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Ask HN: Is it just me?

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Re: Ask HN: Is it just me?

#61

Post by zubspace »

dilyevsky wrote: post #33
zubspace wrote: post #16

I've been working more than 11 years at my current small company. There are often times where things do not work the way I want. Bad communication, new strategies I don't like, different opinions on how do something, bad or sloppy code I need to cleanup, crappy processes, etc... etc... But still, after all those years, I don't feel bad about it. That's life and life is a mess sometimes. There are things you can chang…

This is easier said than done. How do you “try your best” and also disengage when there are things you don’t think are correct, just, etc. For me personally I haven’t been able to find a foolproof solution unless I’m working a contract with very scoped deliverables

Concentrate on the stuff you can do well. I'm sure everyone has some traits or some skills he can rely on. Practice those skills, improve them, be open to new ideas.

The thing is, even if I know or see things I don't like, often it is actually quite hard to figure out a way to improve the situation, a way which works for everyone in the team. Those things take time. You can try to improve those things, but be prepared for a bumpy road. Going in full head on can be painful, things can get personal or you'll do or say things you could regret. Sometimes it's better to wait it out, sometimes it's better to take it slow. And sometimes it's better to just leave it and concentrate on the stuff you can do well.

I don't want to sound like a know-it-all and possibly there are companies which are hopelessly lost. But there are always things to learn and to improve on a personal level. And I'm sure you'll feel better, if you don't try to fight every upward battle.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me?

#62

Post by yieldcrv »

what you described to me sounds like a recurring theme of you being opinionated when you arent hired to do that

just take a cue from the “quiet quitting” crowd, which is a weird way of saying to just do the job as described for 8 hours a day and go home

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me?

#63

Post by serial_dev »

No, it's not just you.

My career is following a similar trajectory, except it is 2-3 years instead of 3-5 , so from my point of view, you are doing pretty well.

I'm not sure if there is anything wrong with you or me. When I look back, I believe that at each employer I learned many important lessons, I didn't repeat the same mistakes over and over again, and I built important work relationships.

So far (7 years in), the market didn't punish me for the lack of blind royalty on my side. Almost every time, I switch with a significant pay raise that I could not even dream of if I stayed. When I switch, I try something new while at the same time, I build on top of what I learned at previous companies, so I become useful for the new company pretty quickly.

I dunno... It's the circle of life?

(my career is not perfect and I know I need to improve a lot, I'm just saying that from my POV, it's normal, it's not necessarily bad for your career, and I regret nothing)

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me?

#64

Post by manmal »

kodyo wrote: post #19
comboy wrote: post #3

Sounds like you may need to improve your social skills. Good employer should understand than nobody is amazing at everything, but such is the world today that marketing wins everywhere (on personal level too). Or you think you are better than you are, not possible to tell from the post (but I'd say unlikely given some introspection that went into making it).

Or maybe his social skills are just fine and it's the corporations he's worked for that are pathological.

The problems OP listed didn’t strike me as unusually pathological. There’s probably some rationale behind each of those decisions. Certainly not the kind engineers like to hear, but political and budgeting reasons.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me?

#65

Post by geocrasher »

I left another comment, but something else occurred to me: You need the New Employee Perspective. It's that same perspective you get when you're the New Employee. Everything is fresh, cool, and awesome. You do great work. Everyone loves you. Then you start noticing things you don't like. You get jaded. "Things were better 2 years ago" kind of thinking.

You leave, somebody else comes in, and they have the New Employee Perspective. Everything to them is fresh, cool, and awesome.

So why can't that New Employee be you? It's just a matter of perspective.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me?

#66

Post by gandalfgeek »

Eng mgr at a FANG, was IC previously. The following is assuming the senior folks (managers or senior ICs) around you are acting in good faith. If you actually have toxic senior people, that's a whole different scenario.

Managers have to balance two priorities, which are sometimes competing: promoting engineering excellence on their teams, and delivering value for the business. The most common example of a conflict between the two is taking on tech debt to release something earlier.

If you disagree with a leadership decision, try to get more background on the thinking behind it. Good managers will be more than happy to get into it in detail. There are always tradeoffs to be made, and the inputs are not always purely technical. There often are business and organizational constraints too.

This is often a barrier that ICs have to break through to get to more senior levels (even they choose to stay on the IC track): making sound engineering decisions, but also being able to understand the business and make appropriate tradeoffs.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me?

#67

Post by dilyevsky »

echelon wrote: post #35
atian wrote: post #14

> Typically, I work for an employer for around 3 to 5 years. […] Then around the halfway mark or later, things sour for a variety of different reasons. Typically, I will fall out with someone senior, like my line manager. It's normally over something mundane but definitely technical. This is a red herring. The fact you’ve carried it out this far to the 3-5 mark is extraordinary. Most people move every two years just…

> Most people move every two years In SF. In Atlanta we have 90+% retention at a five year mark.

The whole point of staying in sfba rat race (at least to me) is getting exposed to a lot of different things working with a lot of different people/companies

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me?

#69

Post by echelon »

nielsole wrote: post #59
echelon wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most people move every two years In SF. In Atlanta we have 90+% retention at a five year mark.

That's less attrition than I would expect from retirement alone (falsely assuming age was equally distributed) 90%+ doesn't seem plausible

It's factual.

If I had to guess, most folks at my last office were between the ages of 20 and 45. We only saw one retirement during my tenure. A few folks left to a local startup and did far worse than when our company IPO'd and 100x'd our options. I could name everyone that left and count them on my fingers.

We collectively maintained a spreadsheet of Atlanta hiring dates and frequently compared our seniority against our colleagues based in SF. Most of us were in the top 5%, according to an internal employee registry API that could tell you your seniority rank.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me?

#70

Post by manmal »

Existenceblinks wrote: post #53

It sucks and it's worse when that happens even before landing into a job. What if you think React should be ended already, it's a clear lose engineering wise. Yet industry can't get of out "hiring reasons", so the CTO's decision is already bad for me before any further conflict.

This is taken out of context, but why would one think React should be ended? Experience has shown that every JS framework will be phased out eventually, so why not ride on each wave as long as the available developers pool is the deepest?
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