Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

jasont.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 183 posts

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

#161

Post by vhiremath4 »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #22

Eh. These all seem fine. My route? I work less. I have a typical 9-5 but 1-2 days a week I leave a little early and go to do something engaging. Never when I have meetings. Never when I have deadlines. Never when someone is waiting on something from me. But I, and I suspect most engineers, have the capacity to get my work done for a week in less than 40 hours. I used to spend time dicking off on my computer to fill t…

I sincerely hate to be the bearer of bad news, but we are in the very early innings of a major global economic recession. If you like your job, I strongly suggest putting in an honest effort and work week. This past 5 years in particular have been incredibly cushy for employees, and that is about to change rapidly. I highly doubt many (if any) companies will employ a 4 day work week in a year or so.

I could also be wrong here and the correction won't be this harsh, but just throwing out a different perspective I don't feel is being shared across Hacker News enough yet.

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

#162

Post by antod »

lovich wrote: post #143
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.

Manager here. I do the same thing and I suspect a few of my reports are as well. As long as they continue to complete their work to my satisfaction level I don’t question them on it. I’ve made clear to them that there’s a few core hours they need to make sure they can be available for meetings with other teams and our 5-10 minute standup is about the only checkin I need. I can already see their git commits and jira h…

Not directly related to your comment, it just triggered a random reflection on micro management...

Being micro managed as a manager is even worse than as an IC - there's a certain level of badgering you have to pass on so you can satisfy higher management, and there's a limit to how much of that you can filter. So you get micromanagement of yourself plus the extra shitty feeling of having to do it to others.

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

#163

Post by kadoban »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #130
fruit2020 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait. Does slack show idleness? Maybe it’s disabled in my org. Never seen it on any of my colleagues. We are either green or gray

I think there is a yellow state. But yellow and gray are both "bad" since they are not green.

Is there? I wonder how to trigger that, don't think I've ever seen it. There's just green, grey and that little z thing for do-not-distrub for me.

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

#164

Post by [deleted] »

vhiremath4 wrote: post #161
AlwaysRock wrote: post #22

Eh. These all seem fine. My route? I work less. I have a typical 9-5 but 1-2 days a week I leave a little early and go to do something engaging. Never when I have meetings. Never when I have deadlines. Never when someone is waiting on something from me. But I, and I suspect most engineers, have the capacity to get my work done for a week in less than 40 hours. I used to spend time dicking off on my computer to fill t…

I sincerely hate to be the bearer of bad news, but we are in the very early innings of a major global economic recession. If you like your job, I strongly suggest putting in an honest effort and work week. This past 5 years in particular have been incredibly cushy for employees, and that is about to change rapidly. I highly doubt many (if any) companies will employ a 4 day work week in a year or so. I could also be w…

[deleted]

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

#166

Post by alkonaut »

ransom1538 wrote: post #152
alkonaut wrote: post #27

My motto is: I don't want to work on a CRUD app. I want computer science to actually be part of what I do. Not parsing and validation and deployments and migrations. But finding these jobs where actual "what you do with the data" is the majority work, and the fluff around it is a minority, is HARD and such jobs seem to be more far between. Perhaps because the software jobs that used to be difficult algorithmic proble…

There are tons ways to escape: security, sre, engineering sales, etc etc.

I'd put those in the bin with "Stuff that just goes on around what programs do but doesn't actually relate to what they do".

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

#167

Post by ornornor »

imbnwa wrote: post #113
kqr wrote: post #97

Another way to do this that isn't about escaping from your boring work is... well, making your work more interesting. Have a good idea? Coordinate with the right people and go for it. Even if nobody asked you to. You should never feel like you need someone's authorisation to do a good job. Becoming free anywhere, even within one's regular work, is not about asking for freedom -- it's about insisting to act as if one…

This is what I try to do, but at the org I work for there's a low key assumption that Devs are too stupid to do anything but what can be implemented in a sprint, no matter the complexity of the problem (which obviously leads to poor engineering outcomes). Teams are criticized when there're no 0-burndowns by people upstairs so everyone adapted by vastly simplifying solutions/work to fit that expectation.

Be careful. Stay at one of these places too long, or work at too many in a row, and you’ll end up so burned out that you won’t be able to even entertain the idea of programming ever again for quite some time. Been there, got the t-shirt.

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

#168

Post by laserlight »

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…

Picking up another task doesn’t mean that it has to be finished. If one lacks skill, they can train. If documentation is missing, one can document whatever they learn. The last one is difficult to address, but not impossible. If team members don’t give a shit about the product, I bet they can still find something they give a shit about that also contributes to the product.

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

#169

Post by paskozdilar »

laserlight wrote: post #168
paskozdilar wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Picking up another task doesn’t mean that it has to be finished. If one lacks skill, they can train. If documentation is missing, one can document whatever they learn. The last one is difficult to address, but not impossible. If team members don’t give a shit about the product, I bet they can still find something they give a shit about that also contributes to the product.

You make a good point. I guess as long as the people are passionate, the first two issues can be, over time, worked through. I guess the tarpit is that the "time" can be really long, especially for (skill-wise) heterogeneous team working on large undocumented projects.

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

#170

Post by willcipriano »

ipaddr wrote: post #112
b3morales wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've left these "time to lean, time to clean" jobs in the dustbin of my teens where they belong. It's a seller's market for us geeks right now; we should take advantage of it while it lasts and find good conditions for ourselves to work in.

How do you filter for that in your job search? Questions during the interview help but it's easy to misunderstand.

I put together these questions for my job search and they have worked ok for me.

"What has turnover looked like in the past year?"

Sweat shops have high turnover, press for a number for this question.

"What are your on call expectations? How do you manage incidents out of hours? How frequently do incidents like that happen?"

If they don't mention comp time or anything like that during those three questions they probably don't offer it, and if incidents happen with any frequency you can assume you will work a good bit of unplanned overtime.

"How is my work evaluated?"

The harder the criteria here the less likely they use butts in seats management. If it's someone vauge about "how well you collaborate with the team" or similar it's probably a subjective measure probably related to if your butt is where they expect it to be when they look.

Post reply on HN