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Things I want to say to my boss

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Re: Things I want to say to my boss

#111

Post by ajkjk »

marcinzm wrote: post #48
reallymental wrote: post #3

I think y'all (i.e. who've contributed anonymously to the article), have taken these words too literally. I think we're finally seeing the culmination of around 15+ years (post '08) of leadership mindset finally reap its rewards. Over the last decade (last 3+ decades realistically, I'm around 35, so that's all my personal anecdotal data goes back to), these "leaders" have all thrown away the facade of "mentorship", "…

As I've seen it younger engineers simply focus a lot more on money and their career growth versus the product or whatever their own sense of "the right thing is". That makes the stock go up and everyone is happy more or less. At the same time a lot of experienced engineers get very upset at the suggestion that they should do likewise.

imo younger engineers are doing this because the culture has driven out and suppressed any instinct to care about anything else. If you show up at a job and try to care you fail, you get frustrated and burned out, all your eagerness is rewarded with nothing. There's a strong pressure, from every direction, not to care about anything other than just completing tasks, executing on OKRs, and collecting your RSUs, since you just get burned if you try; saying anything out loud about how the work is pointless or even nefarious threatens the illusion and the illusion protects the money hose so it's not allowed to be questioned.

Re: Things I want to say to my boss

#112

Post by alephnerd »

pwillia7 wrote: post #5
reallymental wrote: post #3

I think y'all (i.e. who've contributed anonymously to the article), have taken these words too literally. I think we're finally seeing the culmination of around 15+ years (post '08) of leadership mindset finally reap its rewards. Over the last decade (last 3+ decades realistically, I'm around 35, so that's all my personal anecdotal data goes back to), these "leaders" have all thrown away the facade of "mentorship", "…

I wonder if this is related to the agency problem[1] and the rise of short-sightedness from the ruling class. If you're just trying to make as much money as possible this quarter and have no real care about building long-term value, why wouldn't you put agents in that mercilessly generate money at the expense of things like your brand and people? I also wonder how many of the authors of the piece are at public vs pri…

It is a variation of the principal-agent problem, and recognizing had helped me climb up the ladder in my career.

Re: Things I want to say to my boss

#113

Post by mekoka »

xnorswap wrote: post #69
everdrive wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A very good observation, and true of nearly any contemporary fiction set in the past. People just seem unable to avoid this flaw.

"contemporary fiction set in the past" Nitpick, but this is a contradiction. Contemporary fiction doesn't mean "current" (or least it didn't used to) it means "set in the time it was written". I guess the word contemporary has been misused to the point of just meaning current or modern and I shouldn't nitpick it!

> I guess the word contemporary has been misused to the point of just meaning current or modern and I shouldn't nitpick it!

According to at least a few references, it very clearly applies to the two meanings. I couldn't find a single dictionary that excludes or seems to favor one over the other.

Re: Things I want to say to my boss

#114

Post by hinkley »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #75
arevno wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because many of us older developers got into the profession when it didn't pay well, and had negative status associated with it, because we loved doing it. So yes, there is very little tolerance from us toward those who are in it for money/status/prestige, and not for the love of it.

Also, this is why we still gravitate toward FOSS communities. It's the last vestige of a dying era. A circle where people like that have a chance to hang up together and keep the warm feeling of being human.

FOSS is a bit like blogging in that a lot of it seems to be motivated by a desire to win an argument you lost once already.

I’m a maintainer on one library in small part because of an argument I had with a maintainer of a similar library years ago. And nearly a maintainer on another one. I voted with my feet and made improvements to DX an/or performance because I can’t pull down a wrongheaded project but I can pull up a better one.

(Incidentally I looked at his issue log the other day and it’s 95% an enumeration of the feature list of the one I’m helping out on. Ha!)

Re: Things I want to say to my boss

#115

Post by getpokedagain »

marcinzm wrote: post #48
reallymental wrote: post #3

I think y'all (i.e. who've contributed anonymously to the article), have taken these words too literally. I think we're finally seeing the culmination of around 15+ years (post '08) of leadership mindset finally reap its rewards. Over the last decade (last 3+ decades realistically, I'm around 35, so that's all my personal anecdotal data goes back to), these "leaders" have all thrown away the facade of "mentorship", "…

As I've seen it younger engineers simply focus a lot more on money and their career growth versus the product or whatever their own sense of "the right thing is". That makes the stock go up and everyone is happy more or less. At the same time a lot of experienced engineers get very upset at the suggestion that they should do likewise.

If this were good for stock go up 9/10 startups wouldn't fail. While cutting corners can be needed at times doing the wrong thing doesn't. Eventually the wrong thing also pisses off the market and turns your company into a joke with a bad reputation.

Re: Things I want to say to my boss

#116

Post by no_wizard »

didibus wrote: post #76
reallymental wrote: post #3

I think y'all (i.e. who've contributed anonymously to the article), have taken these words too literally. I think we're finally seeing the culmination of around 15+ years (post '08) of leadership mindset finally reap its rewards. Over the last decade (last 3+ decades realistically, I'm around 35, so that's all my personal anecdotal data goes back to), these "leaders" have all thrown away the facade of "mentorship", "…

> Profit at any cost Yes, but I think you're overlooking a hugely important factor in all this... You boss is just some average manager that very often could even be below average. Your boss is under their own pressure to perform and most of them will similarly struggle because they're not that good. Most workers at any roles are just average by definition. And the higher up you go, the more timing and luck plays a r…

>Think about it, it's super easy to, as a manager, do nothing but tell people to work harder, do better, and ask why this isn't done, why this isn't good, etc. This is what being bad at leading a profit maximizing company looks like.

I agree with this 100%. I may add a tidbit here simply because I'm thinking about it. There is a real agency problem in leadership.

I've been a staff engineer[0] for just over half a decade now. I've noticed, particularly in the last few years, there's been more dustups over executive[1] authority of the role. Traditionally, what I've experienced is having latitude to observe, identify, and approach engineering problems that affect multiple teams or systems, for example. I've contributed a great deal to engineering strategy, particularly as it relates to whatever problem domain I am embedded in. Its about helping teams meet their immediate sprint goals, not working on strategy or making sure upcoming work for teams is unblocked by doing platform work etc.

The only thing I can surmise about this shift is that engineering managers (and really managers going up the chain) don't want to feel challenged by a "non manager". They didn't like that we didn't have a usual reporting structure that other ICs do (we all rolled up the same senior director or VP rather than an EM) and previously had similar stature that of a director.

[0]: for a general sense of what this entails, see this excellent website: https://staffeng.com

[1]: As in having the power to put plans and/or actions into effect

Re: Things I want to say to my boss

#117

Post by nosianu »

dragonwriter wrote: post #70
no_wizard wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deep professional understanding of a problem space that a business solves is way undervalued. Institutional knowledge, experience, and domain expertise have been devalued precisely because the managerial class (particularly executives and VPs) actively learn and live the idea that labor is always bad and to be minimized as much as possible. This is what the AI boom is really about, removing more power from labor. Its…

> This is what the AI boom is really about, removing more power from labor. Its why all the AI hype largely markets itself in this way "how AI can replace or minimize X role" as opposed to "This is how you can use AI to empower your workforce in the majority of discourse I've seen around it. Arguably, AI is largely marketed that way because that's what corporate buyers care about, the same way every productivity impr…

> Arguably, AI is largely marketed that way because that's what corporate buyers care about

Why "arguably", that is exactly what he wrote

Re: Things I want to say to my boss

#118

Post by hinkley »

the_snooze wrote: post #24
reallymental wrote: post #3

I think y'all (i.e. who've contributed anonymously to the article), have taken these words too literally. I think we're finally seeing the culmination of around 15+ years (post '08) of leadership mindset finally reap its rewards. Over the last decade (last 3+ decades realistically, I'm around 35, so that's all my personal anecdotal data goes back to), these "leaders" have all thrown away the facade of "mentorship", "…

It's toddler-level thinking. Replace the complexity of leadership, humanity, and values with "make line go up," because the latter is way easier to measure, especially when you ignore the costs that aren't yours.

The first really stupid customer I encountered had a bunch of beanie babies in his office.

I used to mutter about him being that race in Star Trek TNG that kidnaps people to make their ships “go”.

But then one day I had an epiphany. I realized his boss knows exactly what he is. He’s a useful idiot with a knack of getting something for nothing out of people. That’s his skill. Not dinner conversation, but cost control. That and the Gervais Principle explain a lot of our head scratching about bad managers. They just know how to nerdsnipe or neg us into doing free work.

Every time I take a computer to the Genius Bar I impersonate that beautiful moron. I’ve paid for one expensive repair that I feel nobody should have to pay for, but also not paid for two repairs that I knew damned well were out of warranty. All told I’ve paid pretty much what a fair universe should have charged me for lifetime maintenance on my hardware.

The thing is if they know you’re in IT they will engage in a coherent argument with you that explains why they are entitled to deny your claim. If you just say, “it won’t connect to the internet” then they do the mental math on what an argument will cost with this grandpa whose kids bought him too much laptop for his own good and decide a waver is just less work.

Re: Things I want to say to my boss

#119

Post by flatline »

gdulli wrote: post #99
arevno wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because many of us older developers got into the profession when it didn't pay well, and had negative status associated with it, because we loved doing it. So yes, there is very little tolerance from us toward those who are in it for money/status/prestige, and not for the love of it.

Why does having different values imply intolerance?

I do think there can be element of snobbishness around it, but that's not really the point. The overculture of corporate America has finally overtaken the hackerish (relative) meritocracy of early tech, of Getting Things Done and Building Cool Stuff. Rewards are increasingly tied to metrics decoupled from useful outcomes. If you want to get paid a big tech salary you need to go through the leetcode grind, and do things like project sufficient "masculine energy" (lol). Management performance is measured by hiring and expansion more than product delivery and success. The ethics of what you are doing are completely secondary to shareholder value. You still need technical skills, but they are somewhat less important, there are many more competing incentives than there used to be, and the stakes are higher. This has been happening since the early days - cf. Microserfs, written all the way back in 1995 - it's just that tech has worked its way so thoroughly into the fabric of corporate existence that the two have more or less completely merged.

Re: Things I want to say to my boss

#120

Post by eddieroger »

marcinzm wrote: post #48
reallymental wrote: post #3

I think y'all (i.e. who've contributed anonymously to the article), have taken these words too literally. I think we're finally seeing the culmination of around 15+ years (post '08) of leadership mindset finally reap its rewards. Over the last decade (last 3+ decades realistically, I'm around 35, so that's all my personal anecdotal data goes back to), these "leaders" have all thrown away the facade of "mentorship", "…

As I've seen it younger engineers simply focus a lot more on money and their career growth versus the product or whatever their own sense of "the right thing is". That makes the stock go up and everyone is happy more or less. At the same time a lot of experienced engineers get very upset at the suggestion that they should do likewise.

I'm in the middle and lean loyal, but the younger folks probably got it right. There's no more IBM of the 1960s loyalty to be had from the company's perspective, so why not go out and make what you can while you can. No more pensions, not even a gold watch. Look at how often tech sees layoffs - it's not if there's another, it's when.
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