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Enjoy your new IDE, Powerpoint.
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Jun 19, 2016 00:19
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Khisanth Magus posted:This will be accompanied by a promotion and raise as soon as the new head of IT finishes with his current project of consolidating and defining the different positions in the department, as all promotions have been put on hold until that has been done. In other words, you're going do to a whole lot of work without being paid enough for it.
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Jun 19, 2016 15:24
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That sounds a lot like a demotion, man. One situation that terrifies me to think about is being offered to move up to management, and when you decline the offer, they say "ok well you're fired then". It feels like something like that would happen.
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Jun 19, 2016 15:59
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There comes a time in every developer's life when their boss is effectively telling them, "You're our best programmer. We want you to never program again."
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Jun 19, 2016 16:28
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I was asked a few days ago to provide peer reviews for the other developers using the prompt, "Does X deserve a promotion?" I responded that I didn't think that was an effective question to ask, because I don't believe you're failing if you're not specifically deserving of a promotion. Like how I finally snapped after the whatever-th consecutive annual review where the assessment was, "You're a great developer, but you're going to need to improve, if you want to be promoted to Architect." I finally said, "Stop dangling that poo poo in front of me. I'm either good enough to be here or I'm not. I'm tired of being told I'm not good enough for a hypothetical." It was fun. (Now in my annual self-review, I just said, "You should probably give me that higher title, because that's what I do around here anyway." We'll see what happens, ha!)
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Jun 19, 2016 18:48
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That's just the whole up-or-out / Cravath system at work more or less. It's not like the system doesn't work for its intended objectives, but most companies really should not operate like they're a goddamn accounting consultancy shop when they're a software company.
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Jun 19, 2016 18:51
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CPColin posted:Like how I finally snapped after the whatever-th consecutive annual review where the assessment was, "You're a great developer, but you're going to need to improve, if you want to be promoted to Architect." There's nothing wrong with saying "you're great at your current role, but you need to improve Specific Skills X, Y, and Z in order to be promoted to Position W." If the only feedback was "You're good, but you need to just be, you know, all around better", that's crap.
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Jun 19, 2016 18:52
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Ithaqua posted:There's nothing wrong with saying "you're great at your current role, but you need to improve Specific Skills X, Y, and Z in order to be promoted to Position W." If the only feedback was "You're good, but you need to just be, you know, all around better", that's crap. I get that. I was mostly irritated because the feedback had been exactly the same for several years in a row. Also, they had changed the review schedule so I had two in six months. And I was already pissed off about other stuff that was going on. All that added up to one big "NOPE."
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Jun 19, 2016 19:02
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The worst thing I've done in my career (besides ending up with PHP as the main thing on my resume) was staying at a job where I got very favorable performance reviews 4 years straight with no real raise.
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Jun 19, 2016 19:07
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necrobobsledder posted:That's just the whole up-or-out / Cravath system at work more or less. It's not like the system doesn't work for its intended objectives, but most companies really should not operate like they're a goddamn accounting consultancy shop when they're a software company. up or out is fine for software dev, as long as up is not tied to managing people
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Jun 19, 2016 23:42
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So what do places do with people that don't want to manage and just want to code all day? Seems kind of silly to force them into management.
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Jun 20, 2016 12:30
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ToxicSlurpee posted:So what do places do with people that don't want to manage and just want to code all day? Seems kind of silly to force them into management. Good places keep them coding all day. Maybe push them to do a bit of mentoring for more junior people. Bad places force them into management, watch their best developers burn out and leave for another company.
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Jun 20, 2016 12:51
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All I know is that if management is anything like how I'm doing project management for the app I'm a single dev on, then absolutely nobody would be happy with me being in management. Least of all myself. God, I'm loving awful at this.
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Jun 20, 2016 17:02
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Management is a skill just like software engineering - nobody is born to be a good manager, and some people can be talented in it. But everyone needs to actually uh... learn something to be able to do it effectively. Hiring someone into a management position that has just taken classes is no different than hiring engineers based upon certificates either. Even Steve Jobs had an MBA from Stanford.the talent deficit posted:up or out is fine for software dev, as long as up is not tied to managing people
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Jun 20, 2016 17:33
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Pollyanna posted:All I know is that if management is anything like how I'm doing project management for the app I'm a single dev on, then absolutely nobody would be happy with me being in management. Least of all myself. I was "given" management responsibilities after a while, and, it turns out, I am absolutely unsuited for it. Nothing was ever said, a new manager was moved in and I went back to normal dev duties. At no point of the process did anyone say either "now you are a manager" or "now you are again a developer", but the work I was expected to do changed. I hate hated being a manager though and now I have a lot of respect for good ones, even if they are poo poo devs, so it was useful in that way.
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Jun 20, 2016 21:38
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I still have no idea how to tell whether a manager is good or bad. My experiences with bosses and managers have generally been negative, though.
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Jun 20, 2016 21:59
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Pollyanna posted:I still have no idea how to tell whether a manager is good or bad. My experiences with bosses and managers have generally been negative, though. Good managers will, at a minimum: Do their best to keep unreasonable expectations and deadlines from being heaped upon you Keep worthless meetings and adminstrative crap off your schedule Listen to you Now, how much of that they actually can do without being completely hamstrung by the rest of the business varies wildly from company to company.
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Jun 20, 2016 22:42
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I love the manager that leaves me alone unless I need help with a problem or I'm screwing up and need a course correction.
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Jun 21, 2016 01:13
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The best managers kiss down and kick up, because they realize that their people are the ones making them look good. The worst ones do the opposite.
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Jun 21, 2016 02:42
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necrobobsledder posted:That's the problem though - "up" in a modern corporation implies you are managing people because there's no C-level whose primary function isn't to manage the labor of people out there in the Taylorist dogma. It's not like Jeff Dean should be the CEO of Google despite being one of the most respected engineers there. The concept of up-or-out really only works in organizations that are meant to make everyone a salesman to some degree and to reward them for business generated because for everyone else that's talented in their specific area it leaves no possible path for someone to hyperspecialize unless that brings in more revenue or some form of tangible good to the organization. I've seen some companies try to say that they allow "technical" paths for career progression but it really only works up to the levels of middle-upper levels of the usual Fortune 500 hierarchy and every one of these places that can even split this up have at least 10k+ employees anyway and are by sheer ubiquity likely to be an old hat corporation culturally set as sales and management that expels and repels most technical leaders. up and out doesn't mean you get promoted within a certain time period or you get fired. it means you hire new grads and people with minimal experience and you promote the best and get rid of the rest. you only go outside that to get people with experience or skills you can't develop internally. once you reach some level (in a law firm this is partner, usually) you don't have to make like, C suite or board of directors or get out, you just have to outperform those pushing up from underneath and you are safe. most (american) software consultancies, netflix and arguably facebook and microsoft work on this model. it's not great for every company, certainly, but i think it makes sense for companies that have strong internal cultures and practices, an abundance of mentorship and high performance expectations
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Jun 21, 2016 05:13
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Most places have a concept of terminal and no terminal positions. There are generally expectations around how quickly you should move into a terminal position, but once there so long as your work is good nobody wants to fire you. Also a lot of big tech companies have tech progression that goes through the equivalent of VP or SVP these days. Your coding time is more limited, but it's replaced by design review and mentor ship, not management.
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Jun 21, 2016 16:52
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Today we went to Santa Cruz to have a team offsite on a catamaran.
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Jun 23, 2016 00:59
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Volmarias posted:The best managers kiss down and kick up, because they realize that their people are the ones making them look good. The worst ones do the opposite. Yeah, the managers job is to guard you from bullshit and assist/guide where necessary. I wouldn't necessarily call it a hard skill to learn if you have the right environments in which to learn, but many developers will never be exposed to an environment that does so, meaning it seems impossible to learn. Even introverts and people with literal Asperger's syndrome can learn how to manage others - I'm not kidding there, one of the absolute best watch leaders I had back in my sailing days was a guy who took a long time to get going, but was 100% level headed teflon (nothing sticks) when it came to managing people once he learned how. The thing is, it's all about actually breaking down how to manage and work with people, and how to actively resolve conflicts in ways that get the best results for everyone. Very few people genuinely know or get taught how to do it, and it's hard to learn because you rarely get chances to start fresh with new teams. Again, my sailing days had me working with a brand new team of 40 random people every week, in a very fast paced environment compared to the office, so it's one of the best places to learn the very general skill of management.
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Jun 23, 2016 02:04
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Cicero posted:Today we went to Santa Cruz to have a team offsite on a catamaran. Was it required? How many people got sea sick?
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Jun 23, 2016 02:39
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I heard it described as this. A manager can either be a poo poo funnel or a poo poo umbrella. You want one who is a poo poo umbrella, in that they shield their team from the poo poo rolling downhill.
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Jun 23, 2016 02:43
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In the context of poo poo redirection, a good manager should also treat their employees like grown-ups. I've seen managers err too much on the side of poo poo umbrella. The right balance is for a manager to insulate their people from the pressures of the political voices, but the team should still be informed of what those political pressures on the team actually are, because it turns out grown-ups make better decisions and do better work when they know who it's for and why. It also helps them understand what their manager is doing all day, and I find things just run smoother when empathy flows correctly in all directions.
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Jun 23, 2016 03:32
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Kallikrates posted:Was it required? quote:How many people got sea sick?
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Jun 23, 2016 06:35
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Dramamine makes you extremely sleepy, I've learned. I've also realized that the grand majority of the issues and problems I face in my software engineering career come not from software itself, but from the people involved. I can't write a program to tell the VP that we should fix technical debt before shoving more features down users' throats, I can't write a program to justify an expensive solution which already has a cheaper and more useful alternative available, and I can't write a program to give our team good project management and product direction. The code itself is the least worst part of my job, the people are easily the hardest and the worst.  I don't want to do project management or product development, not at all, and I'm balls at working with people - but even I can see that these are the weakest links in software development these days. The worst part of computers isn't the computers themselves, but the people using them.
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Jun 24, 2016 17:46
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Pollyanna posted:Dramamine makes you extremely sleepy, I've learned. Working in Development:The worst part of computers isn't the computers themselves, but the people using them
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Jun 24, 2016 18:18
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Pollyanna posted:The worst part of computers isn't the computers themselves, but the people using them. Congratulations on realizing the truth behind truths! Go forth with eyes open and realize that the code you're working on doesn't matter nearly as much as not surrounding yourself with horrible people because that poo poo is pure poison.
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Jun 24, 2016 20:25
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9FGgwCQ22w
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Jun 25, 2016 23:52
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The sheer amount of programmers that program in C/C++ that have absolutely no idea how memory works is mind loving boggling to me. 
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Jun 28, 2016 16:32
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ratbert90 posted:The sheer amount of programmers that program in C/C++ that have absolutely no idea how memory works is mind loving boggling to me. How do you mean? Like they don't think/care about cache optimization or what?
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Jun 28, 2016 16:49
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ratbert90 posted:The sheer amount of programmers that program in C/C++ that have absolutely no idea how memory works is mind loving boggling to me. That's the stuff that you can use with the star key right?
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Jun 28, 2016 16:51
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Could be worse, you could be working on the git codebase where they know how memory works but don't appear to care.
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Jun 28, 2016 17:10
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Munkeymon posted:How do you mean? Like they don't think/care about cache optimization or what? Like, they don't understand you have to free memory that you allocate. That there are efficient ways to use memory. God help you if you try to mention stack vs heap.
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Jun 28, 2016 17:55
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ratbert90 posted:Like, they don't understand you have to free memory that you allocate. That there are efficient ways to use memory. God help you if you try to mention stack vs heap. Ahh but do they at least try to initialize or write to it before they read and make decisions off of it? That's progress!
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Jun 28, 2016 19:26
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ratbert90 posted:The sheer amount of programmers that program in C/C++ that have absolutely no idea how memory works is mind loving boggling to me. Dehumanize yourself and face towards embedded programming
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Jun 28, 2016 19:55
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:Ahh but do they at least try to initialize or write to it before they read and make decisions off of it? That's progress! That IS true! Volmarias posted:Dehumanize yourself and face towards embedded programming Even worse; I do embedded Linux programming. 
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Jun 28, 2016 23:33
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Let me take a wild guess - your coworkers are mechanical or electrical engineers originally?
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Jun 29, 2016 00:35
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