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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

#81

Post by munchbunny »

davidmurdoch wrote: post #75
munchbunny wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mo…

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.

In my experience it's not an issue of egocentric upper management. It's an issue of a process that is 80% tuned and for various hard to solve organizational reasons it doesn't get to 90%+ tuned.

For example, in my own latest onboarding about two years ago, in hindsight I definitely feel that about 1 hour of it was dubiously useful and was a political concession to someone playing visibility games, out of about 6 hours of up front orientation.

I think that grade of "off for reasons but not always good ones" is the norm. It's like the event planning equivalent of that one corner of the code that makes no sense because someone bikeshedded it last year.

Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues

#82

Post by runawaybottle »

Lammy wrote: post #80
runawaybottle wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So here again you allude to gender. I’m open to having that discussion as a valid consideration if we eliminated all other rational explanations (as in, we enter the gender discussion if it’s obvious we can’t make sense of the reaction any other way).

As for how to bring up her issue? Well, her initial way was one way. It turned out it wasn’t the best. The parameters you can modify is when and also to whom.

Believe it or not, speaking directly to faang level senior engineers can provide insight into higher levels of standards that a larger diverse audience can extract value from since due diligence was done on providing perspective. That’s an adjustment.

Edit:

I’ll just add one thing to give an example of honing perspective. It is entirely possible that the first three days of on boarding is a dream come true for a lot of people, just to finally be at that company. Now how would I sound if I compared my dismissive experience of it in contrast to that?

If this is you fifth or sixth go around, and you picked up some good/bad, make that clear, and be aware of the diversity in people’s experiences so that your critiques are palatable in a variety of contexts.

Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues

#83

Post by scruple »

vinceguidry wrote: post #35
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…

Very very few people writing software knows how to do it well. I'm talking from a cultural perspective, not from a technical one. Young people are either hungry enough or not jaded enough or both to put up with it. By the time you hit your late thirties you're already too tired for this crap. By your forties you're looking for an exit. By your fifties, you're one job loss away from semi-retirement.

Late 30s here, tech lead. I hear myself saying, "I'm too old for this shit" under my breath almost every fucking week. So.. What you're telling me is that I'm in for more of the same. Great.

Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues

#84

Post by majewsky »

toyg wrote: post #77
ken wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 than…

> In the end, everyone deep down would rather not have to work for someone else, or to not work at all.

I very much disagree. I like that my company cares about things like sales/marketing/HR/finance so I don't have to. And anyway, for most jobs, you need a supporting structure that has your back, like a company or a government agency or whatever. Sure, you could start your own company, but at that point you'll most likely spend more time doing management rather than actual work. I like that I can focus on my technical role since I'm very much not a manager type.

Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues

#85

Post by kayfox »

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…

Tech rapidly burns people out, the people that survive either get someplace where they can quietly hide, play the dominance game, find some way to duck out from time to time or some combination of all three. You either follow the crowd or people tell you that your wrong at every opportunity, if you want to prove yourself right you get saddled with impossible goals to do so.

The constant churn of the actual technology has many people running to catch up. What worked today no-longer works tomorrow because there is no considering in the engineering, if that even happens, of permanence. Because of the heavy involvement of software the hardware is often burned at the end, some products took longer to bring to life than they lived, because its all disposable. The software, the hardware, the people.

I think to see why women and older engineers are few and far between we should be looking at these issues, because in some technology companies outside big tech we see plenty of women and older engineers, but since those companies don't "innovate" every quarter and pivot like a top, they trudge on outside the limelight, some doing great things we take for granted.

Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues

#86

Post by camgunz »

davidmurdoch wrote: post #70
camgunz wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yeah totally, and I think your earlier point about these things being designed by committee explains a lot of this. I onboarded at a place where I had to use this map of people’s desks to find certain people. Like, I can do that, but I’m never going to need to. But whatever ops manager representing their department probably thought there should be some ops thing in there, or they fought for that software and want to make sure it gets good use or whatever. I get all that, but generally what it indicates is that no one at any point (e.g. an engineering manager) said “hey this thing is intuitive enough people don’t need training on it, and culturally my people will feel condescended to”. It’s a bad signal, and borne out in Rachel’s case by the desk and equipment stuff. And while this isn’t always the case, if they can’t get small stuff like this right, what are the odds they’ll get professional development, comp, or conflict resolution right?

Hiring (or training) good managers is very hard, even more so for engineering managers. But it’s so bad as an employee to have a manager that doesn’t advocate for you, good people will leave, and that’s just a downward spiral.

Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues

#87

Post by Lammy »

runawaybottle wrote: post #82
Lammy wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So here again you allude to gender. I’m open to having that discussion as a valid consideration if we eliminated all other rational explanations (as in, we enter the gender discussion if it’s obvious we can’t make sense of the reaction any other way). As for how to bring up her issue? Well, her initial way was one way. It turned out it wasn’t the best. The parameters you can modify is when and also to whom . Believe…

> Now how would I sound if I compared my dismissive experience of it in contrast to that?

I would trust that both of you are telling the truth about the way you experience reality, wouldn't assume that one had to be false for the other to be true, would probably try to offer some words of sympathy or encouragement for your bad experience, and would do my best to accommodate both in the future, of course :)

Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues

#88

Post by toyg »

majewsky wrote: post #84
toyg wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 than…

> In the end, everyone deep down would rather not have to work for someone else, or to not work at all. I very much disagree. I like that my company cares about things like sales/marketing/HR/finance so I don't have to. And anyway, for most jobs, you need a supporting structure that has your back, like a company or a government agency or whatever. Sure, you could start your own company, but at that point you'll most…

If you didn’t have to earn money to live, you wouldn’t need to have a company or whatnot - that is my point.

Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues

#89

Post by majewsky »

toyg wrote: post #88
majewsky wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the end, everyone deep down would rather not have to work for someone else, or to not work at all. I very much disagree. I like that my company cares about things like sales/marketing/HR/finance so I don't have to. And anyway, for most jobs, you need a supporting structure that has your back, like a company or a government agency or whatever. Sure, you could start your own company, but at that point you'll most…

If you didn’t have to earn money to live, you wouldn’t need to have a company or whatnot - that is my point.

You still want to accomplish goals, and most goals require some sort of organization that bears the initial/ongoing investment and provides you with the back office etc. For instance, even if you're the best surgeon in the world, you won't be about to run a hospital all on your own.

Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues

#90

Post by toyg »

majewsky wrote: post #89
toyg wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you didn’t have to earn money to live, you wouldn’t need to have a company or whatnot - that is my point.

You still want to accomplish goals, and most goals require some sort of organization that bears the initial/ongoing investment and provides you with the back office etc. For instance, even if you're the best surgeon in the world, you won't be about to run a hospital all on your own.

> You still want to accomplish goals

why do that when Civilization V exists?

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