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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

#61

Post by bobbiechen »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #17
luckylion wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Except the tone in all of the stories is overwhelmingly the same: I'm not stupid, what I'm being asked to do is stupid. And as I said, usually the commenters will give you the benefit of the doubt: yes, that legacy code sounds like it probably sucked, or yes, the client's requirements were nonsensical and contradictory. Except here.

>Except the tone in all of the stories is overwhelmingly the same

I disagree with this. I think Rachel's blog is fairly aggressive as far as HN submissions go, which doesn't elicit a lot of sympathy. It's pretty argumentative with sniping and a sense of superiority:

>Now, when I run into a thing like this, I start getting snarky and bitchy and start thinking laterally. Like, okay, watch me not use your stupid system but get the answer anyway.

And I don't think that's an unjustified reaction based on the content, but it's also not typical for blog posts that show up here. So the tone is aggressive, and commenters end up being unsympathetic. I completely agree with the parent comment that changing the tone of the post would likely result in a different set of comments (not that the author seems to care).

I've also noticed this in the HN comment section. There's a well-known member who ends up picking fights often in the comments; I usually don't read usernames at all, but if I notice a comment written in a certain bitter, argumentative way, then it's almost always from this person.

Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues

#62

Post by [deleted] »

StavrosK wrote: post #55
mikorym wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the only thing saving me at this point is that I am obsessed with mathematics, not with tech. I have a lot of other hobbies that save me, but the math vs. tech mindset is very real to me in the workplace context. I am not saying all mathematicians are good, or good people, but it helps to have something more real to hold onto. I think the same holds for hacker culture. If you are a hacker more than a "techy"…

I'm much more of a hacker, but that's the problem for me, I'm not doing anything interesting. It's all the same things I've done a billion times before, again and again. I guess my problem is that nobody wants to promote a remote developer who lives in Greece to anything other than code monkey, so eh, these are my choices.

[deleted]

Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues

#63

Post by [deleted] »

StavrosK wrote: post #55
mikorym wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the only thing saving me at this point is that I am obsessed with mathematics, not with tech. I have a lot of other hobbies that save me, but the math vs. tech mindset is very real to me in the workplace context. I am not saying all mathematicians are good, or good people, but it helps to have something more real to hold onto. I think the same holds for hacker culture. If you are a hacker more than a "techy"…

I'm much more of a hacker, but that's the problem for me, I'm not doing anything interesting. It's all the same things I've done a billion times before, again and again. I guess my problem is that nobody wants to promote a remote developer who lives in Greece to anything other than code monkey, so eh, these are my choices.

[deleted]

Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues

#64

Post by networkimprov »

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.

You missed the part where she was subjected to systematic intimidation by Uber and private investigators working on their behalf after she left.

Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues

#65

Post by kailswhales »

The original article is clearly talking about Lyft, and having started at there at the same time, I thought the onboarding process was much better than at other companies that I have worked at (others are either too broad/corporate or just a README).

Not having a desk to work at is inexcusable, and definitely seems like a fluke rather than the norm.

What’s wild to me is the amount of people who are berating the author for an opinion post. She is describing what sounds like a garbage experience, and it shouldn’t be that hard to understand/empathize with

Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues

#66

Post by luckylion »

ken wrote: post #44
toyg wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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: companie…

If the ridiculous money is (partly) compensation for the bad circumstances, would you expect the compensation to sink if a union improves the situation?

I'm not sure how this is in different countries. I've not heard that many horror stories in Germany, but most work here is also not VC-backed startups, and the compensation is much lower in comparison. The non-vc-investing might of course also be a reason for lower compensation, when your valuation can't explode, attracting the top developers is less of a priority.

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

Sales (a lot!), restaurants (pretty much every line cook I've ever spoken to mentions it, and what I read in comments online sounds like it's the same in all countries), call centers, transportation off the top of my head. The main difference is that they're usually not paid well.

Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues

#67

Post by camgunz »

davidmurdoch wrote: post #28

As a manager/lead who has personally fielded similar concerns from new hires, I understand where Rachel's frustrations come from, specifically with painful onboarding processes. I'm not commenting on Rachel's specific experience, but just in general for those that might feel empowered by her response; I just don't think it's generally appropriate. The process was surely designed with good intentions, perhaps by commi…

Yeah I agree with the sentiment, but if you asked me to find a dog in a company directory I’d really start to question how much you value my time. This stuff is inane.

Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues

#68

Post by frompdx »

I can relate to the author 100%. The on-boarding process just sounds absurd. I have been there. It was awful. I hated it.

The worst that I experienced was a requirement that all new hires complete a training course for Splunk, the log aggregator. Why? Apparently, Splunk was a shared resource for this massive company. As a result, careless queries or logging could result in degraded performance for other teams needing to query their logs in Splunk.

Ok, no big deal, right? That's what I thought too. I dutifully started working on my training to get it out of the way. I took detailed and copious notes like my job depended on it. After an entire week of eight hour days doing nothing but taking Splunk trainings I was finally done...with section 1.

What the hell? There is another section? As it turned out, it took most new hires 2-3 weeks to complete the trainings. If a new hire did not complete the training they could not access Splunk, and apparently this meant they could not do their job. Absurd on many levels. To add insult to injury, this was a new requirement and many on my team were given access and were never required to complete the training. Those very same people kept telling me "oh, just do it, we don't expect you to be productive right away".

Well, I didn't do it. I refused. I told anyone that asked that I thought the requirement was unnecessary and a waste of time. Eventually, my manager got very pushy about it. I continued to stand my ground. In particular, I told my manager he needed to go to bat for me and get me access if he wanted me to do my job.

LO AND BEHOLD, I was given access.

The author is right for not wanting to be forced to do stupid things and have their time wasted. I don't know where some commenters get off calling the author "entitled" or "not a team player". Why are they so invested in this?

Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues

#69

Post by fragmede »

JabavuAdams wrote: post #25
floatingatoll wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Because I've been in similar situations. There's a saying: "Don't wrestle with pigs because you both end up covered in shit, but they enjoy it." Also, Admiral Ackbar: "It's a traaaap.". > Ignoring the critics allows them to swell in self-importance and gather a crowd around them. Strongly disagree. Making your case and setting the story straight is of course reasonable, but in a way it gives power to your critics. Of…

As much as I try not to, I'll indulge in leaving (deliciously) snarky comments at times (though less on HN). But, do they really move the conversation forward? Comments for those that are reading for low-brow comedic value and condescention may get more made-up Internet points and feel good, but personally, if there's a rational engineering answer to be made, I'll try and give that (eg: Kubernetes doesn't scale past 500 nodes very well because of X due to condition Y that I dealt with.) rather than being dismissive (Kubernetes? More like POOPERnetes! amirite? lolololol)

Readers can decide for themselves wether or not, eg, kubernetes is right for them.

Additionally:

> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues

#70

Post by davidmurdoch »

camgunz wrote: post #67
davidmurdoch wrote: post #28

As a manager/lead who has personally fielded similar concerns from new hires, I understand where Rachel's frustrations come from, specifically with painful onboarding processes. I'm not commenting on Rachel's specific experience, but just in general for those that might feel empowered by her response; I just don't think it's generally appropriate. The process was surely designed with good intentions, perhaps by commi…

Yeah I agree with the sentiment, but if you asked me to find a dog in a company directory I’d really start to question how much you value my time. This stuff is inane.

My hunch is that someone thought the dog thing was "fun","cute", or "on brand". The point likely that they need to onboard employees to their intranet; who they ask you to look up doesn't matter, and using a fictional employee may better than a real employee, as the curriculum want need to change when someone leaves, and for at least someone, using a dog was probably thought to be more fun and engaging.

If using the company directory is necessary to know, then something is needed, then why not try to user something fun? really though, I think the real problem here is probably that this company doesn't really need all employees to know how to use the company directory.

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