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Ask HN: How do I get over constant failure?

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Re: Ask HN: How do I get over constant failure?

#81

Post by rkk3 »

> How do I get over constant failure?

Constant failure? You are highly compensated and have a mortgage for a house, presumably in a very high cost of living area. It seems like you are an insecure overachiever and need to reframe things.

> My manager left a few weeks after I started, my onboarding buddy has been absent, and the fear has started creeping in again that I'm alone and can't hack it in this high performing team.

That doesn't sound like a high performing team. Stop putting dysfunctional startups on a pedestal and denigrating yourself.

Re: Ask HN: How do I get over constant failure?

#82

Post by rmk »

In my experience, you are in learn more or earn mode, but usually not both, when working a startup job. The early stage startups offer great learning opportunities: you get to implement the first cut of the system and learn from your (inevitable) mistakes. The focus is on building. But there is no guarantee of earnings apart from the cash paycheck that is deposited into your account every pay cycle. In such a setup, you may run into bad personalities who can hamper your learning goals, in which case it's best to leave. Note that early-stage startups have a lot of risk and you may end up not learning anything while incurring the opportunity cost.

On the other hand, if you join a very mature startup or established public company, then there will be established HR processes and the likelihood of wacko personalities goes down. There will be better management and almost certainly better pay. The cost is that you will have a mediocre set of colleagues, far fewer learning opportunities and less relevant skills to pick up on the job (relevant, in the sense of landing your next opportunity).

Too much of one or the other will lead to what feels like constant failure. It may be best to alternate between these, accepting the reality that your skills need updating every now and then, and it's best to do that in an environment where that can happen quickly, and money is important and must come at the cost of work satisfaction and learning sometimes. Striking a balance between the two is the challenging part of career management.

EDIT: Reading your post again a few times, I also see another problem. It looks like you have trouble finishing up projects, i.e., converting prototypes into functional product and keeping it running. This is the boring part, and why people get paid the big bucks, and you need to learn the skill of finishing up and keeping the lights on. If you want to learn this specific skill, join a mid-size company that's growing nicely but has an established product or two in a big market. This type of company is where you will have opportunities to learn this type of skill.

Re: Ask HN: How do I get over constant failure?

#83

Post by Terry_Roll »

Maybe move into sales if that is possible, very few people in sales are technical enough and let companies down, you however sound like might know enough to answer those board room sale pitches which require technical details. You can also then find out more about what the customer wants and then use that feedback to drive the technical direction of the product. By being able to code, you can randomly QA the product by getting customer feedback when you drop in on a customer and talk to their users (if that is possible), and you can then pass this feedback back to the dev team. Whilst off the shelf software is mass market, it doesnt always lead to lock ins, custom built software does lead to lock ins and that protects income streams for all.

Also write a bucket list and see how you can change your job to achieve your bucket list. Remote working means more office based employees like coders can now work whilst travelling the world.

Re: Ask HN: How do I get over constant failure?

#84

Post by kleiba »

You say that you have been with a number of startups, and each time it seems like your expectation of what the work at a startup _should_ be like clashes with reality. I have a feeling that this clash plays a big part in your frustration.

It can be helpful to make hidden expectations explicit, and thus allow for a reality check.

So, in your opinion, what is the ideal startup like?

Re: Ask HN: How do I get over constant failure?

#85

Post by richk449 »

burnoutgal wrote: post #40
javajosh wrote: post #18

You could take a risk, and tell the truth to a coworker, ideally someone who sees themselves as a potential mentor. It's an act of trust, being vulnerable like that. But it doesn't sound like you have much to lose, and it's a risk that could actually put you in a much better position, personally and professionally. 2 months without a PR merge isn't the worst thing in the world, but yeah, it's time to do something . S…

I've tried opening up to a couple peers, there's definitely a culture gap where they're successful bay area dev guys who aren't used to hearing about people failing (like really failing, not "my startup ran out of money so I joined a FAANG") or being vulnerable. Agree about merging smaller PRs, I did recently find a backlog of stuff I can crank out to keep myself sane.

It doesn’t seem like your use of the word “failing” is helpful.

You should be going to senior devs and telling them that you are finding it surprisingly difficult to get traction, and that you could really use some guidance and mentoring to make the team as effective as possible. And you should bring them a specific plan that they can critique and provide you feedback on. Pick one PR, write out a plan to get it merged, and ask them to review your plan.

Maybe they will tell you that you picked a bad area to focus on, because Bob is really particular about that code and he only approves changes by senior engineers - then ask the mentor what a better area to focus on is.

Maybe they will say the area is good, but your plan is all wrong. Then ask them how you can improve the plan.

Maybe they will say you are crazy if you expect to be be touching the code base in your first year. Then ask what you should focus on to best contribute.

Then schedule regular follow ups to review how your plan is working out. Come prepared to discuss what you accomplished, and what you haven’t been able to accomplish.

Make it easy for people to help you.

Re: Ask HN: How do I get over constant failure?

#86

Post by septimus111 »

burnoutgal wrote: post #11
pezzana wrote: post #2

> ... It's been a couple months and I have achieved nothing. Not a single PR merged. ... There's a lot to be said for getting into a rhythm of picking an issue, solving it, and merging it. Doing it a few times can be a real confidence booster. What's the reason behind having no PRs merged? Did you create them, only to have them rejected? Have you not completed the work for any? Is there nobody to review them? Also, j…

I've teed up maybe 6 PRs, but it is hard to find who's actually responsible to review things and get sign-off one way or the other. The iteration speed is also very slow and deploys are pretty high risk, so it's hard to throw things at the wall and see what sticks.

If you can't find someone to review your stuff, is there someone you can raise this with who might be able to help? It sounds like a management/communication issue.

Re: Ask HN: How do I get over constant failure?

#87

Post by burnoutgal »

rkk3 wrote: post #81

> How do I get over constant failure? Constant failure? You are highly compensated and have a mortgage for a house, presumably in a very high cost of living area. It seems like you are an insecure overachiever and need to reframe things. > My manager left a few weeks after I started, my onboarding buddy has been absent, and the fear has started creeping in again that I'm alone and can't hack it in this high performin…

Having a mortgage isn't an accomplishment, it's a liability. It would be expensive and stressful to downsize our biggest expense, and unexpected repairs blew a huge hole in our household budget. I'm well-compensated for now, but how long can I realistically keep it up?

The team hasn't done a great job supporting me, but they deliver on their commitments and the individual team members are extremely competent.

Re: Ask HN: How do I get over constant failure?

#88

Post by burnoutgal »

kleiba wrote: post #84

You say that you have been with a number of startups, and each time it seems like your expectation of what the work at a startup _should_ be like clashes with reality. I have a feeling that this clash plays a big part in your frustration. It can be helpful to make hidden expectations explicit, and thus allow for a reality check. So, in your opinion, what is the ideal startup like?

In my mind the ideal role is on a team that clearly owns codebase, has users giving them feedback, and works with product and management to set a roadmap and then deliver on it. Being able to work with new and interesting technologies would be a bonus, but even just working on medium-sized features with a couple other engineers would be great.

Re: Ask HN: How do I get over constant failure?

#89

Post by legerdemain »

yangikan wrote: post #80
andrew_eit wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 Honestly never understood why joining startups is meant to be so amazing unless 1) They are working on exactly the niche that YOU personally want to work in and 2) The startup's company culture is exactly your kind of weird/niche culture too. IMO unless it's a perfect match, you're going to have a bad time as there is less stability and diversity of ideas/experience in small startups. I love large orgs because the…

> I can always move projects when I get bored or something isn't right. This comment is so underrated. In most big companies, if your manager is an asshole or the project is boring, you can always move to a different role.

As far as official protocol goes, at most places I've worked that means you can change teams after a year. They placed you on a team, so they want you there.

People who switch faster either have very accommodating leads or they feel secure enough to give an ultimatum.

Re: Ask HN: How do I get over constant failure?

#90

Post by rendall »

legerdemain wrote: post #69
burnoutgal wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm definitely struggling with finding the one big thing I should focus on. My team has a few objectives for the coming year, but it's unclear who actually owns them or how to get involved. We have a new manager coming in to replace the one who left, but the timing is not great given how long I've already been treading water. PR approval is mostly down to not being able to get any person to actually +1 - our deploys…

Oh jeez, that sounds oddly familiar! Right before the pandemic I joined a large company you've heard of. My boss was mostly absent - I talked to her maybe four times during my entire stay. We were actively hiring for an intermediate lead to take the load off her. My teammates had no idea what to have me do. We operated a confusing distributed workflow that touched many teams. Changes and deploys were seen as risky, b…

> ...would have gambled on the possibility that painful, risky deploys and unclear success criteria were a pain point for everyone. That means work on metrics, tests, and the tooling for them. It means building reliable rollback and faster deploy. It means building parallel testing pipelines. Overall, when there is chaos and lack of buy-in, one possible solution is to build stuff that demonstrates usefulness without a need for buy-in.

Absolutely excellent advice.

I would start by getting consensus on process. Hit up the main engineering chat channel and describe the issue you want better. "Deployment is painful and bug prone. In order to get code to production, first we have to..." Of course use neutral, non-judgmental language - this is the process that has emerged, no one's fault. This is an engineering problem to be solved. Next, ask for thoughts and opinions. You could suggest your own if you think it will help, but it's about building consensus. Just starting these conversations can be enough sometimes. But you can take it to the next step and actually build the tools that are suggested.

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