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Setting the story straight on quite a few issues

rachelbythebay.com

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Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues

#41

Post by [deleted] »

luckylion wrote: post #14
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #10

It's weird how what I consider the same kind of story can seemingly trigger universal empathy or universal derision. If the story is of the oft-posted, "My nightmare dealing with a legacy codebase" or "My nightmare delivering a project for an inept client" flavor, there's no shortage of people jumping in the comments to echo the sentiment and reinforce with their own stories. You change a few details, however, to the…

> What's the secret sauce here? Age? Reputation? Subject matter? I suspect tone to be the secret sauce. You can rewrite most things in ways that at least some people will dislike without changing the facts. You can also rewrite them in a way that will solicit sympathy from those same people. Tone can change a lot.

[deleted]

Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues

#42

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

I think it's kind of weird how a lot of commenters feel a need to take one side or the other in these stories. IMO both of the following were true:

1. The onboarding process at this company was absurd.

2. The author's response was to show contempt and derision to everyone else involved. The "everyone responsible for this is an idiot" vibe was so strong throughout both posts.

Running large, complex organizations is extremely difficult. I wouldn't want to work at that company, but I sure as hell wouldn't want to work on a team with the author, either.

Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues

#43

Post by [deleted] »

lonelappde wrote: post #6
ReactiveJelly wrote: post #2

I do still hate JWZ for that. I hardly ever comment, and I'm punished for it. He's like those teenaged IRC admins who only let you on their server so they can choose your nick for you. The web's not a dumb pipe, it's a pipe I can beat people up with, apparently.

JWZ is a lot of things, but he's never claimed to be a nice person.

[deleted]

Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues

#44

Post by ken »

toyg wrote: post #26
KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #21

Reading this made me think why there are so few middle-aged engineers in tech. There have been several theories for this, such as ageism and the field's rapid expansion. Reading this made me wonder if they just get sick of it and leave. Friends had reached out to me. "We need a director for our reliability software engineering stuff". They asked for my help. They wanted to build something good, like the early days of…

Maybe supply is still way lower than necessary, considering that proficiency requires several years of training and practice on technology that changes very often. Maybe the supply pool is still effectively limited to certain “socioeconoethnic” groups, and often companies self-sabotage by requiring candidates to live in certain areas. In my experience, the attitudes of software developers, as seen all over the web, a…

And yet, lots of software developers do quit and spend a few months off, and then go work somewhere else. Because managers do threaten and bully employees. This is considered 'normal' for the field. One running joke in my circles is that developers never 'take vacation'. They simply wait a few months between jobs, because they're never at one job for more than a year or two.

The other way to look at this is: companies pay programmers ridiculous salaries because the working conditions are so hated. Junior programmers (even those who have never been to college) are paid about as well as dentists, and they still often quit after a couple years. This is way above the $75K happiness threshold. We literally can't pay them enough to stay working for us!

Hypothesis: software development is one of the few industries that I've interacted with where the workers haven't organized yet. When there's no union for collective bargaining, what lever does an individual employee have, other than asking for yet more money, or quitting?

P.S., In what industries do you commonly see managers threatening or bullying workers? I haven't seen that at all.

Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues

#45

Post by greesil »

floatingatoll wrote: post #13
JabavuAdams wrote: post #9

To OP: I wish you all the best. I didn't read or comment on the original article. One thing to consider is to not engage with the critics. It's hard, I know -- really I know. An engineering mind set might make you not want to "flip the bozo bit", and to learn as much from your detractors as possible. There may be strategic reasons to get your story out -- e.g. if your co-workers or potential clients are getting a dis…

Ignoring the critics allows them to swell in self-importance and gather a crowd around them. Why did you choose to pressure someone else here to ignore “HN’s mental illness” and let it fester, rather than to pressure HN’s commenters here to stop being poisonous to others?

Who is pressuring who here?

Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues

#47

Post by trhway »

Lammy wrote: post #20
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #10

It's weird how what I consider the same kind of story can seemingly trigger universal empathy or universal derision. If the story is of the oft-posted, "My nightmare dealing with a legacy codebase" or "My nightmare delivering a project for an inept client" flavor, there's no shortage of people jumping in the comments to echo the sentiment and reinforce with their own stories. You change a few details, however, to the…

> What's the secret sauce here? Age? Reputation? Subject matter? Being a woman. The dogpilers are most likely cluing in on her name. https://i.imgur.com/Kowemhz.jpg

definitely a double standard. If a guy was writing all that, nobody would give a damn about what would be qualified in such a case as a whining of such a self-entitled special snowflake. "For the huge tech salary they make me do stupid things!" I remember there was another post of this author, and it was pretty obvious that a guy behaving that way would be immediately and unquestionably labeled "toxic person". I mean i'm ok with that double standard, as the tech environment may feel psychologically harsh for some people and they do need to have some slack cut for them.

Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues

#48

Post by [deleted] »

toyg wrote: post #26
KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #21

Reading this made me think why there are so few middle-aged engineers in tech. There have been several theories for this, such as ageism and the field's rapid expansion. Reading this made me wonder if they just get sick of it and leave. Friends had reached out to me. "We need a director for our reliability software engineering stuff". They asked for my help. They wanted to build something good, like the early days of…

Maybe supply is still way lower than necessary, considering that proficiency requires several years of training and practice on technology that changes very often. Maybe the supply pool is still effectively limited to certain “socioeconoethnic” groups, and often companies self-sabotage by requiring candidates to live in certain areas. In my experience, the attitudes of software developers, as seen all over the web, a…

[deleted]

Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues

#49

Post by Lammy »

trhway wrote: post #47
Lammy wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's the secret sauce here? Age? Reputation? Subject matter? Being a woman. The dogpilers are most likely cluing in on her name. https://i.imgur.com/Kowemhz.jpg

definitely a double standard. If a guy was writing all that, nobody would give a damn about what would be qualified in such a case as a whining of such a self-entitled special snowflake. "For the huge tech salary they make me do stupid things!" I remember there was another post of this author, and it was pretty obvious that a guy behaving that way would be immediately and unquestionably labeled "toxic person". I mean…

“— but when a woman shares an experience she disliked she's "whining"!”

Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues

#50

Post by [deleted] »

toyg wrote: post #40
networkimprov wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ask Susan Fowler whether you "cannot threaten or bully a tech employee" in a tech hotspot. https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-on... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Fowler

"I had a new job offer in my hands less than a week later." The minute her boss actually told her she was "on thin ice", she was out. Despite her being effectively outside the preferred "socioeconoethnic" groups that most companies self-restrict to, she was practically free at all times to walk out and get an equivalent (or likely better) job . That's a massive privilege.

[deleted]
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