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Signs that it's time to leave a company

adrianco.medium.com

341–350 of 354 posts

Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company

#341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the government could never allow it. If a corporation were able to grow to that size, they essentially become the government the US government is already overwhelmingly something that is structured by and for the benefit of corporations

>the US government is already overwhelmingly something that is structured by and for the benefit of corporations This is an interesting subject. The majority of tax revenue for the federal government comes from income taxes. Only about 10% comes from corporations. But it's easier to deal with corporations and there is no income tax without corporations. So it makes sense to mostly work with corporations. What's also…

Politicians are barely paid by income taxes. They're mostly paid by lobbying and special interest groups, i.e. corporations

Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company

#342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

> You tell engineers that only you understand the customer, then tell the customer only you understand the engineers. I have people skills, god damn it!

What is wrong with you people?! Classic.

Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company

#343
post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It will never catch up to things like AI and will fall behind Amazon Q is appearing all over the place in the AWS console. The AWS Jetbrains plugin also integrates Q, though I've never actually used it. I can't judge the quality of their AI offering, because as I said, I've not used it, but they're definitely not asleep when it comes to AI.

Q is shit. Everyone and their dog is doing genAI. We will look back at this in 5 years and have a good laugh about "ai"

I finally got around to using Q today. It's more awful than I could have imagined.

Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company

#344
post #285
post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1000 if in the morning I dread leaving the car and walking in the office it's time to go. I shouldn't be excited like a dumbass all the time about the work I do but I should at a minimum not dread going into the office.

I always wondered how many other people did this. On the days I have to go into the office I'll spend 15 to 30 minutes sitting in my car sipping coffee and listening to high BPM music. Lately, I've felt like I need to psych myself into being motivated enough to walk into the building.

I think that’s a bad sign, but honestly, I think lacking motivation for any important thing in your life might have a lot to do with something else than “thing is actually bad for you”.

A poor diet, lack of sleep, or lack of exercise are guaranteed to make you hate your life — something that switching jobs isn’t going to fix.

Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company

#345
post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Q is shit. Everyone and their dog is doing genAI. We will look back at this in 5 years and have a good laugh about "ai"

I finally got around to using Q today. It's more awful than I could have imagined.

Amazon Q is powered by an LLM that is not very capable (there are no official benchmarks, AFAIK, but the community consensus seems to be that the level is akin to GPT 3.5).

I wrote a Chrome extension that allows you to use GPT-4 Turbo from Chrome's side panel. It (optionally) gets context about your data if you choose to share your screen with it.

https://github.com/petrgazarov/cumuli-aws-console-chat

Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company

#346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well said. For me, it was a great source of burnout when the true transactional nature of work was thrust on me. I had been giving work 110%. My work ethic and output were part of my identity, and I was integrated well socially in the team/unit. I was motivated, gaining influence, getting interesting shit done, and working with great people. But I was also green, and when all of those motivating factors were eroded a…

I'm curious if you're willing to share more about that experience? I believe that I'm in a fairly similar position atm, and reluctant to let go of the "work ethic and output as part of identity" and therefore career (research vs just a code moneky), and wonder what epiphanies you had to switch your mentality to from one to the other

I wish I could say there were epiphanies, but it seems more like a gradual decline in my opinion of profit-oriented organisations due to increasing exposure to the shitty things they do under the guise of "it's just business", which of course is rolled out the moment that they want to do something shitty, in contrast to all of the levers of morality and virtue that they pull on to extract more from you as a resource. It repulses me and I guess I've just decided that I refuse to be defined by my utility or lack of, especially to some manipulative entity like that. What should I be defined by, instead? I'm still working it out. But I don't think the idea that I am better or worse human simply because of the degree to which I support profit generation serves anyone but a profit-oriented organisation; seems obvious, but you don't have to look hard to see common ideas that do reduce you to a resource: "work gives your life meaning", "the unemployed are lazy", etc.

The topic reminds me of the red pill, blue pill metaphor and to lean into it, I'd say I've taken the red pill but I'm still figuring out what reality means for me now. I hope your situation works out for you. Good luck!

Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company

#347

Definitely feeling this at another FAANG I think there’s something about post-pandemic work in software that just isn’t working. I don’t think it’s just interest rates or a hiring downturn, nor immediate causes like founders leaving (because I see this sickness at most big tech companies these days). Personally, I believe that hybrid work is not going well. Fully remote teams are good, fully onsite teams are good. Wi…

Hybrid is definitely the worst of both worlds. I worked there from the early days so may be biased, but I think Sid (GitLab CEO) really gets it and summed it up well here: https://www.wired.com/story/hybrid-remote-work-offers-the-wo...

Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company

#348
post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to peek behind the curtain, but it's pretty difficult to hold down 2 jobs when you need to physically be in the office 2 days a week. Which, if my anecdotal evidence in my circle is to be believed, that was definitely happening during the pandemic.

Companies need to give up on this whole "we own your time" thing. Work product should be all that matters. If an employee has two or three jobs, but is able to get their work done with the quality expected of them, that's all that should matter. (Certainly there are exceptions; working for two competitors at the same time is not ok for hopefully obvious reasons.)

Just be careful if your contract says you're working exclusively or 40 hours. Otherwise, agreed.

Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company

#349

Definitely feeling this at another FAANG I think there’s something about post-pandemic work in software that just isn’t working. I don’t think it’s just interest rates or a hiring downturn, nor immediate causes like founders leaving (because I see this sickness at most big tech companies these days). Personally, I believe that hybrid work is not going well. Fully remote teams are good, fully onsite teams are good. Wi…

I go into the office twice a week to sit on Zoom calls with coworkers around the country. I'm the only one on my team that has to do so because of where I live.

Time to invest in a green screen.

Re: Signs that it's time to leave a company

#350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious if you're willing to share more about that experience? I believe that I'm in a fairly similar position atm, and reluctant to let go of the "work ethic and output as part of identity" and therefore career (research vs just a code moneky), and wonder what epiphanies you had to switch your mentality to from one to the other

I wish I could say there were epiphanies, but it seems more like a gradual decline in my opinion of profit-oriented organisations due to increasing exposure to the shitty things they do under the guise of "it's just business", which of course is rolled out the moment that they want to do something shitty, in contrast to all of the levers of morality and virtue that they pull on to extract more from you as a resource.…

Thank you for sharing your story. I'll ponder on that one!
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