How did I get so unhappy working in tech? • Hacker News Board

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

#111

Post by BlargMcLarg » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 8:29 AM UTC

twblalock wrote: post #89

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…

Being in meetings means you get to be in the room when decisions are made. Even if you aren't an active participant, you get to at least listen in. Almost all problems are really people problems, and people problems can only be solved by communicating with other people. Some engineers seem to want to work for long stretches uninterrupted, like monks copying sacred texts. That is not the way to succeed. To succeed you…

>Even if you aren't an active participant, you get to at least listen in.

This is why "it could've been an email" exists. If you're not making me an active/reactive, valuable contributor, then you're wasting my time and the boss' money.

>That is not the way to succeed.

I mean, seems a lot of people managed to succeed just fine going radio silent for a long time and simply observing their target audience until the last moment. Which does allow for long stretches of work, and rails against the "communication and work need to be heavily intertwined for success!" spiel. Nor does it say meetings are the best way to do this intertwining, even situationally.

>To succeed you need to make sure what you are building is actually what you should be building.

Which does not necessarily conclude that meetings do this.

The whole comment also misses obvious points such as analysis paralysis, death by committee and more.

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

#112

Post by tuyiown » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 8:35 AM UTC

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…

> Hard to accomplish anything that requires experimentation over months until it works.

That said, the industry matured so much that experimentation that fold up as planned are generally doomed by large structural issue in the approach. 20 years ago, tweaking and digging your way in trench was the expected path since having to work around implementation details and bugs happened whatever you wanted to get done.

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

#113

Post by BlargMcLarg » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 8:38 AM UTC

tome wrote: post #95

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'm generally puzzled by the HN conventional wisdom against meetings, and I'm puzzled by this thread specifically because there doesn't seem to be a single commenter who is as much as just fine with meetings. Am I really in such a small minority, or has HN turned into an echo chamber on this issue, where no one with a countervailing opinion dares to get a word in? Having a meeting interrupt my work ranges from slight…

>I don't know how I would understand my team mates as people

This sounds overly dramatic considering most people are very different in a meeting setup. We didn't need meetings to do this for the majority of our species' existence. Just talk with them, basic empathy.

The way it sounds, you like some meetings because they fulfill X, but X can also be fulfilled in different ways without the downsides of meetings, be it specific meetings or in general. It's those downsides and knowing X can still be satisfied that drives many of us against meetings. Many times, meetings are also subpar or flat-out fail to achieve X because of other circumstances.

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

#114

Post by verve_rat » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 8:44 AM UTC

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #98

jayde2767 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>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. What's wrong with an email?

Or that work tracking system they spent all that time and money configuring.

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

#115

Post by DarkCrusader2 » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 8:58 AM UTC

throwaway6532 wrote: post #3

I feel ya man. This is exactly where I'm at. Left one job because the company burnt me out, but I was still a passionate engineer. Eight months in to my current company I feel the flame I once had for engineering is all but extinguished. Starting to interview for a new job now and every option I evaluate I feel like I already know the BS that's waiting for me there and I just don't want to go through it. I'm trying t…

I have been having similar thoughts recently. With just 4 years into my career (working at a FAANG for last 2), I too am looking around for a job. But it all looks the same corporate BS, providing "business value", grinding for promotion, being a small cog in a enormous machine, dealing with middle managers and their egos and endless insecurity, estimations and deadline chasing, I feel so done and tired. Add the bullshit interview process on top of all this and it is enough for me to never want to change jobs again. I feel like I am in hell.

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

#116

Post by uuyi » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 9:00 AM UTC

csande17 wrote: post #106

onion2k wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. when I started in the 90s I often got several months of focused work without many interruptions. I did that too. Quite often the project failed after those months because we'd built the wrong thing, or the landscape had changed, or the customer had failed to spec what they needed well enough. This was the "Waterfall" methodology, and Agile, with all its meetings, is specifically designed to fix that problem.

My favorite Agile failure case is when you have all the meetings and still fail, because you spent all your time on Agile paperwork instead of designing and building a product.

I am currently succeeding at this failure.

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

#117

Post by tome » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 9:03 AM UTC

BlargMcLarg wrote: post #113

tome wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm generally puzzled by the HN conventional wisdom against meetings, and I'm puzzled by this thread specifically because there doesn't seem to be a single commenter who is as much as just fine with meetings. Am I really in such a small minority, or has HN turned into an echo chamber on this issue, where no one with a countervailing opinion dares to get a word in? Having a meeting interrupt my work ranges from slight…

>I don't know how I would understand my team mates as people This sounds overly dramatic considering most people are very different in a meeting setup. We didn't need meetings to do this for the majority of our species' existence. Just talk with them, basic empathy. The way it sounds, you like some meetings because they fulfill X, but X can also be fulfilled in different ways without the downsides of meetings, be it…

Yeah, the connection between understanding them as people and meetings per se is a bit tenuous, but to get to know them better I would have to interrupt them for a chat, or schedule a coffee break with them, or go to lunch with them, all of which seem as "interrupting to flow" as a scheduled meeting.

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

#118

Post by maccard » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 9:11 AM UTC

BlargMcLarg wrote: post #111

twblalock wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being in meetings means you get to be in the room when decisions are made. Even if you aren't an active participant, you get to at least listen in. Almost all problems are really people problems, and people problems can only be solved by communicating with other people. Some engineers seem to want to work for long stretches uninterrupted, like monks copying sacred texts. That is not the way to succeed. To succeed you…

>Even if you aren't an active participant, you get to at least listen in. This is why "it could've been an email" exists. If you're not making me an active/reactive, valuable contributor, then you're wasting my time and the boss' money. >That is not the way to succeed. I mean, seems a lot of people managed to succeed just fine going radio silent for a long time and simply observing their target audience until the las…

> This is why "it could've been an email" exists. If you're not making me an active/reactive, valuable contributor, then you're wasting my time and the boss' money.

In my experience, the people who work like this are the sort of people with 5000 unread emails who ignore slack DMs too because they're "too busy".

> I mean, seems a lot of people managed to succeed just fine going radio silent for a long time and simply observing their target audience until the last moment.

This is a local optimization, and only works if the entire team is on board with "keep BlargMcLarg unblocked" at the expense of themselves. As the parent put it, this is a people problem, not a tech problem, and by only dealing with _your_ needs you're ignoring the needs of your team.

> Which does allow for long stretches of work,

This is a time management (and people) problem. Not going to any meetings is likely to result in producers appearing at your desk because they don't know what's going on (because _they_ have 5k emails and you've not spoken to them in a week). It also doesn't solve the long stretches of work problem; time management does.

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

#119

Post by BlargMcLarg » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 9:26 AM UTC

maccard wrote: post #118

BlargMcLarg wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Even if you aren't an active participant, you get to at least listen in. This is why "it could've been an email" exists. If you're not making me an active/reactive, valuable contributor, then you're wasting my time and the boss' money. >That is not the way to succeed. I mean, seems a lot of people managed to succeed just fine going radio silent for a long time and simply observing their target audience until the las…

> This is why "it could've been an email" exists. If you're not making me an active/reactive, valuable contributor, then you're wasting my time and the boss' money. In my experience, the people who work like this are the sort of people with 5000 unread emails who ignore slack DMs too because they're "too busy". > I mean, seems a lot of people managed to succeed just fine going radio silent for a long time and simply…

>In my experience

In my experience, there is absolutely zero correlation between preference for meetings and willingness to communicate asynchronously. To me, this is simply advocating for meetings to force people to communicate and be empathic. This has its own set of problems, as evident by anecdotes in this thread and the many discussions prior.

>This is a local optimization

On the flipside, you assume that the local optimization does not lead into a global optimization, while referring back to the parent's "meetings good" as a global solution. Obviously, giving an anecdote of the other extreme of the curve is just there to show how absurd the notion of "meetings are best" is. There is success on both sides of the curve. I would really like to see empirical evidence of "meetings best", as the trend continues towards "more meetings" (or really just more bureaucracy) without any strong evidence as to why this is beneficial for the entire company.

>As the parent put it, this is a people problem

I agree. More communication != better communication. Synchronous communication != better communication. Just like some books read better with fewer words, so can less communication lead to better communication. Unlike what a lot of pro-meeting people like to believe, the anti-meeting crowd isn't arguing for "no communication" as a whole.

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

#120

Post by tiew9Vii » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 9:36 AM UTC

jayski wrote: post #9

you should work for a month in a 3rd world country call center for minimum wage. you have it way too good, be grateful

Right.

I'm in the highest-paid job of my life, getting a free day off once a month on top of 21 days' leave and public holidays. Free health insurance, learning budget, work from home, equity, share plan. Things are very good. I couldn't want more or design a better job.

Yet the agile ceremonies, working on a team where small PR's are open over a week as people argue about names or something, isn't following someone's arbitrary style preference, which is now a dogmatic team rule in the team styleguide.md file or rules.md file or contributing.md file or the department guidelines.md file. Breaking a deliverable into the most minor task possible in a Jira, so you know each class/function you have to write and then find the original plan is not the reality when coding. Then story pointing the card, even if the task itself is less time to do than the effort spent in Jira and pointing. The religiously pairing and people being afraid to do work on their own. All while the deadline is slipping away, and no real work is getting done as the time is taken up by the process around the work rather than the work. You find yourself burnt out, wanting to quit for a simple life.

We know it's not so bad. On the outside, what more could we want? But it also takes its toll mentally. We've probably done much harder jobs in our youth, in call centres, working retail, labouring in factories for minimum wage 10-12hrs a day 6-7 days a week, juggling school with the rent, yet some of us still feel like this is the hardest it's been mentally.

I'm probably going to leave my position to go to a small ten person company. I find them much more fulfilling, no large processes, people turn up, do their work, may need to do more than their fair share as a small company, but you can see the progress and get a sense of achievement.