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My Time at Snap

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161–170 of 264 posts

Re: My Time at Snap

#161

Wow, nothing like a massive whinge to start the day! Don't take a lot of pleasure in saying it, but am highly suspicious of the author's role in all this. While there's no doubt John plagued our friend's life (as are Johns' wont); how said friend played everything else, the relationship handling, the motivation (!) ... culminating in this ego-driven, embittered rant. I mean, the situation definitely sucks. But my big…

I'm just amazed that developers have the confidence to lambaste former employers in such a public, toxic and hostile manner. If I was hiring for a developer position and Google'd Marko Tupper's name, I wouldn't even agree to meet with him based on this article alone. Why would I want someone so ego and drama-driven on my team? I won't even leave negative reviews on Yelp or Google Maps out of fear of reprisal or futur…

It's a pseudonym.

Re: My Time at Snap

#162
post #156
post #55

>you could walk around miles of Venice Beach streets pointing out unmarked office after unmarked office as you went along. A seemingly empty storefront here, a nondescript house there, the top level of an apartment building over that way. Is that legal in that area? I lived in a townhouse association where someone started the company out of his house. Eventually he started hiring and it didn't take long for everyone…

No, they said the company was keeping a bed in the conference room to "comply" with zoning regulations, essentially pretending the office was also someone's house.

It seems like it would be pretty easy to sort of "discover" it wasn't true. In my case the cops just parked outside and recorded people parking and going in and out for a bit (only after the dude balked and denied he was running an office).

Fortunately the guy in question didn't put up a fight after that and promised to move / did.

Re: My Time at Snap

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this perspective a lot - having only read The Fountainhead, I don't understand it at all, and suspect this is largely based off her other works (including Atlas Shrugged)? My interpretation of The Fountainhead was as I described previously - the importance of staying true to who you are, even if this results in missing out on riches (or goes against popular opinion).

Personally, I agree with your summary of the Fountainhead. If you choose to read Atlas Shrugged, however, her opinions start to get more extreme and unsettling.

I actually managed to read _The Fountainhead_, and found it enjoyable enough, without realizing it was supposed to be a libertarian manifesto.

I usually bring this up to give people a baseline in explaining how loud the preaching eventually got in the _Sword of Truth_ series.

_Atlas Shrugged_ is one of the few books I couldn't finish once started; the characters were just too obnoxiously stupid.

Re: My Time at Snap

#164
Remember, centi-medium posts often have two sides to the story.. this person describes one incident with "John" based on a biased, self-reporting and frankly not a great story either: actually seems to portray the author in a bad light even with his one-sided story.

Re: My Time at Snap

#165
Maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle. And a mandatory disclaimer that I have not walked in the author's shoes, and that I am considering his description as what happened.

Two things that stood out for me:

1/ If a director of engineering is not able to run a sprint planning meeting or is grossly inefficient at that, what was the reaction of other devs at Snap who were part of the same meeting. More than likely, if they see that as the state of the managements, were they looking for jobs too?

2/ Is there a point in having engineering teams where there is no regular interaction with the manager?

Re: My Time at Snap

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may sound like it but I can assure you that it's not. Humans are social animals and when you have to spend 8 hours a day, 5 days a week in a setting with little to no peer interaction, it'll start to wear on you. The first month is awesome. Complete freedom & autonomy, then the depression starts kicking in.

You certainly can assure me, but that won't do much. I've been doing it for 30 years, I know how I like it.

The distinction is going to be whether you have a rich social network outside of work. Stack up immediate family, extended family, a handful of close longtime friends, church, a softball team, a couple of hobbyist groups, and a volunteer board, and your half dozen colleagues you were randomly assigned to work near can seem rather superfluous.

On the other hand, you take a bunch of young people straight out of college, collect them from around the country and the world, drop them in a new city without any social network, lean on them to work 50, 60 hour weeks, and suddenly socializing with your coworkers becomes very important, especially if you're single, not very religious, and not very outgoing. The alternative is complete isolation and sad phone calls with friends and family thousands of miles away.

Re: My Time at Snap

#167
That was a really good read, consider writing more articles like this one, you have talent to keep things interesting even for such a long text.

Re: My Time at Snap

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say the place had no toilets, so they build some and you go in and it's just stand up men's urinals. So you politely point out this won't work for you, they're breaking the law and frankly, making you feel very excluded, and they're like: "Meh, women . We'll get around to it. But yeah we'll put some signs up in the meantime. You can use the ones in the building down the street. Thanks for pointing that out..."…

I think everyone would agree the women's bathroom should be built, yes. What's confusing is why you'd close the men's bathroom until the women's bathroom was built?

I purposely didn't put that in - I was trying to convey the righteous outrage that would be felt.

The point is you think about this up front.

The reason you would require the functioning facility to be closed is to make it clear to the business and all others there are consequences for this incompetence and lack of care.

Re: My Time at Snap

#169
post #132
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Several people in this thread clearly are. "Work colleagues suck", "I want 0 colleagues" etc. Some people apparently do want literally zero human interaction in their work.

Few will argue against having work-related interaction. That's fully expected. It's the socializing part that's not everyone's cup o' tea.

It's the socializing part that's not everyone's cup o' tea.

Socializing exists on a continuum. I hate with a passion any sort of company wide or overly organized 'fun' events, but I would still love to have a few colleagues to drink coffee with while casually chatting about what they think about the new features in tensorflow2.

Re: My Time at Snap

#170

Wow, nothing like a massive whinge to start the day! Don't take a lot of pleasure in saying it, but am highly suspicious of the author's role in all this. While there's no doubt John plagued our friend's life (as are Johns' wont); how said friend played everything else, the relationship handling, the motivation (!) ... culminating in this ego-driven, embittered rant. I mean, the situation definitely sucks. But my big…

I'm just amazed that developers have the confidence to lambaste former employers in such a public, toxic and hostile manner. If I was hiring for a developer position and Google'd Marko Tupper's name, I wouldn't even agree to meet with him based on this article alone. Why would I want someone so ego and drama-driven on my team? I won't even leave negative reviews on Yelp or Google Maps out of fear of reprisal or futur…

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