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Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?

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Re: Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?

#101

Post by ghaff »

sumeno wrote: post #80
eudamoniac wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But 1 on 1 meetings are not crossing team boundaries, they are always within the team which is pretty much always smaller than 50. There's no reason the team cannot "talk to everyone all the time" just because other teams exist. But instead this communication is replaced by meetings even though the ability to talk hasn't changed.

Managers DO cross team boundaries though, their peers are other managers. I can't talk to the 100 people in my department every week, but my manager can talk to their 9 peers, who each talk to their 10 reports.

And at larger companies, teams and groups are often geographically distributed if only in other buildings and office locations.

Re: Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?

#102

Post by wenbin »

It’s basically bullshit jobs — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs

The compensation can be high, but the psychological cost is real. Over time, that tradeoff isn’t always worth it: someone might earn more in the short term, yet pay for it with chronic stress, declining mental health, and even a shorter lifespan compared to a lower-paid role that’s more meaningful and less draining.

Re: Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?

#103

Post by Jeremy1026 »

boxed wrote: post #78
Jeremy1026 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must have forgotten about how bad Twitter was after the takeover/purge. December 2022 - https://mashable.com/article/twitter-down-elon-says-works-fi... February 2023 - https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-outage-elon-musk-cos... March 2023 - https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-64811286

And yet, it's up NOW.

It's obviously hard to say how accurate these numbers[1] are, but it looks like Twitter has doubled their workforce from its lowest following their mass layoffs. It might be stable again now because they hired the workforce required to actually keep it running.

[1] https://www.demandsage.com/twitter-employees/

Re: Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?

#104

Post by bluGill »

wqaatwt wrote: post #30
quadrifoliate wrote: post #15

> Like the majority of the team is doing useless stuff that management thinks is impressive This is arrogant thinking typical of developers. Most developers I have talked to (including myself 10 years ago) thinks that they or their friends who agree with them about all sorts of random code quirks are the only one that does work and "carries" the team, and everyone else's work is largely useless. The reality is that a…

It’s not so much the individual employees fault (or personal failing) that most of them in most large enterprise companies aren’t doing anything meaningful and useful. That’s just how large organizations works, bloat and inefficiency is kind of unavoidable in any type of large organization.

Many are not doing anything obviously meaningful and useful. However that doesn't mean it isn't meaningful or useful, only that you don't know.

Re: Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?

#106

Post by tamimio »

The reason why I distant myself from software even before AI is because of all the shenanigans the software people do, primarily silicon valley but it echoes quickly beyond that where other companies try to copy cat it. It feels like a cult, with all sort of weird rituals, if you are an individualist it’s hard to maintain it there.

Re: Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?

#107

Post by JohnMakin »

dieselgate wrote: post #91
JohnMakin wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does this have to take place in a meeting? Why can't it be in a team slack? What value gain do you give talking an engineer through what's bothering them? Are they not capable of that independently of you? A middleman's value is quite limited, of course as a middleman, you don't see it that way, but I find these meetings extraordinarily unproductive, even anti-productive, depending on how bad the "manager" is.

Usually people clam up and are not vocal during group meetings. I am not one of them but it's super common. 1-1s allow people to be more candid.

I am not against 1 on 1's, but making that a regularly scheduled thing as if that adds value is kind of what I am arguing against. If people don't feel comfortable voicing something unless it is in private to their manager, that suggests to me two things - the manager/leadership is not fostering a collaborative environment, or the person needs to work on that (with the assistance/support of their manager), which I see as a manager's primary value gain, empowering their employees.

Managing via 1 on 1's sounds (to me) like a complete waste of everyone's time and a little bit toxic. It also can create an environment encouraging people to go around each other and backstab rather than collaborate. I have been in a lead position before, I'd be very concerned and probably have a series of chats with any dev that sat on something like a blocker until we spoke one on one, or only felt comfortable speaking one on one.

Some things do need to be spoken privately, and they should feel comfortable doing so/scheduling it, but a regularly scheduled thing as a way of managing, unless I am completely misunderstanding GP comment, is crazy to me. Of course I am speaking strictly manager/lead -> developer. A manager managing managers is probably quite a bit different and does require scheduling 1 on 1's regularly to align and adjust, but I wouldn't really know, because I've never been in that role.

Re: Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?

#108

Post by quotemstr »

ryandvm wrote: post #57
cjbgkagh wrote: post #14

What you are describing as performative I would describe as bureaucratic. The Iron Law or Bureaucracy: Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and sc…

Yeah, pretty much all systems of governance ultimately evolve until their primary purpose is actually ensuring the survival of the system of governance and anything else it accomplishes is kind of a side effect. It's probably some sort of informational axiom of rules systems in general whether bureaucratic or biological or whatever. Hell, DNA is just rules about what you can build and it's primary purpose is just mak…

And that's why command economies fail. They fail in the same way that firms do, except that because the whole economy is one giant firm, you can't get the you need to remove entrenched bureaucrats until the situation gets so bad that you have a revolution or lose a war.

Re: Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?

#109

Post by jerlam »

eudamoniac wrote: post #67
ewidar wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In startups with less than 50 people (and I am being generous on the number), everyone talks to everyone all the time, so there is no need for these moments to extract key info to fix/improve situations, identify topics to push, ... But once the company is just large enough, there is no way you're going to interact with everyone in a meaningful manner (n^2 relationships and all that), and the simplest solution is int…

But 1 on 1 meetings are not crossing team boundaries, they are always within the team which is pretty much always smaller than 50. There's no reason the team cannot "talk to everyone all the time" just because other teams exist. But instead this communication is replaced by meetings even though the ability to talk hasn't changed.

Startups don't have as rigidly defined team boundaries. It wouldn't be uncommon for people to take up tasks and responsibilities that would fall under some other team with a different manager.

In larger corporations, teams are insular - members aren't rewarded for doing work outside of their domain, and would be punished for letting another team do their job. Some members are so indoctrinated that they won't respond to any communication outside of their team, unless it's through their own manager.

Re: Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?

#110

Post by [deleted] »

aloe_falsa wrote: post #74

I don't know which FAANGs you have experience with, but the companies and teams I worked for were very numbers- and impact-oriented. No amount of posturing and politics would help you at performance review if you couldn't show that you accomplished some goals and moved some KPIs that ultimately made the company money. YMMV though - if you know people who managed to stay at a FAANG for a significant time without produ…

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