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How to feel engaged at work: a software engineer's guide

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Re: How to feel engaged at work: a software engineer's guide

#101

Post by corrral »

digisign wrote: post #95
corrral wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but the point of this was to generate (easy) work that others want you to do so they won't ask you to do other (more time-consuming) stuff instead. You'll have a very different experience telling the product owner you spent the whole week working on bugs that they noticed and they told you to fix (even if you left them in originally on purpose) than telling them you spent all week refactoring code. The former is…

You don't tell non-technical folks technical details, you deliver finished tickets on schedule, which makes them happy. Would you discuss what algo's you used with them? Database schema? No, then talking about unit tests is a non-sequitur as well. Complete snoozefest for non-geeks anyway. In fact I'd be disappointed by a dev that constantly introduces careless bugs, it's a dev smell. Most bugs should be unique and re…

I agree it's not a great idea, for multiple reasons, but I get why the poster who brought it up would prefer letting bugs slip through to padding everything with more refactoring and adding tests. Deliver features fast(er than you really should be, probably), then coast on some easy bugs for a bit.

External perception of how well a developer is doing often has very little to do with how good a job they're actually doing. I don't think making refactoring and test-making your "easy work" would have the same effect on appearances as the fast-features-and-some-bugs approach, at least at a lot of places.

Re: How to feel engaged at work: a software engineer's guide

#102

Post by EddieDante »

adamsmith143 wrote: post #48
lmarcos wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but what would be their argument against it? "Dev X is pushing his features on time, he's a nice college, always learning from him, but... Ah yeah, but he leaves work 1h before everyone else. Please fire him".

Sure but I guess depending on the place I'd think unless you had an explicit agreement about leaving early that there would be pushback. "If you have enough free time to leave early you have enough time to pick up another ticket"

Sure, I have time enough to pick up another ticket at 3:30pm. I also have time to fuck it up because I've already racked my brain fixing two other tickets, attending a morning standup, and sitting through a company-wide DEI webinar when I should have been having lunch.

So, what would you prefer? That I clock out early because I've put in a solid day's work despite not getting to have lunch, or that I do a half-assed job just to look busy that I'll just have to revert and fix the next morning?

One gets so utterly weary of all this Taylorist bullshit that managers get in the process of earning their MBAs.

Re: How to feel engaged at work: a software engineer's guide

#103

Post by EddieDante »

bsedlm wrote: post #43
EddieDante wrote: post #34

Why would I want to be engaged at work? I just want to do my job and get paid. I think that expecting emotional fulfillment or meaning from my job is a trap, a way to con me into working more while accepting less pay than I deserve. Work won't love me back, so why should I love my work? I lost interest in unrequited love back in high school when I outgrew my Young Werther phase.

but I want my work to be engaging... it seems like I want this out of an existencial instict; one which the modern world has completely disregarded. I want it, but I know (and I agree with your stance) that I will not find it in any "industry" work; academic work, on the other hand, does rely on this kind of self-motivated engagement much more than industry but has other problems.

> it seems like I want this out of an existencial instict; one which the modern world has completely disregarded.

Has the modern world completely disregarded this existential need, or have capitalists weaponized it against workers?

Re: How to feel engaged at work: a software engineer's guide

#105

Post by fatnoah »

paskozdilar wrote: post #54
adamsmith143 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree but from a SWE perspective on any kind of Agile/Scrum team I think the expectation is usually that you pick up another task if you finish early and there's still time during a sprint for example. This also obviously breeds other bad incentives i.e. the faster you work the more work you get.

> from a SWE perspective on any kind of Agile/Scrum team I think the expectation is usually that you pick up another task if you finish early and there's still time during a sprint for example. This is true, assuming that: 1. the whole team has approximately equal skill 2. the system is uniform and well-documented 3. the people actually give a shit about the product If any of these assumptions are not met, then the e…

I can't think of any environment that I've been in where this is true. I think the closest I've been was as part of a team of three people where each of us could really handle any task in the codebase. It was also true that there were things that we each cared far more about as individuals, so, in spite of comparable skills, we tended to gravitate to specific stories, anyway.

As a manager, I have every expectation that we won't be doing scrum exactly by the book, but that's totally fine. I'm more concerned about (reasonably) consistently reproducible levels of productivity, not squeezing every point out of a sprint. If there's slack time, great. That seems to be when people are most likely to contribute new stories, learn something new, etc. Besides, rigidly following scrum feels anti-Agile, anyway. People and interactions over tools and processes.

Re: How to feel engaged at work: a software engineer's guide

#106

Post by kerblang »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #33

> make time to be curious. This is kinda dangerous advice, because I've been involved in countless CRUD apps where the developers were bored and made things more interesting for themselves; NoSQL databases, difficult programming languages like Scala, microservices, CQRS, infrastructure-as-code that was never used in practice (it was wishful-thinking-as-code), home-rolled frameworks (one involved the CTO / lead develo…

This is reasonable advice but it carries the assumption that "simplest is easiest". It is in hindsight. People sometimes say "It's easy to make a complicated solution for a simple problem, but not the other way around," and it's painfully true, as Rube Goldberg noticed. But of course that means we actually have a real challenge if we get our priorities straight.

There are still tedious/repetitive things that come up, though, and if the repetition is bad enough, then there are opportunities to do something clever... But again: Can it be done simply enough to make it worthwhile? Another challenge.

And sometimes you just gotta do the dirty work dirty, and hang in there. Admittedly that is part of any job done well, in the long run.

Re: How to feel engaged at work: a software engineer's guide

#107

Post by fatnoah »

BeetleB wrote: post #62
adamsmith143 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your manager just next level laid back? I feel like most places are going to notice and be bothered seeing the yellow circle on your Teams or Slack status consistently for long periods of time.

One thing I've found to be consistently true: Good managers highlight concerns with your performance. Poor managers complain about your hours[1]. If they're complaining about your hours, then there's something else bothering them, but they're using this as a proxy[2]. I don't want to work with managers who are not willing to discuss the real issues. They're a pain to deal with. So I always start looking for another j…

>If they're complaining about your hours, then there's something else bothering them, but they're using this as a proxy[2].

This can also be a sign that the manager doesn't really know what you're doing and/or has not set clear goals for you, so they have nothing else to measure except your hours.

As VP Eng with an org of 35, my CEO was always giving me grief about the number of hours people on my team were in the office. I always pushed back with our milestone tracking. We are on target, and that's all that matters to me. People know what they need to get done, and that's what I want to manage, not hours in the office, vacation balances, or anything else. I'm not their parent. I set expectations, support them in meeting those expectations, and let them make the adult decision about their time.

Re: How to feel engaged at work: a software engineer's guide

#108

Post by throw827474737 »

corrral wrote: post #90
AlwaysRock wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha. I refuse to play the game. I set my slack to away the day I start and never turn it back to green. I've done this at every job during the pandemic. The stupid green bubble vs gray or yellow or whatever is a form of always being at your desk micro management and it isnt productive. I'll happily explain that to anyone who asks but I've only had a few people ask. Again, if you get your work done most people dont giv…

Similar hiding-the-signal tricks: - Set a reminder to go fuck around with your LinkedIn profile for a few minutes every couple months, so at no point are you suddenly active on it (and so, probably thinking about looking for a new job). - If you have a job in an office with a relaxed dress code (like most devs, probably) make a point of dressing interview-nice at least a couple times a month, from the start. That way…

Huh, for what hide that? Would they proactively fire you?

Here, it is always joked that intentionally giving those signals is the trick to support getting the desired pay raise.. some years ago even saw one guy pulling that off.

Re: How to feel engaged at work: a software engineer's guide

#109

Post by tsol »

dangerlibrary wrote: post #39
adamsmith143 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your manager just next level laid back? I feel like most places are going to notice and be bothered seeing the yellow circle on your Teams or Slack status consistently for long periods of time.

If managers are spending their days watching the color of the circles next to their team member's names, maybe the managers need more work to do in order to "stay engaged" at work. Of all the bad heuristics for trying to determine whether someone is being productive, this has to be near the bottom of the list. It's the digital equivalent of measuring engineer productivity by looking around the room and seeing who is…

Even if that's true, this unengaged manager still has the power to make your life difficult if they think you're not doing enough
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