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No Safe Word posted:If it's that hard to bite your tongue for a year then yeah I guess it'd be worth passing. I've had been subject to one and whenever it came up you just say "I can't talk about it". If you're particularly snarky you can make implications that get the point across because nobody's going to sue over that unless you're doing it to the head of legal of the company you're not supposed to disparage. I think one of the main ideas is that after a year you'll be over it enough that you won't say anything. I did anyway (tactfully of course). Going back to brosmike's issue, if they have that clause upfront, that's a bad sign for them. Do you trust the people you've talked to enough to believe it won't be much of an issue?
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Jul 6, 2015 17:54
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I've accepted a job at a consulting firm. They do full team projects and staff augmentation on contracts generally shorter than a year. Any advice? I'm going to update my business casual wardrobe and make a kit that fits in a messenger bag that'll hold the poo poo I normally keep at my desk like a thermos, tea and snacks, but that's as far ahead as I've planned.
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Jul 6, 2015 19:09
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Munkeymon posted:I've accepted a job at a consulting firm. They do full team projects and staff augmentation on contracts generally shorter than a year. Any advice? I'm going to update my business casual wardrobe and make a kit that fits in a messenger bag that'll hold the poo poo I normally keep at my desk like a thermos, tea and snacks, but that's as far ahead as I've planned. Are you traveling to client sites, or working locally? If you're traveling hit up the business travel thread in BFC. Between all the complaining about how lovely the airline industry has gotten, there is very good advice about how to stay sane and not gain 50 pounds while traveling weekly on business.
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Jul 6, 2015 19:43
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kitten smoothie posted:Are you traveling to client sites, or working locally? If you're traveling hit up the business travel thread in BFC. Between all the complaining about how lovely the airline industry has gotten, there is very good advice about how to stay sane and not gain 50 pounds while traveling weekly on business. Local travel only. Probably wouldn't have taken a full time travel job. I'm losing hair fast enough without that stress.
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Jul 6, 2015 20:03
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Get comfortable with going to people in person to get stuff done, you'll find yourself needing things from different departments in client businesses (marketing, IT, design, ...) that you won't have an existing relationship with. Being able to walk up, introduce yourself and ask them to do things for you quickly in a way that makes them happy is very valuable and you'll have much better success than relying on email. That said, follow up "Just to clarify what we spoke about earlier" emails for meetings etc. are very important. Be careful about stepping on toes of internal dev teams and other departments, one grudge can hamper a lot of work and some people will see you as a threat. Don't put up with their poo poo if they're causing problems though, just raise it professionally with the appropriate people. Go out of your way to chat/have lunch/joke with client employees, especially in augmented teams. Don't work any hours you aren't getting paid for.
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Jul 6, 2015 23:55
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I'm a Rails/JS developer trying to fast-track my way into a management or architect role. I spoke to my boss (he is C-level; I work at a small agency) about my career plans and he made amenable noises but suggested that he'd be more comfortable with that if I had some certifications under my belt. He didn't give me any specific guidelines or goals for certifications to pursue other than he saw me "in a generalist role" and so I'm a bit lost in choosing something helpful, especially since web development moves so fast that from an engineering point of view, certification is meaningless. I have $1800 of company budget with a promise for more next year if I use this wisely. What certifications are worth pursuing, especially considering my mid-long term goal is a track change to a more strategic role?
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Jul 14, 2015 04:44
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Tao Jones posted:I'm a Rails/JS developer trying to fast-track my way into a management or architect role. I spoke to my boss (he is C-level; I work at a small agency) about my career plans and he made amenable noises but suggested that he'd be more comfortable with that if I had some certifications under my belt. He didn't give me any specific guidelines or goals for certifications to pursue other than he saw me "in a generalist role" and so I'm a bit lost in choosing something helpful, especially since web development moves so fast that from an engineering point of view, certification is meaningless. The PMP comes first to mind here. You can also look into other process certifications, such as ISO. Out of curiosity, why do you want to stop being a productive member of society and join us in the ranks of the process-oriented drones?
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Jul 14, 2015 04:56
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baquerd posted:The PMP comes first to mind here. You can also look into other process certifications, such as ISO. As I get older, I'm less and less interested in learning the new way to iterate over a collection in hipster.js every six months. Becoming an engineering manager seems like a good way to not have to do that while still
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Jul 14, 2015 06:48
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Tao Jones posted:As I get older, I'm less and less interested in learning the new way to iterate over a collection in hipster.js every six months. Becoming an engineering manager seems like a good way to not have to do that while still Togaf seems to be pretty big in New Zealand for jobs advertised at architect/mgmt level... Is this the case anywhere else?
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Jul 14, 2015 08:55
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About a year ago, my office hired a bad VP who totally broke our hiring process before getting fired. (Basically: he opened the floodgates to lovely recruiters, posted job reqs that didn't make any sense, failed to screen anyone properly so I'd get into a "final" interview for a senior engineer and discover that they could not write a single line of code, and then tried to get his lovely friends hired after we were worn down on interviews.) Since then, we've only hired two engineers and I'm not happy with either. They're not terrible at writing code, but they spend a lot of time complaining that our code is bad or that they need more documentation (and not fixing the code they don't like or trying to improve the documentation that's confusing them). I'd love for us to hire a few junior developers, because I imagine that would help tilt the atmosphere back in a happy direction. Also, because I feel afraid that if we hire someone senior and they're another whiner, we'll be unable to dislodge them and I'll have to quit. We phone-screened a junior developer recently who I thought seemed fun to work with, but my coworkers vetoed them for being bad at writing code. I'm worried that any junior developer is going to fail to meet their expectations. I think we needed to have started searching back in March when we could have tried to get some new college grads, but instead we hired some internal recruiter who doesn't know anything about software and has been screening people out for not having 6 years of Java (something the bad VP wrote down; we've never used Java anywhere in our code). This is mostly just a gripe-post, but am I freaking out over nothing, or am I hosed? I love all the other developers, I get to write some nice code, and the product is neat, but I feel like I'm hitting a low spot right now.
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Jul 19, 2015 15:38
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Mniot posted:This is mostly just a gripe-post, but am I freaking out over nothing, or am I hosed? I love all the other developers, I get to write some nice code, and the product is neat, but I feel like I'm hitting a low spot right now. It doesn't sound like nothing, it sounds like your company is really hosed up. Between the senior devs who would rather complain than work, the inability to hire anyone junior, and the internal recruiter who wants Java in a non-Java shop, I don't see any way you can make your problems go away, unless you quit. Is the company large enough to get moved to a project that doesn't suck?
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Jul 19, 2015 16:11
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Skandranon posted:It doesn't sound like nothing, it sounds like your company is really hosed up. Between the senior devs who would rather complain than work, the inability to hire anyone junior, and the internal recruiter who wants Java in a non-Java shop, I don't see any way you can make your problems go away, unless you quit. Is the company large enough to get moved to a project that doesn't suck? Nah, it's a little start-up. I'd like to salvage things, and I feel like I've got enough political clout to force through some changes. (Which is part of why I'd like to salvage things. What's the point of earning trust and respect and then quitting to go somewhere nobody knows me?) I just don't know what they should be. Like, if I said, "fire [bad engineer #1] or I quit," I think they'd do it; but I don't think I could demand both their heads and I don't have any way to pick up the slack from his departure. I've started cutting the internal recruiter out of the loop on hiring, but my concern is that I'm starting too late.
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Jul 19, 2015 19:10
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It sounds to me like you have a pretty good assessment of the situation. If you care so much, you might as well try forcing the changes. If you don't try, or fail, you'll end up quitting. I would also start looking for something else now, as you really must quit if you threaten to.
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Jul 19, 2015 19:26
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Mniot posted:we hired some internal recruiter who doesn't know anything about software and has been screening people out for not having 6 years of Java (something the bad VP wrote down; we've never used Java anywhere in our code). Lol
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Jul 19, 2015 23:32
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Time for an honest talk with the people who originally poured their money into the startup? If you have the clout that you can get someone fired, I'd assume they'll listen to you. The thing that could gently caress you over there is that sometimes people stick their head in the sand and might not like the bearer of bad news. But from your description nothing short of a coup could substantially extend your time there.
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Jul 20, 2015 20:14
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Mniot posted:Nah, it's a little start-up. I'd like to salvage things, and I feel like I've got enough political clout to force through some changes. (Which is part of why I'd like to salvage things. What's the point of earning trust and respect and then quitting to go somewhere nobody knows me?) I just don't know what they should be. Like, if I said, "fire [bad engineer #1] or I quit," I think they'd do it; but I don't think I could demand both their heads and I don't have any way to pick up the slack from his departure. I've started cutting the internal recruiter out of the loop on hiring, but my concern is that I'm starting too late. I can't actually tell from your posts how many people are really in this company. You say you love all the other developers, how many people is that? Do you only work with these two new engineers, or are you just not happy with those two in particular? What does everyone else think? I don't think hiring someone new is the solution here, it sounds like you already have problems and you should figure out how to fix those before adding new people. And it doesn't sound like these guys aren't capable of doing the job, it sounds like it's a mismatch in terms of expectations/work culture. Maybe someone just needs to sit with them and go over what they could be doing better? Are there any standard performance or peer reviews? Code reviews? etc. I'm also not clear whether political clout is a matter of actual authority based on your position, or just connections with people in power. The latter situation seems a bit more tenuous than the former, I'd be hesitant to use the former unless it's basically "me or him".
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Jul 21, 2015 10:02
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genki posted:I can't actually tell from your posts how many people are really in this company. You say you love all the other developers, how many people is that? Do you only work with these two new engineers, or are you just not happy with those two in particular? What does everyone else think? We've got 10 SWEs and 4 QA engineers, so that's 11 people I work pretty closely with and am happy with. The two I dislike mostly work on their own projects, largely separate from the rest of us. I think the rest of the engineers share my feelings, but much less strongly because "I can't believe we aren't using Hadoop" or "this table is too wide" all come back to me. I may also be too sensitive about my code; I wouldn't get so worked up if they used a different tone to say the same things. genki posted:Are there any standard performance or peer reviews? Code reviews? etc. Ha ha, no. We're pretty uncoordinated. I've not had good experiences at other jobs with performance reviews. They've all been, "we think you're really great. Uh, but by that we mean 'meets expectations' so here's your CoL raise." We probably should start doing them at my current office though. What's a peer review like? I like the sound of it. We do informal code reviews (just via GitHub, not an everyone sits down thing). With the other engineers, this is pretty smooth: someone spots a bug or suggests a better way or says "I don't like the syntax here how about this" and the submitter fixes up the code. Lots of push-back during these code reviews had a lot to do with the grumblers moving to their own private projects. genki posted:I'm also not clear whether political clout is a matter of actual authority based on your position, or just connections with people in power. The latter situation seems a bit more tenuous than the former, I'd be hesitant to use the former unless it's basically "me or him". What I mean is that I've been here a while, and I believe I am liked and trusted. And that management understands that if I were to rage-quit they'd be hosed (nothing special about me; we just have some hard deadlines and not enough spare developers). That's all some very tenuous clout, but I feel like I should practice being more assertive and that the risks to me aren't large. Thanks for the replies. Feels better to try to explain than just stewing.
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Jul 22, 2015 04:43
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Mniot posted:And that management understands that if I were to rage-quit they'd be hosed (nothing special about me; we just have some hard deadlines and not enough spare developers). I'm not saying this isn't the case but pretty much everyone says this and it's rarely true
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Jul 22, 2015 05:32
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down with slavery posted:I'm not saying this isn't the case but pretty much everyone says this and it's rarely true In addition to this, unless they're paying you accordingly, then it probably doesn't mean much to them.
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Jul 22, 2015 16:33
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Is anybody here perchance good/successful at implementing Domain Driven Design?
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Jul 22, 2015 22:30
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Mniot posted:What I mean is that I've been here a while, and I believe I am liked and trusted. And that management understands that if I were to rage-quit they'd be hosed (nothing special about me; we just have some hard deadlines and not enough spare developers). That's all some very tenuous clout, but I feel like I should practice being more assertive and that the risks to me aren't large. If this is true you should find another job and quit, if they'd be hosed they'd offer you a huge raise for sure. If not, hey, you get another job. Yay!
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Jul 22, 2015 22:55
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Stats show that 80% of people who accept a counter-offer will quit within a year anyway. The money might be better, but it rarely fixes the systemic issues that caused the person to want to leave in the first place.
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Jul 23, 2015 00:30
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True, but he should get a job offer first. Then he has as much firepower as possible when he confronts the owners. If they acquiesce sufficiently, he can turn the offer down, and if they do not, he can quit on the spot. However, it will still be tricky to determine if they will follow through on such promises.
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Jul 23, 2015 00:32
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down with slavery posted:I'm not saying this isn't the case but pretty much everyone says this and it's rarely true You're right. "hosed" is an overstatement. More realistic is "if any developers left right now, the product launch would be disappointing." return0 posted:If this is true you should find another job and quit, if they'd be hosed they'd offer you a huge raise for sure. If not, hey, you get another job. Yay! Mmmaybe. I think if we follow this thought far enough then anyone doing sysadmin work should make infinity money (maybe true?) because as soon as they've got all the system keys they ransom them. It also follows that all employees should engage in collective bargaining. Having all your developers quit at once would wreck you, so we'd all get sweet raises. It's really "we should go communist", right? Yeah, I'm on board with this plan.
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Jul 23, 2015 03:50
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Mniot posted:Mmmaybe. I think if we follow this thought far enough then anyone doing sysadmin work should make infinity money (maybe true?) because as soon as they've got all the system keys they ransom them. Well for one, unions for software devs actually isn't a bad idea. Secondly, ransoming systems keys is illegal, so good luck with that.
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Jul 23, 2015 03:55
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down with slavery posted:Well for one, unions for software devs actually isn't a bad idea. The real trick there is convincing developers to not think of themselves as special super rockstar ninjas.
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Jul 23, 2015 04:29
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minato posted:Stats show that 80% of people who accept a counter-offer will quit within a year anyway. The money might be better, but it rarely fixes the systemic issues that caused the person to want to leave in the first place. That aside, this assumes that there are systemic issues that make the employee want to leave, of course. There are lots of cases where a competent, talented person is making just under what they need to be making to support their life goals (buy a house, save a budgeted $X a month for kids' college, etc.) and it's the employer's job to understand which employee needs they aren't currently meeting before preparing a counter-offer.
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Jul 23, 2015 04:57
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Mniot posted:We've got 10 SWEs and 4 QA engineers, so that's 11 people I work pretty closely with and am happy with. The two I dislike mostly work on their own projects, largely separate from the rest of us. I think the rest of the engineers share my feelings, but much less strongly because "I can't believe we aren't using Hadoop" or "this table is too wide" all come back to me. I may also be too sensitive about my code; I wouldn't get so worked up if they used a different tone to say the same things. I'd also say definitely be careful about 'code ownership', it's tough to get away from but it'll be a useful skill in the future. Generally speaking all of the code you write will be something you hate months/years later anyhow, so someone else bringing it up shouldn't be a big deal. Most of the time, I find that whatever someone complains about is something I didn't like either, and just had to deal with due to circumstances at the time. Or alternatively, sometimes it's purely subjective, in which case you just need to let it go... Mniot posted:What's a peer review like? I like the sound of it. From what you said about the github reviews, it sounds like those two guys didn't like the way you guys ran things and basically took their ball and went home? I think if you guys and/or management can't find a way to really include those guys with the rest of the group, it's just going to grow into a bigger and bigger problem as you continue on... not really working as a team.
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Jul 23, 2015 05:53
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Skandranon posted:The real trick there is convincing developers to not think of themselves as special super rockstar ninjas. Except those do exist, the effect of which is particularly pronounced in companies that are not typically known for hiring top talent. There are a lot of just "OK" developers out there that can fill out teams and do competent work, but don't have any particular brilliance of design, rapidity of implementation, or knack for optimization. If anything, these people are typically under-compensated for the value they provide, and the presence of a union would drive them away. Unless of course you have a fair and objective method of measuring productivity and contributions?
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Jul 23, 2015 06:03
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baquerd posted:Except those do exist, the effect of which is particularly pronounced in companies that are not typically known for hiring top talent. There are a lot of just "OK" developers out there that can fill out teams and do competent work, but don't have any particular brilliance of design, rapidity of implementation, or knack for optimization. If anything, these people are typically under-compensated for the value they provide, and the presence of a union would drive them away.
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Jul 23, 2015 13:26
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baquerd posted:Except those do exist, the effect of which is particularly pronounced in companies that are not typically known for hiring top talent. There are a lot of just "OK" developers out there that can fill out teams and do competent work, but don't have any particular brilliance of design, rapidity of implementation, or knack for optimization. If anything, these people are typically under-compensated for the value they provide, and the presence of a union would drive them away. I was only being half serious. The fact that the gulf between OK and Good developers is so vast is another huge impediment. Vulture Culture posted:These are not the inborn traits of a Programmer God, and while these skills can be mastered in an individual setting, they are best learned and fostered through team structures and dynamics that foster growth and personal development. Show me a team with a 10X Developer on it and I'll show you a broken team that doesn't know how to mentor or delegate. It's not that simple. A lot of people are in the field for the wrong reasons, and everyone (but them, it seems) suffers because of it.
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Jul 23, 2015 15:18
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Skandranon posted:I was only being half serious. The fact that the gulf between OK and Good developers is so vast is another huge impediment. This gulf doesn't exist
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Jul 23, 2015 16:04
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Skandranon posted:It's not that simple. A lot of people are in the field for the wrong reasons, and everyone (but them, it seems) suffers because of it.
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Jul 23, 2015 16:23
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Those guys don't bother me so much as the people who are really, really horrible developers but don't realize their poo poo stinks. Typically this is combined with a religious love of particular stacks like PHP.
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Jul 23, 2015 16:34
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wwb posted:Those guys don't bother me so much as the people who are really, really horrible developers but don't realize their poo poo stinks. Typically this is combined with a religious love of particular stacks like PHP. Uhh I don't know about the rest of you guys, but this is pretty much how I've always felt about myself 2 years ago. Been doing this for over a decade and it hasn't changed. I don't know many people who would say they've been writing consistent quality code for the past decade by today's standards.
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Jul 23, 2015 17:19
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There is also a need to distinguish between people who understand data structures very well, and those who can write good code.
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Jul 23, 2015 19:39
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down with slavery posted:This gulf doesn't exist Besides skill, I think there are spectrums of caring about professionalism, prioritizing code quality, and critical thinking – not exhaustive, of course. I dealt with someone once who I rated very low on professionalism, prioritizing code quality, and critical thinking, but produced code quickly and had raw skills better than what I initially evaluated them at. ...but on the other hand, while they wrote code faster, made more visible progress, and could write almost anything they were asked to, they never did so without fundamentally destabilizing either the entire codebase or the entire subproject they were working on, so they were well-suited for producing demos but nothing they produced was ever close to production-quality. (Aside: I found myself at one point using timing of vacations – to be clear, not my vacation time – to write and land a major rewrite which was later praised for its dramatically improved performance and stability in a project...against their vehement opposition while they were in the office. This felt pretty dirty, and I've heard a similar situation instead caused an internal meltdown in another company.) Another person I worked with was really high on critical thinking, and freely adjusted and traded professionalism for code quality to meet a deadline. Another hit professionalism/quality/critical thinking but traded mental health for it in the process. Good luck evaluating any of this on a linear scale. Vulture Culture posted:These are not the inborn traits of a Programmer God, and while these skills can be mastered in an individual setting, they are best learned and fostered through team structures and dynamics that foster growth and personal development. Show me a team with a 10X Developer on it and I'll show you a broken team that doesn't know how to mentor or delegate. Sorry to relay anecdotes again, but I once found myself at ~15X in a project going by line count (after excluding all generated code and data files), and it was not really the result of realized or unrealized ability, but unhealthy human dynamics that were very poorly handled by everyone involved. That engineer could have been ridiculously useful in a different role but was instead grossly misplaced to their and that company's detriment. If everyone is a 1X to someone's 10X, then perhaps there's a systematic problem making a lot of people 1/10X. ProSlayer posted:There is also a need to distinguish between people who understand data structures very well, and those who can write good code. Also: those able to mentally model simple threading issues in their head. Doctor w-rw-rw- fucked around with this message at 20:21 on Jul 23, 2015 |
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Jul 23, 2015 19:52
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Doctor w-rw-rw- posted:There is a class of developer (IMO) which can figure out how to do almost anything, but doesn't necessarily do it well. It's definitely a spectrum. My own personal tastes for code lie in the direction of putting delivery of value to the customer first and foremost, but that doesn't mean I don't care about code quality. That is, there is also a class of developers that cares deeply about having the most beautiful flower of a codebase but can't really do anything in a timely fashion.
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Jul 23, 2015 21:35
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While it is a complicated and multidimensional measurement, it's not a zero sum game. Some people working as programmers are just poo poo at all the above metrics mentioned.
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Jul 23, 2015 21:47
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Skandranon posted:While it is a complicated and multidimensional measurement, it's not a zero sum game. Some people working as programmers are just poo poo at all the above metrics mentioned. To be fair, some businesses only need people who can do it at a bare minimum level (and get paid accordingly).
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Jul 23, 2015 23:11
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