211–220 of 293 posts
In the last few months I have basically neglected my regular job which is to be a team lead and architect. Other people have picked up the slack to some degree but I feel more and more that my tech skills are going downhill because I am dealing with a software system that shouldn’t ever have been bought.
This is becoming a real career problem. I am learning “skills” that are totally useless in any sane company and neglecting the skills that can get you a good job.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This right here. I realized long ago I should do whatever I can to the best of my ability. If my superiors want to do something stupid or use my skillet in a suboptimal way my responsibility is to do my best to council with them, share what I see and then do the best job I can at whatever I am assigned to, assuming over course it doesn't cross legal or moral boundaries. My job is not my Identity we have an economic a…
>My job is not my Identity we have an economic arrangement I do what I am asked to do …within the predefined framework of “roles” >If my boss wants to pay me a SWE salary and then insists I clean out the break room fridge on Friday that is his perogrative not mine. Your wording here is kind of vague. Are you saying that you would acquiesce to anything a boss requests? What if it’s not the breakroom but a public bathr…
> assuming over course it doesn't cross legal or moral boundaries.
If someone asks me to clean the bathroom, sure I do it at home, much more rewarding to make $50 an hour, and probably less gross than the bathroom where a toddler is potty training.
As for the rest of those items although they may not explicitly fall under legal violations by US federal law, given the relationship between myself and my boss they probably cross policy lines and could be excluded under illegal. Except for taste testing food I'd do that one for sure.
But your framing this as a ruler and subject relationship is off the mark because every thing you listed has people that get paid to do exactly those things, that doesn't make them all serfs to a lordly managerial class.
It seems you have concocted the most absurd extreme interpretation of my words and then used that to refute my argument.
Ultimately I am willing to do pretty much whatever I am asked to as long as it is legal and moral, included in moral is my dignity as a human being.
Ultimately I feel that trying to frame every interaction with an employer as adversarial and feeling that everything is workers vs managers is immature and reductionist. At the end of the day Initech or Introde or whatever as a company doesn't really exist it is a legal fiction we use in society. What does exist is my boss my coworkers my customers. I want to treat them well and with respect and make life easier for them not because they deserve it, or because I think I will get ahead. I do it because I want to be a good person and good people treat others well even regardless of who they are.
It doesn't mean I need to be a door mat or allow myself to be exploited, but it means as an employee I try to behave like I would want my employees to behave if I were a manager, and if sometimes that means they ask me to do something for them that isn't inside of my regular job description I'll try and do that because I dont bave to come in and see Mr. Introde every day, I come in and see Dan my boss, or Carl the director and those are people.
Most everyone you meet is another person just trying to get by in the world and most people can really use someone cutting them some slack once in a while.
I had a situation once where we had a minor re-org and I ended up with a new manager. Literally day one, he made an attempt to change everyone's role. We were a team of developers and business analysts. He decided that everyone would become both and spend 50% of their time on each activity. Not sure why he thought this was a good idea, but he did. After he announced it, I had a 1x1 with him and clearly let him know t…
Glad it worked for you, but in my experience, this doesn't always work. Making everyone a developer and a business analyst is a super stupid idea. This is not something subtle like rotating people to work on different parts of the same codebase. What is even more stupid is that it looks like he decided it unilaterally (based on your comment). Why should anyone work for a person like this? If a boss decides to make hu…
I had a situation once where we had a minor re-org and I ended up with a new manager. Literally day one, he made an attempt to change everyone's role. We were a team of developers and business analysts. He decided that everyone would become both and spend 50% of their time on each activity. Not sure why he thought this was a good idea, but he did. After he announced it, I had a 1x1 with him and clearly let him know t…
This right here. I realized long ago I should do whatever I can to the best of my ability. If my superiors want to do something stupid or use my skillet in a suboptimal way my responsibility is to do my best to council with them, share what I see and then do the best job I can at whatever I am assigned to, assuming over course it doesn't cross legal or moral boundaries. My job is not my Identity we have an economic a…
If I were employed at a place that did not let me work on high-impact high-visibility roles, I'd move to somewhere that did as soon as possible.
(Unless I was already where I wanted to get in my career)
One of my problems is that I like to write code. Specifically novel code. But the places I work at really want me to just do regular CRUD work and glue work (use other people's code and avoid novel code). How do I find companies that write their own cool new code? Maybe coding teams get broken down into such small teams that there is only room for CRUD and glue and novel code gets too risky when trying to deliver use…
There are many novel projects that work with novel code, (such as UI / features on top of stable diffusion).
And you can drill into the novel code dependencies (such as SD in above example) if you want to write novel code.
Working with teams shipping novel code publicly is probably the fastest way to find work that pays you to do similar.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>My job is not my Identity we have an economic arrangement I do what I am asked to do …within the predefined framework of “roles” >If my boss wants to pay me a SWE salary and then insists I clean out the break room fridge on Friday that is his perogrative not mine. Your wording here is kind of vague. Are you saying that you would acquiesce to anything a boss requests? What if it’s not the breakroom but a public bathr…
You omitted an important qualifier. > assuming over course it doesn't cross legal or moral boundaries. If someone asks me to clean the bathroom, sure I do it at home, much more rewarding to make $50 an hour, and probably less gross than the bathroom where a toddler is potty training. As for the rest of those items although they may not explicitly fall under legal violations by US federal law, given the relationship b…
I’m confused by this part. What if your company does not have a policy against foot rubs or babysitting? For example there are big wellness companies like, for example Goop, that might reasonably have foot rubs, babysitting and software engineering in the same building.
>every thing you listed has people that get paid to do exactly those things
I agree. There are people whose job it is to babysit and provide massages. If you heard your babysitter say that it’s reasonable to demand that they engineer software because you pay them so much, would that make sense to you?
edit: The job you describe yourself as doing seems akin to personal/executive assistant, which is a fine job! I worked as an EA for years. I wouldn’t call myself an SWE if I worked as an EA.
edit 2: After re-reading, this makes even less sense.
If your friendly boss “Dan” insists that you clean the bathroom, you’re happy to do it because it makes you a better person? It makes ole’ “Dan”’s life easier to insist that an engineer being paid engineering wages do minimum wage work? Couldn’t Dan make his life even easier by hiring a cleaner for an hour a week for a fraction of what your time is worth? It seems like Dan would both save money and have talented workers spending more time being productive. That’s a win-win!
Unless of course Dan likes exerting power for the hell of it, then it’s a loss for him. If Dan liked to make sure his employees should be infinitely deferential and constantly reminded that they are lucky to work for him, it would make sense to insist (not ask, it’s insist according to you) that you do menial work that literally anyone could do.
Friendly ole Dan, such a nice guy that he reminds you to polish the Sword of Damocles every Friday. It is such an inconvenience for him when it gets dusty.
I'm pretty high up the IC chain (the leveling guide even says my level is a natural place for someone to be at for a long time/indefinitely). And I'm not interested in the next level. More, I'm not interested in growing professionally anymore.
That's not to say I'm not gonna keep solving problems and learning new things. But at this point, I'd just like to be Very Good at What I Do for the next years.
I'm busy growing personally on many axes anyways. But they aren't useful to my employer. But I only have so much "self-improvement" juice to give.
The real problem here is that hiring is a giant pain for both sides. In an ideal world, you would quickly quit that job and hop to another. If you didn't do that, they would quickly hire you and both sides would move on without much stress. But changing jobs/employees is a big deal involved insurance, retirement funds, dozens of hours of interviews over many weeks, etc. My advice for anyone in this spot is to quit qu…
Yep, I never quit a job without a new one lined up. Because sometimes it takes several months to find something decent. Sometimes you don't have a choice. If you've been laid off, you may have to jump on the first thing that comes along (will usually be a suck job with high turnover - those always seem to hire quickly) and keep looking for something good.