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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

#71

Post by runawaybottle »

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.

No one wants to promote a developer to anything in general. One mechanism to achieve that is to simply promote everyone, e.g everyone claims a senior title, claims fullstack, etc. That’s one way of keeping developers roughly where they are.

Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues

#72

Post by toyg »

networkimprov wrote: post #64
toyg wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

This can happen in any sector - but in most of them it's also pretty hard to find a well-paid replacement job in a week, so it's more effective and less reported.

Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues

#73

Post by StavrosK »

runawaybottle wrote: post #71
StavrosK wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No one wants to promote a developer to anything in general. One mechanism to achieve that is to simply promote everyone, e.g everyone claims a senior title, claims fullstack, etc. That’s one way of keeping developers roughly where they are.

That's generally a transparent non-event, but I agree, I don't see many developers being promoted to much.

Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues

#74

Post by runawaybottle »

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…

Developers have that attitude because it’s a technical creative profession. You are tied to what you create so it has emotional impact if you don’t put in the emotional framework to deal with business realities.

Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues

#75

Post by davidmurdoch »

munchbunny wrote: post #60
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…

While I definitely agree with the "you don't know what you don't know" point, I also think there should be a healthy dose of judgement for what should be considered "mandatory up front" as opposed to "you can learn it when you need it." My last on-boarding, for example, I thought was approximately the right balance. Bootstrap the most basic credentials, set up MFA that covers 90% of your needs, get your access badge,…

My point is that the onboarding process was already designed with lots of judgement, and plenty of past experience. The process was decided upon by others who are more qualified than you, as a new hire. Until you understand more about the company, and its organizational flaws and quirks, you should refrain from criticizing some of these things. Overwatch, write these criticisms down and look at them a few weeks or months later, only then will you be able to approach these problems with the appropriate knowledge.

Of course, there are places that are run by egocentric upper management that aren't qualified and won't listen... in which case my comments don't apply, but I don't think that is the norm.

Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues

#77

Post by toyg »

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…

> companies pay programmers ridiculous salaries because the working conditions are so hated.

I think any blue-collar worker would be laughing his ass off at this statement.

> paid about as well as dentists, and they still often quit after a couple years. This is way above the $75K happiness threshold.

Fuck-you-money actually enables this sort of freedom, since you're less scared of going jobless for a few months thanks to all the fat you've stored. So might as well quit and think about things for a while. Over certain levels, the meaning of one's job can take priority over immediate compensation.

> We literally can't pay them enough to stay working for us!

In the end, everyone deep down would rather not have to work for someone else, or to not work at all. Programmers in tech hotspots are lucky enough to actually be able to do it, and pretty often too, without any serious repercussion. For many, this is a golden age the likes of which we've never seen.

> In what industries do you commonly see managers threatening or bullying workers?

All of them - we wouldn't have unions otherwise. There is a reason the word "boss" has negative connotations.

Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues

#78

Post by runawaybottle »

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

No, sorry, you don’t get to just fire that serious accusation towards everyone here.

I’ve made another comment here about what I think is behind her post. But if you want my general common sense opinion on why the post didn’t resonate with most people is because it falls under the old adage of ‘know your audience’.

People are getting laid off, there’s entire groups trying to break into the industry, there’s entire groups in inconsequential positions that are easily commoditized, and so on.

Yet here is someone being critical of what appears to be a 3-day on boarding, many of us would be lucky to have that job, and even luckier to be able to bounce from it on a whim.

Goto a third world country and complain about how Costco has long annoying lines in America.

Anyway, that’s the underlying sentiment behind the post that I think most people are reacting to.

Know your audience, or even better, get your timing right. Don’t bring this up when there’s 39 million unemployed.

Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues

#79

Post by fragmede »

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…

The secret sauce is empathy. "My nightmare dealing with a legacy codebase"? We've all dealt with that scenario, even (or especially) if it's our own code, years later. Sharing "war stories" like that is interesting and builds camaraderie.

On-boarding is harder to empathize with. For most readers it was likely a while ago, and other memories of their company have replaced the experience of the very first week. Even if it was bad, readers who are employed at a company just put up with it. Thus, Rachel's "this is stupid and so is everyone one involved except me" tone, falls flat by insulting the reader.

Then there was the promise - of hearing about red flags. Personally I expected some sort of horror story. "Here's the Kafkaesque story of why I didn't have a laptop for 3 months and was forced to access my email using a fax machine".

Instead, there was this bit with having to gasp talk to a coworker while being taught the company's HR system. Searching for a dog is inane, but hardly a nightmare. I'll be honest, I didn't keep reading much past that.

If you changed the details in "my nightmare delivering a project for a client" to be "THEN, the client spent a bunch of time with me speccing out the work to be done, and then gave me plenty of time to do the work they asked, and I couldn't do it", would you blame the commenters for a "this person must be incompetent" sentiment? The situation's less clear cut than that, but the devil's in the details!

Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues

#80

Post by Lammy »

runawaybottle wrote: post #78
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

No, sorry, you don’t get to just fire that serious accusation towards everyone here. I’ve made another comment here about what I think is behind her post. But if you want my general common sense opinion on why the post didn’t resonate with most people is because it falls under the old adage of ‘know your audience’. People are getting laid off, there’s entire groups trying to break into the industry, there’s entire gr…

That’s so reductive. How is anybody allowed to have any problem if someone else has it worse off than them?

You seem to misunderstand my “serious accusation” as if I’m saying criticizing a woman is unacceptable. I’m saying I believe there’s a gender difference in people’s default level of empathy.

Spoiler: I thought her post about the onboarding sucked too, for all the same reasons everyone else did. And I’m someone who usually loves her blog.

I try to be empathetic to the fact that we’re all different people and will react to the same situation in vastly individual ways. Her reaction to that onboarding situation is her own, and those emotions are the kind of thing that can’t really be “wrong” or up for debate. You can’t reason somebody into un-feeling an emotion.

Maybe the HN discussion for her post could have been about making these kind of huggy feely human processes more accessible? Instead it was about how she’s so ungrateful, or about how she shouldn’t have published it, or even speculation about her neurotypicality.

Lots of people in tech circles talk a big game about how they’re so progressive and support all people’s differences because a person can bring so much in other areas despite the areas where they are weak. Just don’t be female I guess.

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