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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?

#221

Post by Aurornis »

Esophagus4 wrote: post #187
icedchai wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at a place where the manager had, at the height of the organization's growth, five reports. He couldn't handle that many 1:1's so, at one point, he made them into a "group" 1:1. Of course, that made no sense. Eventually his manager reversed the decision. I'm honestly sure what he did all day, but he eventually got laid off. The best companies I worked for had no 1:1's. Eventually the company was acquired and…

> The best companies I worked for had no 1:1's The problem with this is we will ask, “if you want to talk about career progression, or go over a technical question, or talk about performance feedback, how do you get that from your manager?” And one might say, “just Slack them or ask them for a call.” And the problem is that you now have created an environment where the voices the manager hears the most are the squeak…

You don’t need a meeting scheduled every single week just in case the person might want to talk about career progression that week.

Many teams can and do function well without rigid weekly 1:1s. The best performing companies I’ve worked for didn’t have anything resembling scheduled 1:1s. Everyone talked to their managers during their work and managers were available for conversations if you asked.

It’s interesting to hear from people who have only experienced these rigidly structured 1:1 situations who can’t understand how anyone could communicate without scheduled 1:1s.

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

#222

Post by Aurornis »

Esophagus4 wrote: post #211
watwut wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you need 1:1 to talk about technical questions, something is horribly wrong. And I would expect pwrformance feedback to have its own set of meetings. Second, scheduled 1:1 is not a mechanism to avoid politics. People who can play politics better are as much advantaged as they are without it. They will simply know better what to say and do in those 1:1.

> If you need 1:1 to talk about technical questions, something is horribly wrong. And I would expect pwrformance feedback to have its own set of meetings. With this approach, I hope you are not a manager.

What do you mean? Even at companies with strong 1:1 cultures it’s bad practice to save technical questions for 1:1s (shouldn’t be delaying them until the weekly slot) and performance reviews are scheduled separately from 1:1s because it shouldn’t take the place of normal communications. It’s an additional meeting with separate agendas.

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

#223

Post by danudey »

cebert wrote: post #156
harrall wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have standup every day so my manager knows what I am doing so my 1:1s are: - General sentiment about problems with the team and company that bother me but that I don’t have a solution to yet or decided how to bring it up with the team. - Fun / interesting projects I unilaterally decided to dedicate my working hours towards that I never asked permission to work on. Sometimes it ends up being something cool that my m…

So basically useless unless you need to schedule a meeting with them

It's beneficial to have someone to bounce things off of, to provide feedback, or to share a degree of personal information; it can be helpful for my manager to know that I have a lot of family stuff going on this week so I may be intermittently available, less productive, or working different hours.

It's also an opportunity to get on the same page about stuff or clarify things that might be a bit too long-form for a daily standup.

My 1:1s with my team lead vary between three minutes and 45 minutes; if there's a lot to cover, we cover it, if there's only one thing we discuss it and hop off. If there's nothing or if one of us is busy we just skip it.

I think the real benefit is that that time in my team lead's calendar is always blocked off for me if I need to use it for something so I don't have to wriggle around other meetings, appointments, etc. to get a slice of face-to-face time about something that doesn't feel 'important enough' to schedule a meeting for but which wouldn't get discussed otherwise.

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

#224

Post by danudey »

ozim wrote: post #195
wrxd wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With most of my managers 1:1 have always been a way for them to catch up with what I’ve been working on, despite doing a standup every single day so that the team knows what each other is doing.

That’s you, cool no problem I would like chatting with you just to catch a breath. But there is Mallory who will tell on everyone on the team some dirty stuff. There is Karen that is trying to undermine Louise because she has bigger boobs than her - yeah she won’t tell it outright but each one on one she would try to indicate she is not doing great job. There is Henry who thinks he is a fucking rockstar genius implem…

The problem you're talking about isn't 1:1 meetings, it's having a toxic and dysfunctional team of assholes at a shitty company. In that kind of environment every interaction with people is awful, 1:1 or not.

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

#225

Post by kittikitti »

I don't love this idea that software engineering is performative. It's become so prevalent that people instantly think my role is too. It's rather frustrating when you can point to dollar amounts related to the work you've been doing at corporate and then people ask if you do anything there. If you feel this way in your team, perhaps you can engage those who you think are being performative instead of criticize your own coworkers publicly.

It's become so bad that people don't realize what's not performative.

Also, just because I make things look easy or do things quickly, doesn't mean I didn't do anything at all.

I much prefer the label "coder" than software engineer because of this. It signals that the label isn't doing the heavy lifting.

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

#226

Post by bicepjai »

phyzix5761 wrote: post #12

Price's Law says that the square root of the total number of items or participants contributes to at least half of the results[0]. I've found this to be true in almost everything in life, including work and business. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%27s_law

That’s the first time I have heard this one. Feels something like Pareto principle

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

#227

Post by icedchai »

Aurornis wrote: post #220
jldugger wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because they have so many 1:1 recurring meetings scheduled each week that they don’t have time for anything else. Dude, a a weekly 1:1 should be 30 minutes long. And managers should have at most 10 directs, so 5 hours total out of a 40 hour work week. Something has gone haywire and it's not the 1:1 thats the problem. > I was requested to set up 1:1s not only with my team, but with each of the other teams we interfa…

> Dude, a a weekly 1:1 should be 30 minutes long. And managers should have at most 10 directs, so 5 hours total out of a 40 hour work week. Something has gone haywire and it's not the 1:1 thats the problem. I agree wholeheartedly, but this company culture had different ideas than you and I. Their idea of a 1:1 was that it was the formal and correct way to synchronize people. It wasn’t limited to managers and their re…

If I had not witnessed something similar myself, I wouldn't believe it either. How many "sync" meetings do you possibly need? How does anyone get any actual work done with all this going on?

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

#228

Post by pavel_lishin »

Obscurity4340 wrote: post #200
pavel_lishin wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There was a point of equilibrium in any organization’s middle management, a fulcrum of responsibility that remained still while the upper and lower ranks of the bureaucracy moved around it. Tyren knew from experience that a shrewd official could find this pivot-point within the org chart and, once entrenched, enjoy near-complete autonomy with almost no responsibility. From "Son of a Liche", by J. Zachary Pike.

Do you think this pivot-middle idea is generalizable to other domains? What is the logic or context that allows them such latitude and autonomy or to even conceptually exist at all? Are they specialized in such a way that they are qualified and expected to focus on higher-quality problems or difficult to hire for or they maybe dont have to deal directly with people in some sense How does one become sufficiently shrew…

To be clear, the book makes it very clear that Tyren was a bad person, and a bad manager, and that what he is doing is not something people should aspire to.

As far as logic and context? Every system has a place for... maybe "parasite" isn't a particularly good term, but there are places where one could get lost in the basement - hopefully with their favorite stapler.

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

#229

Post by hyperhello »

danudey wrote: post #218
order-matters wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assigning single purpose to things is not necessary. "Systems are what they do" is a quote for a reason. I think in addition to rules survival and admin self-concern, people genuinely underestimate how much maintenance and effort go into accomplishing goals in an organized, communicable, trustable way. It is also why AI is not as successful as people thought it was going to be at taking over jobs. If you think the on…

The quote that I heard was "the purpose of a system is what it does", which was to a degree kind of revelatory. The example I heard was McDonald's ice cream machines. What is the purpose of a McDonald's ice cream machine? To make ice cream? No, they break down all the time, they're actually pretty bad at making ice cream. The purpose of a McDonald's ice cream machine is to create billable service calls and ensure sup…

It doesn’t hold to reason that McDonalds would publicly and continuously put up with that from a supplier. Much more likely that they have control over the machines and use them for impromptu advertising, to keep calorie per dollar lower, and to starve out local ice cream shops as needed.
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