“Your lack of planning is not my emergency”
"It was. Now you are fired." how it typically goes at startups.
Mental health in software engineering
31–40 of 440 posts
Re: Mental health in software engineering
#32I'll dump this one here as it's still annoying me a bit. So one afternoon I'm sitting there and our sales guy John came in (you know who you are if you're reading this) and described what he'd managed to sell a client. I sat there and I scribbled on bits of paper for hours, did some research and went back to him with the point that it wasn't possible from an algorithmic perspective. Basically he'd assumed that if it…
It's good advice if you have the appropriate financial resources or support network, but plenty of us don't have the option to move back in with our parents for six months and need to adult on hard-mode.
Yeah I learned that security was pretty important after that and security means not buying nice shiny things until you have no money and having a decent buffer zone.
Re: Mental health in software engineering
#33I used to be in (moderate) awe of young college drop-out CEOs. Then I worked for a couple of them. Now I refuse to work for startups that have 20-somethings at the top, because they really do not know how to manage or lead. They are motivated by fear of failure and having accomplished nothing so far they treat others like garbage. Avoid.
The phenomenon of showing up at Stanford and telling some 21-year-old that he's Jesus Christ and that you're going to give him millions of dollars is a wen on the American business culture matched only by corporate raiding.
It's the nerd version of college football/basketball recruiting.
Re: Mental health in software engineering
#34I'll dump this one here as it's still annoying me a bit. So one afternoon I'm sitting there and our sales guy John came in (you know who you are if you're reading this) and described what he'd managed to sell a client. I sat there and I scribbled on bits of paper for hours, did some research and went back to him with the point that it wasn't possible from an algorithmic perspective. Basically he'd assumed that if it…
It's good advice if you have the appropriate financial resources or support network, but plenty of us don't have the option to move back in with our parents for six months and need to adult on hard-mode.
That may be, but it sounds like the GP was just sharing a story.
Re: Mental health in software engineering
#35I'll dump this one here as it's still annoying me a bit. So one afternoon I'm sitting there and our sales guy John came in (you know who you are if you're reading this) and described what he'd managed to sell a client. I sat there and I scribbled on bits of paper for hours, did some research and went back to him with the point that it wasn't possible from an algorithmic perspective. Basically he'd assumed that if it…
It's good advice if you have the appropriate financial resources or support network, but plenty of us don't have the option to move back in with our parents for six months and need to adult on hard-mode.
Sometimes you don't leave by choice and staying ahead of the layoff treadmill takes its own toll on mental health. Probably doesn't hurt to patch things up with the parents if possible.
Re: Mental health in software engineering
#36This is a person that should have never been in a leadership position. I have worked under these types of people that were great engineers themselves but couldn’t lead worth shit. No trust in the team. Always doing shit themselves. No discussion. Backdoor discussions. Always bending to the will of management. Everything is “important”/“critical”. It’s micromanaging to the worst degree. At the same time, I would likel…
>No trust in the team. Always doing shit themselves. No discussion.
Yup, I've had a boss like this. Maybe my company was particularly dysfunctional, but I didn't have much experience with the projects and tasks I was being assigned. I definitely was not hiding it either. Then when I spent time trying to figure things out on my own, my boss would simply do the work himself and provide no feedback.
Re: Mental health in software engineering
#37I think it is so important to be able to disconnect from whatever it is that we are doing, even for a very short period of time.
Go for a walk, brew a coffee or simply close your eyes and breathe.
Many times, stress is created artificially. It hurts our performance and deteriorates our ability to think.
Encountered numerous situations where work was "urgent" and would likely land a contract or sales for the company, and everyone would be a superstar if they delivered this "crunch".
After 2 months of pulling all-nighters and sleeping for 3/4 hours, we deliver the project ahead of time. Apathy begins to set in after management/decision makers keep on giving these gifts we call "crunches".
To help the company and go the extra mile is something most of us have done in the past and will possibly do in the future. However, it's like the story of the boy who cried wolf, if everything is urgent and every task is to be done NOW, then there are bigger issues at play.
Like everything in life, there is usually a limit/budget of money, time and effort. By abusing these limits and tolerances, people will lose respect for the people crying wolf and will put less effort into their work.
Re: Mental health in software engineering
#38This is a person that should have never been in a leadership position. I have worked under these types of people that were great engineers themselves but couldn’t lead worth shit. No trust in the team. Always doing shit themselves. No discussion. Backdoor discussions. Always bending to the will of management. Everything is “important”/“critical”. It’s micromanaging to the worst degree. At the same time, I would likel…
People are promoted to their level of incompetence
Re: Mental health in software engineering
#39This is a person that should have never been in a leadership position. I have worked under these types of people that were great engineers themselves but couldn’t lead worth shit. No trust in the team. Always doing shit themselves. No discussion. Backdoor discussions. Always bending to the will of management. Everything is “important”/“critical”. It’s micromanaging to the worst degree. At the same time, I would likel…
> Always doing shit themselves This is one of the most counterintuitive things about leadership roles IMO. If you get promoted there, it’s often because you got a lot of things done yourself in an IC role. And then the fewer things you do yourself, the better off you, the company, and your reports are once you’re in a leadership role. So you have to learn that feeling idle compared to what you used to feel like isn’t…
In addition as a leader your best use is often to be interrupted with questions from junior engineers. This means you can never (or rarely) get into a flow where you are productive, as you are getting close someone interrupts your thought with a question.
As such if you have time to work on engineering (which you should make to stay sharp) it needs to be something unimportant to the business so that you can be late. Trying to add a new warning to your static analysis tool, checking out the latest framework to see if you should switch to it in the future - and other such things that you really want and long term are good but short term won't pay the bills.
Re: Mental health in software engineering
#40"An example of uncertainty in business is when your CEO tells you they promised a feature to your biggest client and it needs to be built ASAP as highest priority, so all hands on deck. Then a day later they tell you another feature, completely contradictory to the first one, needs to be built as well and is also highest priority. When you tell them they both can't be highest priority, the answer is: make it happen."…
Worse is when it's a salesman, not the CEO. It's infuriating. I always wanted to tell that salesman that he got to go back to the customer and tell them that we weren't going to do it, since he was the one who promised it without finding out whether and when we could do it. Of course, I never had the clout to force that to happen...
I've been so much happier ever since I took a position in an organization that doesn't feature a sales department.