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You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss
51–60 of 90 posts
Re: You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss
#52What if you agree with this article, you do feel constrained in an unhealthy way by your job in a large organization, but you don't feel that leaving for a small company or startup is an option (or at least not an option anytime soon)? Well, here's a coping skill that can help you. Focus on doing your duty as well as you can, regardless of the context. In other words, imagine your boss says that the web app must be w…
You need a lot of energy (cynicism? doublethink?) to be able to see such a pointless exercise as an opportunity for training. It might be the optimal thing to do, but it is quite hard to ignore that part of your brain which tells you to avoid useless stuff.
Besides, not all crappy tasks can be bent like this. Sometimes, there is just no way to disguise it as an interesting challenge.
Re: You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Humans also weren't meant to build pyramids, send men to the moon, or write operating systems. Big organizations are needed for big problems. But I do generally agree with the article that big organizations are not the best place to develop as a programmer.
Big organizations are needed for big problems. The jury is still out on that one. The trend lately has been in the other direction.
I would qualify it like so: that government-scale problems still need government-scale employment. But they need relatively less of it now. As with a lot of things in technology the change is mostly creeping in from the bottom, turning large spaces into cheap/easy one-person problems.
Re: You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss
#54Re: You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss
#55What if you agree with this article, you do feel constrained in an unhealthy way by your job in a large organization, but you don't feel that leaving for a small company or startup is an option (or at least not an option anytime soon)? Well, here's a coping skill that can help you. Focus on doing your duty as well as you can, regardless of the context. In other words, imagine your boss says that the web app must be w…
haha I tried that yesterday....my boss asked me to come up with documentation for some objective C code....in three days I not only documented two classes but also used a tool called appledoc for autogenerating documentation for all the classes....in fact I wrote a script that I added as an xcode target that when run not only autogenerates documentation but also uploads it on a central server.
RESULT...I got severly REBUKED for not creating a word document and emailing it to him...in fact he threatened me about escalating my disobedience to senior management
Re: You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Humans also weren't meant to build pyramids, send men to the moon, or write operating systems. Big organizations are needed for big problems. But I do generally agree with the article that big organizations are not the best place to develop as a programmer.
Big organizations are needed for big problems. The jury is still out on that one. The trend lately has been in the other direction.
By "big" I mean problems that require many distinct, intelligent decisions. These problems always has and always will require very large groups of people working cooperatively. For example, the Apollo program at it's peak employed 34,000 NASA employees and 375,000 contractors [1]. This is really a point of semantics though, not really worth debating.
Re: You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss
#57What if you agree with this article, you do feel constrained in an unhealthy way by your job in a large organization, but you don't feel that leaving for a small company or startup is an option (or at least not an option anytime soon)? Well, here's a coping skill that can help you. Focus on doing your duty as well as you can, regardless of the context. In other words, imagine your boss says that the web app must be w…
You need a lot of energy (cynicism? doublethink?) to be able to see such a pointless exercise as an opportunity for training. It might be the optimal thing to do, but it is quite hard to ignore that part of your brain which tells you to avoid useless stuff. Besides, not all crappy tasks can be bent like this. Sometimes, there is just no way to disguise it as an interesting challenge.
Agreed. This advice is only for when you are trapped. It is not good to put your effort toward a pointless goal.
Re: You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss
#58What if you agree with this article, you do feel constrained in an unhealthy way by your job in a large organization, but you don't feel that leaving for a small company or startup is an option (or at least not an option anytime soon)? Well, here's a coping skill that can help you. Focus on doing your duty as well as you can, regardless of the context. In other words, imagine your boss says that the web app must be w…
Or alternatively I'd do this: spend as low energy on this absurd project as you can, read about new stuff at your work if you can and grow your normal skills at home. Have a project on a side, help real people to solve real problems. Have no pity when you leave this boss and the company behind.
The only thing to be careful of here is that even though it is a sign of intelligence that you choose not to put forth effort toward a fruitless goal, your boss or another outsider may not view it this way. They may think you're lazy, for example.
Re: You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there any successful YC company that doesn't have bosses and employees? There is even a feature on HN designed specifically for bosses to find employees.
There are several that were acqhired when they were just the founders.
And presumably the companies that acquired them had bosses.
Re: You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss
#60There's a really great book written by an anthropologist living with a group of pygmies in the Congo. They literally have no leader. Very interesting and a similar vibe to that of PG's lion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forest_People