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Signs that it's time to leave a company

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Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company

#191

Post by godelski »

erinaceousjones wrote: post #70

That so many people are so focused on things "having" to be in a constant state of exponential growth makes me feel uneasy. It's like so many people can't see the forest for the trees - we can't have infinite exponential growth forever. Like, little software shops which take on a stable number of projects / contracts / clients a year, focused on sustainability instead of pure profit, lose and gain people at a roughly…

> so focused on things "having" to be in a constant state of exponential growth makes me feel uneasy.

> can't see the forest for the trees

SO MUCH THIS.

I get that momentum is a powerful force but it is incredible how many missed opportunities there are because the blinders we put on. We talk a lot about how difficult it is to align ML models, but sometimes I feel like we are the difficult to align models. A lot of it makes me feel less human too, because part of why humans stand out is that we __can__ do long term planning and have extremely powerful inference that allows us to generalize. But I feel like we're living in this weird world where we're trying to turn humans into machines and machines into humans. That we need to be the strict letter of the law entities and machines need to be the absolute generalizers. I don't know exactly when it happened, but I feel like one day we just woke up in Goodhart's nightmare.

I've been trying to combat this a lot, including in myself. One thing I find that helps me is to explicitly write down intended goals and outcomes. That way I can constantly check my alignment fairly easily and don't lose sight or get tricked by metrics. The other thing I do, which is a bit harder is to write down assumptions. This list actively changes a lot as I learn but it's become vital in projects I work on and how I understand things. I'm a researcher and this has become my most valuable tool (I've been surprised to find some of my peers are resistant to this idea). It's an essential tool to not get deceived by metrics if you have long term goals (this is where I find the resistance. Focus is typically short term). Any other techniques people have found helpful for keeping aligned?

Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company

#192

Post by [deleted] »

erinaceousjones wrote: post #70

That so many people are so focused on things "having" to be in a constant state of exponential growth makes me feel uneasy. It's like so many people can't see the forest for the trees - we can't have infinite exponential growth forever. Like, little software shops which take on a stable number of projects / contracts / clients a year, focused on sustainability instead of pure profit, lose and gain people at a roughly…

[deleted]

Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company

#193

Post by gverrilla »

irrational wrote: post #101
paulddraper wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People collaborate easier in person. Travel is a downside.

Except, some jobs really really don't require much if any collaboration. We've been having to come back into the office since last September. In all that time, I've only spoken to another person a single time. Literally one hour in one day in the past 5 months. All meetings are still over zoom and when I'm not in a meeting, I just find some place in the building to sit and work. Except many people still weren't comin…

I had a friend reporting a similar situation in the big consultancy firm he works for. There would be more workers than available seats. He said they would do it to make people get to the office BEFORE their working hours. Dark patterns all around.

Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company

#194

Post by behringer »

Aurornis wrote: post #155
codegeek wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's ok. You are just built to work with more structure and processes. Some people like the small company vibe where things are a bit chaotic but also fun and creative. Nothing wrong with either.

> You are just built to work with more structure and processes. For what it's worth, some of the most highly structured and process-heavy tech companies I've worked at have been small startups. Small companies can be a haven for micromanaging first-time CTOs, inexperienced VPs of Engineering who learned how to "lead" from books and LinkedIn posts, Technical Program Managers who want to control every aspect of everyth…

Structure and process is not micro management. It's just management.

Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company

#195

Post by notShabu »

imo "growth" basically means a company is able to profit from mining "reality". their alpha or edge is having the know-how to be at this cutting edge.

in such an environment, "truth" matters a lot because it allows more efficient interfacing with reality.

without growth, managing perception becomes more important than truth. this leads to zero-sum politics exacerbated by things like mortgage payments and visa status.

everyone is trying to get into AI companies these days b/c they seem like the only companies that can still profit off of "playfulness" while all other cultures are becoming very Serious.

instead of just doing things or solving problems, every action and message has to jump through a bunch of "what will X think" hoops which is demoralizing.

Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company

#196

Post by pramsey »

jacobsenscott wrote: post #117
lucidguppy wrote: post #34

I don't understand this fascination with central offices. We live in the year 2024. We should be able to look at our workforce, find small offices, and have hub and spoke networks of offices - and work from home as a fallback. Rent a condo, do a communal office, if you want more close collaboration - shuffle your teams to colocate them - not force them into 1hr commutes into a fucking empty office. Our infrastructure…

The current crop of execs grew up watching Star Trek TNG - a flying office building where everyone lives for their work and you could sound a klaxon and everyone scrambles to the conference room. Also everyone loves and is willing to die for the leader. That's all you need to know.

Crisis! Head to the conference room!

Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company

#197

Post by phyzome »

maxlin wrote: post #124

Saying RTO picks the fruits of the trees and leaves the husks is true only in the way that it keeps the best workers which can create more fruit, and those "fruit" that fall off weren't going to be around long in any case. The best, and safest practice is to only allow remote work only as an exception for those that produce results way above the average. Anyway. One sign to actually leave a company though, is the fre…

WFH is a benefit, and when you cut benefits, your best (and most mobile) employees evaporate off.

Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company

#198

Post by tasuki »

andrewstuart wrote: post #178
erinaceousjones wrote: post #70

That so many people are so focused on things "having" to be in a constant state of exponential growth makes me feel uneasy. It's like so many people can't see the forest for the trees - we can't have infinite exponential growth forever. Like, little software shops which take on a stable number of projects / contracts / clients a year, focused on sustainability instead of pure profit, lose and gain people at a roughly…

“Little software shops” are hell. I say this as someone who owned/ran one for a number of years. Never again. Never.

I worked for several little software shops, it was fine, really. Big tech was much less sensible, and I lucked into a very nice big tech company to work for...

Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company

#199

Post by cableshaft »

soneca wrote: post #126

> ” As an employee, it’s usually best to leave in the first wave of cuts.” That’s only valid if you can very easily find another job with similar salary and better work environment, right? If I am a regular IC that will have to go through a lot of interviews to find a new job it is best to just wait until I am fired (while looking for a new job without leaving the current one).

Yeah, for sure. No need to put in your two weeks notice or whatever just to get out of there right away. Usually there's a bit of a breather after that first wave of cuts, enough time for you to look and interview elsewhere.

I think part of the reason why they said that is it's best to leave at this time (i.e. start whatever process you need to do to leave) because you'll have the most time to look and interview for a good next job before things start to get worse at your current job, or before you might get axed in the possible next wave and possibly need to take whatever crap gets offered to you just to get a paycheck again.

Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company

#200

Post by amerine »

A significant portion of the reasons the author outlines are exactly the environment going on at $PreviousJob, except it started a year or two before the pandemic. It’s amazing to read their flags and notice how much of it aligned with the final few years of the nine I spent there.

It’s especially hard when a large company (80-90k employees) can’t see themselves as a conglomerate of smaller businesses that have individual/different cultures, customers and customer needs. The authors list destroyed $PreviousJob (not yet, it’s still there but all the “fruiting trees” that created the magic customers loved are gone. From top to bottom, it’s a shadow of itself in vision, ability and drive. It’s a shame, mostly for the customers.).

The biggest flag I can agree with is when sales timelines force corner cutting or outright premature/possible-unworking/unsustainable software get delivered to customers at outrageous prices all while losing focus on the needs of the core customer base. How can a business ignore the source of 60% of their core customers/fans for three-five years and believe they can recover from that? They can’t.

I know old peers and colleagues will read this and know what I mean. I hope they do, and I hope that my passion for what we were working on and our entire customer base was very obvious for all my time there.

It’s wild that “leaders” are deaf to internal experts who built and grew these smaller orgs into the businesses they are today. I don’t assume me or anyone else has all the answers, or are ever right, it’s the complete objection to suggestions of righting the course towards customers who actually need and want the product that’s wild.

I like to think of it like the Unix philosophy of “small sharp tools”, as our founders believed. Chasing extreme growth is a poison and when it infects giant organ from top to bottom… the issues the author highlights and the ones I experienced lead to these outcomes.

This is why companies/products die.

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