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Don't avoid workplace politics

terriblesoftware.org

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Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#291

Post by surgical_fire »

JustExAWS wrote: post #286
surgical_fire wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely, I was talking about very technical roles, typically as a software developer. "Individual Contributor" in contemporary corporate jargon. I was never interested in other roles.

The problem with those roles are that they are easily commoditizable and were even before AI. It’s also harder to stand out from the crowd if (the royal) you has as your only vector of competition is an ability to do coding interviews. I was very much and I am very much an IC. I chose a path to manage and deliver projects with about half and half hands on keyboard coding and the other half dealing with “the business”…

> The problem with those roles are that they are easily commoditizable and were even before AI

There are pros and cons about being in a "commoditizable" role. I honestly am not worried at all about AI.

> It’s also harder to stand out from the crowd if (the royal) you has as your only vector of competition is an ability to do coding interviews.

Which is why I said that the best skill I ever acquired was "how to be interviewed".

> But if you look at the leveling guidelines of any major tech company, “codez real gud” only gets you to a mid level role.

I just wanted enough that I could afford a house and raising a family. Mid level role provides that, and it is what I optimized for.

Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#292

Post by JustExAWS »

surgical_fire wrote: post #291
JustExAWS wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with those roles are that they are easily commoditizable and were even before AI. It’s also harder to stand out from the crowd if (the royal) you has as your only vector of competition is an ability to do coding interviews. I was very much and I am very much an IC. I chose a path to manage and deliver projects with about half and half hands on keyboard coding and the other half dealing with “the business”…

> The problem with those roles are that they are easily commoditizable and were even before AI There are pros and cons about being in a "commoditizable" role. I honestly am not worried at all about AI. > It’s also harder to stand out from the crowd if (the royal) you has as your only vector of competition is an ability to do coding interviews. Which is why I said that the best skill I ever acquired was "how to be int…

First you have to get the interview. I don’t know how old you are. But the older you are (I’m 51) the harder it is to get mid level hands on keyboard roles.

It’s a shit show out here right now. It’s actually worse than the dot com bust. I had no trouble getting jobs then as an enterprise dev working in Atlanta with four years of experience.

Have you looked for a job post 2022? My experience in 2023 and 2024 when I was looking for a bog standard enterprise dev job (twice) that needed AWS experience. Mind you in 2023, I had 5 years of AWS experience leading projects with hands on keyboard work including 3 working directly for AWS leading projects at AWS ProServe.

A) submitting my resume for standard enterprise dev jobs blindly to ATS’s using LinkedIn Easy Apply, Indeed, etc: I submitted hundreds of resumes and heard crickets. LinkedIn shows you how many people applied, if your application has been viewed and how often your resume has been viewed. Maybe 3-5x my application was even looked at.

B) Targeted outreach to internal recruiters based on a niche of niche in AWS where I was an industry wide subject matter expert [1] - two interviews one offer.

C) reaching out to my network based again not on them wanted someone who could code - coders are a dine a dozen. They wanted someone who was hands on but also had a history of working through all of the complexities of dealing with organizations and “getting things done”. I had two full time offers and one short term side contract.

The three offers came within two weeks. It would have been a lot harder no matter how well I could do on a coding interview to stave out.

That was in 2023. A year later I was let go of the shitty company that I did accept the offer from through my outreach to recruiters. I got an offer from responding to an internal recruiter for the job I have now within three weeks. But I also did the randomly submitting my resume again while I was waiting with the same results.

Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#293

Post by BeFlatXIII »

galenmarchetti wrote: post #19
ndriscoll wrote: post #13

> Stop pretending you’re above politics. You’re not. Nobody is. The only question is whether you’ll get good at it or keep losing to people who already are. False. You do not lose if you do not play. You can offer your expertise/opinions and point out places where things could be improved, but at the end of the day, just treat work as someone paying for your time. If you've advised them on how to best make use of tha…

it depends on whether you want to live life with work-as-someone-paying-for-your-time or whether you want to live life as work-as-perfecting-and-delivering-on-craft you can have an attitude towards spending the short hours you have on this earth attempting to produce quality work that others appreciate and make their lives easier in some way, as opposed to writing those hours off as sold to someone else

Those hours are sold off to someone else to fund the stuff that matters in my life, where the financial RoI is negative.

Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#294

Post by timr »

rockercoaster wrote: post #141
timr wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As usual HN comments are more on point than the article....I've lost count of how many times something was proposed and rejected by everyone in the chain except the C-suite. Then the C-suite overrode the process decisions basically because they played golf with someone outside the company. You're just naming legitimate stakeholders (the C-suite) and asserting that they're illegitimate. I grant you that playing golf…

> So maybe a case of HN comments being "more on point than the article", but primarily in the way that it directly illustrates what the author is saying: engineers routinely bail out of the politics, to their own detriment. IDK about everyone else, but I pretty routinely bail out of the politics of decisions when it's mostly to the company's detriment. Starts to look like an uphill battle against people above me on t…

Well, like I said: you can always give up. Sometimes that's the rational thing to do, even when you are engaged in the game.

However...

> I pretty routinely bail out of the politics of decisions when it's mostly to the company's detriment.

Maybe your judgment of "detriment" is right, maybe it's wrong, but the point of the article is that too many engineers want to do what you're doing as some kind of misguided purity play.

Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#295

Post by jahsome »

writebetterc wrote: post #282
jahsome wrote: post #137

> Good politics is just being strategic about relationships and influence in the service of good outcomes. Yeah, no shit dude. That's exactly the part that's disgusting. Using the word "just" here feels dishonest. I was subjected early on to someone who viewed every single interaction in every single relationship as transactional and framed every decision around the question "what's in it for me?" It really warped my…

"good outcomes" doesn't have to be the best outcome for you, personally.

There's no part of me that wants to maintain relationships for the express purpose of extracting value in the future for gain -- personal or otherwise.

I simply refuse to let the end justify the means, whatever that end is.

Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#296

Post by surgical_fire »

JustExAWS wrote: post #292
surgical_fire wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem with those roles are that they are easily commoditizable and were even before AI There are pros and cons about being in a "commoditizable" role. I honestly am not worried at all about AI. > It’s also harder to stand out from the crowd if (the royal) you has as your only vector of competition is an ability to do coding interviews. Which is why I said that the best skill I ever acquired was "how to be int…

First you have to get the interview. I don’t know how old you are. But the older you are (I’m 51) the harder it is to get mid level hands on keyboard roles. It’s a shit show out here right now. It’s actually worse than the dot com bust. I had no trouble getting jobs then as an enterprise dev working in Atlanta with four years of experience. Have you looked for a job post 2022? My experience in 2023 and 2024 when I wa…

> First you have to get the interview. I don’t know how old you are. But the older you are (I’m 51) the harder it is to get mid level hands on keyboard roles.

42 here. I still didn't hit that wall. I presume it does exist, yes. That said, I noticed over time that it is becoming more common to see older engineers than it used to be.

Migrating to managerial roles for me is a no-go however. I can't stand managing people.

> Have you looked for a job post 2022?

Yes, I switched jobs last time in 2023. I still get invitations for interviews, though not as often as it used to be, say, in between 2015-2021.

However, I live in Europe. I have the impression that things are not as dire here as they are in your side lf the pond in terms of employment in IT.

> They wanted someone who was hands on but also had a history of working through all of the complexities of dealing with organizations and “getting things done”.

I mean, that is very important in IC roles. Part of my interview prep is a very detailed account of multiple projects I participated in STAR format, highlighting it from inception to delivery, including outcomes.

All that said, I think things are going to be in a slump for a while longer, and might get worse next year. It's a bad time to be job-hopping. I do interviews here and there only to keep myself sharp.

Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#297

Post by JustExAWS »

surgical_fire wrote: post #296
JustExAWS wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First you have to get the interview. I don’t know how old you are. But the older you are (I’m 51) the harder it is to get mid level hands on keyboard roles. It’s a shit show out here right now. It’s actually worse than the dot com bust. I had no trouble getting jobs then as an enterprise dev working in Atlanta with four years of experience. Have you looked for a job post 2022? My experience in 2023 and 2024 when I wa…

> First you have to get the interview. I don’t know how old you are. But the older you are (I’m 51) the harder it is to get mid level hands on keyboard roles. 42 here. I still didn't hit that wall. I presume it does exist, yes. That said, I noticed over time that it is becoming more common to see older engineers than it used to be. Migrating to managerial roles for me is a no-go however. I can't stand managing people…

> Migrating to managerial roles for me is a no-go however. I can't stand managing people.

We are in complete agreement here. I don’t manage people directly. But being responsible for projects that involve a other people does require you to know how to peer feedback, use soft skills etc.

> However, I live in Europe. I have the impression that things are not as dire here as they are in your side lf the pond in terms of employment in IT.

Probably not as bad and to be fair, if I were still looking for in office jobs in Atlanta where I spent my career from 1996-2020 working locally, it would have been easier. I assume in Europe you’re also not dealing with competing against the young tech bros.

> I mean, that is very important in IC roles. Part of my interview prep is a very detailed account of multiple projects I participated in STAR format, highlighting it from inception to delivery, including outcomes.

Thats definitely not mid level pulling tickets off a board behavior (that’s a compliment btw). I think we are in “violent agreement”.

Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#298

Post by rossdavidh »

roarcher wrote: post #201
rossdavidh wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, from the point of view of getting investment money, it is probably the "right call". It's just not the business of making technology decisions, it's the business of making technology cosplay. Not my business.

Oh I agree, in that sense these features fulfill their true purpose, which is to assure some clueless VC that his money will be at the forefront of innovation or some hogwash. But they give zero value to the end users, who largely ignore them. Maybe even negative value, considering the opportunity cost.

As others have said before me, "the hype IS the product".

Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#299

Post by surgical_fire »

JustExAWS wrote: post #297
surgical_fire wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First you have to get the interview. I don’t know how old you are. But the older you are (I’m 51) the harder it is to get mid level hands on keyboard roles. 42 here. I still didn't hit that wall. I presume it does exist, yes. That said, I noticed over time that it is becoming more common to see older engineers than it used to be. Migrating to managerial roles for me is a no-go however. I can't stand managing people…

> Migrating to managerial roles for me is a no-go however. I can't stand managing people. We are in complete agreement here. I don’t manage people directly. But being responsible for projects that involve a other people does require you to know how to peer feedback, use soft skills etc. > However, I live in Europe. I have the impression that things are not as dire here as they are in your side lf the pond in terms of…

Ahhh, my bad. I took your original take as a role where you would oversee other people, in opposition to an IC - who I presumed could only be "mid-level".

So yeah, I totally agree with you. Understanding the business is important in that sense. Especially when communicating the outcome of projects to non-technical stakeholders. I go out of my way on my current role to produce metrics that I can graph to show the positive outcomes of projects.

One of the things I learned is that non-technical people in particular love this sort of eye-candy. I don't say this in a derogatory way, it is a good way to communicate stuff.

Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#300

Post by Brian_K_White »

bravetraveler wrote: post #129
Brian_K_White wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tribelessness itself is a poor result and does not solve any problems. It's a dead end. It's irrelevance. It's being an animal that eats for a while then dies and does no one else any good in the mean time. By arranging things so that no one else is a part of you, you are also not a part of anyone else. What is the point of that existense? It's the same as living in a vr where all you do is self-gratify and it has no…

Sounds fun, I'm in. Didn't ask for the ride/responsibility and the only reason it hasn't ended by now is sheer cowardice

Why did you come here to express the opinion that that sounds good?
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