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

Getting things “done” in large tech companies

seangoedecke.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 228 posts

Re: Getting things “done” in large tech companies

#161

Post by PaulHoule »

bluecheese452 wrote: post #147
_fat_santa wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's kinda the beauty of it. If you get laid off from one of these places the next place doesn't know that you took 300k home to do jack, all they know is you worked for a super prestigious company for 10 years and you can plausibly make up the rest about what you actually did there.

If you took home 300k for 10 years then you don’t have to worry about getting a job.

For many people expenses expand to fill income. Some people think that the real brilliant investors of the bay area are the real estate investors who captured all the value.

Re: Getting things “done” in large tech companies

#162

Post by [deleted] »

deadbabe wrote: post #79
whstl wrote: post #3

I don't disagree with the article, but after working in big tech, two HN startups, a couple unicorns and others, in two continents, I don't really find this too actionable. In the last ten years (and even in the 20-people HN startups), the day to day work of engineers has become so incredibly specialised and divorced from the needs of decision-makers and the customers that there is almost nothing I can do to influenc…

So you’re saying the only time you were satisfied with your work is when you took the role of a product manager who stepped in between the engineers and the rest of the company and had all their contributions filtered through your ego? Yea, that sounds pretty satisfying…

[deleted]

Re: Getting things “done” in large tech companies

#164

Post by phillipcarter »

conrs wrote: post #144
whstl wrote: post #3

I don't disagree with the article, but after working in big tech, two HN startups, a couple unicorns and others, in two continents, I don't really find this too actionable. In the last ten years (and even in the 20-people HN startups), the day to day work of engineers has become so incredibly specialised and divorced from the needs of decision-makers and the customers that there is almost nothing I can do to influenc…

I've had a very hard time with the Product Manager discipline. From the books and podcasts like Lenny's, it all makes perfect sense, but it seems like in practice it is as you described - they've inserted themselves in between and often don't represent either side well. It's lead me to develop product management skills myself, which are honestly incredibly useful in avoiding wasted effort. But it does make me wonder…

As a PM I've always held the opinion that I'm genuinely not needed for a ton of work if the lead engineer is reasonably product-minded and understands current customers. Most existing customer pains are plainly evident and so long as it's not a wild amount of work, my job is to just give a thumbs up and move on.

Where it gets nasty is the new opportunities. Assuming your system of patronage at a company is a good one, there's a lot of work in finding new opportunities in the first place and testing them out. And often the cat herding of developers who do some of this (great!) but want to just run wild without testing any of their assumptions (not so great!) and trying to balance the excitement and creative forces with whatever framing is needed to satisfy others in the company. That gets most complicated when various stakeholders hold opposing positions on "what we should be focused on", and if you don't have a PM absorbing that damage for you, you're just going to end up doing that all day instead of building software.

Re: Getting things “done” in large tech companies

#165

Post by happymellon »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #129
joezydeco wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You haven't been on LinkedIn in the last few years, then.

unfortunately I have. It is indeed a hellscape of, as the kids say, "aura farming". Microsoft really seem to want to turn it into Instagram for some reason. I still use it as a job board, personally.

Is there any other meaningful job board (outside of "whose hiring" on hn)?

I haven't had to apply for a job for a while, so genuinely curious what people would use these days if there wasn't anything coming via word of mouth.

Re: Getting things “done” in large tech companies

#166

Post by cubefox »

gwbas1c wrote: post #138
cubefox wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. I would phrase it like this: There is two things to avoid: "overengineering" and "underengineering". The first case has happened when it later turns out that the developer did put in too much work into a feature than was necessary in retrospect, in the second case that they did put in too little work. At the time of engineering it is usually not clear how much work would constitute over- or underengineering, as…

> But usually it makes sense to "err on the side of overengineering". Because (limited) overengineering merely means some development effort was wasted, while underengineering can easily mean years of painful tech debt that is an order of magnitude or two more expensive than the wasted effort from overengineering. In our case there was a lot of overengineering by novices, so a lot of the tech debt involves unwinding…

I would guess underengineering (quick and dirty solutions) leads to a lot more tech debt in expectation than overengineering.

Re: Getting things “done” in large tech companies

#167

Post by Capricorn2481 »

beezlebroxxxxxx wrote: post #22
eXpl0it3r wrote: post #14

Is this sentiment the reason why a lot of "engineers" will provide terrible quality in code / tests (lack thereof) / documentation / etc.? If all that matters that someone at the top sees it and is happy about it at this specific moment in time, why bother writing code that can last and doesn't leave behind an absolute unmaintainable ball of mud? We don't need gold plating and yet billions could be saved by having in…

More and more you run into people who simply don't care about craft and quality. I can already hear the chorus of people that will scream "I'm not paid enough to care" or "it's just a job for some people", and those things are often true; but, nonetheless, people used to take much greater care in their craft even when they were paid less. There was a sense that, even if it was just a job, it should be done well. A ce…

It's a lot simpler than you're making it: PMs don't want to pay for those things.

If you tell them what tests are, they will say that's a waste of time and we need to ship features. If you tell them there's a huge security vulnerability that will take 15 hours to fix, they will get vaguely angry with you in a way that directs you to another task, to avoid explicitly saying "we're not working on security." They are very good at this malicious misdirection. Their goal is to not understand their own liability and make it your choice to work overtime for free.

I'm dealing with this right now, a company with multiple data breaches who is trying to blame us, the new guys, for a breach that happened before we joined the project. They refuse to notify their customers because they "don't know how much data was leaked" (because they turned off the logs to save money). They have been so disgustingly negligent through this process I am considering leaving my job just to not deal with this one client.

There are developers that don't care, but many that do. And they have stories similar to mine. They are told not to care by managers. I've never met a good PM. I'm sure they are out there, but I'm convinced this position is a magnet for the scummiest snake oil salesman on the planet.

Re: Getting things “done” in large tech companies

#168

Post by Capricorn2481 »

eXpl0it3r wrote: post #14

Is this sentiment the reason why a lot of "engineers" will provide terrible quality in code / tests (lack thereof) / documentation / etc.? If all that matters that someone at the top sees it and is happy about it at this specific moment in time, why bother writing code that can last and doesn't leave behind an absolute unmaintainable ball of mud? We don't need gold plating and yet billions could be saved by having in…

Lots of PMs want to "go go go" fast and will not settle for anything less. We write tests and docs for the clients that let us. But the reaction from a lot of CFOs is offense that we would even suggest adding code that isn't features.

Re: Getting things “done” in large tech companies

#169

Post by stronglikedan »

yawgmoth wrote: post #30
_fat_santa wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's kinda the beauty of it. If you get laid off from one of these places the next place doesn't know that you took 300k home to do jack, all they know is you worked for a super prestigious company for 10 years and you can plausibly make up the rest about what you actually did there.

> you can plausibly make up the rest about what you actually did there. I would never do this, and if you would do this I wouldn't want to work with you. Maybe I'm a sucker, but I sleep alright.

Everybody does this to some degree. Even you.

Re: Getting things “done” in large tech companies

#170

Post by kylereeve »

cljacoby wrote: post #62

I have mixed feeling on this. Some parts of this are probably good advise, at least with respect to clocking titular promotions. No disagreement around visibility of delivered "big wins" being key. However, I feel like this article is subliminally pro-management, with the thesis statement essentially being just make your manager (and their manager) happy. But what happens when there's no clear direction from manageme…

On the flip side, when you have a manager who's genuinely on your side and wants to help you produce value (seems rare, I've been lucky enough to land one or two), "pleasing your manager" can accelerate career advancement and actually delivering working software you're proud of.
Post reply on HN