This was just business as usual 50 to 100 years ago. People started at the bottom and worked their way up. There were no I've-got-a-degree shortcuts because degrees weren't about training for a job, they were about finding out about the world around us. It's interesting that things are starting to circle around, but I doubt any corporation will drop the degree requirements... unless AI CEO's start rejecting all human applications.
Doing Everyone Else's Job
41–50 of 106 posts
Re: Doing Everyone Else's Job
#42I tend to apply this to myself, within an organization (as opposed to those who like to generically try it all - fair enough). I've always been an enormous fan of touring the organization. Whether I join as a dev, or an exec, I always make it a point to spend some time with product, with support, and with marketing. It ends up providing me a unique vantage point. I encourage others to do the same, and when I 'control…
any tips on how to go about such things? its occasionally hard to find excuses to go hang out at the other end of the building and talk to another team I dont know much about as a regular developer
I usually asked my managers by framing it to their goals, if agreed they would schedule with other managers.
It's harder during crunch or when everyone is remote.
Re: Doing Everyone Else's Job
#43I tend to apply this to myself, within an organization (as opposed to those who like to generically try it all - fair enough). I've always been an enormous fan of touring the organization. Whether I join as a dev, or an exec, I always make it a point to spend some time with product, with support, and with marketing. It ends up providing me a unique vantage point. I encourage others to do the same, and when I 'control…
any tips on how to go about such things? its occasionally hard to find excuses to go hang out at the other end of the building and talk to another team I dont know much about as a regular developer
Always have a folder in your hand when visiting other teams in other parts of the office. Print out some code, a few pages of spec, whatever. Just don't go walkabout empty-handed.
Re: Doing Everyone Else's Job
#44I worked for a Japanese corporation, and a big part of their HR policy, was to move staff around the company. It was usually in 1- or 2-year stints (people would spend their entire careers at the company, so they could do this). Eventually, they would end up doing longer stints, where they would specialize. They would couple this with things like standardized coding and documentation styles, common tools, etc. Traini…
This is what doctors do in Czech Republic - mandatory journey through hospital departments taking about 2.5 years.
That's Medicine everywhere
Re: Doing Everyone Else's Job
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
LOL! My bosses used to tell me that I need to learn to be more `rude` and not just do what others says because I can. I have learnt a lot and one of the biggest is to say NO, in big Uppercase—I can do anything for work but I won’t do that, NO, I won’t do that. Sometime, I still do and I like the fun and thrill of locking in a hotel room after a meeting and coming out in lot less days these days (pppppsssstt, because…
You don't do these things because they benefit your boss. (They might happen to, but that's not the point.) You do them because they benefit you . Not going to benefit you? There's lots of ways to say no to a back-channel request. Not a back-channel request? Then I guess it's not someone else's job!
Easier said than done. Saying no is not so easy. There's a bit of a weird dynamic that if you could do something that others need help with, saying no can be considered rude, but saying (even if lying) that you don't know how to do it is generally accepted. Usually a boss (or even a colleague) backing in saying no helps a lot.
Also the helping can cause escalation of "demand". First you help with something quick and easy for you, but soon you find "owning" more and more of the task.
It's not dissimilar from the entitled people in open source project bug trackers.
Re: Doing Everyone Else's Job
#46I worked for a Japanese corporation, and a big part of their HR policy, was to move staff around the company. It was usually in 1- or 2-year stints (people would spend their entire careers at the company, so they could do this). Eventually, they would end up doing longer stints, where they would specialize. They would couple this with things like standardized coding and documentation styles, common tools, etc. Traini…
This is what doctors do in Czech Republic - mandatory journey through hospital departments taking about 2.5 years.
This is also part of the system for doctors in the US, it's called residency. During residency rotations the residents (who have already graduated medical school) go through structured clinical training with patients within each medical specialty, supervised by an attending physician.
Re: Doing Everyone Else's Job
#47I used this technique to great success in a few companies where infrastructure operations was critical to the business (cloud provider, SaaS companies), by having myself and other members of my team where I was the tech lead work with Support and Sales to get direct exposure to customer problems and the internal problems facing staff who deal directly with customers. Not only did this help our operational staff who are mostly "back of house" gain an understanding about our customers, how they use the product, and the impact of operational decisions, but it also helped us get more empathy for the staff that bridged between us and the customer, and we found ways to bring some actions closer to the customer by enabling Support to do some things without needing to submit a ticket and wait on us.
I really wish this was more common in the industry, now as a Product Manager, while I do a lot to engage with field teams (Support, Sales) and work across every group in the company (Legal, Finance, Eng, Ops, Support, Sales, et al), I still only get interactions and snippets, it'd be great to go walk a mile in their shoes.
Re: Doing Everyone Else's Job
#48This was just business as usual 50 to 100 years ago. People started at the bottom and worked their way up. There were no I've-got-a-degree shortcuts because degrees weren't about training for a job, they were about finding out about the world around us. It's interesting that things are starting to circle around, but I doubt any corporation will drop the degree requirements... unless AI CEO's start rejecting all human…
As a high school dropout, with a GED, I can relate. Pretty much all of my education has been OJT and seminars/classes.
It's earned me lots of sneers, over the years, but the people that mattered, didn't care. I spent most of my career at one of the world's best optical equipment companies, working as a peer with some of the top people in the world. It was quite humbling, and extremely gratifying.
Re: Doing Everyone Else's Job
#49In case the author reads this : I suspect I agree with some of the ideas (or at least they're though provoking), but the writing does not help. The comma count is a hint ;) (I had to parse a few paragraphs several times to get the idea.)
I got in the habit of using Oxford Commas[0]. Not everyone loves them, and I sometimes need to go back, and uncomma stuff.
I got in the habit, because it is better for technical specifications. It makes it clear, to which word an "and" applies. I think it makes reading prose a bit awkward, though.
I've noticed that LLMs really don't seem to like using commas, in general.
Re: Doing Everyone Else's Job
#50One of the things I hate about my current job is that it's impossible to do this. Everything is locked behind multiple layers of permissions. It takes weeks to get the correct permissions set up even for my actual job (which I see any time changing roles here, or when onboarding new hires). Getting the permissions to jump in and improve some other part of the system that I don't officially own - even though I might g…
I worked at a company where you could do it, but some people take fixes as insults to their mother's honour, so all in all probably on a personal level it is best to avoid doing it.