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JawnV6 posted:y'all the department and relevant professional certification is named "human resources" turning your nose up with the manager closest to you using it ain't gonna move the needle It's actually called the "people department" in our company now. Our PMs just didn't get the memo.
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Jun 11, 2020 17:39
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How did anyone ever think "human resources" sounded better than "personnel"
spiritual bypass fucked around with this message at 20:38 on Jun 11, 2020 |
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Jun 11, 2020 20:08
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rt4 posted:How did anyone ever think "human resources" sounded better then "personnel" If I had to guess, it sounds better when you're talking about doing bad things to them (firing, reducing benefits, etc.) because you don't have to remember that it's human beings you're talking about. They're just lines on a budget to be tweaked as needed to hit your forecasts.
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Jun 11, 2020 20:36
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:If I had to guess, it sounds better when you're talking about doing bad things to them (firing, reducing benefits, etc.) because you don't have to remember that it's human beings you're talking about. They're just lines on a budget to be tweaked as needed to hit your forecasts. This is the key. Think of how far removed you are when buying a steak or something at the store. You don’t envision an animal growing up and living it’s life, being butchered, and all the various steps along the way. You just look at all of the steaks in front of you at the store as separate entities, not as things that once lived. It is really easy to not see resources on a spreadsheet as human beings.
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Jun 11, 2020 20:49
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Please use the American approved phrase "human capital stock".
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Jun 12, 2020 14:40
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Oh yeah thanks for reminding me to post that here https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1264996588834996226
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Jun 12, 2020 14:45
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Well I guess it's slightly better than being called livestock?
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Jun 12, 2020 15:02
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Hippie Hedgehog posted:Well I guess it's slightly better than being called livestock? Next interview question, are you a pig, sheep, or cow?
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Jun 12, 2020 15:36
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I'm being milked for my productivity daily. Sheep.
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Jun 12, 2020 17:39
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https://twitter.com/schmichael/status/1271297791839465472
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Jun 12, 2020 20:20
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Too real
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Jun 12, 2020 23:40
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too real. i have spent an inordinate amount of time drinking at bars with managers of software companies.
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Jun 13, 2020 00:45
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The sooner you come to terms with the fact that you are just a cog in the money machine, the sooner you can divest yourself from any emotional attachment and start treating work each day as a business transaction.
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Jun 13, 2020 01:28
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My company insists on referring to its employees as “associates” which I loathe. I associate with a company because it employs me, not because I sometime play cards with it but we’re not really good friends.
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Jun 13, 2020 02:43
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one year away. i just got promoted to team lead. 
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Jun 13, 2020 04:03
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I bailed on management back to senior IC. So did my previous three managers, at two companies. And a close friend of mine at a separate company. All early-mid 30s. The pressure is real, though. No one wants that job. It's a trap. Guinness fucked around with this message at 04:37 on Jun 13, 2020 |
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Jun 13, 2020 04:33
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Guinness posted:I bailed on management back to senior IC. But I always figured management was in my future because I like coding, but I also am really good at the people and planning aspects of the job, and actually enjoy those, too.
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Jun 13, 2020 12:25
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I've been able to resist making that move for a few years mostly because all the managers here _really_ wanted to be managers. The other option is moving up to a "principal engineer", but that process seems to be broken right now and not many get to that level. Probably because they want more drat managers.
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Jun 13, 2020 12:55
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I was recently contacted by a few previous research associates of mine that are interested in exploring VC options for a small business that they've had for a few years. They've been getting by on various grants and funding that they've won from military and government sources, and they now have a few patents in their IP portfolio and have published papers on their technology (scanning binaries and libraries in a product and telling you which CVEs are present based on their control flow patterns) and want to push into the endgame. Has anyone heard how the VC landscape is looking these days? Has COVID-19 reduced the number of companies looking for funding, or has it maybe caused VC firms to reduce their investments?
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Jun 13, 2020 17:33
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hendersa posted:I was recently contacted by a few previous research associates of mine that are interested in exploring VC options for a small business that they've had for a few years. They've been getting by on various grants and funding that they've won from military and government sources, and they now have a few patents in their IP portfolio and have published papers on their technology (scanning binaries and libraries in a product and telling you which CVEs are present based on their control flow patterns) and want to push into the endgame. best and most important factor for whether peeps get vc, before and after the world plague, is whether they went to plutocrat school or not. berkeley also works
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Jun 13, 2020 17:52
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Ghost of Reagan Past posted:We'll have to see. I'm also job hunting, and there's no real advancement track at my company if you aren't management (which is a mistake! it's bad!), but the financial windfall and obvious path for advancement here mean I can afford to be pickier as I search for senior IC roles (especially doing things I want to do). I'm exaggerating a little bit, and if you're interested and think you'd be good at it then by all means go for it. I've worked with a few engineering managers that genuinely enjoyed their role, and they are great people to work with/for. If it's something you enjoy and are good at there is a dire need for good engineering managers in the top echelons of tech. The theme I've seen though is that good senior engineers get the opportunity to get "promoted" into an engineering manager, and they take it because it seems like the next step for career progression and it's more immediate and accessible than the super-senior IC track (principal, etc.). It's what I wrestled with, and ultimately went for it. In retrospect, it's really more of a lateral move to switch tracks. But if you're like many good senior engineers, you enjoy the engineering work and it's painful to be so adjacent to actual engineering work but without getting to be hands on. Yeah, yeah, every org says "our engineering managers are different, they're super close to the real work, they still spend time coding" and that's just never reality. The pressures and responsibility of management ultimately supersedes any time for engineering work. And the longer you aren't in it, the harder and harder it gets to pick it up here and there. The fork in the road that I, and my colleagues, have faced is when you're running up on that 2-3 year mark as a manager you are somewhat at decision point: do I fully buy-in to management track, or do I retreat to being a senior IC while I still can relatively easily. The small bit of irony is that everyone I know that bailed on management to return to being a dev got a big comp boost out of it -- by switching companies. I make almost 50% more as a senior dev now than I did as an eng team lead previously. And it's not like I was grossly underpaid before, but RSUs and ESPPs are a hell of a thing. I could see maybe jumping back into management some day, but for the time being senior dev is a cushy gig and I'm not ready to give up being an engineer yet. I don't have any grand aspirations about working my way up to CTO or anything though so maybe I'm just not the type. I'd sooner retire early. I don't regret my stint in management, but I don't miss it. Guinness fucked around with this message at 18:31 on Jun 13, 2020 |
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Jun 13, 2020 18:18
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Guinness posted:I bailed on management back to senior IC. I switched to management a bit over a year ago. I was intent on the switch for about 2 years prior. I love it. I'm just so tired of computers, but cursed with being good at them -- so moving into management has been really satisfying: I can help a team of people who aren't that tired of computers do cool poo poo. I get to talk to people all day, I still read code and talk about architecture and technology all day, but don't actually have to spend any time screaming at compilers or finding typos or debugging network drivers or kernel bugs. It's not for everyone, but I've found it very fulfilling.
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Jun 13, 2020 19:12
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The biggest problem I have with being a senior engineer is all the non-programming, non-design responsibilities I have. I just don't get as much time with the code as I want, and when I do put my head down for a length of time I feel like I'm leaving the juniors twisting, even if I'm not. No desire to be a manager, so I double appreciate when I have one that does their job well.
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Jun 13, 2020 23:03
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I actually enjoy the bit of management I do. It sounds weird, but I enjoy all the negotiating with the directors with vague titles, and trying to protect my team while making everyone happy. I’m not great at it. But I’m learning. I did recently learn why it’s a bad idea to be both a manager and an IC. When you’re a week away from a major release, a manager is going be pulled in a hundred directions to answer questions and put out fires. A programmer needs long periods of heads down time to solve those last bugs. Those are wholly incompatible weeks.
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Jun 14, 2020 00:49
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I also did the move to management and switched back to an IC track after 1.5 years. I think I did alright in the role, my feedback was always good and there's several outcomes I can point to that I'm really proud of and I generally enjoyed the day to day, but I kept feeling like I was not having the same level of impact as when I was leading more technical initiatives. I'd consider trying it again but only at a place that had a good support structure and some semblance of a manager training program. In my case the "mentor" I had was my manager who had a whole two years of management experience (also with little training or guidance) and wasn't someone I particularly respected. I'm pretty sure you can end up in the "one years experience ten times" situation if that's how your early management career goes. I learnt a lot and I don't regret it but I wonder how it would've been different in a FAANG-level management track.
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Jun 14, 2020 09:18
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Destroyenator posted:I learnt a lot and I don't regret it but I wonder how it would've been different in a FAANG-level management track. My experience with FAANGs is that they do not have good support structures for engineers or managers. They kind of expect you to figure it out and get through based on engineering talent. It's even worse for managers and it's very apparent which are promoted from within engineering and which are hired externally.
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Jun 14, 2020 20:47
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asur posted:My experience with FAANGs is that they do not have good support structures for engineers or managers. They kind of expect you to figure it out and get through based on engineering talent. It's even worse for managers and it's very apparent which are promoted from within engineering and which are hired externally.
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Jun 14, 2020 21:58
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Destroyenator posted:I also did the move to management and switched back to an IC track after 1.5 years. I think I did alright in the role, my feedback was always good and there's several outcomes I can point to that I'm really proud of and I generally enjoyed the day to day, but I kept feeling like I was not having the same level of impact as when I was leading more technical initiatives. Unfortunately I'm pretty sure there's not a good manager training track anywhere, at least not that I've seen. Small companies are like "good luck" and big companies are like "good luck, here are 20 hours of web training to tell you about compliance and also brave new concepts like 'in a modern workplace, managers often talk to their reports regularly! consider trying this!'"
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Jun 15, 2020 15:33
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Seems like you've gotta get lucky with a senior manager structure that wants to mentor you into the position. In my case, I've got 2... It's not been a terrible move so far and I feel like I'm helping the team often by removing road blocks and sitting in meetings that not everyone needs to be in. We'll see how I feel in another 6 months. Anyone had any luck making the transition (while knowing what you're supposed to be doing) via a management MBA?
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Jun 15, 2020 15:48
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I have a 1:1 with my manager to discuss my goals. I’m angling to be promoted to senior developer within the next 6 months but other than that my goals are to just continue executing on feature work and gain some breadth of knowledge across the stack. What sorts of things do you all mention in these goals conversations?
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Jun 24, 2020 16:08
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Do you have weekly 1:1s? If so, then your goal conversations are easy, because you’re kinda just always talking about them. If not, schedule a weekly 1:1.
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Jun 24, 2020 16:37
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lifg posted:Do you have weekly 1:1s? Or at least biweekly.
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Jun 24, 2020 16:43
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Hey all, I don't know if y'all have seen the stuff going down in GBS but I wanted to make sure everyone in CoC was aware we had a discord. It's a chill place, and feel free to PM me if this link expires.
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Jun 24, 2020 16:47
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lifg posted:Do you have weekly 1:1s? Yes, we do. But today’s conversation is specifically about goals. We usually slightly touch on it but it’s the only topic for today and I don’t have many besides “keep doing what I’m doing and getting better at it”
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Jun 24, 2020 16:54
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I have no goals, I just want to retire. I have just 6 years experience but I'm totally burned out of working as a dev, but I can't see myself going into management. 
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Jun 24, 2020 16:57
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Change jobs. A silver lining of the very, very lovely H1B EO is going to be that the dev jobs will still be plentiful. E: meant to say that burnout usually comes from bad jobs, but I feel you.
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Jun 24, 2020 17:08
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I actually like my job, if that even makes sense. Maybe I just need a new project; we do consulting for other companies so I can switch up and jump on another project with a different team. But I legitimately think I'm burned out on dev work in general.
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Jun 24, 2020 17:25
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dantheman650 posted:Yes, we do. But today’s conversation is specifically about goals. We usually slightly touch on it but it’s the only topic for today and I don’t have many besides “keep doing what I’m doing and getting better at it” Goals don't have to be new job titles necessarily. When you say "getting better at it", expand on that. Does that mean learning a new technology? Diving deeper into the internals of your current one? What does someone who is "better" do? Are they faster? Do they get things done in less code? Are they better at abstraction? Or, are they more involved outside of coding, with (for example) sitting in on client meetings to better understand requirements? You and your manager might have a bunch of different ideas of how you could get better. Being specific and spelling them out might help them find better projects for you to do, or he might have a totally different idea of what your weak points are.
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Jun 24, 2020 17:27
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Doghouse posted:I actually like my job, if that even makes sense. It does not.
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Jun 24, 2020 17:42
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Doghouse posted:I actually like my job, if that even makes sense. Maybe I just need a new project; we do consulting for other companies so I can switch up and jump on another project with a different team. But I legitimately think I'm burned out on dev work in general. None of this makes sense. What do you like about your job? What don't you like about being a dev?
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Jun 24, 2020 18:41
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