Organization probably doesn't want to improve things • Hacker News Board

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#251

Post by anvil-on-my-toe » Sun, Oct 08, 2023, 1:28 PM UTC

neogodless wrote: post #237

Draiken wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we lived in a world where money wasn't so important I would fully agree with you. But it is. I can't earn the same as you all can because I don't live in the US, but if I did I would grind all the leetcode (as insulting as I find them) for one single reason: I don't want to work forever. So I agree with some other comments here. No it's not really a choice. Choosing to earn less and hope for a lottery ticket win l…

> No it's not really a choice. Hard disagree. Have never worked for "terrible big company" (though some mediocre medium companies!) But outside of the super high cost of living areas like NYC and San Francisco, it's trivially simple (if not easy) to live on $50-60K USD each year (adjust this number for inflation as needed) while still enjoying yourself, having high performance technology, doing some travel, etc. You…

$60-100k salary is not enough to support a family and retire; it's probably not enough for a single person to make meaningful progress towards retirement because at that level of pay home ownership is constantly out of reach and inflation outpaces wage growth. It's sacrificing your life so someone else can get rich.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#252

Post by harimau777 » Sun, Oct 08, 2023, 1:28 PM UTC

uoaei wrote: post #94

jiggawatts wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporations from the perspective of most employees are communists dictatorships. Think about it: you use a communal means of production, distribute profits centrally, and you don’t get to vote for who gets to be your manager.

I guess misconceptions like these are why theorists abandoned the term 'communism' in favor of 'communalism' to explain what they meant. This isn't even a no-true-scotsman argument, but if all that comes to mind when communism comes up is Soviet dictatorship, the cold war propaganda worked.

For what it's worth, I understood the parent post to specifically be referring to instances like Stalinism, Maoism, etc. since it says specifically "communist dictatorship".

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#253

Post by argiopetech » Sun, Oct 08, 2023, 1:30 PM UTC

neogodless wrote: post #239

TeMPOraL wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But there’s this super prevalent idea that keeps getting pumped around the blogosphere that it’s absolutely impossible to not work at a terrible huge company and therefore you cannot possibly escape, and I quote, “going home and despairing”. Behind all such writing is an unspoken piece of context: those terrible huge companies pay software devs better than small ones. It's not that they can't work at a smaller comp…

You're saying if you can't maximize your pay, it's not an option ? I cannot wrap my head around it. Being happy with your life is not a one-to-one correlation with income. You can make less money than "maximum" and still have a great life.

It's not necessarily maximizing money, but maintaining lifestyle. It's extremely common for people to increase their standard of living as their means increase, and reducing that requires significant effort in some cases (e.g., people tend to buy as much house as they can afford, so any significant salary reduction could necessitate selling the house and uprooting your family). It's a minimal sacrifice in the face of having to work a job you hate, IMO, but it's still a powerful barrier for many.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#254

Post by coffeebeqn » Sun, Oct 08, 2023, 1:31 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #196

skrebbel wrote: post #192

Blog posts like these are a staple on HN and I’m always mildly offended by them. It seems to me that there’s a class of programmer that will take an overpaid job at a terrible BigCo, spend their evenings writing ranty blog posts about how terrible it all is, culminating in the inevitable “I quit” article, only subsequently to accept a job at a different terrible BigCo. At no point does this article, or most articles…

> But there’s this super prevalent idea that keeps getting pumped around the blogosphere that it’s absolutely impossible to not work at a terrible huge company and therefore you cannot possibly escape, and I quote, “going home and despairing”. Behind all such writing is an unspoken piece of context: those terrible huge companies pay software devs better than small ones. It's not that they can't work at a smaller comp…

Unless you’re talking about big tech that’s not true. A random bank or insurance company or whatever will pay worse than well funded startups

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#255

Post by RandomLensman » Sun, Oct 08, 2023, 1:32 PM UTC

pdimitar wrote: post #233

RandomLensman wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other answer is risk: large, poorly reversible changes can go wrong and there will be blame. Even if there is golden parachute, within the respective social group that matters - and to regulators where applicable.

Well, thicker skin is one option. I have no problem admitting fault when I thought I can help but ended up harming something. However, that also happened extremely rarely. People are just way too risk-averse. Though I get why the useless managers are like that, they don't want anything shining a light on their team more than absolutely necessary because they know they could be the first ones on the chopping block sho…

Someone just managing a team isn't really in any way "management". Usually would have very limited power for anything as a team leader. Lower than divisional leadership is often much more administrative than anything of "executive" function.

And, btw., things like delayering are fairly typical efficiency drives. So these "management" positions might not be that stable to start with.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#256

Post by coffeebeqn » Sun, Oct 08, 2023, 1:35 PM UTC

tuatoru wrote: post #74

pdimitar wrote: post #7

That article was a very nice surprise and apart from how crushingly accurate it is (before somebody jumps in to defend all the corporate chaos, of course) it also had me giggling several times while reading it. The answer of course is financial incentives. It is the answer 99% of the time, I know quite a few high-profile managers at this point and they are all very smart and get stuff done people and yet they allow t…

> I've known a few company owners long time ago who ... swore on their lives they will not fire the managers for bringing them bad news It needs to go further. Fire everyone who says there are no problems. If there are no problems, why is an under-manager needed? Also fire everyone who makes up bullshit problems. If you're going to agree with me all the time, why do I need you?

If the culture of the company is checked-out people doing some nonsense to get a paycheck, you’re not going to fix that by tough love unless you will actually fire 80% of the company. What really happens is you fire some useless people but who made someone’s life at work easier or more fun and now everyone who is somewhat competent will start looking for a better job.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#257

Post by Draiken » Sun, Oct 08, 2023, 1:35 PM UTC

neogodless wrote: post #237

Draiken wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we lived in a world where money wasn't so important I would fully agree with you. But it is. I can't earn the same as you all can because I don't live in the US, but if I did I would grind all the leetcode (as insulting as I find them) for one single reason: I don't want to work forever. So I agree with some other comments here. No it's not really a choice. Choosing to earn less and hope for a lottery ticket win l…

> No it's not really a choice. Hard disagree. Have never worked for "terrible big company" (though some mediocre medium companies!) But outside of the super high cost of living areas like NYC and San Francisco, it's trivially simple (if not easy) to live on $50-60K USD each year (adjust this number for inflation as needed) while still enjoying yourself, having high performance technology, doing some travel, etc. You…

You can always lower your standard of living, sure. But that's a different conversation IMO.

I guess technically that's a choice, but it's so bad in the long term I personally can't consider it valid.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#258

Post by Draiken » Sun, Oct 08, 2023, 1:38 PM UTC

lapcat wrote: post #248

Draiken wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they retiring with the same standard of living they had before? Can they sustain a medical emergency? Can they pay for their kids college? I'm sure some can do all this. But I'm pretty sure most can't.

> Are they retiring with the same standard of living they had before? This is a strong indicator that choice is a factor, despite your protests to the contrary. But what exactly do you mean by "standard of living"? For example, when you're employed, you have to live where the jobs are, no matter how expensive, unless you can get remote work. Whereas when you're retired you can live anywhere, perhaps a place that is b…

You're telling me most retired Americans have more than hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings?

I'm not gonna dive into stats for that since I'm not an American, but I would be thoroughly surprised.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#259

Post by neogodless » Sun, Oct 08, 2023, 1:41 PM UTC

anvil-on-my-toe wrote: post #251

neogodless wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No it's not really a choice. Hard disagree. Have never worked for "terrible big company" (though some mediocre medium companies!) But outside of the super high cost of living areas like NYC and San Francisco, it's trivially simple (if not easy) to live on $50-60K USD each year (adjust this number for inflation as needed) while still enjoying yourself, having high performance technology, doing some travel, etc. You…

$60-100k salary is not enough to support a family and retire; it's probably not enough for a single person to make meaningful progress towards retirement because at that level of pay home ownership is constantly out of reach and inflation outpaces wage growth. It's sacrificing your life so someone else can get rich.

In today's environment, home prices really seem to be getting nuts.

As I said, anyone in software is likely making over $100K. A $500K house with 20% down would have a P&I payment of $2,715 / month (at 7.2%, plus taxes/insurance.) That's less than $33K / year. (I bought my first house for $155K making $55K / year, and my second house for $390K making $100K.) If you're making over $100K, and spending under a third of it on housing, you should be able to afford to live, unless you're careless with your money.

I don't think I'm making any sacrifices in my life, because I don't think of the things you can overspend on as sacrifices. As I said, I eat well (at home and at restaurants), I travel, I have great technology / toys. And at 44 I have a 7 figure net worth. Because I'm still spending under $65K USD / year, I could likely live off investments in a few more years, though being in software, it's easy to continue contracting on my own terms and having extra money.

Re: Organization probably doesn't want to improve things

#260

Post by cxr » Sun, Oct 08, 2023, 1:41 PM UTC

archiewood wrote: post #241

skrebbel wrote: post #192

Blog posts like these are a staple on HN and I’m always mildly offended by them. It seems to me that there’s a class of programmer that will take an overpaid job at a terrible BigCo, spend their evenings writing ranty blog posts about how terrible it all is, culminating in the inevitable “I quit” article, only subsequently to accept a job at a different terrible BigCo. At no point does this article, or most articles…

> This is because Power BI tracks usage metrics and almost all dashboards are completely unused. This is what I term the “dirty secret of BI” - for most organisations, most dashboards are unused, except by the teams creating them. This is because reports need to be useful to be used, and most are not. In my opinion useful means one of: 1) Aiding people with actual decision making power to make decisions 2) Improving…

This has nothing to do with the comment you replied to. Even the quote at the top of your comment is a quote from the article, and not from the parent.