221–230 of 266 posts
Quite a difference from all of those "my day as a employee" TikTok videos, such as https://www.tiktok.com/@iamitzelromero/video/717157277625860... https://www.tiktok.com/@miss_alexabel/video/7068404845325143... https://www.tiktok.com/@suppgorjess/video/708395834045538641...
Credit to Walmart for creating an environment where a person can still love their job after years of service. That stuff can't be faked, even with a high salary. Before you say, "it's easy to say when you're getting paid $240K a year." Nah. A person needs challenge; a purpose. Lots of FANG ICs making $500K+ who hate their job. Why? No challenge or palpable purpose. To create a scaled corp structure where a person can…
If there companies paying 500K who’d like a software engineer to just professionally do the job, not complain, not have an agenda, not worry about promotions - drop me a reply. You pay, I work. That’s the all there’s to it.
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This would be like asking the average corporate "software development manager" to actually look at the code/product developed by his reports. Except for early stage startups where the person is truly in a player/coach role, it rarely happens.
That's exactly what they should be doing though. Toyota calls it a "gemba walk" -- managers and even executives need to walk the factory floor and see problems with their own eyes, not through hearing reports. With software, the codebase is the gemba, not the office. Managers don't need to be writing code, but they should be reading it. Otherwise it's like a production manager who has never seen the inside of their o…
I believe the idea is for the manager to be visible and approachable so people can feel comfortable coming up to the manager raising issues etc. If the manager is away off site in an executive office or similar then it becomes an added barrier for people to be able to approach them, to notify them about issues etc.
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Would honestly love to know more. What activities which are not common for a store did he bring from the navy?
His style of leadership was what a good captain should be. Kind, caring, patient with everyone but also personally set and expected a higher standard. Mistakes were opportunities to learn, and you never felt belittled. He was the kind of person that was the first to show up and the last to leave and knew every part of the business as if he had done it, and was busy but always had time for people and knew there names.…
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Or making developers run the app/website on average laptops/phones that users commonly use, rather than on the most expensive MacBooks/iPhones.
Marissa Mayer, while at Google, kept using dialup at home so she would experience what someone without broadband sees.
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The chant is absolutely real. I don’t know how frequently they do it in retail, but it was pretty infrequent in the software engineer positions. Source: I was a software engineer for Jet.com for two years after the Walmart acquisition, and then another year separately.
Wait, so you're saying you had to do a chant as a SWE? That's wild. I'm really glad I never took up the recruiters for Walmart Labs now, that would have been a disaster for me.
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That was a trap, she, as a boss gave 2 options for the answer: "easter or summer toys" then she proceeded with the 3rd option: eclipse. That gives bad vibes.
In some contexts yes but I think the idea is to teach the employee that they can answer with a different option. But it does depend on their relationship and personality.
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Another issue is we’re a couple generations in where kids were told over and over swe is what their passion is without it being a real reality. Eventually they get old enough to realize the lie but not young enough to take the risk of doing something about it.
> but not young enough to take the risk of doing something about it. I cannot grok this statement. The older I am the bigger risks I was able to take because I had accumulated more financial independence. Why would you be able to take more risks when you are young? When I was 23 I had little savings, little assets, lots of debt I was worried about paying off, and felt like I needed to work or I was going to be homele…
Many in their 30s are married, mortgaged, and otherwise unable to risk rocking the boat.
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If you're in SW, you probably will need to think about your job off work: They usually don't work in shifts, and will have deliverables in a timeline of months. They need to plan the work, and always adjust to hit the deadlines. If you're a doctor, then you probably don't have to think about your job off work.
Doesn’t a doctor tend to have deliverables in a timeline of minutes or hours, on the order of dozens such deliverables a day, often with health- or life-critical stakes attached? It seems like only yesterday that this counterpoint made the rounds here: “The darker side of being a doctor” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40025261
One observation though, doctors on average have a better reason for work stress to follow them home, seeing life or death shit all the time. Whereas SWEs carry home an unreasonable amount of stress in situations that not only aren’t as important as that, but situations where the fruit of their labor will last only a few years at most. Like, your magnum opus at work will very likely be torn down anyway, so in terms of lasting legacy you’re probably better off with a job in landscaping or carpentry rather than a “living in the future!” career in ad tech, self driving cars, etc.
From this I conclude that most software people, including myself, are way more obsessive and less rational than we usually like to think.
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Complete anti-scientific hogwash only rich people would repeat, again.
There are more than a few studies behind it. Is that "scientific"? Remember that viral story about the guy who made the min salary in his company $70K? What did he base that number on, do you think? Separately, if someone said that your take is "complete anti-scientific hogwash only poor people would repeat," would you think their opinion valid?