Feels like taking an Uber to a battlefield, fully prepared for a bloody fight, and then realizing you're the only one there and nobody showed up. All those advertised slogans and inked cultural standards, and for what? I never worked for a FAANG company, but I had the pleasure of being interviewed by most of them. I met engineers dedicated to the vision, running in circles, hardly any of their hard work ever merged in production. I never understood it, and I think it's a real problem, how does an engineer build a track record if they spend years writing code that never reached a single real user.
Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?
261–270 of 307 posts
Re: Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
I lead teams of Data Engineers, Data Scientists, and Platform Engineers. My direct reports drive their 1:1s; from the need to have them in the first place to the agenda when we do. We have standups for our team as well as the larger team and we are in constant contact with one another throughout each day via IM. Why would we need to repeat the same shit in a 1:1? I consider their 1:1s THEIR meeting. If they want it,…
I would love practical advice on how to say to a manager "I'm not deriving any value from this recurring 1x1 meeting, can we move it to on-demand?" My 30+ year career has not revealed a way to achieve that yet without repurcussions. However much I'd prefer it.
I realize I’m different than many leaders out there; I came up through the ranks and do everything the way I wished it had been rather than the way it was.
As such, I’m entirely open to any and all feedback from my team. I certainly wouldn’t be offended if you just asked; I’d do my best to accommodate it.
What’s the worst that can happen? They say no?
Re: Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used to be a believer in daily standup plus bi-weekly sprint planning, but lost faith with the (possibly cargo cult) methodology I was trying to follow. Adding 1:1 in with that would be far too frequent, and probably far too little real content in each meeting. Did productivity actually change dispensing with those meetings? Probably not by much, it's hard to say empirically because task estimation was always a wil…
The general academic lab model is still the best I've seen and experienced. People sign up to present at the weekly lab meeting if they have something to present, 1 person per meeting. There's maybe 10 mins of quick bringing things up at the beginning of lab meeting before the presenter starts, if you have something short to share or general announcements. Specific project groups will have their own direct meetings o…
Going directly from a research lab with a healthy and collaborative culture to an agile scrum factory in the private sector was one of the most jarring experiences of my life.
Everytime I speak to an academic who is trying to make the same leap this is something I always warn them about.
Re: Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?
#264Atleast not at Amazon
Re: Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
The doers can fire the system 5 people.
The doers can't remove the bureaucracy-focused people, because doing so would run counter to Pournelle's Iron Law; it's like crossing the streams. Let's instead replace bureaucrats with AI, since the same pressures that drive bureaucracies toward self-preservation might instead push AI systems toward AGI .
The law doesn’t define behavior. It describes behaviors.
Those behaviors can change by giving the doers more power. If a bureaucrat is trouble, and the doers can cause the bureaucrat to be fired, to doers will have more power.
Re: Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?
#266Earlier 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 an anti pattern of management - the 1-1 shouldn’t be a status update. There are times you want to brief your boss on things that are important to them, but if you’re just going over your tickets, that’s a waste of time (unless you’re using that time to get technical guidance on your tickets). There are lots of lousy managers out there, and you can’t control that - but you can set the agenda of your 1-1 yoursel…
I have had multiple managers and the thing is I wouldn't expect a truly honest answer from my manager ever, so to me it is also just all performative ritual that I have to go through and would rather avoid. So it does feel like waste of time to me. And I also feel like I have to be careful, because honesty has most of the time just yielded me useless work in the long term. It is easier to pretend everything is good, than to point out issues as it will i variably lead to a rabbit hole of nonsensical work.
Re: Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would love practical advice on how to say to a manager "I'm not deriving any value from this recurring 1x1 meeting, can we move it to on-demand?" My 30+ year career has not revealed a way to achieve that yet without repurcussions. However much I'd prefer it.
I realize I’m different than many leaders out there; I came up through the ranks and do everything the way I wished it had been rather than the way it was. As such, I’m entirely open to any and all feedback from my team. I certainly wouldn’t be offended if you just asked; I’d do my best to accommodate it. What’s the worst that can happen? They say no?
Worst that happens is they get silently offended, while being political to you at the same time and secretly undermine your performance reviews during calibration meetings without you even knowing or just not standing up for you that much during this time will be enough due to stack ranking etc.
Re: Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?
#268Earlier 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…
I saw someone like this just get made redundant - they talked a good game and did enough to cement themselves in the organisation, then ended up reporting into a manager who was already over capacity so didn't have the bandwidth to chase up a guy who wasn't causing him any trouble.
Re: Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
I realize I’m different than many leaders out there; I came up through the ranks and do everything the way I wished it had been rather than the way it was. As such, I’m entirely open to any and all feedback from my team. I certainly wouldn’t be offended if you just asked; I’d do my best to accommodate it. What’s the worst that can happen? They say no?
Worst that happens is they get silently offended, while being political to you at the same time and secretly undermine your performance reviews during calibration meetings without you even knowing or just not standing up for you that much during this time will be enough due to stack ranking etc.
This - I've had a manager who was pretty ineffective, and if he wasn't doing 1:1s he'd feel like he was failing at managing. Easier to just talk in circles with him.
Re: Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thats fine, though if you do that forever you'll probably harm your promotion chances. Which, if your goal is just to get by, sounds fine? But generally speaking, it's a chance for you to speak about your work to the person writing your performance review, and get feedback, which may be in short supply otherwise for various reasons.
I don't know why I'd ever want a promotion, and I haven't ever got one. I did turn one down once. A promotion is like 5% more pay for way more work and a bunch of corporate bullshit along the way. If I want to move up I just change jobs.
My last promotion from level 3 to level 4 was a 50% increase in pay basically, with no change in responsibilities or scope.