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How I influence tech company politics as a staff software engineer

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Re: How I influence tech company politics as a staff software engineer

#91

Post by braiamp »

> The easiest way is to actively work to make a high-profile project successful

Oh, my sweet summer child. Do you really believe that I would be allowed to be able to make a high profile project successful? I literally have been sidelined of many high-profile projects were they failed in the precise way I said it would fail if continuing the path we were on which is caused by actively working to make it successful. Telling your boss they are wrong and why tend to not work when your boss already have an idea on its head about how it will work.

Re: How I influence tech company politics as a staff software engineer

#92

Post by awesome_dude »

idiotsecant wrote: post #85
awesome_dude wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in Australia, and I've yet to find a company that isn't broken.

All companies are broken. Many companies are broken in ways that are tolerable or even decent.

Look, if everyone could just run their companies how I think that they should be run we'd all be happy :)

Re: How I influence tech company politics as a staff software engineer

#93

Post by mystifyingpoi »

Trasmatta wrote: post #27
smallnix wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In case you can share an alternate strategy to make a career in a large tech company, please do, would be interested.

That's the crux. I don't want a career in a large tech company.

> I don't want a career in a large tech company

I would swear by this when I started working in IT, but 3y later I changed job and took a gig at a big corporation. It was eye opening and jaw dropping. Everything was lightyears ahead in terms of tech, management, money, investments in people, and much more compared to the small company. It geniuinely made me mad for not doing this sooner.

Re: How I influence tech company politics as a staff software engineer

#95

Post by notyourwork »

Aurornis wrote: post #65
getnormality wrote: post #15

It seems like this post can be summarized as follows: 1. If your manager has something in particular they want you to do, you should do it. 2. If your manager doesn't have something in particular they want you to do, you should figure out what they will want you to do in the future , and make any necessary preparations so that it will be doable when they want it. I'd say it's good advice. The only thing I would add i…

> 1. If your manager has something in particular they want you to do, you should do it. This point seems obvious, but it's one topics I've had to coach many early career people on over and over again. Many of the people who were having difficulties or heading toward PIP could be turned around by implementing a simple loop where they: 1. Ask their manager for the top priority, explicitly. Re-confirm the top priority e…

As a former engineer who recently transitioned to management, this is precisely how engineers who are competent are perceived as underachieving. Focus on the right problems, put side quests on the back burner.

Re: How I influence tech company politics as a staff software engineer

#96

Post by creer »

jlund-molfese wrote: post #60
johnfn wrote: post #48

A lot of the frustration I typically hear in this camp is something like “well I shipped a huge refactor that cleaned up all the code, why does no one appreciate that?” One particular interaction that got me thinking was a few years ago listening to an acquaintance telling me how he spent months meticulously cleaning up the data pipeline and making it perfect, and how no one appreciated this work. Like, as an enginee…

I agree! You have to also remember that, if you're the person pushing for something to be priority, it's your job to make it make sense to whoever is responsible for prioritization. The easiest way to do that is to speak the same language everyone else is. Your product manager probably speaks in dollars (or euros, renminbi, etc). If you provide a good-faith estimate (ballpark ranges are totally fine) that increased t…

Sure except that "saving money" is not what makes a company win, and so it's rightly not what makes a career. If you can show that building that new library for $X will streamline engineering by Y% which will allow doubling sales by launching 3 new products - NOW you have a good proposition. (Your "X future business scenario").

Saving money on the current product is only useful if the company has no clue where to go next. Since normally the current product will be gone in 2 years. It can be useful when your company is in long steady production, like a refinery where saving 0.5% would be huge.

This is something people often miss about dodgy code bases. Or about writing a large application in a weird choice for a language. IF you were able to deliver that application AND it's still profitable 5 years later, THEN already it was hugely successful. You can argue that it was not in the correct language and you are wrong because it was ALREADY hugely successful. Same for cleaning up the documentation.

Re: How I influence tech company politics as a staff software engineer

#97

Post by SeanAnderson »

apwell23 wrote: post #57
SeanAnderson wrote: post #13

Man, I must not have worked at dysfunctional enough companies. I can't relate to the opening remarks in this article at all. I'm used to really open communication from the top down and, even when we build in a direction I disagree with, we've discussed things enough that I'm at least interested in seeing why someone else I consider intelligent sees the world so differently. Perhaps it has to do with only working for…

> I can't relate to the opening remarks in this article at all. i am guessing you never got promoted at work?

I was a staff engineer at my last employer

Re: How I influence tech company politics as a staff software engineer

#98

Post by SeanAnderson »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #46
SeanAnderson wrote: post #13

Man, I must not have worked at dysfunctional enough companies. I can't relate to the opening remarks in this article at all. I'm used to really open communication from the top down and, even when we build in a direction I disagree with, we've discussed things enough that I'm at least interested in seeing why someone else I consider intelligent sees the world so differently. Perhaps it has to do with only working for…

What size companies have you worked at?

Relatively small. 50-100 people. I could see it being totally different at larger companies, but gosh it sounds miserable!

Re: How I influence tech company politics as a staff software engineer

#99

Post by maccard »

awesome_dude wrote: post #80
Aurornis wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's only about getting higher ups to sing praises about things that I might not have even done. If a company is so broken that promotions are decided based on factually incorrect information, there's nothing to do other than escape to a different company. I'm talking about companies that are functioning okay, but they let the PMs drive what the team works on. A bad PM will send the entire team in the wrong directi…

I'm in Australia, and I've yet to find a company that isn't broken.

If everywhere you look stinks, it's time to look under your own shoe.

No company is perfect, no team is perfect, no person magically knows what's right to do and has a perfect vision. Even if you get somewhere with the right team, right vision and right priorities, and you stick with them, the world will change and one of those will end up incorrect.

Re: How I influence tech company politics as a staff software engineer

#100

Post by [deleted] »

bradlys wrote: post #41
codazoda wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read number 2 more as being ready with your own agenda items. For example, if you want to make a code base more minimal, have a POC and some details worked out for when the opportunity presents itself. If you have something prepared and then there’s a site speed, SEO, or series of bug complaints you might be able to pitch your minimal ideas as part of that solution. I like the concept but I don’t know how well it w…

To flesh out things to where you could actually make a reasonable pitch with things like realistic time estimates and documents that would be useful to read then you'd have to have already done it, it'd be trivial, or you apparently have plenty of spare time to do serious spikes in your day to day. You'd also have to have the spare time to update these project ideas as the months pass, the product and codebase change…

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