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Story: “It would be career limiting..."

doomedprojects.com

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Re: Story: “It would be career limiting..."

#51

Post by duped »

maxbond wrote: post #23
abeppu wrote: post #6

> we hadn’t even received all of the specifications from the customer that we would need to complete the project > And then one of them said “It would be career limiting if the client were to hear this.” > I’d met my responsibility to the company – and the company had threatened me as a result. The author interprets that they were threatened. But really, for whom would it be career limiting? Perhaps I'm being too cha…

If you are a manager, and you make this type of remark, do not get it twisted. You have made a threat, and you have created an adversarial situation that limits your report's ability to trust you. You've telegraphed to them that you're willing to throw them under the bus, and they will remember. If it doesn't feel like you're making a threat - it may feel to you like you're genuinely giving advice - then you have not…

What do you think an IC is doing when they walk into a room full of managers and declare the project they're managing is horribly mismanaged?

Re: Story: “It would be career limiting..."

#52

Post by angarg12 »

In my career I have two clear examples of projects that

a) Got cancelled shortly before launching

b) Took several people several months to complete (amounting to a number of people-years)

and most importantly

c) Would not have started if someone had asked the right questions early on

I believe as engineers we can achieve big impact by preventing doomed projects from lifting off. That being said, it requires a certain support and company culture that aren't available everywhere.

Re: Story: “It would be career limiting..."

#53

Post by giantg2 »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #24
giantg2 wrote: post #12

Ah, that freeing feeling. I had that once. I was a new security champion for a team. The product had schema owner SQL injection vulnerabilities on every page we developed. I had a meeting with the department head and explained the whole situation and two remediation options. He chose the third option - do nothing. According to him we have a realtime DB backup. Has it ever been tested? No. Do you have procedures for i…

As long as you have it documented in an email ( issue plus proposed remediation ), you are good. You did your part. Sometimes it is best just to slowly walk away like you did.

It sucks though since I sort of liked that work and had some respect of my peers. Now I just bounce from team to team every 18 months (lateral moves, no raise). I probably could have stayed there and gotten a promotion if I played the politics and kept my mouth shut. Now I'm just a lazy slacker because I've gotten shafted by the company a couple time.

It's a great compliment for your peers to call you a senior or tech lead, but it only opens the door to the great insult of your managers keeping you from the actual roles.

Re: Story: “It would be career limiting..."

#54

Post by wnolens »

This is the only justice I ever get as an IC/tech lead - to watch things crumble just as I expect.

It's happened several times. It's happening right now in my team, in fact. It's so off the rails I don't have time to interview for a new job.

Re: Story: “It would be career limiting..."

#55

Post by Seattle3503 »

duped wrote: post #47

I mean this story is cathartic, but I don't get what the "rabble rousers" expected to happen. You don't go into a meeting like that to present problems, but to present solutions. And a 12 month delay on a $60 million contract isn't a solution, it's another problem for the sales/client success people. And doing it in front of a group of management, no less - that's like firing a shot across the bow, declaring that the…

Yeah, it seems like scope needed to be reduced in order to deliver an MVP on time.

Re: Story: “It would be career limiting..."

#56

Post by mastazi »

thih9 wrote: post #20

I'm seeing a cloudflare error; is the page down now? > Web server is returning an unknown error (Error code 520)

edit: luckily we can read the story from sibling comment.

edit 2: it's back online and I just re-archived the page in case it goes down again: https://archive.ph/vrgsQ

--

yes and both archive.org and archive.is have archived an empty version of the page unfortunately[1][2]... it seems that as of right now (9th Nov 6:26am AEDT) there is no way to read the article. Hopefully it will be back online.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20221108183338/https://doomedpro...

[2] https://archive.ph/uHF4m

Re: Story: “It would be career limiting..."

#57

Post by 1123581321 »

pmoriarty wrote: post #4

I could never relate to people who care about their career, "success", getting ahead, or climbing the corporate ladder. For me virtually everything else in life has been more important, and careers/jobs were just a necessary evil because it's almost impossible to survive without money.

It might help to learn about how they spend their time out of work, and to learn about their upbringing and parents. And how they see their goals at work.

I can tell you that many of them also see work as a necessary evil they need to do what they really want.

Re: Story: “It would be career limiting..."

#58

Post by lumost »

There is also another way of looking at this doomed project.

1. A client didn't know what they wanted, had 60 million to spend on figuring it out, and hired a firm that would let them spend 60 million.

2. The firm was incentivized to provide a nice looking underestimate and then adapt as new work was discovered.

3. The firm continued getting paid as long as the client was happy.

4. The client did not want to be told that the project was a year late in advance.

One unfortunate aspect of the customer is always right is that the customer may often be very wrong.

Re: Story: “It would be career limiting..."

#59

Post by andrewflnr »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #44
maxbond wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are a manager, and you make this type of remark, do not get it twisted. You have made a threat, and you have created an adversarial situation that limits your report's ability to trust you. You've telegraphed to them that you're willing to throw them under the bus, and they will remember. If it doesn't feel like you're making a threat - it may feel to you like you're genuinely giving advice - then you have not…

Quoted post unavailable.

I mean, being threatened is a "cheap education" relative to being fired, sure.

Re: Story: “It would be career limiting..."

#60

Post by pjc50 »

duped wrote: post #51
maxbond wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are a manager, and you make this type of remark, do not get it twisted. You have made a threat, and you have created an adversarial situation that limits your report's ability to trust you. You've telegraphed to them that you're willing to throw them under the bus, and they will remember. If it doesn't feel like you're making a threat - it may feel to you like you're genuinely giving advice - then you have not…

What do you think an IC is doing when they walk into a room full of managers and declare the project they're managing is horribly mismanaged?

Delivering information.

Now, it takes a lot of company culture work to make it safe to actually deliver that, but you have to choose: do you want to have some awkward meetings, or some awkward subpoenas?

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