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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?

#291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

If you’re scheduling meetings without an idea of what to talk about, that’s a problem. Looking up ideas to discuss with your manager is a good idea. If you are being scheduled for time slots and have to search for ideas to fill it every week, that’s a symptom of a broken meeting that should be reduced in time, frequency, or both. > I guess shame on either the manager, you, or both. This culture of shaming people who…

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

#292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

If you’re scheduling meetings without an idea of what to talk about, that’s a problem. Looking up ideas to discuss with your manager is a good idea. If you are being scheduled for time slots and have to search for ideas to fill it every week, that’s a symptom of a broken meeting that should be reduced in time, frequency, or both. > I guess shame on either the manager, you, or both. This culture of shaming people who…

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

#293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lead teams of Data Engineers, Data Scientists, and Platform Engineers. My direct reports drive their 1:1s; from the need to have them in the first place to the agenda when we do. We have standups for our team as well as the larger team and we are in constant contact with one another throughout each day via IM. Why would we need to repeat the same shit in a 1:1? I consider their 1:1s THEIR meeting. If they want it,…

I would love practical advice on how to say to a manager "I'm not deriving any value from this recurring 1x1 meeting, can we move it to on-demand?" My 30+ year career has not revealed a way to achieve that yet without repurcussions. However much I'd prefer it.

The meeting isn't for you. If it were, you'd have been the one scheduling it.

First place to start is to determine what value the other party is deriving from the meeting. Zero in on exactly why they want to have the meeting. From there, you can put your problem solving skills in action to determine if there is a better way to deliver equivalent value.

However, keep in mind that it is likely that the value you are delivering is your company during that time. A lot of hiring happens because the people involved want to have 'friends' around them.

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

#294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if they don't and want to work, great. Interesting thought, I had never considered cancelling if they don’t have anything. Thanks for that. My thought was always, “I want to give everyone that time no matter what, and if they don’t have anything, then I go to a list of questions I have for every 1-1 if we have time. Stuff like, “how are you feeling with ${latest_company_happenings}?” or “how do you think the team i…

>“how are you feeling with ${latest_company_happenings}?” or “how do you think the team is doing?” or “are you interested in the work these days, or burnt out?” That is the worst questions to ask to the experienced people. You cannot share your negative feelings, so the answer should be socially acceptable bullshit. Are you burnt out? Yes? Sorry to hear that! I'll put a high attrition risk to your name in the system.…

This very much depends on the place and the level of maturity in how you share the negativity. Good managers will try to understand and help you, that's a large part of their job.

Also, if you are a high performer then being an attrition risk isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's in the companies best interest to try keep people who are important.

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

#295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"the purpose of a system is what it does" thank you, i believe this is closer to, if not exactly, the original wording. >The purpose of a McDonald's ice cream machine is to create billable service calls and ensure support contracts this is spin, but does have truth. i think people dramatize the quote too much towards conspiracy or alternative intent. I think the best way to interpret the quote is to remove intent an…

Therefore the purpose of a system is to support incentives.

in a way, for sure - but the incentive exists outside the system so the system would not know what incentives people have for using it. but it usually has rules, input/outputs, delegated authorities for limited scopes, etc. so the system is just the result of those things which may be a greater or lesser scope than any given incentive. Systems are usually used to manage many different incentives as well, so perfect alignment with all of them is often impossible

For example, we might say the US postal systems intended purpose is to deliver mail legal packages. the unabomber had an incentive to use that system to deliver bombs through the mail and it worked. So it was more true to say the purpose of the us postal system (at that time) was to move any items at all from one location to another, at least with respect to the incentive of wanting stuff moved around.

but having a mailman potentially go to every home every day is also something the system does. exciting dogs is something the system does. Just like how blocking the street is something that the garbage collection system does in its current state, which might have an impact on the hours of the day chosen to send hte trucks to collect. There may not be an incentive for everything the system does, and when framed around purpose you might call them side effects, but it's all the same to the system.

when a person is operating as part of the system and something goes wrong, we try to shift blame to them - and it becomes a grey area. this is often why individuals are not held accountable for their actions on behalf of a system when they hurt someone. if you call the police on your neighbor falsely claiming he is violent, the police show up and are too aggressive, and your neighbor get injured - there is mixed responsibility. Using force is within the scope of the police system, you subjected your neighbor to that system knowing that, and the officers have discretion oso depending on the details may or may not have been acting as reasonable representatives of the police system. Taken to an extreme though, SWAT-ing your neighbor is now seen as a serious crime on your part, as we understand teh system that supports a SWAT team showing up to a location to include damages and a low bar for lethal force. we cant say the purpose of the 'SWAT system' is to attend to threats, its not. it is to act on behalf of information claiming a threat exists, because thats what it does.

okay im yapping again, my bad

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

#296
post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's obviously hard to say how accurate these numbers[1] are, but it looks like Twitter has doubled their workforce from its lowest following their mass layoffs. It might be stable again now because they hired the workforce required to actually keep it running. [1] https://www.demandsage.com/twitter-employees/

Ok? But it's still like 1/3.

Yes, which would allude to sentences 2 and 3 in my original comment.

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

#297
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is actually shocking that twitter is still standing after his severe headcount cuts. I have not yet read an analysis of that. How was the system able to keep going with almost no downtime after such severe layoffs?

things tend not to break in new ways when you don't change them. maybe theres some scaling limit where twitter will have difficulty running, but its a fairly straightforward piece of software? on the other hand, it likely has a bunch of security holes from not updating dependencies and so on

Possibly more holes if Grok has been vibe coding much of it for years now.

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

#299

The idea that 1:1s with devs adding very little value to the team is… pretty wild. If you think 1:1s don’t add value, your slice of the reality of what even modestly sized teams need to operate smoothly is so far from my experience I don’t think we’re likely to bridge the divide. But to make a good faith effort: what is the job you think line managers are supposed to be doing, if not listening to devs, going to meeti…

Really depends on the team etc. I don't think every team needs to have 1-1, certainly not weekly as a mandate.

The best cultures I worked at didn't have 1-1 series by default

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

#300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

question bank ?! lol, no wonder people complain about being performative.

If you have nothing to talk about, cancel it

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