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Every single company that over-invested in real-estate is pushing for return to office. Mine included. I wonder why? 
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May 10, 2022 14:30
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| # ? May 27, 2024 19:04 |
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either commercial real estate pressure or a boomer high up in the ranks doesnt want to let go of controlling their workers. I for one intend on never working inside of an office again, FAANG salaries be damned
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May 10, 2022 14:41
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 They are already stealing my wages. I'm not also propping up the property value of that flashy new HQ campus they built, and in which I have absolutely no stake, by exposing myself to additional risks. I've never been this ready to quit on the spot. It's kinda calming, actually. e: my relatively small satellite office went "hybrid" last week, and they had a covid exposure the third day in. gbut fucked around with this message at 14:51 on May 10, 2022 |
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May 10, 2022 14:48
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I aint gonna test a companys return to work policy. Your employer can fire you for any reason they want, and that includes firing you for working remotely instead of being in the office. I dont trust anyone to not discriminate against remote/WFH workers and sideline, marginalize, or kick them out for it. Ill insist on my 2-3 days in the office max, sure, but thats only under my employers good graces and the fact that other employees do the same. If everyone suddenly starts doing M-F 9-5 again, I gotta do the same or risk being called out and reprimanded. Maybe I have trust issues, but with the United States the way it iscan ya blame me?
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May 10, 2022 15:11
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This is all why I insisted on A: a company that wasn't near me at all, basically no way for me to go in-person without relocating. B: a team that was already geographically distributed and also not all near offices, so they couldn't go in-person without relocating a LOT of people or having their whole team quit. I also noticed quite a few positions that were supposedly full remote still asked about how open I was to relocation. I generally took this to mean they eventually wanted to go in-person regardless of their supposedly permanent remote jobs.
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May 10, 2022 15:29
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Yeah dont trust any company that says theyre remote. Eventually the false confidence of butts in chairs will win out and everyone will get recalled cuz Covid is over baybee open er upppppppp hack cough wheeze
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May 10, 2022 15:33
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I completely understand that I come from a place of privilege, as a senior white male computer toucher. That said, I've been a refugee, I've been hungry, and if I don't use that privilege against even greater privilege and to better my life while I'm still alive, than what's the point. Yes, the US at-will crap is horrendous. But it goes both ways. The company will do just fine without me, and I'll be happier whatever the next chapter is.
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May 10, 2022 15:36
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Pollyanna posted:I aint gonna test a companys return to work policy. Your employer can fire you for any reason they want, and that includes firing you for working remotely instead of being in the office. I dont trust anyone to not discriminate against remote/WFH workers and sideline, marginalize, or kick them out for it. Ill insist on my 2-3 days in the office max, sure, but thats only under my employers good graces and the fact that other employees do the same. If everyone suddenly starts doing M-F 9-5 again, I gotta do the same or risk being called out and reprimanded. if they're gonna manage you out it's gonna either be through PIP or stagnation. both of those take a lot of time, and you'd have ample time to find a new job (or start coming into the office, which would put you back where you started, but not necessarily worse off). going full remote has definite career risks, but it's not near as dangerous as just refusing to come in, and your post kinda conflates the two i mean the above is also google-specific (or maybe largecorp-specific). other jobs are absolutely not constrained to long PIP processes, but google is, so remote workers are pretty safe it's a lot easier for me to say this post-promo than it was at my previous level though. my big hope was that i'd get promo before RTO was in full effect so that i wouldn't have to deal with in-office vs. remote biases. now ive got a pretty comfortable buffer before i need to think too hard about ratings beyond "dont screw up too bad"
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May 10, 2022 16:04
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bi crimes posted:either commercial real estate pressure or a boomer high up in the ranks doesn’t want to let go of controlling their workers. I for one intend on never working inside of an office again, FAANG salaries be damned This pretty much Not that it's insanely nice, but my house/home office is way nicer than whatever pleasing gray $274 Costco/IKEA cube with 42" high walls they're going to cram me in to.
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May 10, 2022 16:04
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Achmed Jones posted:going full remote has definite career risks Like what?
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May 10, 2022 16:28
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Good Will Hrunting posted:Like what? read pollyannas post, she mentions them
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May 10, 2022 16:29
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Those are not "career risks" specific to being remote? They're risks of any lovely company pulling some discriminatory garbage.
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May 10, 2022 16:37
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Good Will Hrunting posted:Like what? Unless you're just super charming on camera it's really hard to get promoted to manager (if that's what you want) when the other candidates are in the office every day/week. That's the big thing. If you come in as a lvl4 you can make it to lvl5 but chances you make it to lvl7 are going to be pretty low compared to your twin who has the same work output and comes in to the office every day. Me personally my situation, I give zero fucks about this any more but if you are the climbing type this is going to ham string you pretty hard
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May 10, 2022 16:40
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Pollyanna posted:Yeah dont trust any company that says theyre remote. Eventually the false confidence of butts in chairs will win out and everyone will get recalled cuz Covid is over baybee open er upppppppp hack cough wheeze
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May 10, 2022 16:40
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Hadlock posted:Unless you're just super charming on camera it's really hard to get promoted to manager (if that's what you want) when the other candidates are in the office every day/week. That's the big thing. If you come in as a lvl4 you can make it to lvl5 but chances you make it to lvl7 are going to be pretty low compared to your twin who has the same work output and comes in to the office every day. Me personally my situation, I give zero fucks about this any more but if you are the climbing type this is going to ham string you pretty hard When better, more seasoned engineers refuse to work for companies where this happening becomes quite obvious.... well those companies are going to struggle to hire. Also like you said climbing the ranks isn't equal to "career".
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May 10, 2022 16:48
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I say all this because I used to work at a startup based in California while I was in Boston and I was let go after two weeks and I never got confirmation on why I was let go but I suspect the combination of being a remote engineer who was also ramping up on the codebase was too much for the startup to bear so they figured I was useless and cut me loose. Ive never had a single problem at work since then, including working remotely at any point, so I doubt it was my output or my ramp-up time. But now I have a low opinion of companies and dont trust them not to be bad at supporting remote workers. Its not rational, yeah, but Im still suspicious.
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May 10, 2022 17:34
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I picked this link up from another thread and  . https://geekenspiel.com/products/y2k-year-2000-best-buy-remember-sticker-1
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May 10, 2022 17:36
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Achmed Jones posted:if they're gonna manage you out it's gonna either be through PIP or stagnation. both of those take a lot of time, and you'd have ample time to find a new job (or start coming into the office, which would put you back where you started, but not necessarily worse off). going full remote has definite career risks, but it's not near as dangerous as just refusing to come in, and your post kinda conflates the two Fair enough, I dont know exactly what the this person doesnt think we should all be in the office and is standing their ground game plan would be on the other end. And refusing to come in is effectively violating rules and direction, and thats a weakness you really dont want to expose. Anyway, of course a place wont fire you outright for it - theyll find another way. quote:i mean the above is also google-specific (or maybe largecorp-specific). other jobs are absolutely not constrained to long PIP processes, but google is, so remote workers are pretty safe Google remote workers are okay for now. Google always has the option of saying nah start coming back in. Thats what worries me. Point taken on advance warning, though. quote:it's a lot easier for me to say this post-promo than it was at my previous level though. my big hope was that i'd get promo before RTO was in full effect so that i wouldn't have to deal with in-office vs. remote biases. now ive got a pretty comfortable buffer before i need to think too hard about ratings beyond "dont screw up too bad" Honestly the longer I work here the less good L5 looks, as much as the place itself is fine Ive had to mop up some serious skidmarks on what Im now in charge of and Ive seen my tech leads face grow more wrinkles.
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May 10, 2022 18:09
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Arsenic Lupin posted:I picked this link up from another thread and Tum my computer off? eew
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May 10, 2022 19:09
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Pollyanna posted:I aint gonna test a companys return to work policy. Do you guys not have employment contracts? My recent Offer of Employment contract clearly stipulates that I am a 'remote' employee, with no official office to report to. Not that it matters, because my firm actually is doing the smart thing and dumping most of their expensive office space. The one that did/would hold most of my team/division was on that list. I don't have to worry about missing all those highly synergistic watercooler conversations and collaborative lunches where 'great ideas' were invented.
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May 11, 2022 03:33
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B-Nasty posted:Do you guys not have employment contracts? My recent Offer of Employment contract clearly stipulates that I am a 'remote' employee, with no official office to report to. I made certain mine said exactly that, because the home office is about a 75 minute drive away.......JUST close enough to make the wrong kind of people think it might be reasonable for me to show up.
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May 11, 2022 03:45
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B-Nasty posted:Do you guys not have employment contracts? no, no i don't
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May 11, 2022 05:21
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I'm an officially designated remote employee and my manager makes fun of me for saying I'm going to move back to NYC, and literally laughed his rear end off when he thought I was serious about suggesting I was gonna move to the Bay Area.
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May 11, 2022 05:33
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B-Nasty posted:Do you guys not have employment contracts? My recent Offer of Employment contract clearly stipulates that I am a 'remote' employee, with no official office to report to. It's unlikely that you have an employment contract as people typically think of a contract unless you are a contractor with a fixed term contract or have an atypical situation. Terms in a typical employment agreement can be modified by the employer. Compensation, work location, etc can all be changed. Changing from remote to not would be similar to forced relocation, which while uncommon does occur. That isn't to say that I expect companies who have explicit agreements with their employees for remote to change that. If they're willing to put it in writing then leadership at worst tolerates it and likely supports it
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May 11, 2022 05:56
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US is weird, I can't imagine most people working off that over here.
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May 11, 2022 07:03
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Usually your employment contract will have things like "duties as assigned" and "according to the relevant company policies", all of which can and do change without needing to get a new contract signed. If you didn't need to sign a new employment contract to start working fully remote, then your employer can likely ask you to start coming back in to the office without a new employment contract too.
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May 11, 2022 07:17
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For what it's worth, changing your duties or work conditions(like moving from remote to an hour+ commute) can make quitting be considered to be with "good cause". For unemployment at least, this means you'd still be eligible for those benefits. This is true in at-will states as well. I'm not sure how that would go in regards to unvested RSUs and such, but that would be a question for an attorney and probably worth exploring considering how much money it could be. I doubt someone would have much of an argument here if a company was asking them to start marking a 20 minute commute every day, but like asking someone working remote from San Diego to start commuting to Los Angeles would be a different story.
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May 11, 2022 15:27
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asur posted:It's unlikely that you have an employment contract as people typically think of a contract unless you are a contractor with a fixed term contract or have an atypical situation. Terms in a typical employment agreement can be modified by the employer. Compensation, work location, etc can all be changed. Changing from remote to not would be similar to forced relocation, which while uncommon does occur. Like you said, they could, in theory, also decide to change your compensation going forwards to $1 even though your Offer of Employment says $$$ figgies. Most large employers aren't going to renege on something in writing like that. Really, it's just the benefit of having something written down that you can show to capricious managers that suddenly think you should be in the office. They aren't likely to deal with the HR paperwork to force the issue.
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May 11, 2022 22:34
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I'm a leader and I don't know if I like it. On the one hand, I'm on a relatively certain path to staff-swe in the next year. Maybe senior staff further down the line. Fat paychecks hell yeah. Also I genuinely like the people I work with. On the other hand: In this role I have little time to do things myself. I'm the go-to person for answering questions on what feels like ~everything. I have lots of urgent stuff -- I try to delegate, but probably don't do it often enough. I miss having hours and hours of open focus time on my calendar instead of meetings and 1:1s. I'm good at the project management aspect of writing software, but don't enjoy it. I guess that's the core of it: I'm good at stuff that the team and company highly values, but it's out of my comfort zone and I don't enjoy it. I'm torn between * Dialing my effort way the gently caress back to rest+vest for a while. This seems healthier for myself, but part of me will feel guilty about it. * Continuing the things that make me unhappy until I have money to... idk? buy a nice apartment? honestly haven't thought that far ahead. This seems stupid. * Find a way to continue in this role that makes me happier. Maybe I just need to get more comfortable delegating to others and better at managing my calendar. Writing all this is mostly rubber ducking I guess. Has anyone else navigated something like this? Tips? Regrets?
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May 11, 2022 23:28
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my sister is eight months pregnant and getting forced out of her putertouchin leadership position, almost certainly because of it she doesnt post anywhere but tumblr but takin referrals for employment lawyers and places where a woman can go work for a woman touchin computers (dev job)
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May 11, 2022 23:34
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Illusive gently caress Man posted:I'm a leader and I don't know if I like it. Be brutal with your calendar. Block time out and make it clear you are not available. Just mute Slack/whatever during those times. Have plenty of "office hours" for the people who need to come to you for quick questions - if you don't your calendar will further fill up with useless 30 minute meetings. Also, be brutal with meetings. You get an invite you don't recognize/don't know why you've invited? "Hi, I'm having trouble fitting this meeting in. Can you provide an agenda or your specific questions for me?" Block out random poo poo on your calendar. Make regular hour long 1:1s with whoever is in the same type of position that you trust to just block out space if people are scrutinizing what's on it. I've been where you're at. You need to take control of your schedule in a way that makes you still approachable, but on your terms so you can get your own work done. Company culture and the people you work with will determine whether this works out or not. I'm helping a few of my managers with this right now. I've endorsed "no meeting fridays" with zero oversight or buy in from the higher ups. I just made it a thing for my teams. I got zero pushback.
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May 11, 2022 23:45
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bob dobbs is dead posted:my sister is eight months pregnant and getting forced out of her putertouchin leadership position, almost certainly because of it This sucks. Horrible timing. There are plenty of places that aren't poo poo like this, but it's a hard time to be job searching. Once she goes on maternity leave, they can't fire her without opening to massive lawsuits, so maybe it'd be a good time to get a dr to say that she needs bed rest and that she has to go on leave early? And then come back at the end of leave with her immediate notice?
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May 11, 2022 23:49
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Illusive gently caress Man posted:I'm a leader and I don't know if I like it. Delegating and documenting more is a big part of it. Even if delegating a thing right now means you may end up sitting with the junior dev to walk them through how to do it, they will become better at it and tackle it in the future. Motronic's calendar advice sounds pretty applicable Project management and SWE should be different positions, especially if you're at a place that has a staff SWE position. If you're getting pulled into project management and don't like it, definitely push back and get back into development or architecture + development (which I think is more of a soft wall, but I don't have that experience), or a tech lead position where you can provide the time estimates and help write tech portions of proposals, but someone else handles chasing other portions down. Actually developing and managing projects or people is an easy way to get into a tough spot, because the management part is actually more important but you'll prefer to do the developer part.
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May 12, 2022 01:37
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StumblyWumbly posted:Project management and SWE should be different positions, especially if you're at a place that has a staff SWE position. If you're getting pulled into project management and don't like it, definitely push back and get back into development or architecture + development (which I think is more of a soft wall, but I don't have that experience), or a tech lead position where you can provide the time estimates and help write tech portions of proposals, but someone else handles chasing other portions down. I'm on the cusp of promotion from Senior to Staff/Tech Lead Engineer, and project management is a big chunk of the responsibilities - and the gap that I'm working on closing. And within that bucket of project management skills is delegation to juniors as well. I don't particularly love project management, and it's my weakest skill set, but if I pushed back on it I'd never see the promo. We don't have very many TPMs so it becomes senior+ devs running projects. From my discussions with other senior+ engineers at other companies including Google, Amazon, and Microsoft that this is common. The more senior you get, the less down and dirty you are with the day to day code as your focus is on direction setting, guidance, project management, etc. I'd love to just be the technical expert that continually makes system-level improvements without a lot of project management responsibilities, but I don't know where I could find that?
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May 12, 2022 02:00
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Guinness posted:From my discussions with other senior+ engineers at other companies including Google, Amazon, and Microsoft that this is common. The more senior you get, the less down and dirty you are with the day to day code as your focus is on direction setting, guidance, project management, etc. I'm curious how it works at larger companies. Mentoring, reviewing, architecting, debugging, that's all definite high level work. On the project management side, there's some stuff you can't get away from, like architecture and estimates for proposals. But a lot of project management is managing stakeholders, chasing down tasks, minutes and scheduling for meetings, budgets, making written stuff look good, and that should all be a separate PM. That's the system my small company is working on, a tech lead vs project lead division.
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May 12, 2022 02:18
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Guinness posted:I'd love to just be the technical expert that continually makes system-level improvements without a lot of project management responsibilities, but I don't know where I could find that? I don't think these jobs exist in anywhere near the quantity to match the number of highly skilled engineers out there. The reason why everyone gets pushed more towards leadership roles is because that's where the manpower gap is.
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May 12, 2022 02:53
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StumblyWumbly posted:I'm curious how it works at larger companies. Mentoring, reviewing, architecting, debugging, that's all definite high level work. On the project management side, there's some stuff you can't get away from, like architecture and estimates for proposals. But a lot of project management is managing stakeholders, chasing down tasks, minutes and scheduling for meetings, budgets, making written stuff look good, and that should all be a separate PM. That's the system my small company is working on, a tech lead vs project lead division. Most large places I've been at there should be people dedicated to doing those things, but sometimes you as the more senior dev need to convince people to make sure they're in place when they're needed. I've got a pretty healthy/equal mix of: - Standard dev work: implementation, debugging, deployment - Support, meetings, ceremony - Big picture design, architecting The biggest challenge in my career now is influencing people I have no authority over. If teams are missing the big picture, ICs need growth, patterns/tech/ideas need evangelizing throughout the org, SEMs/POs/PMs could benefit from gentle nudges in a different direction, etc. The Tech Lead chapter in The Manager's Path goes over the pain here. I like that book a lot.
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May 12, 2022 03:09
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Illusive gently caress Man posted:I have lots of urgent stuff -- I try to delegate, but probably don't do it often enough. - I don't trust the team to do a good enough job. "If you want it done right, do it yourself." This is a bad position to be in. Gotta let them at least try (and give them room to falter). - Delegating tasks means explaining in excruciatingly clear detail what you want and how you want it delivered. Which means you have to be a good communicator, and you have to identify important issues ahead of time. I feel like when I don't have a clear idea of what I want, or there's lots of unanswered questions that'll get answered in the process, it feels easier to just do it myself. But I have to learn to alter that to be "do the *research* part yourself, to disperse the fog around the problem, and then once you know what you want, delegate the execution to the team."
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May 12, 2022 03:48
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https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1522609829553971200?s=20&t=vQrUw6G_1rWFO1JqeXMY_w Apropos of the discussion upthread
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May 12, 2022 05:52
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| # ? May 27, 2024 19:04 |
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shrike82 posted:https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1522609829553971200?s=20&t=vQrUw6G_1rWFO1JqeXMY_w finally, the definitive answer on how technical managers should be
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May 12, 2022 08:54
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