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Well, thanks for that insight everyone. It was interesting to hear about others' experiences. I have my 90-day performance review in 2.5 weeks. There are some opportunities for me to give feedback on what I feel is holding me back in terms of ramping up, but I'm not really sure how to clarify that it's mostly product issues (not having work to do, the work we do have is vaguely specced one-liner JIRA stuff lacking any sort of business requirements/use cases) and poor management that fails to notice problems and lashes out when you don't read their mind. I don't feel the situation is at all rectifiable and is indicative of a problem with the engineering culture/product culture of the company as a whole. (For example, the literal exact questions I'm asking about benchmarking something were asked 6 months ago.
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May 24, 2017 18:03
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Hughlander posted:Very very high. First I've heard of game development being good. Good Will Hrunting posted:Well, thanks for that insight everyone. It was interesting to hear about others' experiences. Im sure there's good reasons to have 90 day performance reviews and all, but I've only had poor experiences with them. I'd typically just see my colleagues and I getting the whip cracked or something, and it always came off as a high-pressure management tactic. Pollyanna fucked around with this message at 18:08 on May 24, 2017 |
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May 24, 2017 18:05
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Pollyanna posted:First I've heard of game development being good. A central theme of my posts is that people shouldn't put up with lovely places because there are plenty of non-lovely places out there. I haven't worked more than a 40 hour week in almost 2 years and that was just for maybe 2 weeks when a bunch of things were landing at the same time. In turn I've travelled the world, own two houses in a hot housing market and am raising a family while still having hobbies that eat up a lot of time. As a manager I've dropped places that emphasized repeatedly 'How would you manage the brilliant rear end in a top hat' type questions, because it's not worth the stress of dealing with an environment like that.
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May 24, 2017 18:11
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Good Will Hrunting posted:Industry vets: what % of your jobs (or % of your time spent working, as I realize jobs can obviously change) would you say was "good"? Alright, guess I'll chime in. I've been in the industry for about 20 years. Job 0, 1 year - part-time work at uni for a startup doing academic virtual conferencing stuff, back in about 1997. Somehow, this company managed to go bust right in the middle of the .com boom. It was alright I guess? Mostly it was handy because a guy from here gave a rec at the next place I worked so it got me in the door of the industry. Job 1, 1.5 years - a company that had a proprietary file format and viewer for academic documents. I rate this one a 'meh'. Job 2, 1.5 years - Trolltech, the guys who make Qt. Definitely would rate this as good. Only left because I was moving to the US. Job 3, 1 year ish? - a company that made software for print imposition and suchlike. Bad, if only because they kinda stopped paying on time then paying at all, sooo I left and went to - Job 4, precisely 365 days. An IT/management consultancy place. They paid relo but on condition I pay it back if I left before a year. Horrible. Ridiculous hours, toxic environment. Job 5, 6 years-ish, automative embedded stuff. Good. Nice people to work with, fun work, buuuut I wanted to move back to the UK, so - Job 6, 6 months - another consultancy, you'd think I'd learned my lesson. Absolute poo poo. Stressful, psycho upper management, and they tried to force me into taking a 'voluntary paycut' by claiming I'd 'failed my probation' at the end of 6 months (a probationary period is standard in the UK, during it you can be dropped with more or less zero notice). I jetted the gently caress out of there after that, into - Job 7, coming up on 5 years - an antivirus company. Mostly good. Some management bullshit, but good people to work with, work is alright even if I do spend way more time than I would like dealing with frigging ancient commercial Unix stuff. There's kinda a theme here, if you like working somewhere, you're going to keep working there, if you don't, you're gonna look to escape. About 2.5 years of my working life has been actively, regularly unfun.
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May 24, 2017 18:43
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Good Will Hrunting posted:Industry vets: what % of your jobs (or % of your time spent working, as I realize jobs can obviously change) would you say was "good"? I don't think myself as a veteran, but what the hell. Year 0 to 2: Small startup as in, I was the only worker in team of 3, it was cool because the problem was very novel, the downside was the pay was poo poo and I was flying by the seat of my pants for all the time I was there, overall i'd say it was bad, but not that much. Also, the company fell apart from a lack of resources before they launched so welp. Year 2 to 6-ish: Also a small startup, with three other people. This one was pretty good for the first 3 years, where me and my boss worked on building a project from scratch, but as the years went on, the focus shifted to maintenance and building some satellite projects to that bigger one, and my job has become very boring and stale. Also I noticed that my pay really has been lackluster. Overall I'd still say it was a really good experience, because I eventually touched almost everything from coding to deploying the application, and I really liked it.
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May 24, 2017 18:49
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New Yorp New Yorp posted:Then you work for a company that is bad at mentoring junior-to-mid-level folks. They should be able to carve of small slices of the non-trivial problem to farm out to the mid-level folks, then give it a thorough code review and feedback. And to be honest, this was one of the hardest parts of getting to the level where I am today: letting go of the code base and allowing the junior-to-mids take over and learn from it and give guidance without interfering too much. For some really interesting things, I'll do a bit of the work. But I'll turn the rest over to them to own. It frees me up to research new technology for what might be next on our roadmap, help write business cases for product improvement and do things that I've wanted to do for years that my company has always neglected.
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May 24, 2017 18:59
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Iverron fucked around with this message at 20:12 on Aug 10, 2023 |
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May 24, 2017 19:23
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Good Will Hrunting posted:Industry vets: what % of your jobs (or % of your time spent working, as I realize jobs can obviously change) would you say was "good"? Ignoring internships in high school + short-term co-ops in college: 2yrs: Small (non-tech) company, total shitshow, boss was incredible rear end in a top hat + idiot (like literally screamed and punched walls), but he loved me, and I was smarter than him, so it was a fine time for me at least  2yrs: Same company, got acquired by actual-tech company, boss fired, kept me as Jr. developer (I was full time in college at this point). Excellent experience, learned a ton, eventually got 'laid off' for being a slacker (I deserved it: see full-time student + full time MMORPG addict). 1.5yrs: real job at defense contractor, it was insanely bad, I was looking for a job at like 6 months in 2yrs: startup, employee #<10, it was meh. The code was insane, but I got to rewrite it all, made it way better. Piloted some projects. Way underpaid and promised raises never showed up, repeatedly. Mostly good, bad mgmt though. <1yr: another startup employee #<10, CTO was incredibly great. Then CTO quit, and I started looking (company eventually, to the surprise of no one, ran out of money). Well run for what it was, and great people, just wasn't going anywhere. Good experience overall. 4yrs: 100% remote startup employee ~#10. Started great, eventually filled up with fart huffing, velocity slowed to zero. Everything became like a 6 month corporate initiative of introspection and gathering feelings and reinventing how organizations work. Engineering way underresourced. Hired PR people + HR people instead. Tech continued to rot, growth slowed, lol. Company got worse, I got out. 1yr+counting: 100% remote startup employee #<10, way more interesting tech, extremely smart people, CTO best boss I've had. Great so far. Deal with a lot of enterprise clients which kind of makes me want to die a little inside, but in a consulting role so I get to boss them around. So pretty much everything is good until it gets bad, except for defense contractors. They're incredibly stupid places.
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May 24, 2017 19:25
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I've only had 3 jobs, but I spent 17 years at one of them. While I moved around internally, it wasn't until I left the company that I could view it from the outside and see how it ranked compared to other places. So lesson learned: move every few years, even if you're in a comfort zone.
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May 25, 2017 02:34
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Year 1-5: medium-smallish public company. Learned a lot but not efficiently, and being in smaller market region (and not giving a gently caress) was not plugged into the ~tech community~. Tech was old but I didn't know better, managers were good, life was easy and good, but low stakes. Year 5.5-6: gently caress it I'm going to Europe Year 6-9 [lol]: Big finance tech company in big market region. My colleague said: "Like working at the Death Star." Lots of capable coworkers, but even more lousy ones. Realized I have been stunting my growth by not giving a gently caress for so long and am behind on tech and engineering practices and interview whiteboard bullshit. I lucked out because my team was a greenfield oasis project in the middle of a fintech tarpit tech stack. Laid back manager was an asset at first, but as I got more experience I got turned onto the politics and massive levels of horseshit inflicted by middle managers who don't give a gently caress at a company that will never fire them or change. Mix of good and bad. Learned a ton. Year 9-10: Enchanted Forest Unicorn tech company. There are still politics and bullshit to a degree (such is life) but it's more managable and the overall caliber of contributors and managers is way higher. There are no stormtroopers like at the Deathstar. I like it, but we lost (quitters, no one perished to my knowledge) our tech lead, manager, and other most senior engineer just a few months after I joined, which has been taxing. I'll stick around for a few years until I say gently caress it I'm going to <place far away> for 6 months again. I am a cynical optimist, and I would say overall it has been 90-10% good to bad. If I were to break down the 90% further, and I were, I would say half that was "just a job" not great but nothing to complain about either. As my dad loves to say, "that's why they call it 'work'" ahh shutup dad
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May 25, 2017 03:51
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My career path is insane and not recommended for anyone, so here's my words of warning. Embedded dev in defense, enterprise start-ups, starting my own bad "companies" (and quickly abandoning them thankfully), consultancies for building cloud IaaS and PaaS systems, cloud platforms in the defense IC, a few straightforward full stack w/ Java roles, and cloud operations. In hindsight, I should have just gone to el Goog in 2005 before I slowly lobotomized myself with mostly bad companies but at least good people to have as coworkers.VOTE YES ON 69 posted:So pretty much everything is good until it gets bad, except for defense contractors. They're incredibly stupid places.
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May 25, 2017 14:22
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Job 1: 2 months. Incubator/commission workshop of some sort. I begged around at startups near where my parents lived until one of them said they'd take me on as a "Developer Apprentice". I did design work and markup for a client's website. HTML, CSS, and basically nothing else. They let me go on my birthday due to "financial concerns". They folded a month later. Job 2: 10 months. Marketing analytics startup. After attending an intensive web development course at a boot camp, I got hired as a junior dev working on their main Rails+Angular app. The Rails work was alright, but I hated Angular and I got bored very quickly. The startup also did a lot of interesting big data/back-end work, but my requests to transition onto something that I had better chances of building a career off of were rebuffed. I also chafed with my direct manager, as I was constantly being alternately told that I needed to "be more assertive" and being told that I should "be less aggressive". As a woman in software engineering, that left a bad impression on me, and that was the point where I decided I wanted to leave. The company and I finally agreed that it would be best if I moved on after I stupidly used a client's credit card while fixing our CC system since we didn't have any test credit cards I could use. Honestly, I kinda earned the blame on that one, but it was the chance I needed to move on.The company had massive layoffs a couple months after I left, and judging from the recruiters and related companies I've talked to since then, those haven't slowed down. During my time there, we had many, many data backend fuckups where things went down for stupid reasons and clients got angrier and angrier. Prior to leaving, most of the major API and data people saw the writing on the wall and left. So, I didn't feel too bad about following. Job 3 (current): 1 year, 5 months. Big financial/insurance company. Was hired on by being told I would be working in Clojure on a data-related backend, but instead got relegated to a Rails monkey role again. The application was poorly written and adding features to it was nightmarish at first. I brought the team up to speed on good development practices, and we improved it quite a bit! Unfortunately, it's hard to shake off old corporate, waterfall habits, and the project was still a pain to work on. Management sunset the project beginning of this year, and moved us onto a new one for our website redesign after about a year of work on the first one. The second project, the one I'm currently on, was/has been a loving shitshow. It was rushed, overpromised, badly managed and completely confused. Literally nobody that's still around is happy with the situation. We've successfully delivered despite ourselves, and even though my team is the most sensible and competent of all the project teams, I still have difficulty feeling accomplished and learned. I feel like I've begun to stagnate, and have become frustrated with the lovely management over the past year. That, combined with the fact that a good 50% of our office has quit in the past month or so, means that I'm looking for a new place again.  The entire upper tier of our office's management was fired about halfway through that project (and replaced with promoted underlings who may or may not be better, but sure as hell are a lot more corporate and rigid). Two months into my tenure at the company, there was something like a 15% workforce reduction - at an insurance/financial company where people spend their entire lives making a career, that's devastating. My friend at the main campus reported people breaking down sobbing in the hallways, wondering what to do with their lives now. These were people in their 50s-60s who had spent decades at the company.  Then about a month or so ago, our entire ops team walked out. I don't feel like this place is stable, but I do feel like we could all be laid off without warning. Apparently my coworkers agree with that assessment, and the scuttlebutt is that everyone's talking to recruiters now for new positions.This place is on death row, and I'm not willing to be caught in the crossfire. ----- Looking back on all this, yikes. It's hard to tell how much of this is my own fuckup for not vetting a place well/not being on the ball enough, and how much is just plain bad luck. No wonder I'm so obsessed with trying to grow. Pollyanna fucked around with this message at 15:06 on May 25, 2017 |
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May 25, 2017 15:03
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quote:The company and I finally agreed that it would be best if I moved on after I stupidly used a client's credit card while fixing our CC system since we didn't have any test credit cards I could use. Honestly, I kinda earned the blame on that one, but it was the chance I needed to move on.  How in the gently caress did you have access to a client's credit card? That company deserves every bad thing that happens to it and the option to use it, even accidentally, should never had existed to ANY developer, junior or senior.
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May 25, 2017 15:27
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geeves posted:
This is the same company that let a newbie engineer have complete and unsupervised access to their server setup scripts, which predictably led to production pointing to the wrong API and database for a good 12 hours before it was caught. The users were not happy.To explain how I had access to the credit card: I was given the CC information and told to use it to replicate the bug on production, and debug it. Guess what happened when I got the feature to work properly? (To be fair, I should have pushed back on that more than I actually did, but after I asked if we had a test CC and was basically told "no, shut up and do your work", I decided it wasn't worth pissing off my manager. I should have trusted my gut.) Pollyanna fucked around with this message at 15:39 on May 25, 2017 |
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May 25, 2017 15:35
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At my last job, we would typically dump all the request parameters to a debug log when an exception happened. Occasionally, we would have a connection error with our payment processor. Cue a bunch of log scrubbing, when somebody finally noticed.
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May 25, 2017 16:35
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Part of Pollyanna's story is making me wonder: what's the acceptable interview code phrase for "I'm fleeing a sinking ship"? Sure, I could just give her the old "It's not a good fit for me" while blinking SOS in Morse code, but what if they don't know Morse code? You'd have to make sure you're not signaling desperation to anyone who cares about the budget over getting you on the team, but, as an interviewer, I'd be sympathetic to wanting to get the hell out before the runway ends or layoffs hit.
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May 25, 2017 17:14
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Munkeymon posted:Part of Pollyanna's story is making me wonder: what's the acceptable interview code phrase for "I'm fleeing a sinking ship"? Sure, I could just give her the old "It's not a good fit for me" while blinking SOS in Morse code, but what if they don't know Morse code? "It's not a good fit for me". It's technically true, is unlikely to burn bridges, and won't annoy any dickheads who think that wanting to flee a sinking ship reflects badly on the interviewee.
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May 25, 2017 17:20
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Munkeymon posted:Part of Pollyanna's story is making me wonder: what's the acceptable interview code phrase for "I'm fleeing a sinking ship"? Sure, I could just give her the old "It's not a good fit for me" while blinking SOS in Morse code, but what if they don't know Morse code? I don't think that sympathy is moving the needle one way or another on the decision to hire you. "Well, they can't hack it technically, but let's forget the business needs and be charitable for no reason!" or "Super bright, could really help us out with this product, but the last company they were at is sinking? Probably all their fault, better avoid." Like why are you trying to communicate this at all?
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May 25, 2017 17:23
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Pollyanna posted:let a newbie engineer have complete and unsupervised access to their server setup scripts This is standard and in no way uncommon in my experience. Year 1 to 2: AAA console games company. Chaotic, great fun, good learning, bad hours. Year 2 to 4: Same games company but on an MMO. Pretty fun and learned a lot more about backend. Early in project so better hours. Year 4 to 10: Small startup as early employee. Great fun, amazing team, some okay products, some crappy ones. Year 10 to 11 (now): A "Big4", again been pretty great. Zero bad years so far, but I think I'd consider the first 2 years bad if I had to do them again now.
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May 25, 2017 17:59
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Pollyanna posted:This is the same company that let a newbie engineer have complete and unsupervised access to their server setup scripts, which predictably led to production pointing to the wrong API and database for a good 12 hours before it was caught. Damned if you do, damned if you don't is not a good thing to be faced with. I don't think it was your fault. This sounds like a systemic security failure that makes me wonder how your CTO has a job. How big was this company? We're pretty small. Outside of operations, 4 of us (myself included) have the keys & permissions to production. I personally don't want the responsibility, but it kind of comes with the job and I usually defer to my boss if something needs to be done. Nothing, production-wise, is accessible to anyone else and is pretty well restricted via how we have AWS setup & key management. geeves fucked around with this message at 18:22 on May 25, 2017 |
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May 25, 2017 18:20
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JawnV6 posted:I don't think that sympathy is moving the needle one way or another on the decision to hire you. "Well, they can't hack it technically, but let's forget the business needs and be charitable for no reason!" or "Super bright, could really help us out with this product, but the last company they were at is sinking? Probably all their fault, better avoid." It didn't occur to me that it might influence the decision via sympathy, actually  just trying to think of some way to spin it other than NaGFFMA, which I just find unsatisfying to say or hear for some reason.Oh and an interviewer who pins a company (especially a big one) exploding on one person isn't someone I want to work for. Well, unless it was somehow common knowledge that it was my fault - then it's fair. Pollyanna posted:"It's not a good fit for me". It's technically true, is unlikely to burn bridges, and won't annoy any dickheads who think that wanting to flee a sinking ship reflects badly on the interviewee. Yes, I know, but see above.
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May 25, 2017 18:23
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Munkeymon posted:Part of Pollyanna's story is making me wonder: what's the acceptable interview code phrase for "I'm fleeing a sinking ship"? Sure, I could just give her the old "It's not a good fit for me" while blinking SOS in Morse code, but what if they don't know Morse code? I think the best way to handle this is just focus on the future. Don't mention your current ship is sinking, talk about how you really want to be on the new ship.
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May 25, 2017 18:32
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Munkeymon posted:Part of Pollyanna's story is making me wonder: what's the acceptable interview code phrase for "I'm fleeing a sinking ship"? Sure, I could just give her the old "It's not a good fit for me" while blinking SOS in Morse code, but what if they don't know Morse code? "There was a reorg," is universally acknowledged as, "it went south."
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May 25, 2017 18:44
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return0 posted:This is standard and in no way uncommon in my experience. Doesn't make it a good idea. geeves posted:Damned if you do, damned if you don't is not a good thing to be faced with. I don't think it was your fault. This sounds like a systemic security failure that makes me wonder how your CTO has a job. It was ~150 employees or so. I would have expected more rigorous standards myself.
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May 25, 2017 18:55
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Munkeymon posted:It didn't occur to me that it might influence the decision via sympathy, actually "Bad fit" gets pushed a bunch here because a better answer depends heavily on your specific situation, who you're talking to, and how the conversation is going. Here's some alternative answers I've given (and received job offers after): "they don't give me any work to do and it makes me mad to participate in scamming the government", "my current company is having trouble making payroll", "I want to have more control over the direction of development", "I really liked the manager who was hired me, and then he quit on my first day", "they want me to spend a week on the other side of the country every month. I have little kids. I'm not going to do that.", "things have not improved since you quit", "the CEO is pivoting the company in a direction that I don't want to go". But when I give those kind of answers it's because I think that I know how the person I'm talking to will take it and how my answer will fit with the company that I'm interviewing with. For example "they can't make payroll" worked well to get hired at a near-IPO company when I was talking to an exec -- he was very proud that they were cashflow-positive and we talked about good and bad business decisions. Saying that I wanted to stick near my kids would have been bad to say to the recently-out-of-college CEO but worked well with the dad-bro VP (who would relate it to the CEO but now it's coming from someone who can pitch it it a way that's more favorable).
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May 25, 2017 19:19
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Pollyanna posted:Doesn't make it a good idea. While of course I agree with the general principle of least privilege, it's not at all unreasonable for a team that rotates oncall to have full prod access, as long as it's sane and audited. Using customer payment detail for testing in production is highly non-sane.
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May 25, 2017 19:24
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Anyone here worked in the manufacturing industry as a developer?
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May 26, 2017 03:02
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Good Will Hrunting posted:Industry vets: what % of your jobs (or % of your time spent working, as I realize jobs can obviously change) would you say was "good"? Year 1 (2009): Dropped out of Berkeley, because I couldn't afford in-state tuition anymore. hosed up an internship for Facebook until the last two weeks, but the damage had been done. Worked for a friend for just enough money to pay rent in a pest-infested bedroom converted into a triple. Had extreme indigestion the night before my Google interview, until 4am. Good %: At the time, I probably would have said 25%, but in retrospect, probably 4%, because those two weeks that I didn't gently caress up set the tone for how I approached my career afterwards, but I was full of regret otherwise. Also, I landed a job offer only for my former intern manager (a very new manager at the time) to call them. My offer was then rescinded. Year 2: Landed a job at a shady-rear end dating site, where I first learned iOS and Android (iPhone OS 3 and Android 1.6). It was here that I first discovered that managers aren't super-engineers, because I discovered I made better decisions than he did by taking the fall for stupid and severe app issues when he overrode me when I did silly things like insist that an empty-ish model object  ). I considered court but I got *some* payment in the end, with a lot of bitterness felt. I sat next to two dudes he was buddies with working on this other app, who had just decided to shed a bunch of stuff and refocus on posting images. Hated that dude I contracted with, so I thought "That's an interesting idea, but they're probably clowns just like him, their company probably won't be any good".Good %: I dunno. 10%? I learned iOS and Android, and got pretty good at them, but I ended the year sad, broke, and bought two domain names to squat on them because that seemed like a good use of a third of my remaining money. What the gently caress was I thinking? Oh, and that company was Instagram. Double-gently caress. Year 3/4: Landed a job working at Crunchyroll to do iOS. A month in, Apple jerks us around on credit card processing, and can't decide whether or not to force us to pay 30%, and the app sits in limbo for a month or so. Meanwhile, I switch over to Android "temporarily". I end up doing Android for the rest of my employment, barring a failed foray into building the PS3 app because I don't know poo poo about Javascript, and Trilithium is an awful pile of crap. My boss actively fucks over my career for the rest of my time at Crunchyroll, but I don't realize it because I don't find out until much later that each bright idea I suggested as alternatives which the company thought "hey that would be good for business" they decided to implement, but I was never allowed to work on them because he fought against it. I tell a VP I need a raise because I need to send money home - my bank account hovers around 0-$1k for a long time. He gives me a $5k/year raise, which isn't super competitive with industry salaries, but the VP's alright. One or two wholly unqualified people get promoted because they did an okay job on a much better platform; I tell my boss I'm depressed and borderline suicidal and his response is "deal with it or leave". I eventually have a nervous breakdown, and the CEO (who I like) lets me take time off to recover. While I'm recovering, the alright VP has a misunderstanding, and makes a mistake in accidentally firing me. Oops! Good%: Dunno. I can't think of this period of time without getting mad, even though I like a couple of the people I worked with. At the time I might have tried to be positive about it, but my boss was pretty abusive. Year 5: I take a trip, then use what little I have left paying rent and being depressed in my apartment for a couple of months. Then, in the latter half of the year a friend scores an internship at Facebook and hot drat, it's on a cool iOS project. I get a phone screen and I'm in and that's about it (I never had an onsite). I work with some big names, and some even bigger egos, but all around, a ton of raw talent. The team wasn't healthy, but neither was I, mentally speaking. I go on an offsite, and talk about products with a friend from Berkeley and the 2009 internship. This time I only gently caress it up until the last 6 weeks. Also, a person who didn't like me dated my recruiter, and my intern roommate brought over his French girlfriend (and was about to bring over his mother to stay for a month or two), had loud sex, and made a lot of noise until 3AM. I got him kicked out of the apartment. I didn't get the internship. gently caress. Good%: ...mostly poo poo. 20%? Year 6: I started the year homeless, sick, and without leads on a job. I end up getting a job with the friend from Berkeley, who left Facebook to found a company with some other rather notable ex-Facebook people. Stuff's looking up, until the company pivots deeply into stuff that is the worst fit ever. Still, great team, people, team atmosphere. The CEO refers me to someone he knows who's heading up the mobile team at a popular and growing social media site based out of another company's office. I start there, because I use that site all the time and believe in it, but my coworker is one of the most toxic people I've ever met. I stick it out, in part because everyone else is pretty great. Good%: 60%. I had a good six or seven months of fun, interesting work. I wasn't making a ton of money, but I wasn't subject to crippling depression, either. Year 7: poo poo goes down and it blows up in my face and I wish I could talk more about it. I decide to abandon the US to live in a foreign country for a while, but that plan is cut short very quickly because I return a few weeks in because of a death in the family. I spend the rest of the year dealing with that, my own worsening and untreated health condition, and tons of lingering stress from the trauma of working at said social media site. A relative tells me I really ought to be applying to WhatsApp. I think "nah, they'll never go anywhere, Facebook's just going to kill them" (...poo poo). A friend refers me back to Facebook, which I'd planned for some vague later time, but what the hell. I study up. I start interviewing. Good%: 10% Year 8: I get the job at Facebook. Before I get the offer letter from one, possibly two other companies, I accept, because that's the condition for a bump in the compensation. In retrospect, there may have been a better way to play this to maximize compensation, but whatever, I wasn't going to pass this up. I spend the first half of the year struggling to recover from my demons, and the second half doing pretty well and starting to see a path to success/happiness. I like my teammates a ton. Good% 75%. I was still depressed for a while, but I was going to have to deal with it at some point. Having a director who is the loving best and super empathetic and supportive went a long ways towards improving as well. Year 9 (2017): The team reorients its approach to the project to try to grow it. We fail, but we learned a lot and we grow pretty close as a result of working hard together. Team shuts down, and I switch teams. Good so far: 90%. Some stress, some unrest, but all of it is productive career growth, and I feel pretty supported the entire time through. My director was supportive of the switch and I'm working on some drat cool stuff. Things are looking good, and for once I have the chance to build up decent savings. Doctor w-rw-rw- fucked around with this message at 18:08 on May 26, 2017 |
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May 26, 2017 10:29
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Portland Sucks posted:Anyone here worked in the manufacturing industry as a developer? I do.
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May 26, 2017 12:08
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Portland Sucks posted:Anyone here worked in the manufacturing industry as a developer? I spent my first 3-4 years post-college working on ERP systems and a staggering number of engineer-developed spreadsheets for a chemical manufacturer. It wasn't a great experience, but I was also very inexperienced and had no good technical mentorship. The person I was hired under didn't even believe in source control, so we just... didn't. I set up SVN for myself.
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May 26, 2017 14:26
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Portland Sucks posted:Anyone here worked in the manufacturing industry as a developer? My company manufactures embedded stuff, and that stuff is used by OEMs to make machines for manufacturing lots of different things.
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May 26, 2017 15:54
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This was a lot to read but I'm glad I did. I guess part of me naively assumed most jobs are okay, but reading the responses to my question have put things in perspective a bit. I'm glad you're in a good spot now, too!
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May 26, 2017 16:48
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Good Will Hrunting posted:This was a lot to read but I'm glad I did. I guess part of me naively assumed most jobs are okay, but reading the responses to my question have put things in perspective a bit. I'm glad you're in a good spot now, too! BAHAHAHA most jobs are terrible. The problem is, unless you've actually waded through the muck, you won't recognize it and leave a good job for a terrible one.
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May 26, 2017 18:35
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Hughlander posted:As a manager I've dropped places that emphasized repeatedly 'How would you manage the brilliant rear end in a top hat' type questions, because it's not worth the stress of dealing with an environment like that. I often ask that question of candidates because I want to find ones who won't tolerate that kind of poo poo. I don't want that environment at my company either.
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May 28, 2017 04:25
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Kyth posted:I often ask that question of candidates because I want to find ones who won't tolerate that kind of poo poo. I don't want that environment at my company either. That's pretty much my first sentence. Usually using Netflix engineering as the example.
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May 28, 2017 18:02
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Nobody likes assholes, brilliant or not, but incompetent nice people are not good to have in your team either.
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May 28, 2017 18:59
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Volguus posted:Nobody likes assholes, brilliant or not, but incompetent nice people are not good to have in your team either. Depends on if they're incompetent because they lack training or if they're incompetent because they're nincompoomps. The former can be fixed, leaving you with a competent-and-nice employee, which was the goal all along.
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May 28, 2017 19:23
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IMO, there is no such thing as an incompetent nice person because a nice person should realize they're holding others down and leave for roles they're better suited for. The reality is that a lot of incompetent people don't realize how bad they're damaging others. I've heard of some pretty interesting companies that manage to push these people into positions where technical competence isn't as important as interpersonal skills such as program / project management. In the software industry, interpersonal skills with some modicum of technical chops is rare. The real difference between incompetent nice people and brilliant assholes is that usually you can't have more than 2 on a team of any size before it implodes in a fury of neckbeardery and they're much easier to observe in the open compared to the incompetent nice people that sit back and quietly ruin your codebase over years.
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May 28, 2017 19:38
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If you're hiring people that are so incompetent they can't contribute in any capacity with a reasonable amount of on-boarding maybe your hiring process sucks?
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May 28, 2017 20:05
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Defense contractors, man. That's all I can say.
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May 28, 2017 20:07
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