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How did I get so unhappy working in tech?

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Re: How did I get so unhappy working in tech?

#61

Post by Trasmatta »

rablackburn wrote: post #59
Trasmatta wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, how did your boss respond to that?

My bet would be something like: "haha, yeah it's ridiculous, right?" IME it's sadly common for an organisation to have a Problem, for everyone to acknowledge there is a Problem, for someone to even come up with a roadmap to solve the Problem...and yet nothing will change because there is some ineffable disconnect between knowing and doing. Really it seems to come down something like "well, if we're going to go to all…

> or, "good idea, let's add a weekly meeting to monitor fixing this issue"

At one company, we started having daily "show and tell" meetings at the end of every day in addition to daily morning standups. I said during a retro that these were causing extra stress for the team, and felt unnecessary.

The team lead responded to that by making them 15 minutes longer, because he claimed the stress was just coming from team members not having enough time for their demos.

Re: How did I get so unhappy working in tech?

#62

Post by lvturner »

Trasmatta wrote: post #55
ipaddr wrote: post #44

As someone who has been in the industry for 20+ years I've noticed changes that may have lead to this point. Daily standups, meetings, gluing frameworks Daily standups are is a one size solution to a communication problem. Daily standups shouldn't be necessary with a team constantly communicating. Daily standups leads to cutting projects into small daily tasks. This leads to a system of micromanagement and it doesn't…

Re: meetings, I really think we need more tech companies taking the initiative to cut out meetings entirely . I think many companies would be shocked to find out that work would continue on, productivity would actually go up, and reported employer happiness would improve. I think it would be a "2020 remote work" style revelation for many teams. Many teams thought remote work would never work out for them, but when th…

I tried this, it didn't work well for my team.

For whatever reason, my team generally likes having scheduled times to discuss certain topics. I always give them optionality on the meeting however (i.e. we regularly review if a given meeting is causing more pain than it's solving)

Re: How did I get so unhappy working in tech?

#63

Post by Trasmatta »

lvturner wrote: post #62
Trasmatta wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: meetings, I really think we need more tech companies taking the initiative to cut out meetings entirely . I think many companies would be shocked to find out that work would continue on, productivity would actually go up, and reported employer happiness would improve. I think it would be a "2020 remote work" style revelation for many teams. Many teams thought remote work would never work out for them, but when th…

I tried this, it didn't work well for my team. For whatever reason, my team generally likes having scheduled times to discuss certain topics. I always give them optionality on the meeting however (i.e. we regularly review if a given meeting is causing more pain than it's solving)

In that situation, I think just the goal of minimizing the amount of meetings to the best of your team's ability would still help. Preferably 2 hours or less total, but 3 or 4 might be okay if special care is taken to when they are scheduled.

My meetings all get scattered throughout the week haphazardly such that getting even a few hours of dedicated work done is almost impossible on many days.

Re: How did I get so unhappy working in tech?

#64

Post by BLKNSLVR »

sidlls wrote: post #52
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We are not obscenely overpaid. Everything following this line seems to point in the other direction. Just because a smaller percentage of higher-ups received more doesn't mean you / we are not obscenely overpaid, it just means "they" are phenomenally obscenely overpaid and at the top of the exponential scale of "what's wrong with shit these days". Teachers and nurses, as the pandemic demonstrated, are essential to…

Laborers at most levels in our society deserve better compensation and treatment. The lower on the socioeconomic ladder, the more so. That some are underpaid compared to the value they deliver than others isn’t controversial to me. What is controversial is the suggestion that because some in the labor class are somewhat better paid they shouldn’t complain about also being underpaid relative to the value they provide.…

Well said, and I definitely sledgehammered the nuance.

Are we going to see the pendulum gathering momentum in the swing towards unionization? Could be I'm already late on that call given that Amazon employees have already had a recent victory in pursuit of this.

The world at large* seems to be reaching a breaking point in their tolerance of the widening wealth gap, manifesting in this collective burnout / great resignation / cynicism of purpose. Interesting times...

*may just be projecting myself onto the rest of the world and / or my media bubble's limited view.

Re: How did I get so unhappy working in tech?

#65

Post by ryanschneider »

spaetzleesser wrote: post #53
ipaddr wrote: post #44

As someone who has been in the industry for 20+ years I've noticed changes that may have lead to this point. Daily standups, meetings, gluing frameworks Daily standups are is a one size solution to a communication problem. Daily standups shouldn't be necessary with a team constantly communicating. Daily standups leads to cutting projects into small daily tasks. This leads to a system of micromanagement and it doesn't…

"Developers are expected to attend meetings more than ever. The focus required to deep dive into complex issues get's broken with meetings that developers shouldn't be attending. You can attend meetings or you program rarely can you do both effectively on the same day and rarely can you get the focus you once had." Agreed. when I started in the 90s I often got several months of focused work without many interruptions…

I also started I the 90s and now that you mention it I don’t think I had any meetings at my first job at a small software company. And even after we were acquired I still think we had at most semi monthly meetings.

My first job with daily standups was 2008 or so, and I just realized I left less than a year after they were implemented.

In short, I probably had less meetings in my first ten years in software than I did last quarter.

Re: How did I get so unhappy working in tech?

#66

Post by gumby »

> I knew nothing about the bitterness that seeps into your soul when you’re working in tech.

I wonder if the author got into “tech” because it seemed like a lucrative career and, as they say elsewhere, it looks to the outside world like they are doing something useful.

I’ve only been working “in tech” about 40 years and pretty much every day feels exciting to me. That the author feels differently doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with them!

It could be burn out or depression.

Re: How did I get so unhappy working in tech?

#68

Post by jayde2767 »

ipaddr wrote: post #44

As someone who has been in the industry for 20+ years I've noticed changes that may have lead to this point. Daily standups, meetings, gluing frameworks Daily standups are is a one size solution to a communication problem. Daily standups shouldn't be necessary with a team constantly communicating. Daily standups leads to cutting projects into small daily tasks. This leads to a system of micromanagement and it doesn't…

I view the daily standup as a way to communicate status to a Product Owner/Project Manager/SCRUM Master who may have to communicate status to a larger "Standup of Standups", if you will.

I agree that a high quality team communicates with each other often and status amongst them should not be necessary, or require a daily scheduled time.

Re: How did I get so unhappy working in tech?

#69

Post by jayde2767 »

Trasmatta wrote: post #55
ipaddr wrote: post #44

As someone who has been in the industry for 20+ years I've noticed changes that may have lead to this point. Daily standups, meetings, gluing frameworks Daily standups are is a one size solution to a communication problem. Daily standups shouldn't be necessary with a team constantly communicating. Daily standups leads to cutting projects into small daily tasks. This leads to a system of micromanagement and it doesn't…

Re: meetings, I really think we need more tech companies taking the initiative to cut out meetings entirely . I think many companies would be shocked to find out that work would continue on, productivity would actually go up, and reported employer happiness would improve. I think it would be a "2020 remote work" style revelation for many teams. Many teams thought remote work would never work out for them, but when th…

I wish there was a true measure for opportunity cost.

Re: How did I get so unhappy working in tech?

#70

Post by kookamamie »

gumby wrote: post #66

> I knew nothing about the bitterness that seeps into your soul when you’re working in tech. I wonder if the author got into “tech” because it seemed like a lucrative career and, as they say elsewhere, it looks to the outside world like they are doing something useful. I’ve only been working “in tech” about 40 years and pretty much every day feels exciting to me. That the author feels differently doesn’t mean there i…

Agreed. I took notice of OP's narrow view of "tech" and somehow binding web-dev to (assumed here) everything else. Not everything in tech is about gluing frameworks.
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