Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

So, I'm not clear on why you haven't been able to do that?

I got to where I hated the developer culture, and got a job that was outside of it, where I had access to nothing except MS Office, and had the epiphany that it's Turing complete, I can do anything!

First: Have a very direct conversation where you state that after-hours work, and being on-call, are not the job you took. Also state that you really like the job you have, and that you'd like to continue to work where you're working.

Next: Make sure your value to the company is clearly established. What important things have you done that were vital to the company? (If the decision makers think they can replace you, then you're better off switching jobs now.)

Finally: Figure out how to telegraph that you're considering other offers without actually telling anyone that you're considering other offers. In the late 1990s - early 2000s, showing up very late one day in a suit did it. In my case, I just started leaving at random times to meet people for coffee, or taking phone calls behind the office. Later, I didn't pick up the phone for an "important" call with my boss, and his boss, because I was at an interview. They figured it out and the problem was solved very quickly.

Just finished four months of overtime to meet an arbitrary executive-decision deadline. Now I'm on a new project, and I'm finding out just how horrible the other teams had it: legacy systems from the dark ages of tech that are being shoved into the cloud, critical account access is shared with everyone, everything was built by hand two years ago by people who are no longer here, nothing is documented, and 4am maintenance windows are a weekly thing. There's aloof parent companies imposing draconian pointless restrictions, finance has a strangle hold over everything (hiring, new hardware, new software, etc) and kills any funding no matter how much we need it, but somehow execs will buy a giant pointless thing that we never use, all the bosses refuse to take responsibility to push back or even fix problems we can control, and we have to go through three different teams to get changes made outside a single cloud account. Developers don't want to have any responsibility whatsoever for how their code actually runs or is supported, scrum masters impose ridiculous process requirements that have nothing to do with productivity, we never actually see a single customer/client until we launch a product, we have almost no tests, and almost no plans for what to do if we can't just build more cloud stuff to fix any problem. There are 10 architects whose sole job is to tell you to use arbitrary technology with absolutely no context or consultation, security is one guy who doesn't know what metasploit is, and the people building shared services for internal use don't want to actually support the users using them. I'm the only one trying to improve anything because I'm new. Everyone else is either job hunting or is super green and in love with the constant free food and beer.