Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: New job at BigCo. Everything has friction

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 219 posts

Re: Ask HN: New job at BigCo. Everything has friction

#101

Post by closeparen »

ravenstine wrote: post #18

Yes. It even happens at medium sized companies. One answer is to accept the way things are at BigCo and to just coast along in your role, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Another answer is to work at an early-stage startup or a small non-tech company where you can move fast. The tradeoff there is lack of job security and lesser pay. Don't ever expect to move fast at BigCo. It's a BigCo for a reason. By moving fa…

From MediumCo I will say: there is a lot of friction, quite intentionally, when you go off the rails. As a backend engineer, messing with things like VMs and SSL certificates yourself is definitely way off the rails. We want that to be hard. You are supposed to be creating and iterating on services using the standard application frameworks, deployed to the standard shared clusters, communicating through the standard service mesh, etc. where all of that is handled automatically.

Make sure there's not a golden path that you're missing? Or that your reasons for departing from it are really insurmountable?

Re: Ask HN: New job at BigCo. Everything has friction

#102

Post by Simon_O_Rourke »

Not only does everything have friction, most of it is by design to keep other less talented people in jobs.

If it's truly unpleasant, then try to be that guy who can "make a few calls" and get stuff pushed through a small bit quicker. Pander to the egos you'll encounter, hop to their beat until you get things done because fighting it will just end up taking longer.

Re: Ask HN: New job at BigCo. Everything has friction

#103

Post by jerDev »

bdcravens wrote: post #92
ravenstine wrote: post #18

Yes. It even happens at medium sized companies. One answer is to accept the way things are at BigCo and to just coast along in your role, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Another answer is to work at an early-stage startup or a small non-tech company where you can move fast. The tradeoff there is lack of job security and lesser pay. Don't ever expect to move fast at BigCo. It's a BigCo for a reason. By moving fa…

> Another answer is to work at an early-stage startup or a small non-tech company where you can move fast. The tradeoff there is lack of job security and lesser pay. I work for a very small "non-tech" company, have been here 12 years, and have a great income. The tradeoff I had to make was a much higher level of responsibility. (I'm at the very top of the tech stack - if something isn't working, there's no one for me…

Lesser pay is not always true.

Re: Ask HN: New job at BigCo. Everything has friction

#105

Post by fivre »

throwbigdata wrote: post #45

All these people telling you to coast are right for 80% of the population. If you have great ability, do t squander it. Get another job where you can be more effective. Find your passion and your fortune will likely follow. I eschewed advice like the others give, and I didn’t have to work after 35. Yes I got lucky but I also worked hard and failed and got back up and found a place to succeed. Big companies are mostly…

Survivorship bias is a thing :)

For every 1 person who got a big payout, there are 99 more that just worked themselves to burnout and maybe got a mediocre options payout worth about 1/2 the salary they'd have made at BigCo.

This is probably more true if you're employee number There isn't any guaranteed, or IMO even likely expectation of a big reward if you join SmallCo and simply "work hard". The reward for that is usually more that higher-ups recognize you're capable and choose you as the go-to person any time they have any sort of tough problem. This is both exhausting and frustrating if you're the designated hero fixer but cannot convince leadership of broader changes they need to make to limit the number of fires that need fighting or train other employees to handle tasks as effectively as you. The general rule that you'll most likely see a salary increase by hopping jobs anyway still applies.

Re: Ask HN: New job at BigCo. Everything has friction

#107

Post by closeparen »

honkler wrote: post #21

Can there be a better display of first world (actually SF bay) problems than this post by OP? All Over the world, workers yearn for breathing time - A few minutes away from the the production line. They wish their tool breaks and the management takes a long while to provide a replacement. What’s your issue, op? You seem very excited to generate shareholder profit.

Put another way, software engineers are some of the few people afforded a healthy relationship with their labor - to take pride in its craftsmanship, to be satisfied by things working well and dissatisfied by things working poorly. That is cause for gratitude and celebration.

This kind of oppositional attitude is toxic. I'm glad not to find it in my coworkers. And I would not accept an environment where coworkers displayed it.

Re: Ask HN: New job at BigCo. Everything has friction

#108

Post by phendrenad2 »

honkler wrote: post #49
wussboy wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not wrong to enjoy your work. This person's experiences are real to them, and they have the right to feel them. If only the most unfortunate person in the world can claim injustice or dissatisfaction, if only their problem can be solved, progress will grind to a halt.

If they have the right to their experiences, I have right to provide my opinion on their experiences. And let's be honest, if their way of life makes it worse for the rest of the world, it's perfectly okay to publicly shame even.

OP didn't say you didn't have the right, OP merely shared their opinion on your opinion of someone's experiences.

Re: Ask HN: New job at BigCo. Everything has friction

#109

Post by 8ytecoder »

ravenstine wrote: post #18

Yes. It even happens at medium sized companies. One answer is to accept the way things are at BigCo and to just coast along in your role, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Another answer is to work at an early-stage startup or a small non-tech company where you can move fast. The tradeoff there is lack of job security and lesser pay. Don't ever expect to move fast at BigCo. It's a BigCo for a reason. By moving fa…

Not disagreeing but you can't just give up and coast along either. Don't get me wrong, I've been doing it for a couple of years and getting ready to quit my job because of it. It gets frustrating and a tool that's not used frequently loses its edge.

I'd say do a couple of things -

a) Provide constructive recommendations on the specific friction points. Sometimes, especially coming from a small company background, you fail to realize the need for a process or review. It doesn't mean it can't be improved but resist the immediate urge to hate it.

b) Plan ahead. Once you get familiar with how the processes work, set aside time to raise request before you actually need the resource. I was terrible at this and it came to bite me many times. Anticipate and plan ahead.

Re: Ask HN: New job at BigCo. Everything has friction

#110

Post by closeparen »

honkler wrote: post #46
striking wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feeling like you're constantly blocked isn't fun either. Starting to get into the groove only to have to immediately stop, having to keep track of lots of threads where people put up roadblocks to justify their own jobs, etc. is not "a few minutes away from the production line". It's work all the same, and not the work most engineers sign up to do.

During that while, what stops you from reading a book, working on a consulting project on the side (thanks, WFH), learn some new skill? Life is more than serving your boss in the office.

I'm not serving my boss. My boss has a whole set of metrics and expectations that are quite distinct from delivering working software to customers; I use my considerable autonomy as a white-collar worker to half-ass those behind her back and spend my energies on what is actually satisfying to me, which is to craft good systems and make things work well. And as the sibling comment mentions, this is a lot more interesting when there are real customers and stakes.
Post reply on HN