[HN Gopher] Signs that it's time to leave a company
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Signs that it's time to leave a company
Author : bezeee
Score : 210 points
Date : 2024-01-10 20:59 UTC (2 hours ago)
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| doublerabbit wrote:
| Two years and six months.
|
| If you do not get any promotion, perks or increase of benefits
| during that time, your not going to get any ever.
|
| Waiting with the mindset of "maybe I will this year" will only
| cause you mental anguish, to the point you'll become disgruntled
| and end up shooting yourself in the foot.
|
| Why two years six months? It's takes three months of constant
| effort just to score an interview/new job and three to properly
| resign on pleasant terms or negotiate an upgrade.
|
| Two years, is an substantial amount sum of time to work for a
| company and the bare minimum you should work in any company in my
| honest opinion.
|
| Jumping ship will always bring more money. The truth is that
| businesses don't care much about you as much as they like you to
| believe. In that your forgotten in seconds flat and were only
| hired for your talent.
|
| So why give it to them if they're not going to return the favour?
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Two years for a company that isn't horrendous to work for. If
| it is clearly not working out - a no brainer - then just leave.
| Might be on day 1!
| scorpioxy wrote:
| Funny you mention that. Looking back, there's at least one
| company that I should've left on day 1. The flags now look
| bright red. But my thinking back then was that I'm probably
| wrong with my understanding of the situation - maybe this,
| maybe that. There's an emotional undertaking when you leave
| your old role and show up at a new place and there's bound to
| be some struggle.
|
| That place was a disaster. I mean the half-the-team-ends-up-
| leaving kinda disaster.
|
| Figuring out when "it's you and not me" takes a lot of
| introspection and that's usually accompanied by a lot of self
| doubt. You can't really tell except long after the fact.
| onion2k wrote:
| _Waiting for "maybe I will this year" will only cause you
| mental anguish_
|
| The problem there is the 'waiting' bit. If you expect other
| people to see your impact and reward it you won't get it. You
| need to advocate for yourself. Make sure you're talking
| directly to stakeholders and leaders in your org. Post about
| things you've worked on in company channels. Update everyone
| when you hit goals and milestones. Celebrate your wins.
|
| If nothing else this makes work more fun.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > If you do not get any promotion, perks or increase of
| benefits during that time, your not going to get any ever.
|
| SV bubble. Getting a promotion every 2.5 years is very rare in
| traditional engineering companies.
| serial_dev wrote:
| A promotion? Sure. But not even a modest raise in 2.5 years,
| that's not a good sign.
| ska wrote:
| It's partially a SV bubble, and partially a early-career
| bubble (and partially an I've-only-seen-the-good-times
| bubble, probably)
|
| When having these conversations people often forget that it's
| pretty natural for the time between promotions to increase
| significantly as your experience and role level increases.
|
| FWIW "promotion" i mean a meaningful change int he scope of
| your role, not a banding exercise to pay you a bit more. That
| can also be achieved without promotion; companies have
| different approaches to the 6ish meaningful role buckets in a
| technical career.
|
| This means that advice about "how long is too long" isn't
| really general.
| cqqxo4zV46cp wrote:
| Yep. All this is telling me ie that there are still a bunch
| of sheltered HN users that are in for a rude shock when they
| see what it's like to work long-term in an environment
| without free money keeping everything afloat. A lot of you
| have been living in a make-believe world.
| MandieD wrote:
| Good, I'm not the only one reading those comments and
| thinking, "oh, you sweet summer children who didn't
| graduate into the Dotcom Bust or Great Recession..."
| iamthirsty wrote:
| As you get closer to the top, people keep their positions
| longer and there are generally less of them. Natural
| progression.
| serial_dev wrote:
| Two years six months is also a reasonable time as some
| companies have salary discussions only once per year.First time
| around, you might have only been at the company for a short
| time, after your first full year you might not be able to, want
| to go for a salary raise or you might not get it, but if you
| don't get it the second time, it's a sign that is hard to
| ignore
|
| This is, though, with an asterisk that you made a reasonable
| effort to get your raise.
|
| If you didn't, for example you had too much going on in your
| personal life, and therefore you couldn't put in the quality
| hours, it might make sense to just be happy with what they give
| you as in other places you might not be able to tend to your
| personal stuff as well as in your current company.
| pi-e-sigma wrote:
| Salary discussions can happen at any time, though.
| Restricting it to once per year is just delaying tactic. If
| you resign and they want or need you, all of sudden
| everything is possible
| auspiv wrote:
| Vast majority of large, publicly traded companies (at least
| in the US) only do pay determination (and associated
| raises) once per year. Promotions can definitely happen
| whenever but there may be a cycle associated with that as
| well.
| pi-e-sigma wrote:
| You truly believe that such rules are written in stone?
| There's always exceptions if a need arise. Budgets of
| whole countries can be changed mid year but salary of
| some employee can't? :)
| teach wrote:
| Maybe I'm the old man in the room, but I worked for non-tech
| companies for the first twenty years of my career.
|
| No promotions, no perks and no real change in benefits is the
| norm for the vast majority of American workers.
|
| What's wrong with getting paid a reasonable amount of money for
| a career you enjoy and are good at?
| hobs wrote:
| The fact that the ownership is capturing a huge multiple of
| your effort and you could go somewhere else to capture more
| of the money you create?
|
| Let's invert it - why should I just make my boss more money
| forever while I get the same cut?
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| >Let's invert it - why should I just make my boss more
| money forever while I get the same cut?
|
| It sounds like you're assuming OP is getting a small cut.
| What if his salary is generous and there's a profit sharing
| bonus pool every year?
|
| The idea that in every career one needs to be continuously
| promoted to new positions doesn't make a whole lot of sense
| in my opinion.
| teach wrote:
| Nailed it.
|
| In fact, individual contributor salaries were public and
| constituted ~80% of the company's entire annual budget.
| Rent, utilities and all management salaries were
| contained in the remaining 20%.
| hobs wrote:
| And how much was... profit? When you say budget that's
| not directly tied to the revenues of the company, that's
| just the amount they decide to spend this year.
| hobs wrote:
| Well, then the OP is among one of the very few people
| that couldn't find a better job for the position.
|
| In my experience I have had 22 jobs in my life, half
| software, half not - every time I asked for a raise and
| even got a good one it was never more than 9% in a
| specific position, in moving positions I have received
| over 100% multiple times.
|
| There was no such thing as profit sharing, I was
| seriously underpaid many times. There was 401k matching
| at best, and anywhere that offered stock basically went
| bust or used means to ensure they never paid it.
|
| Ultimately I would love to stay somewhere that paid me
| well and treated me well, but getting both for a steady
| period is hard!
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| You valued your time differently than others value theirs.
| Every hour you're paid for is an hour of life you'll never
| get back.
|
| Comfortable gig with adequate comp for some, "fuck you pay
| me" for others. We're all replaceable, and you never know
| when you'll run out of time and be unemployable (through no
| fault of your own). Maybe people just learned being
| reasonable got them nowhere. Sometimes it does, but not most
| of the time.
| bitwize wrote:
| Jumping ship stops bringing in more money once you get old,
| unless you transition to management (which not all of us can or
| want to do).
| pi-e-sigma wrote:
| And once you are in the management jumping ship is even more
| difficult.
| geodel wrote:
| Jumping ship will always bring more money.
|
| Thats not true often. I have known so many people ended up in
| worse place after jumping.
| velcrovan wrote:
| Other signs for me personally:
|
| * Sales schedules dictate product development timelines rather
| than the other way around
|
| * Leadership thinks about practical operational/logistics issues
| only when forced to
|
| * The importance of "culture" is brought up without fail when
| talking about working from the office, and never at other times
|
| * Leadership is fond of setting goals and deathly allergic to
| providing incentives
| iamthirsty wrote:
| I agree with all but the last, as I think it's debatable.
|
| > Leadership is fond of setting goals and deathly allergic to
| providing incentives
|
| Goals are good, in any way, as long as their portioned right.
|
| And at the level most people this is targeted to are working
| at, is the rather large salary supposed to be the incentive?
| mxkopy wrote:
| It happens at lower levels too, when the company is too broke
| to give bonuses
| polynomial wrote:
| What are some typical examples of operational/logistics issues
| that less than great management might otherwise ignore?
| choppaface wrote:
| Always have an engaging side project or non-work interest (a
| family even!). A slow-growth company is torture if you have to
| give it 100% of your attention. But in some cases you can turn
| corporate disfunction into a means to fund your own interests.
| cqqxo4zV46cp wrote:
| Let's not conflate slow-growth with corporate dysfunction.
| stvltvs wrote:
| I'm currently dealing with corporate dysfunction due to fast
| growth.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Small company, in my first week the owner sent an all-hands email
| that chewed out some of the staff.
|
| I left by the end of the week.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| More discussion previously:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38827801
| geocrasher wrote:
| - Investors are priority over customers
|
| - Getting stonewalled at every opportunity to be heard
|
| - Drastic change in ownership with nonsensical goals
|
| - Family ran company with lots of family infighting and drama
|
| - An office full of cokeheads
|
| Some of my personal faves.
| iamthirsty wrote:
| > - An office full of cokeheads
|
| Ah, the 80's. What a time.
| opportune wrote:
| Definitely feeling this at another FAANG
|
| I think there's something about post-pandemic work in software
| that just isn't working. I don't think it's just interest rates
| or a hiring downturn, nor immediate causes like founders leaving
| (because I see this sickness at most big tech companies these
| days).
|
| Personally, I believe that hybrid work is not going well. Fully
| remote teams are good, fully onsite teams are good. With hybrid I
| feel like I never know how to contact someone and can never
| expect a quick reply (with remote, sure someone could go AWOL
| still, but there was less ambiguity on if they were just
| commuting or doing something in the office). I've had skip
| managers/directors who I'm almost certain are barely working and
| just milking out huge salaries while hiding behind their remote
| status. I've seen people join and leave teams from random offices
| all over the world, never onboarding fully and never truly
| getting it. It's awful.
|
| I want people to have flexibility and I think full-remote culture
| works just as well as fully-onsite works - everyone is in "one
| place" whether it's in collaboration software or in person. But
| this sucks.
| gtirloni wrote:
| Hybrid companies need the full remote AND on-site apparatus at
| the same time. They can't be half remote or people will be left
| off of office discussions all the time and they have to
| maintain expensive real estate.
|
| Imagine having to wait for the office day in a hybrid company
| to discuss something important. Nobody does that.
| closeparen wrote:
| It's easiest to schedule meetings on remote days, since they
| are not constrained by conference rooms or commute blocks.
| auspiv wrote:
| My company does week in-office, then week remote. Quite a bit
| of flexibility during the in-office weeks too if you have a
| doctor appt or whatever. I personally really like it. People
| get stuff done in-office, and then during the remote weeks we
| bust stuff out that doesn't need to be face-to-face.
|
| We are not at all a tech company.
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| I'm hybrid too, and while I personally like it overall [1],
| it doesn't help with one of the main sticking points
| regarding remote work vs in-office: Needing to live within
| commuting distance of an office. It's expensive, it limits
| people with kids to certain school districts etc. -- In some
| ways it's the worst of both worlds for some people.
|
| [1] I however, really, really dislike going into the office
| only to have a bunch of zoom meetings anyway.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Do you mark a difference between hybrid where not everyone goes
| in on the same days and hybrid where everyone goes in on the
| same days and stays away on the same days?
| opportune wrote:
| Yeah. My company is in principle set 2, in practice set 1.
| But even so, I'm on a team where almost half of us are fully
| remote or working out of other offices and so don't go in on
| our "dedicated in office days". I stopped going in on those
| days too because it felt pointless.
|
| I think part of what's so insanely demotivating about all
| this is how hard it makes leadership/management. Or rather,
| how it allows poor leadership/management to get away with
| doing poorly and how much worse the impact of poor management
| becomes in this setting. Because right now, even though I'm a
| TL I have absolutely no idea what the people controlling the
| purse strings want or care about, or what their goals are. I
| just wait for things to filter down through the org chart to
| me. There is no osmosis of knowledge or thought or strategy,
| and I feel like lazy/inattentive/unknowledgable management
| kicks up politics and siloing to the next level - when we
| were fully remote this didn't seem to happen as much.
| 972811 wrote:
| i agree with all of what you said, but i think the main change
| is just that these companies aren't growing the same way they
| were pre-pandemic. everything feels resource constrained in a
| way it didn't in the mid-2010s and this makes everything
| inherently political and negative
|
| edit: to give an example, you probably don't think at all about
| an exec's value when you see him once a quarter in an all-hands
| explaining the great growth and complimenting teams, your
| paycheck is high and growing, and your team has happy hours,
| lavish team all hands, and tons of autonomy. when the same exec
| is announcing layoffs, no growth, and reduced benefits, you
| start to look at the deal a little differently
| 3737hdhd7372 wrote:
| I agree, something about working hybrid just feels like "why
| are we doing this?"
|
| It's like an awkward inbetween
|
| I also don't get why companies seem unphased about paying for a
| giant office that is empty the majority of the week
| dboreham wrote:
| Hybrid doesn't make sense. It's just "working in an office
| with some days at home" which was something I remember doing
| in the mid 1990s. Basically as soon as the Internet and
| laptops existed, it was done.
|
| It seems more like a frog boiling exercise on the way to full
| in-office (which imho will never return).
| rcbdev wrote:
| For some people it's an intentional exercise into full home
| office.
| Turskarama wrote:
| Hybrid can make sense _if_ there are scheduled in person
| activities on the in office days. If you're coming in to the
| office just to work by yourself then it should have just been
| a work from home day.
| willhslade wrote:
| Not to peek behind the curtain, but it's pretty difficult to
| hold down 2 jobs when you need to physically be in the office
| 2 days a week. Which, if my anecdotal evidence in my circle
| is to be believed, that was definitely happening during the
| pandemic.
| allknowingfrog wrote:
| My team of 5 synchronized our hybrid schedules (same two days
| in the office together). We love the mix of in-person
| collaboration days and remote "leave me alone so I can
| accomplish something" days. We're a small startup in the
| Midwest, so I have no idea how it would scale to FAANG-level
| problems, but it's the best of both worlds for us.
| corytheboyd wrote:
| The big RSU grant is depleted and you don't get a new one that is
| comparable in size. There is zero reason not to leave in this
| case, because you will absolutely make way more money by leaving.
| You can even leave and rejoin the same company to get another
| grant, as dumb as that is. Make sure you actually ask for a new
| grant before quitting, nobody is going to give you money for
| free. You also need to be good but that's a given if you've been
| around for 3-4 years (however your RSU vesting works)
| tschwimmer wrote:
| You will have to re-interview to get a new grant, and even for
| a strong performer with a well-established historical track
| record at the company can be a very probabilistic event.
| hibikir wrote:
| Smaller refreshes than the original grant are a clear message
| from management that they don't necessarily want you around,
| but you aren't underperforming so much as to want to bother
| with the hassle of a Pip. In any place that isn't massively
| dysfunctional, a manager can hand out large enough refreshes to
| the people they want to keep in the long run.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| > because you will absolutely make way more money by leaving
|
| That is a pre-2023 advice my friend, unless you've been there
| like 10yrs or an ai researcher or something
| corytheboyd wrote:
| Well you're right in that I haven't been looking for jobs
| recently, but I find it extremely hard to believe that large
| grants and salaries are no longer a thing in the software
| industry at large. A few friends-of-friends I know very
| recently got nice grants and salaries, with large Mega Corps,
| but that's always where the money was?
| ryandrake wrote:
| Everyone on HN knows someone's brother's nephew's wife's
| cousin's former roommate who makes $600K at MegaCorp FAANG
| but those kinds of opportunities aren't (and have never
| been) common. Especially now during our first tech bear
| market in what, 13 years?
| corytheboyd wrote:
| Yeah good point, and 13 years is more or less the length
| of my career so it's all I've known (feel like I will
| regret saying that I haven't been programming for 192
| years on HN but oh well)
|
| At the same time, it's 13 years of data backing up the
| claim, though they probably said the same thing before
| the dotcom bubble exploded, didn't they, weee
| ryandrake wrote:
| It's pre-2023 thinking and early-career thinking. Without job
| title growth, eventually everyone plateaus. There's only so
| much _any_ company is willing to pay a non-manager individual
| contributor worker bee. Early in your career you can go from
| say $45K to $60K to $100K like it 's nothing, but the more
| you job hop, it'll start looking more like $110K -> $120K ->
| $125K -> $128K and so on, asymptotically approaching your
| locale's top pay for your role.
| closeparen wrote:
| Note: the _national median_ for software developers is
| $127k, don 't let anyone sell you that as some kind of
| career ceiling. Especially if you live in New York,
| Seattle, or the Bay Area.
|
| https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151252.htm#st
| ryandrake wrote:
| Yea, I just recently fell off my four-year "cliff" at my
| company and it's humbling to see your total comp suddenly reset
| back three or four years. This is often a very good
| discontinuity that justifies looking around, and it's no
| surprise that people tend to leave close to their whole number
| anniversaries.
| corytheboyd wrote:
| Humbling is an interesting way to put it haha!
|
| I wish you luck. As nice as it is to know that there are
| greener pastures, the idea of interviewing amidst the great
| tech layoffs of today scares the shit out of me.
| hibikir wrote:
| Hit the nail in the head. A growing company has plenty of
| opportunity for learning, promotion, making new things, and
| retooling old ones to match the growth of business. This means
| there are very few zero sum games, either at the IC or management
| level.
|
| When growth stops, there's little chances to gain status by
| solving problems: Someone already has status, and really doesn't
| want to lose it. Those frustrated with the lack of growth, and
| who have good skills applicable somewhere else will leave. The
| people that stay are those that have fewer opportunities to find
| something better elsewhere. So when you see an
| architect/principal engineer that has been there for 15 years,
| you know they know that they'd not be hired at the same level
| anywhere with more chances of growth: Those people have already
| left.
|
| This is why i understand the middle manager that tries to empire
| build: If you don't have growth opportunities, your top
| subordinates will leave you, and with them your group's
| performance.
|
| There are other reasons to leave a company, like if you see good
| chances that you'll dislike your boss and they will remain your
| boss for at least another year, but the lack of growth will
| always be bad.
| eiskalt wrote:
| > The people that stay are those that have fewer opportunities
| to find something better elsewhere. So when you see an
| architect/principal engineer that has been there for 15 years,
| you know they know that they'd not be hired at the same level
| anywhere..
|
| ..or they are simply more enjoying life by maintaining a better
| life-work balance.
| imiric wrote:
| Eh, I don't get this constant growth mentality that pervades
| tech companies. It seems more related to investors wanting to
| see an ever growing return on their investments than it being
| healthy for the company and its products.
|
| Can't a company reach an equilibrium where the right people are
| doing the right things, and everyone is happy with their role
| and compensation? Sure, people may leave and be replaced, and
| even a moderate amount of growth could be healthy, but why
| focus so much on constantly expanding teams, more products,
| more revenue, more, more, more...? It seems to boil down to
| basic human greed, at the end of the day.
|
| I much prefer working for companies that don't have this growth
| obsession. IME they place more value and care into their
| product and customers, rather than chasing the next big thing,
| which often ruins the good thing they had.
|
| So hyper growth is actually a signal for me to leave, not stay.
| With all these layoffs going on, how can we say that the
| growth/layoff cycle is a sign of a healthy company? It might
| not hurt their bottom line, but I sure wouldn't want to work in
| an environment where I'm worried I might be laid off at any
| moment.
| kabdib wrote:
| Signs that I've seen before leaving:
|
| * There are more VPs than there are restrooms.
|
| * The free coffee and soda is no more.
|
| * Engineers are co-opted as salespeople ("... and why is the
| project late?").
| gwern wrote:
| The soda is a classic: https://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-
| elves-leave-middle-ear...
| nradov wrote:
| There's nothing wrong with occasionally pulling in engineers to
| help salespeople with writing proposals or participating in
| sales calls. Smaller companies can't afford to have sales
| engineers as dedicated specialist positions.
| d0gsg0w00f wrote:
| +1 for removal of snacks and coffee as a reliable canary
| AnarchismIsCool wrote:
| If they can't justify a few dollars for snacks, what do you
| think they're gonna do about your six digit salary...
| lxe wrote:
| Amazon's tech innovation died a while ago. It will continue to
| operate its successful business lines until it runs out of steam
| and shrivels up, just like IBM & co. It will never catch up to
| things like AI and will fall behind.
|
| And it's not a bad thing for Amazon, at least for now. They are
| in a better position than Google, where they have a more diverse
| revenue stream, and can out-compete everyone else. They don't
| need to innovate.
| JohnFen wrote:
| For me, the main sign that it's time to leave a company is when I
| start fantasizing regularly about leaving the company.
|
| My gut seems to be wiser than my head on this stuff. Nearly every
| time that I've moved on, it's turned out to be the right call in
| hindsight.
| geocrasher wrote:
| And the one time I actually followed my gut and got a new job,
| I let my boss convince me to stay on (I really loved the
| company) and then he sold it shortly after to some jackasses
| that ruined it. And then when I did leave, I left without a
| good plan and ended up in a family owned company whose
| infighting left everyone wondering if they'd have a job the
| next day. Pure hell.
| tcmart14 wrote:
| I still follow same advise my dad told me before I left for
| Navy bootcamp. He was an Army vet. But it goes something like,
| 'when you wake up in the morning and realize you hate putting
| on that fucking uniform, its time to hang it up. Or else you'll
| end up doing shit and getting in trouble.' Now that I am out
| and went into software, and even before while I was working in
| the chemical industry while I went to school, I use that same
| philosophy but reworded.
| blueridge wrote:
| Yeah, big +1 to this. I recently left a role I was at for four
| years, paid well, but turned sour quickly due to changes in
| leadership and mismanagement across the organization. I
| followed my gut out the door with nothing lined up and it was
| absolutely the right call for my health and sanity.
| quadog wrote:
| From the article: "There is a tendency to micromanage and add
| process overhead...".
|
| Yes, the day that leadership invites "Agile coaches" in to start
| scrumming up the works is another sign to move on.
| lucidguppy wrote:
| I don't understand this fascination with central offices. We live
| in the year 2024. We should be able to look at our workforce,
| find small offices, and have hub and spoke networks of offices -
| and work from home as a fallback.
|
| Rent a condo, do a communal office, if you want more close
| collaboration - shuffle your teams to colocate them - not force
| them into 1hr commutes into a fucking empty office.
|
| Our infrastructure is now ephemeral on the cloud - why can't we
| be more flexible with our work situation?
| garrickvanburen wrote:
| Fully agree. My weekly email rant was on how anti-customer
| offices are. https://forstarters.substack.com/p/for-
| starters-13-there-are...
| iwontberude wrote:
| I wish they would stop trying to force us into shared working
| spaces. They can make me work from home, a close office, a far
| office... I don't care. Just give me a private office and I
| will do my best work. At home, I don't have room for a private
| office, so they would need to relocate me and cover a portion
| of the rent for their office. I am not a contractor. I am an
| employee. I don't control any of my working conditions and I
| shouldn't have to pay out of pocket for it.
| voidee wrote:
| But I love distracting people and making them unproductive!
| jasonzemos wrote:
| As an anecdote, my neighbor is a crazy asshole who started
| blasting music and having parties at random hours; it can be
| problematic for sleep and productivity. Police in California
| are inept at stopping this. Will the company pay to send
| lawyers or do I have to waste my own time and money to pick
| up and move my whole life for something worse to be waiting
| at the next rental?
| paulddraper wrote:
| People collaborate easier in person.
|
| Travel is a downside.
| OtomotO wrote:
| Other downside: way more coffee breaks and private
| discussions.
| robertbalent wrote:
| > way more coffee breaks
|
| That's upside.
| kamilafsar wrote:
| That's not a downside. That's part of building and being a
| team. We're human, not machines. If you hire the right
| people, they'll know when to have a laugh and when to work
| their ass off.
| passwordoops wrote:
| Private discussions happen way more often remote in my
| experience
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Many of the largest software projects in history have been
| implemented by remote workers. Like the Linux kernel.
|
| But if you require to read people's reactions and body
| language and try to figure out if they are telling the truth,
| or brag about your socioeconomic status or appearance, or if
| you need to assert dominance over others, or do social
| engineering like mirroring other's movements, then face to
| face is perhaps useful.
|
| To me, when someone says "there is no replacement for face to
| face communication", what that usually means is "we distrust
| people here".
|
| I dislike offices, they are cesspools of misery, dominance
| and fake smiles. Long live remote work.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| You're summing up a pretty wide spectrum of things as
| "distrust". If a junior engineer says they understand what
| I'm asking for and will deliver it in 2 weeks, but actually
| they don't fully understand and will deliver half of it in
| 3 weeks, I wouldn't typically characterize that as them
| lying or being untrustworthy. But it's a problem that's a
| lot easier to detect and solve in person. (It's also, not
| coincidentally, a problem that Linux kernel devs generally
| don't need to worry about - there's no Linux Dev Inc. whose
| next big contract will fall through if a project doesn't
| finish on time.)
| worewood wrote:
| I agree with you, except the last sentence, which may vary
| from place to place.
|
| My office is very friendly and people have very good
| humour. Which is good for socializing but for work, it's
| tough because so many interruptions and we waste a lot of
| time "talking about the weather". I am way more productive
| working at home.
| pacomerh wrote:
| I don't collaborate better in person.
| NegativeK wrote:
| I do, probably because of my particular flavor of strong
| introversion.
|
| What's the solution to different people benefiting from
| different work styles?
| irrational wrote:
| Except, some jobs really really don't require much if any
| collaboration. We've been having to come back into the office
| since last September. In all that time, I've only spoken to
| another person a single time. Literally one hour in one day
| in the past 5 months. All meetings are still over zoom and
| when I'm not in a meeting, I just find some place in the
| building to sit and work. Except many people still weren't
| coming in since september and now they have cracked down on
| it and said people must be in the office and they are
| checking badge check-ins and the ip address of where our work
| laptops are being used to see if they are on the campus
| network or not. The result is tons of people are here now,
| but there isn't room for them. Before the pandemic, the
| company started getting rid of cubicles and moving to rooms
| full of desks and you just find somewhere to sit. But they
| don't have enough places to sit for everyone so if you don't
| get here early, you just end up sitting on the floor or
| wandering around. It is crazy how much lost productivity we
| are experiencing.
| vlaxx wrote:
| > I don't understand this fascination with central offices.
|
| It's not about you, it's about them. What they control, what
| they own, what they have.
|
| They are in love with the feeling of dominance in a room full
| of people. They love to see the minions that they command. Its
| about being able to visualize and understand the domain that
| they control.
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| The current crop of execs grew up watching Star Trek TNG - a
| flying office building where everyone lives for their work and
| you could sound a klaxon and everyone scrambles to the
| conference room. Also everyone loves and is willing to die for
| the leader. That's all you need to know.
| iwontberude wrote:
| "Customers don't care what the companies buildings are like."
|
| They never could, yet their experience is shaped by the buildings
| employees use. Having been moved to a hybrid office and lost my
| private office -- my work suffered and so did the work of my
| colleagues. By not taking real estate seriously, my company is
| pushing me to look for work elsewhere. I don't want to waste my
| thirties doing crappy work because I don't have an office to work
| in.
| some-guy wrote:
| I've been at the same enterprise SaaS company for 10 years.
| Personally? Staying at the same company for a long time while
| performing well gave me some options I wouldn't have gotten
| otherwise. Like OP, the culture has shifted drastically with
| COVID and the post-ZIRP environment we live in.
|
| When RTO began, my spouse got a job which would have required me
| to move away and make it impossible to meet in-office numbers.
| Thankfully I requested remote and it was approved, now I'm living
| in a low-COL area while doing the same job. Most people in my
| position don't get remote approval. Hence I'm basically stuck
| here--looking around for available remote positions, my TC would
| be in most cases cut in half.
| mt_ wrote:
| Is is just me, this post and this [1] one are just people
| complaining about RTO? If you were hired during COVID lockdown
| with the promise of your career buing built on remote only, fine
| but lay yourself off and move on. Else it's not entirely
| justifiable to be mad at AWS for RTO policies. From an outside
| perspective AWS looks very healthy and ouputing great innovation.
|
| [1]. https://justingarrison.com/blog/2023-12-30-amazons-silent-
| sa...
| ShamelessC wrote:
| > lay yourself off
|
| "Straight shooter with upper management written all over him."
| xwowsersx wrote:
| Archived: https://archive.ph/dk9vW
| devwastaken wrote:
| "the product teams that are left after pruning should try to keep
| the most experienced employees, lay off the junior ones"
|
| This inevitably leads to your product being owned by a few devs
| with no one else who has the org knowledge necessary to make
| meaningful changes. Your org should be making experienced devs.
| If it isn't, you don't own your product.
|
| Junior devs are your future. They have motivation and want to be
| apart of your mission far more than the experienced devs that are
| there for a paycheck so they can get their own show running.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| The full quote:
|
| _"... the product teams that are left after pruning should try
| to keep the most experienced employees, lay off the junior
| ones, and return managers to individual contributor positions
| where possible. Experienced employees have been through this
| before, make better judgement calls under stress, and
| communicate better. "_
|
| So writes the experienced employee. Adding to the parent
| comment, experienced employees also may have vested interests
| and cognitive inertia based on the current situation, the way
| things have been done until now. If you want new growth, new
| perspective, new ideas, new energy, new blood can help. They
| don't know that 'back when Eddie was here, we did it this way
| ...' and they don't care.
|
| The OP also writes,
|
| _managers start to hoard ... and play politics to preserve
| their products._
|
| That applies to the experienced employees too.
| RyeCombinator wrote:
| Dupe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38827801
| SpaceNoodled wrote:
| > Jeff Bezos was always focused on keeping the "Day 1" culture at
| Amazon, and everyone I talk to there is clear that it's now "Day
| 2".
|
| I left Amazon around the same time, and was saying the same
| thing. All of the callouts in this article hit the mark.
| erinaceousjones wrote:
| That so many people are so focused on things "having" to be in a
| constant state of exponential growth makes me feel uneasy. It's
| like so many people can't see the forest for the trees - we can't
| have infinite exponential growth forever.
|
| Like, little software shops which take on a stable number of
| projects / contracts / clients a year, focused on sustainability
| instead of pure profit, lose and gain people at a roughly 1:1
| ratio, rarely downscale or upscale offices, have a relatively
| flat heierarchy, everyone is compensated realistically,
| reasonably and equitably, and the work is done at a rate that is
| a nice balance between interesting/challenging whilst relaxed
| enough to not cause burnout, with a sensible work/life balance.
| That's what I look for, and they're fucking havens.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> Like, little software shops_
|
| I tried those and TBH they never worked for me. Small shops in
| my experience have not very good processes, rush to gain new
| projects and customers at all cost by sales/management always
| overpromising and burning out engineers in the process who
| strugle with the unrealistic deadlines, promotions are gained
| trough favoritism since there's no fixed clear and well
| documented promotion/career path but you're at the mercy of how
| your bnoss and his boss/CEO feel about you each day.
|
| So no thanks from me, I'm going back to big old crusty
| established comapanies with established products and customers,
| established processes. YMMV of course, there' no one sized fits
| all for everyone and big companies have their own issues but I
| feel I can more easily manage and deal with those. Pick your
| poison.
| codegeek wrote:
| That's ok. You are just built to work with more structure and
| processes. Some people like the small company vibe where
| things are a bit chaotic but also fun and creative. Nothing
| wrong with either.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| From experience, without company or team growth there is very
| little scope for you to grow in your career: everyone keep
| their jobs at best and someone has to leave for another
| employee to be promoted up.
|
| If you're OK with that, sure. But if you're aiming for
| promotions and personal growth, move.
| lelandfe wrote:
| I can attest to this. I worked at a 100 person software
| company at the beginning of my career. Raises were modest and
| there were no promotions available. I got a promotion and a
| large raise through negotiation and politicking.
|
| It was stable and paid the bills, but I wasn't growing. I
| should have left years earlier.
| RestlessAPI wrote:
| So privately held companies? """Shareholders"""" are the
| worst...
| whilenot-dev wrote:
| Time and time again job announcements are mentioning _fast-
| paced environments_ , and exactly those companies like to churn
| through an immense body count. Loyalty needs to go two ways.
| Stability seems to be a game for the older folks, whereas
| younger people prefer efficiency and risk taking.
|
| "we can't have infinite exponential growth forever", I agree,
| but _I can create infinite exponential personal growth for my
| younger self_ is acceptable as well.
| jojobas wrote:
| The don't want to be compensated reasonably, because they find
| opportunities to be compensated unreasonably.
| droptablemain wrote:
| >Like, little software shops
|
| My first dev job was at one of these. They didn't even use
| version control.
| dotancohen wrote:
| That doesn't mean that _you_ can't use version control. Or
| just introduce it to the company.
| eikenberry wrote:
| Any tips on finding these positions? I'd love to work at a shop
| like this but don't know anyone who works at one and they most
| likely do majority of their hiring through their employees'
| networks.
| ineptech wrote:
| That's the double-edged sword of capital markets, right? If you
| take investment then you need to produce big returns forever,
| and if you don't then you're in danger of being beaten in the
| short term by those who do. Small consultancies and contract
| shops might be an exception, but that's not because of the
| owner is wise so much as because those kinds of businesses
| don't scale with investment like more typical software
| companies.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| > That so many people are so focused on things "having" to be
| in a constant state of exponential growth makes me feel uneasy.
| It's like so many people can't see the forest for the trees -
| we can't have infinite exponential growth forever.
|
| From first hand experience, let me explain why I need this.
| It's because when the growth stagnates, management starts to
| attack their own reports. This is an effort to squeeze
| productivity that comes all the way from the top. Middle
| management politics governs your life. There are constant
| threats like PIPs, politics, measuring BS metrics such as lines
| of code. Your director may be getting antsy about their own
| promotion and want to fire you away to perform a reorg that
| makes themselves look good. Your coworkers will turn against
| you because management will start stack ranking. Imagine going
| into work everyday where every slack message, every email,
| every code review is all about posturing to let someone else
| take the blame. How does this work environment sound to you, as
| an engineer?
|
| Everything about that job becomes about management games. You
| will be blamed for things not in your control.
|
| I would accept stagnation as an employee if the company can
| accept stagnation. Everyone knows infinite growth is
| impossible. And if the company runs out of ideas, no amount of
| pressing IC engineers is going to fix anything. But pressing IC
| engineers is exactly what they do. And this is why I don't want
| to work at stagnating companies. I am not a kid who will
| willingly take the blame for BS management.
| throwawaaarrgh wrote:
| "Try and get a job at somewhere growing rapidly"
|
| Personally I try and get a job at a company whose mission and
| ethics I believe in so I don't feel like a hapless techno-weenie
| cog in some generic startup wheel whose driving purpose is to
| give the founders a nice exit.
|
| Sadly for my skillset, the people hiring are generally evil or
| their net effect on the world is negative. Looking into goat
| farming.
| neilv wrote:
| > _the product teams that are left after pruning should try to
| keep the most experienced employees, lay off the junior ones, and
| [...]. Experienced employees have been through this before, make
| better judgement calls under stress, and communicate better._
|
| I think that's probably true, if you are a company of people who
| are good at what they do, and if what they do is what is now
| needed.
|
| But most tech companies seem to be either bad at what they do, or
| only good at things that are no longer the needed operating mode
| (e.g., the very common mode of Potemkin Village startup
| appearance of "growth", in what's essentially an investment
| scam).
|
| In those situations, it might make sense to wring remaining value
| of the company, while cutting the highest salaries. If all you
| need is warm bodies, such as for appearances/obligations, or
| because you're going to do bad work in any case, then juniors
| tend cost less.
| lulznews wrote:
| Always Be Leaving.
| swasheck wrote:
| i've been a remote employee for about 10 years now with a variety
| of companies. at my current employer, i was hired as a remote
| employee in the post-COVID, pre-RTO limbo time.
|
| from what i understand, pre-COVID this company had a robust
| corporate culture, even at their satellite offices, and they
| mentioned i could participate in that, if i chose to do so (i
| live within 50km of a satellite office). unfortunately, the
| financial winds also shifted during this limbo time and the
| company cut a lot of what they did to develop this corporate
| cultureto accommodate the generous remote/WFH stipends that they
| gave to their employees as they transitioned from traditional
| employment arrangements.
|
| however, the (former) CEO of my company mandated RTO two days per
| week. all remote employees were re-categorized as traditional if
| they lived within 50km of an office, regardless of employment
| agreements. hr did a great job sorting through this mess and
| remote-hire employees were re-re-categorized so there was no
| mandate.
|
| unfortunately, there's been no re-investment in the corporate
| culture-building in the satellite offices (hq has gotten quite a
| few benefits for RTO restored), so those employees are left with
| no stipend, and no "corporate culture" incentivisation which was
| a hallmark by which many of them were hired. attrition has
| skyrocketed and now it's a bigger problem for the company to
| manage: employee shortages, physical plant underuse, and general
| mistrust in leadership.
|
| ultimately this all feels like the post-911 airline industry.
| they instituted baggage fees to compensate for all of their lost
| revenue and once air travel began booming again, they kept the
| fees.
|
| as i talk with other people (colloquialism, i know) i dont sense
| that everyone thinks that RTO is bad, per se, but it seems like
| many companies are looking to mandate an RTO without investing in
| restoring the previous environmental and cultural agreements that
| employees came to understand as a "fringe benefit" within their
| employment agreement.
| swyx wrote:
| i wrote the startups version of this for anyone interested
| https://www.swyx.io/startups-going-bad
| oneepic wrote:
| Here's a bizarre story about quitting. When I was at Microsoft, I
| had a manager who, despite good intentions, led through fear and
| paranoia. I had gotten yelled at for causing a production
| incident, which was not the first time, but that week I started
| having some very strange dreams involving seeing the number "69"
| in different places. Just some juvenile humor maybe, I just
| dismissed it.
|
| In the meantime, gradually this idea of quitting popped up and
| felt like a crazy, radical, awesome idea -- and I told him I was
| leaving immediately, fuck 2 weeks notice, etc. I was excited and
| terrified of him. Well, he told me the processing would still
| take a few days no matter what, and once we finalized it, my
| official last day was... June 9. 6/9
|
| Then I worked at Expedia, had a rough experience with a manager
| there, and wouldn't you know it I had the magic number appear in
| my dreams again. 3 months in, cya. Call it superstition, or
| classical conditioning, but I don't really regret it.
| TobyTheDog123 wrote:
| ...the product teams that are left after pruning should try to
| keep the most experienced employees, lay off the junior ones...
|
| I think I know the generation the author belongs to
| dougb5 wrote:
| [delayed]
| maxlin wrote:
| Saying RTO picks the fruits of the trees and leaves the husks is
| true only in the way that it keeps the best workers which can
| create more fruit, and those "fruit" that fall off weren't going
| to be around long in any case.
|
| The best, and safest practice is to only allow remote work only
| as an exception for those that produce results way above the
| average.
|
| Anyway. One sign to actually leave a company though, is the free
| soda / coffee being cut off and it turning to something the
| employees have to pay for in the kitchen / cafeteria. Believe me,
| this is often a sign that the company is losing its way.
| soneca wrote:
| > _" As an employee, it's usually best to leave in the first wave
| of cuts."_
|
| That's only valid if you can very easily find another job with
| similar salary and better work environment, right?
|
| If I am a regular IC that will have to go through a lot of
| interviews to find a new job it is best to just wait until I am
| fired (while looking for a new job without leaving the current
| one).
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