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Ask HN: Shitty job but well paid
31–40 of 74 posts
Re: Ask HN: Shitty job but well paid
#32Create a vision, get the team to buy into it. Convince senior managers to buy in. Present and execute a plan to fulfill the vision. Be the change you want to see. Edit: I can see that I need to explain in more depth. Too many technically-oriented folks take the cultural and political landscape of a company as a given. It is not. You can change it. Even as a relatively junior employee, your attitude, communications an…
Re: Ask HN: Shitty job but well paid
#33Create a vision, get the team to buy into it. Convince senior managers to buy in. Present and execute a plan to fulfill the vision. Be the change you want to see. Edit: I can see that I need to explain in more depth. Too many technically-oriented folks take the cultural and political landscape of a company as a given. It is not. You can change it. Even as a relatively junior employee, your attitude, communications an…
This is a "feel good" answer that is statistically very unlikely to work out.
Also, if you hop around a lot, you'll realize that these problems are not constrained to one bad company. You'll run across it basically everywhere if you wait long enough. You might have a boss who protects a "good culture", but when he's gone (voluntarily or not), it's gone.
For career stability, you have to learn to play this game and operate within its constraints, or you'll spend your whole career on the proverbial run.
The problem is that software people think empirically, as their job requires them to do so. Most other people do not do this, and in fact, most others would be disadvantaged if they did do so, so they have exactly the opposite incentives dictating their thought processes/structures.
STEM-types like us assume that "convince people" means show them the evidence, make our most stringent and convincing arguments, and demonstrate the clear superiority of the approach we've advocated.
Unfortunately, very few people are equipped to process such arguments from an objective or fair perspective. Advocacy for your theory's superiority is heard as "admit MY superiority". The theory and the personality proposing it are naturally and automatically conflated. Quite reasonably, colleagues are opposed to such admissions when that's the message they're hearing.
Not only are there the standard tendencies to interpret such behaviors in this manner, but there is the additional factor that all of your peers/colleagues are also performing image calculations in the context of their own careers. Even if they know that your intentions are pure and that your arguments are solid, they still have to protect against the opponent who would walk in to the bosses and say "borplk embarrassed that guy really bad the other day", failing to observe and/or communicate the egalitarian/cooperative context.
This is the part where people normally say "Well I would never work somewhere like that!" Yes you would. You do. It's unavoidable. You can't overcome human psychology (which is just a thin veneer on human biology). You must learn to cooperate with it.
Once you internalize this perspective, you are a) finally operating on the same level as many of your peers (especially non-STEM peers), and their decisions make a lot more sense; and b) room to effect change becomes visible much more readily. The opening of the playing field is especially potent in software-heavy companies, because, as discussed above, most software devs are very naive when it comes to office politics. If you're willing to practice it, you can frequently crush with minimal serious opposition.
Re: Ask HN: Shitty job but well paid
#34Re: Ask HN: Shitty job but well paid
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is you never know if it is going to be better or worse. My experience is that it is mostly the same everywhere. What changes is the paycheck, company logo and the faces
More seriously though, you should ask around people you know and trust about which workplaces they like. Not all workplaces are alike. Look at switching industries. Look at non-profits. Look at things you care about outside of tech, and go do tech in that industry.
Re: Ask HN: Shitty job but well paid
#36I choose the better job (better people), because that's what I spend most of my day and everyday frustration doesn't worth it FOR ME.
Re: Ask HN: Shitty job but well paid
#37Care to level-set on the tech stack? How "old" is the old tech stack? Is it "old" like Rails 4? J2EE? COBOL? Mainframes?
Re: Ask HN: Shitty job but well paid
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a "feel good" answer that is statistically very unlikely to work out.
I'm not the guy you replied to but I agree with him. It's not really unlikely to work out if you approach the problem deftly, he just states the plan in simplistic terms. Also, if you hop around a lot, you'll realize that these problems are not constrained to one bad company. You'll run across it basically everywhere if you wait long enough. You might have a boss who protects a "good culture", but when he's gone (vol…
Re: Ask HN: Shitty job but well paid
#39You can't see how much money you're losing by staying in a job you hate.
Re: Ask HN: Shitty job but well paid
#40-turn that freelance into regular job and quit the regular one
-try 2-3 good companies with remote options from my domain where I think I can be very good at and enjoy working. if I land into some of them, quit at least regular job and leave freelance as side income or quit that too initialy.