Story: “It would be career limiting..." • Hacker News Board

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

#81

Post by bombcar » Tue, Nov 08, 2022, 7:45 PM UTC

maptime wrote: post #66

donatj wrote: post #40

> I spent about 18 months working on a doomed project. For a lot of that time, I thought I was the only one who realized it was doomed. I had a similar feeling about a project once. I thought "Boy is this stupid. No one in their right mind is going to pay for this. Why are we building this." Let me manager know my feelings. Stayed and built it. Thing is a huge success. One of our best selling products. Boy do I still…

It sounds like you were working on the project without enough contact with users to understand the value of the thing you were building. That doesn't sound like it's your fault!

The only people worse at knowing what the customer wants than management/sales is the customers themselves.

It's really strange the first time you experience it.

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

#82

Post by silviot » Tue, Nov 08, 2022, 7:45 PM UTC

Would it be legal (and, different question, do you think it would be ethical) in a case like this to quit and go to the client company proposing advice on how to negotiate to avoid the $60M loss? A role of advisor to let them know they need to get their shit together (and provide the required specs) and to guide themto ask for incremental delivery. As far as I can tell such a consultancy is easily worth $1M/year or more, given its potential effectiveness.

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

#83

Post by wccrawford » Tue, Nov 08, 2022, 7:45 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #21

smarks wrote: post #10

At Sun Microsystems this notion was so common that there was a TLA for it: CLM = "career limiting move"

I don't think they have it at my company. Or maybe nobody was nice enough to tell me. That might explain being just a midlevel after 10 years and a masters...

If you're still being paid like a mid-level dev after 10 years, you owe it to yourself to look for a new job and get a massive pay raise.

My original plan was to stay 3 years at my first company, and then change jobs for a raise. I ended up staying 5 because they gave me great raises for the first 3... And then screwed me on 2 years, at which point I knew I should have left at 3 after all.

After that it gets murkier, but in general if you aren't seeing really nice pay raises every 3 years, you can get it by changing companies.

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

#84

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Nov 08, 2022, 7:49 PM UTC

[deleted]

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

#85

Post by kazinator » Tue, Nov 08, 2022, 7:49 PM UTC

Here is where the blogger loses me "Finally, we made our primary recommendation, which was to slip the project 12 months to cover the newly-discovered work, and provide margin for any additional remaining work."

They should have tried to identify wasteful work that could be trimmed so as to deliver something to the customer.

The managers were probably thinking, what, there is unplanned, untracked make-work going on in the project, and these guys just want it to be added to the schedule, and even look for more?

> I’d met my responsibility to the company – and the company had threatened me as a result.

That is not clear. The manager could have just been expressing the fact that if the confidential, internal problems from the meeting were to leak out to the customer, the customer might walk away. He could have been referring to his own career, or careers in general.

However, if that manager was insinuating that unless staff are reminded not to, like a bunch of children, they are going to go to customers, or the public, and squawk about problems discussed in an internal meeting, then that was actually quite insulting, and betraying mistrust.

Of course it will be career limiting to blab confidential info and lose customers, even under the best of circumstances.

Doing that is being stupidly honest, because maybe solutions can be found to deliver, and save the deal; if you blab to the customers, then you could be flushing away the opportunity.

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

#86

Post by TremendousJudge » Tue, Nov 08, 2022, 7:49 PM UTC

Mathnerd314 wrote: post #72

Seattle3503 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It seems like Agile would have been a great fit. Too many requirements, no real information - it's exactly the situation where throwing out prototypes and getting feedback can lead to a solution.

I don't think hiring some certified Agile gurus and reshuffling all the teams in the middle of the project would have improved the chances of delivery.

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

#87

Post by ThrowawayR2 » Tue, Nov 08, 2022, 7:49 PM UTC

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.

Career and climbing the corporate ladder are orthogonal. For example, I don't care about climbing the corporate ladder but I do care very much about my career progression because it defines what job opportunities I get to choose from in the future and better career progression allows me more freedom to choose only the ones that are likely to be fun. (Unlike many here, I actually enjoy my profession.)

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

#88

Post by Kon-Peki » Tue, Nov 08, 2022, 7:50 PM UTC

swader999 wrote: post #22

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.

Once you have a family, debt, obligations it does matter. Health care too.

> careers/jobs were just a necessary evil because it's almost impossible to survive without money

> Once you have a family, debt, obligations it does matter. Health care too.

Health care is obviously the elephant in the room. But generally, you'll find that people like this have structured their life in a way that allows them to have this attitude toward their career.

We in the tech industry are particularly blessed in our ability to do this. (perhaps less so in the Bay Area)

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

#89

Post by wwilim » Tue, Nov 08, 2022, 7:50 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #21

smarks wrote: post #10

At Sun Microsystems this notion was so common that there was a TLA for it: CLM = "career limiting move"

I don't think they have it at my company. Or maybe nobody was nice enough to tell me. That might explain being just a midlevel after 10 years and a masters...

There are plenty of fish in the sea. Change jobs and see if that helps. It might remedy the burnout as well.

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

#90

Post by trevor-e » Tue, Nov 08, 2022, 7:51 PM UTC

I'm not a project management expert, but isn't this basically why Agile was created so that incremental/iterative progress can be more easily delivered? Like hearing this part is insane to me:

> I was hired on as an individual contributor maybe 15 months before the project was to be delivered to the customer

I can't imagine trying to deliver a project of this size all at once and so far into the future. I also find it hard to believe that individual parts couldn't be reprioritized to ship first, rather than the all-or-nothing take of "we need 9 more months".