91–100 of 135 posts
Let’s not fool ourselves: the answer is obvious. The skills that make you a manager are not usually authentic leadership skills in a large corporation. That actual leader is a very special person with usually a very special set of circumstances inside a big company. Most simply optimize to survive and fill their coffers.
I'd guess a lot of people would have their own special stories to tell. However, do not underestimate the fact that some of these stories might not be easily disclosed. A "friend of mine", let's call it Bob, decided to leave one of the big tech companies (call it "A"), and join another big tech company (call it "B"), which offers him exactly double the salary. Due to a very unlucky combination, a former colleague at…
> AAaaand, Bob is never to disclose anything about this, publicly, ever. That kind of provision is usually unenforcable if not illegal. (Bob speaking of it would probably risk attracting meritless lawsuit, but frankly meritless lawsuits are a fact of life and us comfortable tech folks ought to be willing to brave them for the sake of society)
I can emphatically tell you that I have a mutual non-disparagement clause with [REDACTED]; _and_ that these clauses seem to be routine enough to be included with most "resolution contracts", at least in Europe ( results seem to indicate that these clauses are very popular in Europe).
Most people don't have the equivalent resources (that business have) to fight these clauses; especially, where the resolution - itself - may haven taken so long that the person is essentially "glad" to have some modicum of restitution and sense of resolution.
This means/infers that these clauses (generally) are de facto enforced by "better safe than sorry" scenarios.
(Generally, whether they're legal and enforceable comes down to the clauses first having been breached and, then, being challenged in court. This means/infers effort, time, and money that the people these clauses tend to - generally - target don't have.)
I'd guess a lot of people would have their own special stories to tell. However, do not underestimate the fact that some of these stories might not be easily disclosed. A "friend of mine", let's call it Bob, decided to leave one of the big tech companies (call it "A"), and join another big tech company (call it "B"), which offers him exactly double the salary. Due to a very unlucky combination, a former colleague at…
Venice was the original Silicon Valley. Aldus Manutius's print shop is an example of Venetian high tech. A good proportion of Europe's books were printed in Venice in the early 1500s.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> AAaaand, Bob is never to disclose anything about this, publicly, ever. That kind of provision is usually unenforcable if not illegal. (Bob speaking of it would probably risk attracting meritless lawsuit, but frankly meritless lawsuits are a fact of life and us comfortable tech folks ought to be willing to brave them for the sake of society)
>That kind of provision is usually unenforcable if not illegal. I can emphatically tell you that I have a mutual non-disparagement clause with [REDACTED]; _and_ that these clauses seem to be routine enough to be included with most "resolution contracts", at least in Europe ( results seem to indicate that these clauses are very popular in Europe). Most people don't have the equivalent resources (that business have) to…
> The problem is that every employee is judged by their ability to get work done That's mostly not true.
Another big issue with performance reviews is how heavily biased they are to recency. People know not to rock the boat when performance reviews are coming up because a bad review will be used against you when layoffs start. Like the author says, performance reviews between co-workers can be unanimously positive because everybody who gets how the game works knows that any negative thing can be construed as a black mar…
The best thing to do is to not exert yourself too hard Jan/Feb, take on a new project March which has some planned deliveries for the fall, and hit the target no later than mid October. November and December can then be spent promoting the work you did Mar-Oct, review/comp season, and enjoying your holiday.
> The problem is that every employee is judged by their ability to get work done That's mostly not true.
It is true. The trouble is that different parties disagree over what is counted as "work" and when is it "done".
I'll never forget a straight faced conversation about a project dashboard filled with red statuses, with 2 layers of management asking me "what if we change the definition of done?"
I mean sure, what if we pretend delivering code to DEV was done, then it would be done sooner, absolutely. If we never spin up a PROD env, we could mark that green as well, right.
But is the rag status to save managements a* (yay all green) or to represent reality of work remaining to be done to deliver work to clients (its not done).
There is a very large canyon between “good manager “ and “good leader,” especially in big tech. Many definitely do not cross pollinate. Let’s not fool ourselves: the answer is obvious. The skills that make you a manager are not usually authentic leadership skills in a large corporation. That actual leader is a very special person with usually a very special set of circumstances inside a big company. Most simply optim…
I've had about 15-20 managers in my career. 3 were bad enough I'd never work for them again. ~5 of them I'd enthusiastically work for again. 1 of them is truly a good leader that I've seen move mountains. The rest are forgettably average.
> " ...as well as a handful of unlucky folks who deliver solid results but lack social grace and self-promotion skills. " Ironic that what was once the character archetype for geeky programmers have now become pariahs in the industry they pioneered. Now we all toot our own horns as loudly as we can, hoping to drown out our fellows, in search of the next bonus or job hop and devil take the hindmost. Introverted, have…
Not to mention, higher levels in a company involve a ton of working with other people, so somebody with social anxiety or heavy introvertism should not be promoted to them, as they’re beyond his/her competence.
Shameless self plug, but my GitHub handle is hellisotherpeople. I like to imagine a coding Sartre would have said “hell is other people’s code”
tl;dr: Hell is AI's code ;)