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AskYourself posted:So the invisible hand then, I believe as much as in the trickle down economics. The games industry gets away with it but the software industry does not nearly as much. Some places can get away with it briefly but a terrible company to work for, like was said, word gets around. The games industry gets away with it because their employees are ultimately more disposable. It's a cool job that you want to tell your friends about so hordes of people are desperately trying to get in. A lot of game companies bank on that by paying lower wages when compared to other software domains and having worse employment practices. EA in particular became infamous for putting teams on permanent crunch time over multiple projects. We're talking a minimum of 60 hours a week and no vacation allowed for over a year. Like was said though that only matters if people can easily find a new job. That's true of programmers and less so for most other tech professionals but basically everybody else is getting screwed right now for exactly the reason that they can't easily find other work.
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Feb 25, 2017 19:02
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The unemployment rate is like 5%, yes that omits losers that dropped out of the workforce and take opiates/watch TV all day. People can definitely find other jobs, they're probably worse jobs.
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Feb 25, 2017 19:19
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sarehu posted:The unemployment rate is like 5%, yes that omits losers that dropped out of the workforce and take opiates/watch TV all day. People can definitely find other jobs, they're probably worse jobs. The labor participation rate is what to look at. Hordes of people are also underemployed and the jobs being created are frequently minimum wage, part time, no/dismal benefits jobs. Tech professionals don't suffer in this situations because, well, try to do anything at all without computers being involved somehow.
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Feb 25, 2017 19:27
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How can you disagree with me without contradicting anything I said? An actual disagreement would be: there are other jobs for these people and EA is taking advantage of labor stickiness.
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Feb 25, 2017 19:52
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sarehu posted:How can you disagree with me without contradicting anything I said? I was pointing out that quoting the unemployment rate and nothing else is stupid. Underemployment is rampant and the people dying of opiates while watching TV all day are probably discouraged workers who are not technically unemployed but don't have jobs. Yeah unemployment is 5% right now but it absolutely doesn't tell the whole story and also doesn't really apply to tech professionals. The unemployment rate among people with CS degrees is like 1% or 2% and there are a hell of a lot of programming positions unfilled. Game development is a different beast entirely because so many people are desperately trying to get out of not game development into game development. In the case of EA you have people for whom "stay in game industry" is more important than "not work 60 hours a week for less than I should be making." Some people just really, really, really want to make games and EA abuses that.
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Feb 25, 2017 20:15
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ToxicSlurpee posted:The games industry gets away with it but the software industry does not nearly as much. Some places can get away with it briefly but a terrible company to work for, like was said, word gets around. I'll never forget this classic rant from the spouse of an EA coder. I assume it's gotten better since then, but it's never been my industry so I really don't know. http://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html
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Feb 25, 2017 22:01
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http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/05/business/stinging-office-memo-boomerangs-chief-executive-criticized-after-upbraiding.html Also the famous Cerner memo that tanked their stock 22%, when the CEO said he wanted to see the parking lot full at 7:30 AM - 6:30 PM, and wanted it half full on Saturdays. I knew a couple people who worked for Cerner, around the time of that memo. They said that 40 hours/week would, at best, get you subpar annual reviews. 50/week was necessary to tread water, and the people who were actually getting promoted were pulling 60+. From Glassdoor, it sounds like the place hasn't changed a lot in that regard 15 years down the line.
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Feb 26, 2017 00:40
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ToxicSlurpee posted:I was pointing out that quoting the unemployment rate and nothing else is stupid. Underemployment is rampant and the people dying of opiates while watching TV all day are probably discouraged workers who are not technically unemployed but don't have jobs. They're actually people who are perfectly capable of working but don't. Likewise people at EA could get jobs elsewhere -- which suck more. At this point in time everybody knows about how EA is, it isn't a bait and switch. EA offers approximately the best deal they can get. It's actually a nice job as far as jobs go, being some game art slave.
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Feb 26, 2017 01:48
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My boss is pretty bad. He has a key role in speccing this integration project I'm working on (bringing our system into the company that bought us) and his slow pace is blocking me and the other three developers on my side. There are two managers from the parent company also involved and they see it but they also have many other responsibilities. I don't know what to do. I've asked him questions that he just has ignored. The other developers and I put together a spreadsheet of outstanding questions and there are zero answers in a week, except for management at our parent company giving "I think we'll do it like this/need to do this but I'm not sure we'll have to wait for Big Boss". How do I handle this without completely undermining him? Like these aren't little decisions, I'm talking about major poo poo that is being totally blocked. We're all a bit apprehensive to say anything because he's our direct manager.
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Feb 27, 2017 17:23
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Good Will Hrunting posted:How do I handle this without completely undermining him? Like these aren't little decisions, I'm talking about major poo poo that is being totally blocked. We're all a bit apprehensive to say anything because he's our direct manager. I think you are already doing as much as is possible, I don't see any risk free way to move forward. Either you just start making the decisions yourself, or undermine your boss and go over his head, or some combination of both.
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Feb 27, 2017 17:45
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Good Will Hrunting posted:My boss is pretty bad. He has a key role in speccing this integration project I'm working on (bringing our system into the company that bought us) and his slow pace is blocking me and the other three developers on my side. There are two managers from the parent company also involved and they see it but they also have many other responsibilities. I don't know what to do. I've asked him questions that he just has ignored. The other developers and I put together a spreadsheet of outstanding questions and there are zero answers in a week, except for management at our parent company giving "I think we'll do it like this/need to do this but I'm not sure we'll have to wait for Big Boss". Have you talk to him about this yet? That's always step one. Step two is ask if you can take tasks off his plate, so he can focus on bigger issue items. I ask my bosses that all the time, phrased just like that, when I see things I'd like to own. If there's anyone who has good rapport with him, they should be the one to do it. I don't know what step three should be. If you are completely blocked and are spinning your wheels, can you quickly build a demo?
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Feb 27, 2017 18:06
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lifg posted:I don't know what step three should be. Feet up and play WoW, I think, unless he fancies a quiet word with someone more senior with a stake in the project.
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Feb 27, 2017 20:21
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Had a sync meeting with the team, it was a 90-minute nightmarish disaster with lots of arguing. Hell yah LOVE working in tech. Trip report later but tldr: my boss is a complete joke, has taken on way too much, shoos us away and says "these aren't really blockers".
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Feb 27, 2017 21:00
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Good Will Hrunting posted:Trip report later but tldr: my boss is a complete joke, has taken on way too much, shoos us away and says "these aren't really blockers". 
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Feb 27, 2017 21:14
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I don't even feel like typing it ALL out, actually, cause it's so exhausting. It's clear that there is a gigantic disconnect between our parent company's management style and my boss. Typical big swinging dick stuff, stubborn engineers, know it all attitudes, really toxic and definitely cannot last. The plus side is myself and the 3 other engineers who will handle the day to day are cool, we'll just get next to no support until one of the guys from the parent company switches over. Whether this will be good remains to be seen as the guy switching is the most vocally opposed to my boss! Just trying to learn as much as I can and get done what I can get done, but it's going to get to a point where we're in the middle of a power struggle.
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Feb 27, 2017 21:22
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It's kind of ironic you managed to land such an awful job after being so selective.
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Feb 28, 2017 02:13
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I wasn't really "selective". I turned down one place that could have been worse than this + less pay + longer commute + more on call and got rejected from a handful of places. I wouldn't say this job is awful, but it's definitely not looking like I'll have much in terms of mentorship or even hands-on support from my manager at all. Unless they can him or he gets taken off my project, which would be fuckin wonderful.
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Feb 28, 2017 02:42
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Good Will Hrunting posted:I wasn't really "selective". I turned down one place that could have been worse than this + less pay + longer commute + more on call and got rejected from a handful of places. I wouldn't say this job is awful, but it's definitely not looking like I'll have much in terms of mentorship or even hands-on support from my manager at all. Unless they can him or he gets taken off my project, which would be fuckin wonderful. Well, if it's turning into such a shitshow, why not go out in a blaze of glory? Start concocting your Machiavellian plots to make him look bad and get him fired/kicked off the project. Worst case scenario, it backfires and you have to look for a new job, which is where I think you almost are now.
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Feb 28, 2017 03:09
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Honestly if I just spoke with upper management at our parent company I think they'd be unhappy with him. It's not like the other engineers and project managers don't see it. He's supposed to be taking care of schema design for some data stores we're using and was supposed to prep a document surrounding that, database choice, streaming framework choice, and his arguments for them about 3 weeks ago. He finished it a week late and it turned out to be a pathetic 1 page Google doc with a few lovely shapes and very little that management on the other side tore apart. We had a sync meeting to discuss it that turned into him saying exactly what was in the document and doing nothing in terms of speccing or furthering the design. He then went away 2 days to a company offsite and was unreachable, but upon returning didn't come to the office for two days and ignored my Slack questions regarding key design progress, what I could do, and how we were supposed to be handling/implementing something in the spec I didn't understand fully. I know I've only been there a month but these things are preventing me from, for the most part, getting up to speed enough to do my job.
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Feb 28, 2017 03:28
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I see two likely scenarios here. First is that your manager is incompetent, and is stalling as long as possible to avoid revealing that fact. Second is that your manager is normally competent, but for whatever reason these are abnormal times. I had a coworker at one job that was perfectly fine until they got overstressed and then suffered from a major case of burnout / mental breakdown. And you know, that sucks, it happens to the best of us sometimes, but it was really problematic because they refused to let go of "their" projects and let other people take them over. At that point you're actively preventing the team from moving forward. Either way I doubt you're going to get much traction by talking to your manager directly. You need to get a third party involved, preferably one that the manager respects.
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Feb 28, 2017 04:13
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Your manager is currently looking for another job and he's trying to stubbornly torpedo this project's success as a last-minute "I told you so" to the one person who's still listening to him.
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Feb 28, 2017 04:31
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Good Will Hrunting posted:Honestly if I just spoke with upper management at our parent company I think they'd be unhappy with him. You don't owe him his job. Just communicate truthfully. If he gets fired, it's for being a drat lovely boss.
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Feb 28, 2017 07:06
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What's the ratio of senior like him to junior like you ? If it's more than 1 senior for 2 junior, well, let me ask, are there other senior like him or is he the only senior, upon which all that work fall upon ?
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Feb 28, 2017 15:27
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Good Will Hrunting posted:Honestly if I just spoke with upper management at our parent company I think they'd be unhappy with him. It's not like the other engineers and project managers don't see it. He's supposed to be taking care of schema design for some data stores we're using and was supposed to prep a document surrounding that, database choice, streaming framework choice, and his arguments for them about 3 weeks ago. He finished it a week late and it turned out to be a pathetic 1 page Google doc with a few lovely shapes and very little that management on the other side tore apart. We had a sync meeting to discuss it that turned into him saying exactly what was in the document and doing nothing in terms of speccing or furthering the design. He then went away 2 days to a company offsite and was unreachable, but upon returning didn't come to the office for two days and ignored my Slack questions regarding key design progress, what I could do, and how we were supposed to be handling/implementing something in the spec I didn't understand fully. When you join a company in a non-transformative role and see that everything is hosed, get out. No one cares what you have to say about how it's hosed, because they A) probably already know and B) don't want to or can't change it for some inscrutable reasons. You have a great opportunity to be paid nicely to job hunt. Take advantage of it.
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Feb 28, 2017 15:32
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AskYourself posted:What's the ratio of senior like him to junior like you ? If it's more than 1 senior for 2 junior, well, let me ask, are there other senior like him or is he the only senior, upon which all that work fall upon ? He's VP of Engineering but is responsible for a certain chunk of the spec work on this project because he integrates with the product team at "my" company. By "my" company I mean the acquired startup and there are three engineers from that company here (myself with 3 years exp and two seniors with 10+, granted were all new to this domain except the managers). Also there's an "architect" and there's a "team manager" both from the parent company, whose involvement has been limited so far but might ramp up soon it seems. Thanks for the advice and words folks, this thread keeps me sane. One other question: maybe I'm looking at the wrong industries? I've done fintech, ad tech startup, and now ad tech mid-size and they've all been nightmarish in some ways (plenty of good aspects just very dysfunctional overall).
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Feb 28, 2017 15:46
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Good Will Hrunting posted:He's VP of Engineering but is responsible for a certain chunk of the spec work on this project because he integrates with the product team at "my" company. By "my" company I mean the acquired startup and there are three engineers from that company here (myself with 3 years exp and two seniors with 10+, granted were all new to this domain except the managers). Also there's an "architect" and there's a "team manager" both from the parent company, whose involvement has been limited so far but might ramp up soon it seems. It's all nightmarish in some way. Just have to pick which way you're fine with it being nightmarish. All companies are dysfunctional.
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Feb 28, 2017 15:52
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Good Will Hrunting posted:He's VP of Engineering but is responsible for a certain chunk of the spec work on this project because he integrates with the product team at "my" company. By "my" company I mean the acquired startup and there are three engineers from that company here (myself with 3 years exp and two seniors with 10+, granted were all new to this domain except the managers). Also there's an "architect" and there's a "team manager" both from the parent company, whose involvement has been limited so far but might ramp up soon it seems. What are the senior guys doing about the situation? You're the new guy you shouldn't be expected to fix the world
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Feb 28, 2017 15:56
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leper khan posted:It's all nightmarish in some way. Just have to pick which way you're fine with it being nightmarish. Sigh... yeah
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Feb 28, 2017 17:41
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Good Will Hrunting posted:One other question: maybe I'm looking at the wrong industries? I've done fintech, ad tech startup, and now ad tech mid-size and they've all been nightmarish in some ways (plenty of good aspects just very dysfunctional overall). Maybe I'm just cynical but those are two industries almost exclusively focused on money. Maybe a company more focused on people might have a better chance of not being a shithole? Even if the goal is "make people's lives better so we can charge them for it". To that end, public/charity sector can often foster good working environments because there's even less Damoclean profit to concern yourself with.
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Feb 28, 2017 17:49
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leper khan posted:It's all nightmarish in some way. Just have to pick which way you're fine with it being nightmarish. Kind of but not really — adtech and fintech are a special breed of dysfunctional IMO.
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Feb 28, 2017 18:00
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Doctor w-rw-rw- posted:Kind of but not really — adtech and fintech are a special breed of dysfunctional IMO. I've worked in startups, games, and research. Is there a competition for dysfunctionality?
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Feb 28, 2017 18:16
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Arachnamus posted:To that end, public/charity sector can often foster good working environments because there's even less Damoclean profit to concern yourself with. Having worked in a university setting (specifically in biotech), the environment was great so long as you weren't either a) a grad student, or b) applying for grants. If you were, then your life was pretty unpleasant. Government funding has been going downhill for awhile, leaving more labs to scrabble over less money. And grad students are always massively overworked and underpaid.
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Feb 28, 2017 18:19
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From what I've heard of charities or generic non-profit (not NFL non-profit), budgets and resources are tight so while maybe more human in their nature, they usually make up for lack of funding by extracting as much as they can from their resources.
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Feb 28, 2017 18:39
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What do you even say when you interview for new jobs after a month? Not saying I'm going to, not saying I'm not going to. Maybe complain that I can't work in an open office and want remote work? Not entirely untrue, open offices are cancer mostly. Good Will Hrunting fucked around with this message at 18:57 on Feb 28, 2017 |
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Feb 28, 2017 18:52
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Jose Valasquez posted:What are the senior guys doing about the situation? You're the new guy you shouldn't be expected to fix the world They're.. much in the same boat. We're asking a lot of questions from the "managers" and getting different answers from different people or vague answers, then being asked in the stand up "so what are you working on?". We say "this but blocked by x, y, z" and they say "Lets sync up on that" or "I'll add to the spec" and never do, and we just keep trying to spec things with very little business context or very little idea of what the gently caress the architect is rambling about in his spec diagrams (he's a PhD and they're all obnoxiously verbose).
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Feb 28, 2017 19:09
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Enterprise start-ups in unregulated industries seem to be the most dysfunctional despite having the fewest barriers in regulations, business model discovery, and funding. The pattern is that non-tech people doing anything with tech while trying to drive technical decisions themselves or only being able to yield to technical bullshitters in their network tends to result in a lot of just plain bad tech and a toxic atmosphere from the bad planning that results.
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Feb 28, 2017 19:11
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Having worked in a university setting (specifically in biotech), the environment was great so long as you weren't either a) a grad student, or b) applying for grants. If you were, then your life was pretty unpleasant. Government funding has been going downhill for awhile, leaving more labs to scrabble over less money. And grad students are always massively overworked and underpaid. Ain't nowhere that's perfect. Having worked in central government it can be a shitstorm of politics both literal and office, but it's possible to find a good team in a good organisation if you try.
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Feb 28, 2017 19:46
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Oldie Programming: Is there a competition for dysfunctionality?
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Feb 28, 2017 20:02
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Good Will Hrunting posted:What do you even say when you interview for new jobs after a month? Not saying I'm going to, not saying I'm not going to. "The position was substantially different than originally presented" "It was not a good fit" Everyone knows this is code for "they were fuckin out their gourds". This only reflects poorly on you if you have a shitton of short term jobs. If you don't have a history of leaving jobs after a month, no one cares you once accepted an offer with some crazy assholes and then realizing your mistake GTFO.
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Feb 28, 2017 20:33
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VOTE YES ON 69 posted:"The position was substantially different than originally presented" "It was not a good fit" The way I've heard this presented is that everyone gets 1-2 of these "get out of jail free" cards in their career. If you leave after a month, after your next job you don't even have to bother listing this one on your resume. A gap of a month isn't really that much.
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