Mental health in software engineering • Hacker News Board

Re: Mental health in software engineering

#61

Post by asoneth » Thu, Apr 11, 2024, 1:51 PM UTC

cjk2 wrote: post #10

I'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…

> So I go back to him and he accused me of lying and went and told the CEO. The CEO, a pretty chill guy with a doctorate, I was expecting to have a rational discussion about with but not he screamed at me too.

That's terrible, I'm so glad you got out of that situation.

Hands down the best part about working in a field like tech and building up a cushion of savings has been that I haven't had to put up with coworkers who yell, accuse each other of lying, or any other immature, boundary-pushing behavior.

In the past I worked for the military, academia, theater, etc and there were times when I felt a strong esprit de corps and others when I felt stuck because I was a cog in a large machine and had granted jerks immense power over my life -- working on a contract in a war zone, needing approval from certain professors to further my career, needing a job to pay the rent, etc.

Whereas in tech it's easier to fix situations like this. In one case I went home early to send out resumes and left a few months later. In the other I just sent a record of the conversation to my boss and she dealt with the issue appropriately.

A major career regret is having put up with jerks. No matter how much the customer/company pays or how interesting the work is you can find other work that pays just as well and is just as interesting except you get to spend more of your exceedingly short lifespan with kind, smart, well-adjusted people.

Re: Mental health in software engineering

#62

Post by sanitycheck » Thu, Apr 11, 2024, 1:53 PM UTC

It's too triggering to do any more than skim the article, but having got the general gist of at least some of it, I shall write my top tip here in case it helps anyone (who manages to do it):

Negotiate prohibitively high overtime rates.

Re: Mental health in software engineering

#63

Post by swatcoder » Thu, Apr 11, 2024, 1:54 PM UTC

jongjong wrote: post #43

lenerdenator wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's so weird. I started to think that maybe this is intentional. It looks as though investors want to invest only in over-optimistic people who believe that we're living in some kind of utopian paradise; at the same time they avoid investing in anyone who has had so much of a faint whiff of how the sausage gets made. It's like the entire system is desperate to keep optimists optimistic and pessimists pessimistic. Wh…

Not investors: venture capital investors in tech. It's a particular kind of investment in a particular industry.

Tech VC's are in the business of selling business futures, not building mature businesses. The buyer they sell to can install a practical CEO and worry about actual operations when that time comes.

In the meantime, enthusiastic kids provide a relatively cheap, manipulable, supply of powerpoints and pizazz -- whereas sober, mature professionals often need more personal income and tend to focus more on executing the business that they have experience in (mostly irrelevant to the VC's own business) instead of matching the investment pitch for upcoming rounds (all that matters).

Re: Mental health in software engineering

#64

Post by bongodongobob » Thu, Apr 11, 2024, 1:58 PM UTC

jongjong wrote: post #43

lenerdenator wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's so weird. I started to think that maybe this is intentional. It looks as though investors want to invest only in over-optimistic people who believe that we're living in some kind of utopian paradise; at the same time they avoid investing in anyone who has had so much of a faint whiff of how the sausage gets made. It's like the entire system is desperate to keep optimists optimistic and pessimists pessimistic. Wh…

I mean, VC exists because they need to diversify their investments and literally can't find anywhere to put their money? I got the impression from the outside that VC money is just gambling on March Madness for the elite.

Re: Mental health in software engineering

#65

Post by notaustinpowers » Thu, Apr 11, 2024, 1:59 PM UTC

jongjong wrote: post #43

lenerdenator wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's so weird. I started to think that maybe this is intentional. It looks as though investors want to invest only in over-optimistic people who believe that we're living in some kind of utopian paradise; at the same time they avoid investing in anyone who has had so much of a faint whiff of how the sausage gets made. It's like the entire system is desperate to keep optimists optimistic and pessimists pessimistic. Wh…

Because those investors (rarely) ever lose if the company goes belly up.

Is the company slowly declining into unprofitability? Sell it off and cash that big payout.

Can't sell it off? Scrap it for parts and scavage the remains, cash that big payout.

Did it implode in on itself in a spectacular fashion? Sue leadership to recoup your losses.

As the saying goes, the house always wins.

Re: Mental health in software engineering

#66

Post by skrebbel » Thu, Apr 11, 2024, 2:05 PM UTC

xyst wrote: post #11

This 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…

> This is a person that should have never been in a leadership position

This is the kind of crap that stops people writing blog posts about vulnerable topics like mental health.

I mean really? Author opens up about a terrible shit show and their role in it, and your response is “yeah you suck at that, don’t do it.” I dont think that’s very constructive.

Re: Mental health in software engineering

#67

Post by IggleSniggle » Thu, Apr 11, 2024, 2:05 PM UTC

jongjong wrote: post #43

lenerdenator wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's so weird. I started to think that maybe this is intentional. It looks as though investors want to invest only in over-optimistic people who believe that we're living in some kind of utopian paradise; at the same time they avoid investing in anyone who has had so much of a faint whiff of how the sausage gets made. It's like the entire system is desperate to keep optimists optimistic and pessimists pessimistic. Wh…

I think it's because you need a figure-head that truly has zero doubt that what they are doing is the best and most correct thing. Because it has to sell, and it can't sound like a car-salesman pitch.

It might not be in the best interest of the company, it just needs to be a hype train long enough for the VC to get theirs. The Greater Fool meets real life. The VC doesn't care one way or another if the founder benefits in the end, as long as it doesn't affect their ability to make their next play.

Re: Mental health in software engineering

#68

Post by coldtea » Thu, Apr 11, 2024, 2:06 PM UTC

arethuza wrote: post #17

datadrivenangel wrote: post #5

"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."…

At one point many years ago I was Director of Engineering for a company that was planning a major new version of their product. After I'd been there a few weeks I said to the CEO that I thought I had a pretty good understanding of the scope and challenges for the new release. The CEO said "no you don't" - which led me to ask why he thought this and he said he had thought up a new "must have" feature over the weekend…

The CEO tells the Director of Engineering how long a time a feature "could be built" in? A new one, they suddenly pulled out of their asses too?

Why even have a Director of Engineering position then?

Re: Mental health in software engineering

#69

Post by Workaccount2 » Thu, Apr 11, 2024, 2:08 PM UTC

bongodongobob wrote: post #64

jongjong wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so weird. I started to think that maybe this is intentional. It looks as though investors want to invest only in over-optimistic people who believe that we're living in some kind of utopian paradise; at the same time they avoid investing in anyone who has had so much of a faint whiff of how the sausage gets made. It's like the entire system is desperate to keep optimists optimistic and pessimists pessimistic. Wh…

I mean, VC exists because they need to diversify their investments and literally can't find anywhere to put their money? I got the impression from the outside that VC money is just gambling on March Madness for the elite.

Deploy $5m to 20 companies and only one of them has to hit for it all to be worth it.

Re: Mental health in software engineering

#70

Post by Verdex » Thu, Apr 11, 2024, 2:09 PM UTC

datadrivenangel wrote: post #5

"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."…

This is one of the reasons why kanban is my favorite project management methodology.

"Ah, new highest priority feature. Lets do a mini discovery session and it looks like this work can be represented with 20 sticky notes. Our historical team velocity is 10 sticky notes every two weeks. So we'll probably be done in four weeks. If we take down all the existing work in progress. Lets go to each existing sticky and you can confirm that we can stop working on it."

The stakeholders are still allowed to make decisions, but (hopefully) it forces them to be realistic and understand what they're asking the team to do.