"If you have to ask, it's time to go"
I believe there was an XKCD to that effect, too
Signs that it's time to leave a company
321–330 of 354 posts
Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company
#322Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hybrid can make sense _if_ there are scheduled in person activities on the in office days. If you're coming in to the office just to work by yourself then it should have just been a work from home day.
This is what drives me nuts. I don't mind coming to work if we are doing in person meetings or something. I like seeing my coworkers. If I am gonna be alone in an office the whole time might as well be at home where my already purchased food is.
Same. Most of the time when I'm in the office it's 50% or less empty, anyway.
And most of the people there aren't on my team / projects, so it's pointless. Schlep half-way across the city to sit in an empty office and have Teams calls with the same folks two timezones away... like, why leave home?
Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you mark a difference between hybrid where not everyone goes in on the same days and hybrid where everyone goes in on the same days and stays away on the same days?
Yeah. My company is in principle set 2, in practice set 1. But even so, I’m on a team where almost half of us are fully remote or working out of other offices and so don’t go in on our “dedicated in office days”. I stopped going in on those days too because it felt pointless. I think part of what’s so insanely demotivating about all this is how hard it makes leadership/management. Or rather, how it allows poor leader…
> Yeah. My company is in principle set 2, in practice set 1. But even so, I’m on a team where almost half of us are fully remote or working out of other offices and so don’t go in on our “dedicated in office days”. I stopped going in on those days too because it felt pointless.
Same. Essentially an open secret that most folks aren't going in at all, or if so, 1 of 2 days.
Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company
#324"Try and get a job at somewhere growing rapidly" Personally I try and get a job at a company whose mission and ethics I believe in so I don't feel like a hapless techno-weenie cog in some generic startup wheel whose driving purpose is to give the founders a nice exit. Sadly for my skillset, the people hiring are generally evil or their net effect on the world is negative. Looking into goat farming.
> whose driving purpose is to give the founders a nice exit this seems to exist everywhere? no matter the stated the mission, no one is owning a business to not make money off it
Some businesses have a higher purpose. Some actually want to help people, or the environment, and commerce is just the means to do that. Insane, right! You won't find em in silicon valley.
Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company
#325Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m not sure why you’re being so hostile here. I agree everything can’t be a crisis, and if there were a way to have people in the office only when something important is happening, I think quite a lot of companies would go for it. But you can’t set remote work as the standard and then announce that there’s crunch time in July so everyone has to come in 5 days a week.
Because the primitive and irrational need to hurry all the time for no reason is what takes 99% of the satisfaction of building software while making software worse. Remote work is the future, and irrational environment-ruining offices are the past.
Again, there are many important reasons - it sounds like you're just too isolated from this to understand the context you're missing. You should find one of your customer-facing coworkers and sit in on a call some time if you'd like to learn.
Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
They have good humor, always want to have coffee and lunch, and are your best friends forever. Until you change jobs and you never hear from them again.
I mean that’s just life. Why is this a bad thing? You go through periods of time and when that chapter ends you move onto the next chapter. Expecting a band of misfits to stick together for 40 years is what is atypical. When I was in college I had a great group of friends but after we all graduated we went in completely different directions, industries, and live vastly different lives. The friendship was perfect in t…
Better cultivate meaningful relationships instead of reinforcing a sick institution like the fake office friendship.
Your family, friends, neighbors.
Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because the primitive and irrational need to hurry all the time for no reason is what takes 99% of the satisfaction of building software while making software worse. Remote work is the future, and irrational environment-ruining offices are the past.
Again, there are many important reasons - it sounds like you're just too isolated from this to understand the context you're missing. You should find one of your customer-facing coworkers and sit in on a call some time if you'd like to learn.
You tell engineers that only you understand the customer, then tell the customer only you understand the engineers. But truly speaking you understand neither. It is just a sweetspot of information asymmetry, pseudoscience and falsehoods.
The days of middle management are counted. Everyone wants middle management and their endless excuses for not having hard skills gone.
If you are micromanaging you don't understand software and don't understand management.
Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company
#328Earlier quoted context omitted.
People collaborate easier in person. Travel is a downside.
Except, some jobs really really don't require much if any collaboration. We've been having to come back into the office since last September. In all that time, I've only spoken to another person a single time. Literally one hour in one day in the past 5 months. All meetings are still over zoom and when I'm not in a meeting, I just find some place in the building to sit and work. Except many people still weren't comin…
> some jobs really really don't require much if any collaboration
Yes, some jobs don't.
> tons of people are here now, but there isn't room for them
Well that's stupid.
Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company
#329Saying RTO picks the fruits of the trees and leaves the husks is true only in the way that it keeps the best workers which can create more fruit, and those "fruit" that fall off weren't going to be around long in any case. The best, and safest practice is to only allow remote work only as an exception for those that produce results way above the average. Anyway. One sign to actually leave a company though, is the fre…
WFH is a benefit, and when you cut benefits, your best (and most mobile) employees evaporate off.
WFH is a benefit when you and your boss don't care about the company and are just on the mindset of doing the minimum hours to get your salary, and your boss is just trying to cover his own ass. And would prefer to just get the money for doing nothing while sitting home. And care more about benefits than if the thing you're working on even ever ships.
It is sad such jobs exist, I would never work in such a job and think that HN readers as an average also would not prefer that over working on something worth their time.
When seeking for jobs I always prioritize for companies where most if not all work in-office after seeing how bad remote work can for wasting those hours of your life.
Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company
#330Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean that’s just life. Why is this a bad thing? You go through periods of time and when that chapter ends you move onto the next chapter. Expecting a band of misfits to stick together for 40 years is what is atypical. When I was in college I had a great group of friends but after we all graduated we went in completely different directions, industries, and live vastly different lives. The friendship was perfect in t…
Better cultivate meaningful relationships instead of reinforcing a sick institution like the fake office friendship. Your family, friends, neighbors.
If you move, are you upset your neighbors don't travel with you? I sincerely don't understand the point you were making. Obviously having a network of family and friends matters too, but your children will grow up and leave. Your friends might leave too. Do you think those relations were a waste of time as well.
Most things are ephemeral in a human lifetime. That's why it's better to appreciate what you have now, in the moment; than lamenting something in the past.