61–70 of 86 posts
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Why are you so conditioned to think that fancier titles and more and more money is the end goal of it all?
I have this insatiable addiction to food and shelter. If I could get over my addiction, not only wouldn’t I care about money, I wouldn’t be working.
I was given high impact projects precisely because I crushed tickets as a junior. I demonstrated repeated mini-competencies (crushing tickets), gained credibility, then got to demonstrate macro-competency (deliver projects). Definitely agree that "crushed many tickets" is less effective in performance review than "delivered critical project". I'm not sure how one gets to be responsible for a project without first cru…
I suspect this is a very common experience. I don't think that 'crushing tickets' is a good metric of developer competency, but it's a very visible metric regardless and is therefore probably a good way to progress in many organisations.
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This is what bothered me so much about my last job. Thank you for saying it so succintly
I think it's one of the prime causes of burnout. Feeling like you have no real control over things, but having immense responsibility anyway. Fighting learned helplessness with an internal taskmaster. It's not good for the psyche.
You do that by being able to communicate about the trade offs between the holy trinity of projects - on time, on budget and meets requirements.
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I can’t exchange “pride” for goods and services. The people that hold the power to give you raises and promotions don’t care about “craftsmenship”
Why are you so conditioned to think that fancier titles and more and more money is the end goal of it all?
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I think it's one of the prime causes of burnout. Feeling like you have no real control over things, but having immense responsibility anyway. Fighting learned helplessness with an internal taskmaster. It's not good for the psyche.
The prime cause of burnout is not saying “no” to being pushed to work extra hours. You do that by being able to communicate about the trade offs between the holy trinity of projects - on time, on budget and meets requirements.
I'm incredibly burnt out currently, and I'm consistently at under 40 hours at my job.
> If you ship a project and your management chain begins talking about the next thing, stop improving that project. and this type of advice is precisely why the whole industry completely lost its ability to produce usable things.
Another way to frame this is to not get too attached to your code. Tmrw it could be the cornerstone to a new line of business or it can be burned in the dumpster.
And this is one reason this industry can be so soul crushing. You're asked to demonstrate "ownership", but at any moment some person above you can take all your work away and make you do something entirely different. Somehow we're asked to care about our work and not care about it at the same time.
Awesome article about how to get a promotion. Deserves a follow up article for “how software companies should actually be run to avoid promotion seeking behaviors like projects > all else” Most software companies just need 1 (or at most a handful) of really amazing products. Most products are composed of a handful of “projects”. I’ve worked at big and small tech companies where we were so busy building projects for p…
I would guess that bloat at Spotify is a direct result of empire building by the numbers.
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This is what bothered me so much about my last job. Thank you for saying it so succintly
I think it's one of the prime causes of burnout. Feeling like you have no real control over things, but having immense responsibility anyway. Fighting learned helplessness with an internal taskmaster. It's not good for the psyche.
This is obviously not something everyone can do, but if you can, maybe it's worth it.