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Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?

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Re: Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?

#241

Post by siren2026 »

It has always been super difficult in tech to know who does what exactly. You can look at PRs or # LoC but we all know they are not very representative.

Plenty of people have realized that and played the visibility/politics game. Especially in the last decade where tech has tried to be more inclusive and less about hard metrics. Now the narrative is the key component of your performance review. It's vibes all the way essentially

Then you introduce a layer of line managers that are blurring the signal even more, to the point where the narrative about someone is way more powerful than facts. Their whole job is to play politics and pushing a narrative to other managers/ICs during 1:1s.

Re: Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?

#242

Post by salemh »

Henchman21 wrote: post #69

You are so naive you don’t get it yet? All of “adult” life is performative . Life is a game, a performance, a little play you put on for the benefit of all. Consider this: if management thinks something is impressive, well that makes it impressive . Managers, by definition, manage people , and having 1:1 meetings helps with that. Are you supposing managers also make the same exact effort and contribution as ICs? Woul…

[dead]

Re: Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?

#243

Post by eudamoniac »

jldugger wrote: post #236
eudamoniac wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the key thing is that the direct goes first and gets to talk about _what they want to talk about_. How about if the direct has absolutely no interest in talking about anything because they are just trying to do their job, which is going fine? Because that's 99%, maybe 100% of these meetings I've ever had.

Thats fine, though if you do that forever you'll probably harm your promotion chances. Which, if your goal is just to get by, sounds fine? But generally speaking, it's a chance for you to speak about your work to the person writing your performance review, and get feedback, which may be in short supply otherwise for various reasons.

I don't know why I'd ever want a promotion, and I haven't ever got one. I did turn one down once. A promotion is like 5% more pay for way more work and a bunch of corporate bullshit along the way. If I want to move up I just change jobs.

Re: Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?

#244

Post by Esophagus4 »

Aurornis wrote: post #222
Esophagus4 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you need 1:1 to talk about technical questions, something is horribly wrong. And I would expect pwrformance feedback to have its own set of meetings. With this approach, I hope you are not a manager.

What do you mean? Even at companies with strong 1:1 cultures it’s bad practice to save technical questions for 1:1s (shouldn’t be delaying them until the weekly slot) and performance reviews are scheduled separately from 1:1s because it shouldn’t take the place of normal communications. It’s an additional meeting with separate agendas.

As a manager, it’s your responsibility to give your people feedback on a regular basis to help them grow, and follow up. You need a regular place to talk about these things.

Performance conversations are not once a year, they’re regular and routine.

On the flip side, if someone is not meeting performance expectations, you have to be having those conversations early, coaching / supporting so nothing is a surprise at review time, or worse… if you have to fire someone, they deserve the opportunity to fix the issue first so you want to be telling them where they stand and why.

On technical questions, sure - don’t save them for a 1-1, but I am able to be a sounding bound for my engineers when they mention what they’re working on, and I give them guidance. Sometimes they go, “oh yeah I’ve already thought of that, it won’t work for this reason.” And sometimes they go, “huh, I didn’t think of that. I’ll look into it”

Re: Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?

#245

Post by sqquima »

danudey wrote: post #217

I watched (most of) this video on YouTube, an interview with a former VP at Amazon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WaeGfLnRvc The TL;DR about promotions seems to be that: 1. There are guidelines on what you need to do to reach each level 2. Your direct supervisor will work with you on how they can game the system to get you the promotion For example, they might propose a re-org that will take a product or feature (…

These companies do some marvelous engineering work, but it seems that the engineering skills get you in, while the political skills get you through performance reviews. There should be a FAANG-like acronym that encompasses great companies that aren't toxic.

Re: Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?

#246

Post by phil21 »

Aurornis wrote: post #79
DanHulton wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, honestly, as one of those managers with calendars full of 1:1s, I was kinda surprised at this. They’re frequently the most-useful meetings I have all week. The first ten minutes are usually kinda whatever, just catching up or chatting, but at around the halfway point, the REAL shit comes out. The things that were bothering them, or the task they were stuck on, or the team that’s been blocking them, or in better…

> The first ten minutes are usually kinda whatever, just catching up or chatting, but at around the halfway point, the REAL shit comes out. I worked at a range of startups before joining my first corporate style company. This 1:1 meeting ritual was hard for me to adapt to. At the startups, particularly the high performing ones, issues were addressed immediately. If a problem arose you talked to the people involved qu…

I've come to the conclusion that if I ever start my own thing again I will 100% ban all standing recurring meetings. Maybe an exception for projects-in-progress with a firm end date, but I'm on the fence on that one too. Zero high performing teams I've worked within - or led - has had such form of structure.

Standing meetings tend to devolve into performative uselessness. And they add stress, interruptions, etc. And worst of all - they tend to let people have a false sense of accomplishment afterwards.

1:1's I think can be useful for a certain type of employee, but should be 100% at that employee's discretion. The only use I see for them for that type of person that they have a predictable slot held open on their manager's schedule in the event they need to actually execute it. Most of them should be skipped or there are probably other issues in the employee:manager relationship.

I understand I am the odd man out when it comes to "meeting culture" but the more I get stuck in a myriad of standing meetings the more I have ossified my opinion on this subject. Meetings are not productive work. The older and more experienced I get the more useless I think they are.

A random meeting called because there is an issue to discuss and get a decision made on? Totally fine. Those are useful.

Re: Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?

#247

Post by sqquima »

Henchman21 wrote: post #69

You are so naive you don’t get it yet? All of “adult” life is performative . Life is a game, a performance, a little play you put on for the benefit of all. Consider this: if management thinks something is impressive, well that makes it impressive . Managers, by definition, manage people , and having 1:1 meetings helps with that. Are you supposing managers also make the same exact effort and contribution as ICs? Woul…

I don't think it's either black or white. That said, I wanted to highlight that some adults do have some neurodivergence, which, in a way, makes them a bit naive and unable to navigate the game you mention. There is no need to be condescending.

Re: Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?

#248

Post by Esophagus4 »

Aurornis wrote: post #232
Esophagus4 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s an anti pattern of management - the 1-1 shouldn’t be a status update. There are times you want to brief your boss on things that are important to them, but if you’re just going over your tickets, that’s a waste of time (unless you’re using that time to get technical guidance on your tickets). There are lots of lousy managers out there, and you can’t control that - but you can set the agenda of your 1-1 yoursel…

> Search the net for questions / topics to manage up in 1-1s. This is why so many people find themselves in performative 1 on 1s: It's assumed that the time must be spent, so managers and reports alike start searching for things to fill up that time. The best 1 on 1 formats I've had were quick and to the point. We cancelled or ended early if there was nothing to discuss that hadn't already been discussed. The worst w…

It is totally acceptable to use a list of questions to give you ideas for what to talk about. You might learn something you didn’t know if you didn’t ask.

For example, most managers aren’t having “career” convos with their people regularly. It’s fine to use a question bank if it helps you kick this convo off and get to the heart of the matter.

If your 1-1s have been performative, I guess shame on either the manager, you, or both.

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