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Ask HN: Anyone else is tired of all the corporate bs?

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Re: Ask HN: Anyone else is tired of all the corporate bs?

#41

Post by betwixthewires »

You're not wrong. While nobody should have to do it, some of us just aren't cut out for it. A lot of people can take the bullshit, some of us can't.

I had a boss one time that wanted me to work 50 hours a week. "There's no such thing as a 40 hour a week job anymore" he said. I could get all of my work done in under 20 usually, so doing 40 was bad enough, you want me to put in more time here just so you can prove who's in charge? I didn't work for him very long. There were guys in there that worked for him for years and years, they all looked like husks of men.

If you're not cut out for it don't do it. There are jobs out there that aren't like that, but they're not around every corner. Go try to find one, and don't live a life you don't want because you think you have to.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else is tired of all the corporate bs?

#42

Post by aristofun »

The key reason behind it is that you don’t care about the company.

It means that either you’re not high enough in hierarchy to feel the ownership, to get noticeable stocks etc.

You’re just being used as an expensive cog in the wheel.

Or/and you don’t care about the company mission.

Why are you still there I wonder?

In my experience as soon as I achieve my own goals with an employer - I leave the next day.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else is tired of all the corporate bs?

#43

Post by theshrike79 »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #26
blenderdt wrote: post #23

I think it really depends on the company. Some people in this thread suggest moving to a smaller company or a startup but in my experience this doesn't matter. It's all about the culture of your work environment. Sometimes this is even different per department. I was in a similar position like you a couple of times. Some things I did: * If less income isn't a problem ask to work less. Why not work 32 hours instead of…

> Sometimes this is even different per department. Indeed very true, I've had managers and CTO's who made a point on shielding the engineering teams from any rando meetings, but other departments in the same company where living an experience similar to OPs with death by video-conference. Even had a manager who would cap meetings to max 3h per week. This really added pressure for ppl to justify townhall type meetings…

We had a unit-wide policy of meeting-free days every week. Everyone knew when they were and knew in advance that could just focus on working full-time.

And I, as a team leader/project manager of sorts, just said to my team not to come into meetings that had no pre-defined agenda. I went in and relayed any questions to the team via the company chat if I didn't know the answer outright. Saved the team from hours of useless meetings.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else is tired of all the corporate bs?

#44

Post by kaskakokos »

g105b wrote: post #36

Yes. I have no solution for you, but all I can say is that I feel you. My coping mechanism was to work freelance; less hours and more "fun" projects, but freelance work also comes with its own flavor of bs, so I think it's just a flaw with the human condition at this point.

Agreed. So far we cannot change the human condition, we can only influence the environment, but I am not sure how much, given the complexity.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else is tired of all the corporate bs?

#45

Post by higeorge13 »

theshrike79 wrote: post #38
higeorge13 wrote: post #31

I wish i was always in front of customers. I wouldn’t have had the product or any managers acting as proxies and agreeing on things that don’t make any sense and don’t bring any value to them. Most people think that customers have no idea, while in most cases if you put the right knowledgable people in front of them they would build amazing features together. I have seen it in an AI startup! Whenever us devs worked w…

Techy folks with people skills are in high demand nowadays. Someone who can sell a project directly to the customer while also knowing exactly what is possible and in what timeframe without having to consult someone else is worth their weight in gold. We still have a few too many "hype-men" type salespeople who are in the Always Be Closing mindset without any sense of what's actually deliverable or even sensible.

I agree, although even devs with no people skills could even do better than those sales people or managers. They could hear customers pain points, clear goals on what to optimize for (revenue, clickthrough, etc) and then build some nice data science product within a reasonable timeframe.

But you usually have these proxy people, who then have to do countless internal meetings to figure out what to actually do, imposing extra ordinary requirements and work hours and that’s why we have all these posts with people hating meetings, burning out and switching fields. If only the middle management and product was tech educated and oriented..

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else is tired of all the corporate bs?

#46

Post by lexa1979 »

I live in Belgium, didn't inherit millions from family and am in the middle working class. I'll stay in this working class, this is how it has been conceived, I'll never make millions. Once I understood and accepted this, I managed to work only 4 days a week and live more than finely with this salary. Work is only there to get my living wage, I detached completely from work life, I chat with colleague, I do what I'm supposed to do, nothing less, nothing more, I play cards and read a lot, then my 7h50 workday is over and I go on with my real life: my son, my car, my hobbies, my friends. THIS is what counts.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else is tired of all the corporate bs?

#48

Post by sam_lowry_ »

lexa1979 wrote: post #46

I live in Belgium, didn't inherit millions from family and am in the middle working class. I'll stay in this working class, this is how it has been conceived, I'll never make millions. Once I understood and accepted this, I managed to work only 4 days a week and live more than finely with this salary. Work is only there to get my living wage, I detached completely from work life, I chat with colleague, I do what I'm…

At the same time, I am looking for a part-time freelance job out of Belgium, and find it surprisingly difficult to find.

I am omnivore, having successfully maintained both outdated Eclipse/OSGI-based codebases and large PHP websites, but everyone wants to buy me in entirety.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else is tired of all the corporate bs?

#49

Post by nazgulnarsil »

You are tired because you spend energy projecting a better way for things to be, not bad in itself, but then you physically tense your body to try to make the projection closer to true. It's unclear why people do this but life gets a lot easier if you learn to notice and stop.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else is tired of all the corporate bs?

#50

Post by npacenop »

I don't want to sound like the bad guy here who defends corporate, but I kind of feel like OP and a lot of comments are missing the point. Which is: large business organizations are complex social structures. You can't have a complex social structure without a lot of communication going on. Of course there are zounds of different ways to communicate with each other and if you (and your colleagues) feel like certain meetings are just a waste of time and have no benefit whatsoever, there is something wrong with the org's culture.

I happen to manage approx 20 people in a ~500 person org. Everyone gets a chance to decide if they want to focus on becoming a social animal and growing in the org (which results in more meetings, more emails, more chats, etc.) or just concentrate on the technical stuff. The latter is perfectly fine for me as I am aware that these people still produce huge amounts of value to the company. However they are not party to some decision loops and are often on the receiving end of architecture and design decisions. Most of them start to complain about that sooner or later, so I ask them to start participating in more meetings... Once being able to put all that into perspective, most of them don't complain about it anymore.

So long story short - most of the time you can't have it both ways in a large(-ish) organization. You can either be the guy who digs a hole every day and someone tells him where. Or you can be the guy who decides where to dig the holes but only get to dig a more moderate amount of holes yourself.

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