, ftp server and some napkins. CI stands for continuous Indians. You send code to India, where a team will assemble it. It may take anywhere between a few minutes or few hours. But it beats GitHub actions. Make sure to inspect artifacts, the Indian team has a habit to add some of their ""bug fixes"" covertly. But you gotta finish it by Thursday. Good luck.

Aeolun 11mo ago
There is a magic word that adults sometimes use. It is a word you have to learn to master if you want to be any good at your job. No.
- Ygg2 11mo ago
  Saying no is a privilege. It's easy to say if you have other options. It's extremely hard to say if others depend on you saying yes.
godelski 11mo ago
Words aren't absolute. No reasonable interpretation of my comment suggests I'm saying you should do the impossible. If someone asks you to do the impossible you have to say no. Better yet, you should figure out what they actually do want. They can't get the impossible, that's not on the table. The worst thing an engineer can do is not learn how to say no. I'll even say, if you don't know how to say no then you're not qualified to be a senior
- Ygg2 11mo ago
  Your assumption that seniors will be able to output good code in any situation is what is the issue. As a senior I've been tasked with impossible tasks, with insane deadlines, in ""enterprise"" code bases. Sure, saying NO is an option, but being the NO guy is surefire way to getting fired. And nothing looks better on resume than repeated firings.
  - godelski 11mo ago
    Again, you need to reasonably interpret what I'm saying. Picking out an edge case and acting as if it is some mic drop is disingenuous. We can't communicate if you hyper fixate on one tree when our discussion is about the forest. Language isn't precise enough to do that without getting extremely verbose. So either I can write a novel in response (I'm not going to) to explain what I said above or you can work with me here. If you're really not getting it I'm sure an LLM could help you out if you also fed it the responses. > As a senior I've been tasked with impossible tasks Sure. Even juniors get this. But an impossible task is an impossible task. > Sure, saying NO is an option Saying no is always an option. When given an impossible task it's the only option. There's many ways to say no. Not delivering is one of them > being the NO guy is surefire way to getting fired. You do not get fired for saying no, you get fired for how you say no. You get fired because the project fails. You get fired because you push back against an egotistical manager who doesn't understand the problem and none of the other engineers back you up. It's all about how you say no. You don't have to use the word to do so. Instead lead them down the right path and make them understand. You don't lecture them. Managers are like cats, you have to make them think it's their idea. So you have to ask clarifying questions and when doing so you can introduce explanations that let them know that it's not possible. The goal is to put all the puzzle pieces on the table, put the right ones next to each other and let them put the final pieces together. If they don't then they don't feel like they did anything. You are not a mindless automata directed by your manager. That's not the role of a senior. Your job is to get things done. A senior knows that "the customer" (in this case your manner) doesn't know what they want and doesn't know how to say what they do. The job is to figure that out as best as possible
    - Ygg2 11mo ago
- sethammons 11mo ago
  My CTO, when told that adding scope, reducing headcount, and keeping the same timeline all while discovering new unknowns in the codebase was not possible, we were simply told to make the date and asked who's performance review will be impacted. The "no" was entirely ignored. "I don't accept that." How do you say no in that situation? Just quit?
  - Ygg2 11mo ago
    > How do you say no in that situation? Just quit? Apparently so. It seems GP never had to pay for their siblings to get through college, while paying rent. Just say no, quit, and ruin life of your loved ones, and become homeless. Ez.
    - godelski 11mo ago
      The GP has been homeless and lived off of discarded food. You're right that saying "no" is a privilege. But also there's nothing as empowering as knowing that it's not going to be as bad as it was before. Stop making assumptions about me and start trying to communicate with me. We can't talk if you want me to be wrong and just reinforce your position. And sorry, I'm not as good as doing the cat wrangling in social settings as I am in technical ones. It's a different set of tools to work with and much harder to do in an online setting.
      - Ygg2 11mo ago
        I did talk to you. Seniors don't matter, neither do junior, janitors, and to large part execs and CTO. Processes, and the whole structure of company, and past events determines the outcome not individuals. And on top of that broad economic movements. A good carrot in a rotten soup, is just a rotting carrot to be.
        godelski 11mo ago
        You're right that it is the whole structure, but the whole structure is made of people, individuals. Collective action can't happen without individual action. You don't just magically go from no people doing something to everybody doing something. You start with one person doing something, then more, and more, and it spreads like a virus. Both good and bad behavior spread this way, not instantly. Look, our literal job is to take hard problems and break them down into small and more manageable problems, right? Addressing the whole company is too big of a problem, you have to break it down. You, you are an addressable problem that you can change. The people close to you? Harder, but easier than those far away. They're also easier to convince when you make the change yourself. Or you can just give up and rot in the soup. Would you rather try to remove the rot from the soup or bathe in it?

by Ygg2 11mo ago

Aeolun 11mo ago

There is a magic word that adults sometimes use. It is a word you have to learn to master if you want to be any good at your job. No.

Ygg2 11mo ago
Saying no is a privilege. It's easy to say if you have other options. It's extremely hard to say if others depend on you saying yes.

godelski 11mo ago

Words aren't absolute. No reasonable interpretation of my comment suggests I'm saying you should do the impossible. If someone asks you to do the impossible you have to say no. Better yet, you should figure out what they actually do want. They can't get the impossible, that's not on the table. The worst thing an engineer can do is not learn how to say no. I'll even say, if you don't know how to say no then you're not qualified to be a senior

Ygg2 11mo ago
Your assumption that seniors will be able to output good code in any situation is what is the issue. As a senior I've been tasked with impossible tasks, with insane deadlines, in ""enterprise"" code bases. Sure, saying NO is an option, but being the NO guy is surefire way to getting fired. And nothing looks better on resume than repeated firings.
- godelski 11mo ago
  Again, you need to reasonably interpret what I'm saying. Picking out an edge case and acting as if it is some mic drop is disingenuous. We can't communicate if you hyper fixate on one tree when our discussion is about the forest. Language isn't precise enough to do that without getting extremely verbose. So either I can write a novel in response (I'm not going to) to explain what I said above or you can work with me here. If you're really not getting it I'm sure an LLM could help you out if you also fed it the responses. > As a senior I've been tasked with impossible tasks Sure. Even juniors get this. But an impossible task is an impossible task. > Sure, saying NO is an option Saying no is always an option. When given an impossible task it's the only option. There's many ways to say no. Not delivering is one of them > being the NO guy is surefire way to getting fired. You do not get fired for saying no, you get fired for how you say no. You get fired because the project fails. You get fired because you push back against an egotistical manager who doesn't understand the problem and none of the other engineers back you up. It's all about how you say no. You don't have to use the word to do so. Instead lead them down the right path and make them understand. You don't lecture them. Managers are like cats, you have to make them think it's their idea. So you have to ask clarifying questions and when doing so you can introduce explanations that let them know that it's not possible. The goal is to put all the puzzle pieces on the table, put the right ones next to each other and let them put the final pieces together. If they don't then they don't feel like they did anything. You are not a mindless automata directed by your manager. That's not the role of a senior. Your job is to get things done. A senior knows that "the customer" (in this case your manner) doesn't know what they want and doesn't know how to say what they do. The job is to figure that out as best as possible
  - Ygg2 11mo ago
sethammons 11mo ago
My CTO, when told that adding scope, reducing headcount, and keeping the same timeline all while discovering new unknowns in the codebase was not possible, we were simply told to make the date and asked who's performance review will be impacted. The "no" was entirely ignored. "I don't accept that." How do you say no in that situation? Just quit?
- Ygg2 11mo ago
  > How do you say no in that situation? Just quit? Apparently so. It seems GP never had to pay for their siblings to get through college, while paying rent. Just say no, quit, and ruin life of your loved ones, and become homeless. Ez.
  - godelski 11mo ago
    The GP has been homeless and lived off of discarded food. You're right that saying "no" is a privilege. But also there's nothing as empowering as knowing that it's not going to be as bad as it was before. Stop making assumptions about me and start trying to communicate with me. We can't talk if you want me to be wrong and just reinforce your position. And sorry, I'm not as good as doing the cat wrangling in social settings as I am in technical ones. It's a different set of tools to work with and much harder to do in an online setting.
    - Ygg2 11mo ago
      I did talk to you. Seniors don't matter, neither do junior, janitors, and to large part execs and CTO. Processes, and the whole structure of company, and past events determines the outcome not individuals. And on top of that broad economic movements. A good carrot in a rotten soup, is just a rotting carrot to be.
      - godelski 11mo ago
        You're right that it is the whole structure, but the whole structure is made of people, individuals. Collective action can't happen without individual action. You don't just magically go from no people doing something to everybody doing something. You start with one person doing something, then more, and more, and it spreads like a virus. Both good and bad behavior spread this way, not instantly. Look, our literal job is to take hard problems and break them down into small and more manageable problems, right? Addressing the whole company is too big of a problem, you have to break it down. You, you are an addressable problem that you can change. The people close to you? Harder, but easier than those far away. They're also easier to convince when you make the change yourself. Or you can just give up and rot in the soup. Would you rather try to remove the rot from the soup or bathe in it?