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You have to know how to drive the car

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Re: You have to know how to drive the car

#51

Post by rednafi »

bartread wrote: post #21
rednafi wrote: post #9

Do you ever get tired of playing this “visibility,” “impact,” “promo politics” game and think, “I came into this industry because I like computers, not… whatever this is”?

All the time, my friend: all the damn time. I've been all the way up to CTO in a mid-size company (650ish people), and I've felt like this in every role I've had at different times. Some places more than others. Where I was CTO wasn't too bad but that came at the cost of me not touching code at the company for several years because, at that level, and in the kind of company it was, you just really can't - not without…

Yeah. I’m not saying software work needs to happen in a silo, but man, the politics at large companies - where a certain group of people are constantly trying to get "ahead" of everyone else by yapping and backstabbing - get really tiring after a few years.

Re: You have to know how to drive the car

#52

Post by onion2k »

exodust wrote: post #50
onion2k wrote: post #39

Driving the car is surprisingly easy. If there's a single hack for your career it is simply telling your manager when things happen. Shipped something? Tell them. Broke something? Tell them. Blocked on something? Keep that quiet. No, wait, tell them! Made a breakthrough on something? Tell them. Hit a milestone? Tell them. Got some bad news? Tell them, as early as you can, so they have time to fix things. And so on, f…

Perhaps oversimplified. The manager might not want you tethered to his/her in-box like a puppy on a leash. "When things happen", sounds risky. You don't want to be drip-feeding emails about individual things as they happen. Perhaps this is obvious, but you'd keep your own notes and try to condense into a nice little list for discussion when you next catch-up.

It takes some judgement for sure, but that comes with experience. It's far better to over-communicate than under-communicate until you can gauge it yourself so I'd always recommend sharing everything when it happens.

If it's too much your manager can tell you. That's how you get that experience.

Re: You have to know how to drive the car

#53

Post by bartread »

rednafi wrote: post #51
bartread wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the time, my friend: all the damn time. I've been all the way up to CTO in a mid-size company (650ish people), and I've felt like this in every role I've had at different times. Some places more than others. Where I was CTO wasn't too bad but that came at the cost of me not touching code at the company for several years because, at that level, and in the kind of company it was, you just really can't - not without…

Yeah. I’m not saying software work needs to happen in a silo, but man, the politics at large companies - where a certain group of people are constantly trying to get "ahead" of everyone else by yapping and backstabbing - get really tiring after a few years.

> get really tiring after a few years.

Yeah, completely exhausting. I get quickly worn out by environments where performatism (if that's a word) is too highly valued.

For me, I tend to work at my best when I've got a clear remit, and space to operate freely within that remit with my team without having to constantly seek approval and validation.

Whereas the need to perform/show off/be visible in order to deal with every tiny issue - which I've absolutely seen in one or two organisations - is just... no. No. That might work for some people but it is absolutely no way to get the best out of me.

Re: You have to know how to drive the car

#54

Post by xtiansimon »

alexjplant wrote: post #4

> You ought to know that crushing JIRA tickets is rarely a path to promotion (at least above mid-level), that glue work can be a trap, that you will be judged on the results of your projects, and therefore getting good at shipping projects is the path to career success. Notice that the author didn't write "getting good at delivering value." They wrote "getting good at shipping projects " because > Shipping is a socia…

> “… value whipping stuff out the door more highly.”

Could we also call this making “improvements” for the sake of making improvements? Because it’s expected (else why are we paying you so much money—sort of thing?)

I guess users can’t know for sure why a change is underway. I suspect some change is tacking away from tech-debt, trends in the workforce, adjustments to the tech stack.

Nevertheless I can’t help but feel baffled by some changes (what’s this SaaS trend making UIs swimming in white space, five rows of visible data when the real estate used to show 2-2.5x more data on screen??)

Re: You have to know how to drive the car

#55

Post by senderista »

jeffbee wrote: post #15

How many large tech companies has the author worked for? I don't see how general lessons can be drawn from the stuff on their LinkedIn.

He has built a successful brand by drawing sweepingly cynical conclusions from some rather limited experience (along with clickbait titles), to appeal to cynical audiences like HN.

Re: You have to know how to drive the car

#56

Post by 8note »

ytoawwhra92 wrote: post #12
casualscience wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Crapping something out as quickly as possible and leaving somebody else to deal with the fallout of a bad data model and violent on-call isn't something to be rewarded IMO. Sadly you've described precisely the optimal engineering strategy for promotion at my FAANG

> FAANG And yet those five companies are among the most valuable in the world. There's a cognitive dissonance that arises when you join a company that is performing extraordinarily well only to perceive dysfunction and incompetence everywhere you look. It's so hard to reconcile the reality that companies can be embarrassingly wasteful, political, and arbitrary in how they run and yet can still dominate markets and pr…

nothing says its the people getting promotions that are making the value.

there's still plenty of people not on that grind trying to make whatever thing nearby them work, or have other career goals than promotion or money

that promo option getting people who want to build a bunch of junk out of the way and into positions where they arent building stuff might be relevant to why those companies are succeeding

Re: You have to know how to drive the car

#57

Post by sgarland »

ytoawwhra92 wrote: post #12
casualscience wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Crapping something out as quickly as possible and leaving somebody else to deal with the fallout of a bad data model and violent on-call isn't something to be rewarded IMO. Sadly you've described precisely the optimal engineering strategy for promotion at my FAANG

> FAANG And yet those five companies are among the most valuable in the world. There's a cognitive dissonance that arises when you join a company that is performing extraordinarily well only to perceive dysfunction and incompetence everywhere you look. It's so hard to reconcile the reality that companies can be embarrassingly wasteful, political, and arbitrary in how they run and yet can still dominate markets and pr…

This is my every day, and I’m not at a FAANG. It is horrifying and infuriating at how much could be improved, and how much cost could be cut like that if there wasn’t an absurd amount of internal politics, and we had a high-trust environment.

Re: You have to know how to drive the car

#58

Post by sgarland »

onion2k wrote: post #39

Driving the car is surprisingly easy. If there's a single hack for your career it is simply telling your manager when things happen. Shipped something? Tell them. Broke something? Tell them. Blocked on something? Keep that quiet. No, wait, tell them! Made a breakthrough on something? Tell them. Hit a milestone? Tell them. Got some bad news? Tell them, as early as you can, so they have time to fix things. And so on, f…

What exactly is the point of a manager if they’re just passively receiving information from their reports?

I long for a flat org structure.

Re: You have to know how to drive the car

#59

Post by onion2k »

sgarland wrote: post #58
onion2k wrote: post #39

Driving the car is surprisingly easy. If there's a single hack for your career it is simply telling your manager when things happen. Shipped something? Tell them. Broke something? Tell them. Blocked on something? Keep that quiet. No, wait, tell them! Made a breakthrough on something? Tell them. Hit a milestone? Tell them. Got some bad news? Tell them, as early as you can, so they have time to fix things. And so on, f…

What exactly is the point of a manager if they’re just passively receiving information from their reports? I long for a flat org structure.

What exactly is the point of a manager if they’re just passively receiving information from their reports?

The only thing I've said here is that you shouldn't be waiting for your manager to ask for updates. If you read that as me suggesting managers should passively sit around doing nothing except receive reports then you didn't think about it for very long.

Re: You have to know how to drive the car

#60

Post by WhereIsTheTruth »

Negitivefrags wrote: post #45
onion2k wrote: post #39

Driving the car is surprisingly easy. If there's a single hack for your career it is simply telling your manager when things happen. Shipped something? Tell them. Broke something? Tell them. Blocked on something? Keep that quiet. No, wait, tell them! Made a breakthrough on something? Tell them. Hit a milestone? Tell them. Got some bad news? Tell them, as early as you can, so they have time to fix things. And so on, f…

As a manager, this is 100% the answer. The people who do this are incredibly valuable. At every performance review I tell all the people who don't do this that they need to do it more. None of them ever do. For all I can tell, it's an immutable characteristic that 90% of people will never bring something up unless you ask them.

I have never liked the word "manager" because it's rarely useful in practice, the best managers are actually doers who can cut through the performative transparency and "DDoS attack" of constant updates to see when communication is being used to manipulate or mask failure rather than report progress, because the last thing you want is for your employees to become politicians
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