enshittification: perspective of the camp guard
Getting things “done” in large tech companies
41–50 of 228 posts
Re: Getting things “done” in large tech companies
#42I don't disagree with the article, but after working in big tech, two HN startups, a couple unicorns and others, in two continents, I don't really find this too actionable. In the last ten years (and even in the 20-people HN startups), the day to day work of engineers has become so incredibly specialised and divorced from the needs of decision-makers and the customers that there is almost nothing I can do to influenc…
So, fire the Product Managers?
I can't tell if you know :) https://medium.com/illumination/google-once-fired-all-manage...
Re: Getting things “done” in large tech companies
#43I had to look up "skip-level" since my large tech company lingo was lacking. It is defined as: used to describe someone who works for a company at two levels higher than another person, or a meeting or relationship that involves an employee and a manager at two levels higher by Cambridge's dictionary[1]. That makes it really complicated when the article talks about 1-3 skip levels, I'm not sure how to interpret that…
Skip level is your manager’s manager, presumably 2 is one further step etc
Re: Getting things “done” in large tech companies
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, that is also why large segments of the big corp work environment check out and do the absolute minimum - or even create chaos to make it less obvious who is doing what for whom. Because the paycheck is indeed useful for them, eh?
These people are comfortable collecting a paycheck despite providing little value. I'm not.
Sounds painful!
Re: Getting things “done” in large tech companies
#45I don't disagree with the article, but after working in big tech, two HN startups, a couple unicorns and others, in two continents, I don't really find this too actionable. In the last ten years (and even in the 20-people HN startups), the day to day work of engineers has become so incredibly specialised and divorced from the needs of decision-makers and the customers that there is almost nothing I can do to influenc…
So, fire the Product Managers?
[deleted]
Re: Getting things “done” in large tech companies
#46Simultaneously correct and devastating. Where I work, senior leadership don’t have a technical background and so don’t know when something is “good enough“.
The result is that most of our products are dogshit and are force fed to users within the company and to its clients.
Re: Getting things “done” in large tech companies
#47Is this sentiment the reason why a lot of "engineers" will provide terrible quality in code / tests (lack thereof) / documentation / etc.? If all that matters that someone at the top sees it and is happy about it at this specific moment in time, why bother writing code that can last and doesn't leave behind an absolute unmaintainable ball of mud? We don't need gold plating and yet billions could be saved by having in…
More and more you run into people who simply don't care about craft and quality. I can already hear the chorus of people that will scream "I'm not paid enough to care" or "it's just a job for some people", and those things are often true; but, nonetheless, people used to take much greater care in their craft even when they were paid less. There was a sense that, even if it was just a job, it should be done well. A ce…
> More and more you run into people who simply don't care about craft and quality.
Many talented and conscientious craftspeople, to pay the bills, work jobs which don't afford them full creative freedom, or even appreciate it.
> people used to take much greater care in their craft even when they were paid less
Did they? Maybe this is the golden tint cast when we reminisce about "the good ol' days". I currently know some people who take much greater care in their craft, than some other people I used to know.
The attitude of "I'm not paid enough to do that" feels, to me, to be closely correlated with a company asking the employees to do more for/with the same or less, giving less freedom to choose what to do, micromanaging/policing how they do it, and all the while showing a decreasing amount of loyalty and humanity towards them. It'd be unreasonable to expect the employees to then suck it up, grin, and bear it -- They are equal partners in an employment relationship in which one party is attempting to unilaterally change the status quo.
Re: Getting things “done” in large tech companies
#48I had to look up "skip-level" since my large tech company lingo was lacking. It is defined as: used to describe someone who works for a company at two levels higher than another person, or a meeting or relationship that involves an employee and a manager at two levels higher by Cambridge's dictionary[1]. That makes it really complicated when the article talks about 1-3 skip levels, I'm not sure how to interpret that…
You “skip” over your boss to talk directly to your boss’s boss. If the hierarchy is very deep, you can skip even more levels
Re: Getting things “done” in large tech companies
#49I had to look up "skip-level" since my large tech company lingo was lacking. It is defined as: used to describe someone who works for a company at two levels higher than another person, or a meeting or relationship that involves an employee and a manager at two levels higher by Cambridge's dictionary[1]. That makes it really complicated when the article talks about 1-3 skip levels, I'm not sure how to interpret that…
[deleted]
Re: Getting things “done” in large tech companies
#50Is this sentiment the reason why a lot of "engineers" will provide terrible quality in code / tests (lack thereof) / documentation / etc.? If all that matters that someone at the top sees it and is happy about it at this specific moment in time, why bother writing code that can last and doesn't leave behind an absolute unmaintainable ball of mud? We don't need gold plating and yet billions could be saved by having in…
More and more you run into people who simply don't care about craft and quality. I can already hear the chorus of people that will scream "I'm not paid enough to care" or "it's just a job for some people", and those things are often true; but, nonetheless, people used to take much greater care in their craft even when they were paid less. There was a sense that, even if it was just a job, it should be done well. A ce…
> A certain sensibility of care and craftsmanship has faded away.
It got replaced with professionalism, as in "being a professional", which nowadays seems to mean prioritizing business needs above all.
Caring about quality and craftsmanship is not professional - it's just not being economical with company time and money. It's better for the business for dev teams to tick features off a list as quickly as they can, because marketing can polish a turd and shove it down customers' throats much more cost-effectively than devs can make a half-decent piece of software that provides genuine value.
No surprise more and more people don't care. They keep hearing everywhere - including here - they should abandon childish pursuits, stop reinventing the wheel, writing too clever code, shaving yaks, going down rabbit holes, etc. - they should be professional. Well, that's what we're getting now.