Things I want to say to my boss • Hacker News Board

Re: Things I want to say to my boss

#51

Post by dclowd9901 » Thu, Dec 11, 2025, 5:29 PM UTC

Just more evidence that eng managers (not product managers) and the myriad layers of executives are a waste of time and money. Engineers don't need babysitting. They don't need titles and they don't need someone running interference if people just leave them the fuck alone.

Give them a product goal and they will accomplish it. Tell them what you want to track and they'll figure out how to track it. Tell them what your long term vision is and they'll set you up for it.

Let us do our work and we'll do it well. Stop micromanaging engineers and stop telling us how, and instead, tell us what. This is software: it doesn't take a ton of people to make a product that's profitable. Stop burning capital on useless people.

Re: Things I want to say to my boss

#52

Post by macintux » Thu, Dec 11, 2025, 5:30 PM UTC

WhyOhWhyQ wrote: post #38

My 'boss' was an absolute pyschopath who was a direct cause in my, let's just say, poor mental health over a period of years. I'd rather say not say anything to them ever again, but horrible interactions with them replay in my mind constantly. Imagine spending thousands of hours doing your best to make someone happy just to be treated like the worst piece of garbage who ever existed. That's what my 'boss' was like.

I worked indirectly with such a boss, and just a few months of exposure to that toxicity was enough to leave scars.

Re: Things I want to say to my boss

#53

Post by ambicapter » Thu, Dec 11, 2025, 5:30 PM UTC

exasperaited wrote: post #23

reallymental wrote: post #3

I think y'all (i.e. who've contributed anonymously to the article), have taken these words too literally. I think we're finally seeing the culmination of around 15+ years (post '08) of leadership mindset finally reap its rewards. Over the last decade (last 3+ decades realistically, I'm around 35, so that's all my personal anecdotal data goes back to), these "leaders" have all thrown away the facade of "mentorship", "…

Post '08? All of this dates from the US stock market reforms of the 1970s, ultimately, which led to an explosion of IPOs, and fed the explosive growth of management consultancy and MBA culture. "Business" became something one specialised in as a career farming a quasi-commodity. The culture of the "exit" is the problem; the notion of routine payment with stock options, etc. etc. Back when I was working in a dot com (…

What were the "the US stock market reforms of the 1970s", roughly?

Re: Things I want to say to my boss

#54

Post by VoodooJuJu » Thu, Dec 11, 2025, 5:30 PM UTC

WhyOhWhyQ wrote: post #38

My 'boss' was an absolute pyschopath who was a direct cause in my, let's just say, poor mental health over a period of years. I'd rather say not say anything to them ever again, but horrible interactions with them replay in my mind constantly. Imagine spending thousands of hours doing your best to make someone happy just to be treated like the worst piece of garbage who ever existed. That's what my 'boss' was like.

[dead]

Re: Things I want to say to my boss

#55

Post by arevno » Thu, Dec 11, 2025, 5:30 PM UTC

marcinzm wrote: post #48

reallymental wrote: post #3

I think y'all (i.e. who've contributed anonymously to the article), have taken these words too literally. I think we're finally seeing the culmination of around 15+ years (post '08) of leadership mindset finally reap its rewards. Over the last decade (last 3+ decades realistically, I'm around 35, so that's all my personal anecdotal data goes back to), these "leaders" have all thrown away the facade of "mentorship", "…

As I've seen it younger engineers simply focus a lot more on money and their career growth versus the product or whatever their own sense of "the right thing is". That makes the stock go up and everyone is happy more or less. At the same time a lot of experienced engineers get very upset at the suggestion that they should do likewise.

That's because many of us older developers got into the profession when it didn't pay well, and had negative status associated with it, because we loved doing it.

So yes, there is very little tolerance from us toward those who are in it for money/status/prestige, and not for the love of it.

Re: Things I want to say to my boss

#56

Post by slashdave » Thu, Dec 11, 2025, 5:30 PM UTC

repeekad wrote: post #4

“Burnout isn’t a sign of commitment, it’s a sign of organizational failure.” Exactly, if you need more bandwidth hire more people, otherwise you’re burning the candle at both ends and everything suffers for it

In my experience (as limited as it might be), burnout is a very person thing, usually driven internally by the employee with an out of kilter sense of balance between self-commitment and job performance. Common drivers are broken, centralized processes (e.g. stack ranking) rather than individual managers. Staffing doesn't really help, it just raises the bar, because this is a matter of competition.

In the software world, the sheer focus on compensation is not helpful, especially when some of the larger tech firms promote levels of compensation that nearly all "ordinary" developers could never hope to achieve.

Re: Things I want to say to my boss

#57

Post by abroszka33 » Thu, Dec 11, 2025, 5:31 PM UTC

everdrive wrote: post #39

firefoxd wrote: post #30

I know this will sound a bit cynical, but I've stopped putting too much care into my employer's product. I'll deliver work and perform my best, but I'm not killing myself over it. I've built viable products where I poured my soul into it just for it to be tossed aside [0]. I've optimized processes that went from 12 hours job to 17 minutes, I was fired shortly after [1]. I even wrote on HN to get advice when I felt I…

>I even wrote on HN to get advice when I felt I cared more about my work and colleagues [2]. Instead, my boss was promoted and I was scrutinized. In a lot of cases, "caring too much" is itself seen as a problem because the boss explicitly just wants you to implement the thing that benefits him. He doesn't really want to hear that its not going to work well and there are better alternatives. If you really don't care y…

> If you really don't care you might voice a quiet objection and then just implement the garbage your boss asked for.

This works in theory, but the problem is that some jobs are complex and require thinking. These jobs will attract people who do not like to be a slaves. They want to enjoy their work, do something good and feel good while doing it. The slave like job mentality you mention has severe limitations on what it can achieve.

Re: Things I want to say to my boss

#58

Post by macintux » Thu, Dec 11, 2025, 5:31 PM UTC

jnovek wrote: post #33

ivanovm wrote: post #17

this has ai writing smell all over it. entire paragraphs that just say it's-not-this-it's-that over and over again

Why does it matter? The information in the post still accurately captures a sentiment held by many people.

The complaint is definitely getting old. I wonder how many HN threads at this point don't have someone speculating about AI-generated content.

Hopefully @dang adds something to the guidelines to discourage it.

Re: Things I want to say to my boss

#59

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 11, 2025, 5:31 PM UTC

KaiserPro wrote: post #42

ramesh31 wrote: post #34

Burnout and disagreeing with leadership are something we all deal with. But don't quit your job folks. It's a real rookie move. Unless you have something rock solid lined up, you will become radioactive to any potential employers, and idealism doesn't pay the mortgage.

There is a cost-benefit analysis that you need to make here. Its not a hard and fast rule (unless you're on a visa, or tied to active healthcare), but you don't owe your employer, so killing your sense of joy for them seems unwise. The flip side is that long bits of unemployment is a redflag.

[deleted]

Re: Things I want to say to my boss

#60

Post by eric_h » Thu, Dec 11, 2025, 5:31 PM UTC

the_snooze wrote: post #24

reallymental wrote: post #3

I think y'all (i.e. who've contributed anonymously to the article), have taken these words too literally. I think we're finally seeing the culmination of around 15+ years (post '08) of leadership mindset finally reap its rewards. Over the last decade (last 3+ decades realistically, I'm around 35, so that's all my personal anecdotal data goes back to), these "leaders" have all thrown away the facade of "mentorship", "…

It's toddler-level thinking. Replace the complexity of leadership, humanity, and values with "make line go up," because the latter is way easier to measure, especially when you ignore the costs that aren't yours.

Agreed. It really all is an obvious consequence of optimizing only the things that can be measured on a two dimensional graph, at the expense of all the things that can't (even though in the long term those complex, multidimensional things like culture and care and integrity do, indeed, "make line go up", though perhaps with a smaller first derivative)