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Ask HN: As a dev, what made (or almost) you quit from a job?

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Re: Ask HN: As a dev, what made (or almost) you quit from a job?

#61

Post by MattPalmer1086 »

I almost quit over a micro-managing, angry chief technical architect at a small company. I was leading development, but he overruled all my decisons, hired different people, and was generally unpleasant. He was friends with the owner.

The COO talked me into taking a different position working on protocol development, where I would largely be free of him.

Six months later, the person who replaced me as development lead very memorably and repeatedly accused this architect of being a psychopath in a senior meeting.

Re: Ask HN: As a dev, what made (or almost) you quit from a job?

#62

Post by SanjayMehta »

unmole wrote: post #59
SanjayMehta wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like what happened to my friend at a Chinese telecom company.

Huawei? Yeah, while this didn't happen to me or anyone I know, I can definitely believe that it happened.

Huawei it was.

Re: Ask HN: As a dev, what made (or almost) you quit from a job?

#63

Post by akmarinov »

My working hours are 12 PM to 8 PM. We had a manager have us do calls with an overseas vendor at 6 AM in the mornings. One time is fine, these things happen, but then it became a weekly thing and it started grating on me to basically be at work from 6 AM to 8PM, but then that same manager said "we should do sprint planning at 9 PM today" after being on a 6 AM call. Then he broke out the "we should all pitch in and take ownership" talk and I was done.

Re: Ask HN: As a dev, what made (or almost) you quit from a job?

#64

Post by m33k44 »

A scam of top-5%-bottom-5% rule. I hate this stupidity of non-tech people out of business schools who understand zilch about tech companies.

For information on how this rule has affected people, watch BBC documentary on this topic from the series "Billion dollar dreams".

Re: Ask HN: As a dev, what made (or almost) you quit from a job?

#66

Post by boredemployee »

dirtbag__dad wrote: post #65

Quit two jobs as the solo dev at small companies because the cofounders changed their “product vision” before we finished most features. Nothing more demotivating than building something that never gets shipped.

I always get mixed feelings on this. I mean we're getting paid to solve problems and we shouldn't "fall in love" with our solutions. If the cofounder pivot the business we should just accept it, but I know that's not how it works.

Re: Ask HN: As a dev, what made (or almost) you quit from a job?

#67

Post by m33k44 »

m33k44 wrote: post #64

A scam of top-5%-bottom-5% rule. I hate this stupidity of non-tech people out of business schools who understand zilch about tech companies. For information on how this rule has affected people, watch BBC documentary on this topic from the series "Billion dollar dreams".

> watch BBC documentary on this topic from the series "Billion dollar dreams".

It is "Billion dollar deals" and not "Billion dollar dreams" :) I am not able to edit my original comment.

Re: Ask HN: As a dev, what made (or almost) you quit from a job?

#69

Post by dirtbag__dad »

boredemployee wrote: post #66
dirtbag__dad wrote: post #65

Quit two jobs as the solo dev at small companies because the cofounders changed their “product vision” before we finished most features. Nothing more demotivating than building something that never gets shipped.

I always get mixed feelings on this. I mean we're getting paid to solve problems and we shouldn't "fall in love" with our solutions. If the cofounder pivot the business we should just accept it, but I know that's not how it works.

If you’re paid to pump out code then sure. I think that attitude is probably attainable in a contracting or agency relationship.

But if you’re on a team full-time, where the expectation is that you’re there to build a company, then chasing some founder’s intuition over market feedback is an emotionally destructive death march for everyone involved.

Re: Ask HN: As a dev, what made (or almost) you quit from a job?

#70

Post by pdimitar »

rcarr wrote: post #42
polka_haunts_us wrote: post #17

Small company hired a certain VP who the engineering team reported to. He had experience in our industry but was clearly not adept at actually managing us. He had extremely unrealistic expectations, like he'd demand hour estimates for each ticket, and whatever estimate we gave he would just shave a couple hours off, and then chastise us for being too slow when we didn't make his own artificial deadlines. Occasionally…

> and whatever estimate we gave he would just shave a couple hours off, and then chastise us for being too slow when we didn't make his own artificial deadlines Been on the same end of this one. Business department saw a proof of concept demo and then pulled a deadline completely out their arse so they could try and impress the owner. > he played the "English isn't my first language" victim card like we were the unre…

One of the hardest cringes I have experienced in my life was when I was made aware of this quote:

"I am elected to lead, not to read."

There's a crap ton of people out there that firmly believe that's the best thing ever.

I want off the planet. :(

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