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Skip level means your boss' boss. They should be mentioning them at least every sprint, either during the planning or the retrospective, or whatever planning/disaster pick up the pieces meetings you have, however often you decide to have them. "Gerald, the director/senior manager of the Underwater Weaving Widget Development group, said in our scrum of scrums that they want to switch focus to internal customers that deal with the product side of blah, so next month the tickets will be focused on that" -Your boss/tech lead Your skip level is Gerald
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Jun 27, 2023 04:34
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i think op knows what it means and is just in an org so broken that it isn't apparent. not knowing isn't  worthy, but that kind of organizational dysfunction is
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Jun 27, 2023 05:32
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Should've gone with grandboss.
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Jun 27, 2023 05:53
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Bruegels Fuckbooks posted:and then it took two weeks before I stopped thinking about bad things that happened to me at work constantly while lying in bed. I remember some years back when burnout as a real thing came up that it took two weeks (like, eleven days?) to finally ease out of it. I feel like the breadth and depth of burnout has expanded since then, but I thought you pointing out two weeks was very coincidental.
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Jun 27, 2023 06:41
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Longer it burns the longer it takes for the ash to coalesce into functional human. Been about two years after five of 24/7 ops for me. I can mostly feed myself, mostly. poo poo is no joke. Look out for number one.
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Jun 27, 2023 11:01
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Falcon2001 posted:Extremely Useful Advice Regarding my manager, I'm reading the tea leaves on an imminent reorg (with an open leadership req), & I don't expect he'll still be my manager in 6 months. However, there's still a lot of good advice there on how to handle my expectations of management, rather than simply trying to live with whatever they choose to pass down. I do have ad-hoc communication with my skip level that works out to every two or three months, & he is aware of some specific issues on the team. I do have to prioritize pretty hard though in how I choose what to raise, since I don't get that much time with him. Falcon2001 posted:Any business process that revolves around people working regular 80 hour weeks is already a failure waiting to happen. I assume you are all salaried, so yeah, there's gonna be crunch times/etc around major events where people have to put in extra time in most companies, but you're just robbing from yourself when you work hours like that, so any time you start doing it regularly it's a surefire sign of failures starting to come down the pipe. This is absolutely something where you should be vocal about it, because surprise surprise the consequences are a lot of stuff you've been talking about, like people getting overwhelmed and burned out and ineffective. It's hard to truly get a handle on what hrs some of my other, remote team members are putting in, 80 is likely a bad over-estimate from me, but I would not be surprised at a steady 55-60 for some people, which is definitely bad, just not 80hr/wk bad. Falcon2001 posted:Basically every single book about managing software development workflows nails this point home in one form or another; you'd be hard pressed to find any written resource that doesn't list requirements gathering and solidifying as important. So this is a part I have been thinking about a lot. Demo-slinger came to DS from a hard SWE background without any complex scientific/experimental project background. He is actually pretty good at scaling the hard structural type requirements to get something not technically falling over at scale in prod. This is a tremendously valuable skill that I respect quite a lot, and explains why he has gotten the position he did. However, for DS products, there is a bifurcation between delivering the proper form of the output, and delivering the proper informational content of the output. For example, a requirements set of the sort of "output semi-plausible text loosely related to (topic) on demand to X # of users with Y latency" is the sort of description we do coalesce on relatively early on in the project, and is the sort of thing he can deliver on quite well. However, you really don't need a DS team anywhere near that sort of project these days, there's nothing for us to ADD to. Where our DS team excels is when we are expected to figure out what, beyond "fast returned text" and identify what you actually want it to SAY. What kinds of error classifications are even possible, what is the business appetite for accepting some of those, providing user training for avoiding others, and which ones are absolutely unacceptable. And how do you measure rates for any of that, both before it gets to prod & also during maintenance phases. That's the space where there's very little appetite to get more clarity up front, and because we do quickly come up with some set of form requirements, it does appear to management that we are following best practices and have written direction to work towards. And that brings me to the comments on productivity & deadlines: Falcon2001 posted:I guarantee that somewhere your management probably cares about loss of productivity and failure to meet deadlines, and I also guarantee that most of them don't give a poo poo about burnout until you start talking about it in terms of productivity and failure to meet deadlines. You can sometimes make an emotional appeal when something sucks hard enough, but the cold hard truth of business is that if you can't represent a problem in the form of cost savings or efficiency gains or ability to deliver X thing, you have a huge uphill battle to getting those changes made.
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Jun 27, 2023 13:32
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Ah, it sounds like I might have the wrong idea then. I haven't worked closely with a data science team so ill trust that you're right on all that. Are the "users" implementing your products internal or external to your company?
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Jun 27, 2023 16:36
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Startyde posted:Longer it burns the longer it takes for the ash to coalesce into functional human. Been about two years after five of 24/7 ops for me. I can mostly feed myself, mostly. Yeah, recovery time is going to depend heavily on the specifics of your situation. There's no timeline or schedule on recovering, and also odds are you will never achieve the same level of sustained productivity that you had before burnout occurred. The best strategy I know of is to take each day as it comes, and to try to make sure you have a cushion so you can go easy on yourself when you need to.
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Jun 27, 2023 16:36
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Falcon2001 posted:Ah, it sounds like I might have the wrong idea then. I haven't worked closely with a data science team so ill trust that you're right on all that. The users are internal, at least on the current project. There was a somewhat similar big project that crashed and burned 2 years ago for somewhat similar reasons, but like all large projects that struggle, there were multiple interacting things that went wrong. The lessons that have been learned don't touch the types of risks that I see repeated in these new projects. Honestly, I think this might be a case where I can't completely save management from learning from consequences, but that we eventually will have enough cases to point to that we can pull out the general principles that are needed for success. Also somewhat frustrating from a "told you so" way, but I suspect I won't even ever get that kind of satisfaction either; these are going to be the sorts of lessons learned in a sequence of face-saving agile pivots over the course of the next couple years. If I stick around, I probably can help craft some of those directions since I do have pretty good relationships with product leaders. Just because I think I see what's coming, doesn't mean that I can't feed in my preferred conclusion with a "who could possibly have foreseen!!" tone that will probably be very welcome at some future points.
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Jun 27, 2023 18:25
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+1 reorg  Relatively minor. Another team is getting partly rolled into ours. Closer in scope than previous teams, so at least it makes some sense. +1 employee, so the team will be  fine without me.
Pollyanna fucked around with this message at 19:21 on Jun 27, 2023 |
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Jun 27, 2023 19:04
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I would assume that tech as a whole is in a "Fortunately the bad days are over ... Now it's time for the even worse days" situation. How you approach this IMO depends alot on where you are in your career and what your life situation is. I myself am at staff level with a mortgage and a toddler and enough unvested RSUs to keep my TC floating along for a few years if new awards tank. In my position I have good reason to put up with a few years of BS. If you are early career, young and with no attachments? I don't see any reason to grind it out under organizational BS when you could try the waters somewhere else and find a path that is more suited to you.
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Jun 28, 2023 00:28
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I'm seriously considering trying somewhere much smaller next time, if only for the change of pace from a decade and a half at big tech. Not a startup or tiny shop, but something smaller than 'the largest engineering company on the planet' might be nice.
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Jun 28, 2023 05:39
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Falcon2001 posted:I'm seriously considering trying somewhere much smaller next time, if only for the change of pace from a decade and a half at big tech. Not a startup or tiny shop, but something smaller than 'the largest engineering company on the planet' might be nice.
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Jun 28, 2023 14:56
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putertouchin is a creative endeavor, but for economic and weird other reasons 90% of it gets done in vast corps and orgs and stuff. i dont think the insanity is really extricable from the basic nature of touchin
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Jun 28, 2023 15:04
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Vulture Culture posted:For all the problems that Personalities cause in big tech shops, I'm growing convinced that the ones caused by Non-Personalities in midsize shops are frequently worse You mean like people who just don't care or people who just poo poo out tickets?
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Jun 28, 2023 16:06
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Manager officially started a support check-in! So it sounds like he’s serious about this and started a paper trail. Support check-ins are a new thing at Google and apparently reports of them are rising across the org. I have no idea if they’re meant to be “hey, everything alright?” or a pre-PIP. Either way, I am still interviewing for different teams, and am prepared to find a new company altogether if this goes as south as I think it will. Given my manager’s unconvincing points in my 1-on-1, I don’t trust that he’s not just finding a way to get rid of me.
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Jun 28, 2023 16:52
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Stack ranking 
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Jun 28, 2023 17:47
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I prefer rack stanking
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Jun 28, 2023 17:49
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I’m not gonna lie, Google may have convinced me to retire from software. At the very least, I don’t have much confidence in tech as a career anymore.
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Jun 28, 2023 17:51
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Computers suck and I get my personal satisfaction from chasing rare tanks around the globe. Sadly, my computer touching provides me with the money and delicious prescription drugs that make me not die.
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Jun 28, 2023 18:12
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Pollyanna posted:I’m not gonna lie, Google may have convinced me to retire from software. At the very least, I don’t have much confidence in tech as a career anymore. Yeah, I've been wondering what else I might be "can live comfortably" good at for a while now.
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Jun 28, 2023 18:17
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Yeah unfortunately writing terraform and tweaking templating engines and writing the wrappers that go around them is the only thing I have found that can financially satisfy my hobbies. If my hobbies were knitting and ultimate frisbee I'd probably be a nursing assistant chowing down on anti malarials working for doctors without borders or something.
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Jun 28, 2023 18:26
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why not try ultimate frisbee and knitting? that's an odd way to look at the set of things you enjoy
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Jun 28, 2023 18:30
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I'm pretty deeply committed to boats at this point.
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Jun 28, 2023 18:35
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I've been shopping around to see if I can find a nice cheap place to live, so I don't have to do computer touching any more. The more time I spent on hunting for a new job (in software), the less enthusiastic I was about actually having a new job.
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Jun 28, 2023 18:37
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I don't think computer touching is the problem though, it's capitalism. Source: have had other jobs. If you can support yourself off your hobby, that's the ticket, although it stops feeling like a hobby pretty quick when there's the pressure of supporting your family behind it.
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Jun 28, 2023 19:10
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SurgicalOntologist posted:I don't think computer touching is the problem though, it's capitalism. Source: have had other jobs. The real trick is having enough wealth to not give a poo poo. And computer touching is a decent path to that.
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Jun 28, 2023 19:11
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SurgicalOntologist posted:I don't think computer touching is the problem though, it's capitalism. Source: have had other jobs. For sure, the idea of trying to make a living off of, say, woodworking, is also distressing. These days I'm mostly just very tired.
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Jun 28, 2023 19:20
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Since we're all sharing: my current goal is to save up for FI (financial independence, which I think is around $2M in savings for most areas in the USA, but $4M for urban area or other nice areas?) and then live off the interest as a teacher in a public school so I can help people do what I just did but for whatever their generation's stuff will be. That way I don't _have_ to put up with peoples' crap if I don't want to and can just focus on being good at teaching. Thank you for coming to my TED talk. edit: I'm gonna very much be the cool teacher. Because I'll have my living expenses taken care of with the interest money, I can use the teacher's salary for pizza parties, field trips, food for the poor kids, and then go on cool vacations of my own during the Summer breaks. I got it all planned out. I just need to save up the money, that's all. Love Stole the Day fucked around with this message at 19:26 on Jun 28, 2023 |
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Jun 28, 2023 19:22
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Love Stole the Day posted:Since we're all sharing: my current goal is to save up for FI (financial independence, which I think is around $2M in savings for most areas in the USA, but $4M for urban area or other nice areas?) and then live off the interest as a teacher in a public school so I can help people do what I just did but for whatever their generation's stuff will be. That way I don't _have_ to put up with peoples' crap if I don't want to and can just focus on being good at teaching. Thank you for coming to my TED talk. Being a public school teacher in the US because you don't want to eat poo poo. I feel like you got indoctrinated into a very strange YouTube scam.
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Jun 28, 2023 19:26
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Love Stole the Day posted:Since we're all sharing: my current goal is to save up for FI (financial independence, which I think is around $2M in savings for most areas in the USA, but $4M for urban area or other nice areas?) and then live off the interest as a teacher in a public school so I can help people do what I just did but for whatever their generation's stuff will be. That way I don't _have_ to put up with peoples' crap if I don't want to and can just focus on being good at teaching. Thank you for coming to my TED talk. I know someone who did this and they quickly turned into your typical "kids these days are the worst!" crank. By "this" I mean got into teaching for noble high-minded reasons.
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Jun 28, 2023 19:28
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I might be interested in teaching, but not in the public school system. If you think game developers have it bad, teachers have it way worse. Not only are they being abused because they're passionate about their jobs, but also they're encouraged to develop martyr complexes because they're providing a critical service to oftentimes vulnerable children.
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Jun 28, 2023 19:30
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I don’t know what I really want in life, and my time in computer touching has been spent trying to get as financially secure as possible (which to be fair has gone well enough so far). I basically don’t exist otherwise.
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Jun 28, 2023 19:32
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drat, sometimes I feel like I'm the only one that actually still enjoys development. Though, not doing the actual coding part of the job for work has allowed me to enjoy it more as a hobby. So I guess there's that.
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Jun 28, 2023 19:35
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i still like it but my secret is to peace out when a company gets to 100 peeps tops, usually 50
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Jun 28, 2023 19:36
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Covid was very effective at revealing how many/most parents utilize public schools If you want to do a social good go get yourself a $15 bottle of doxycycline, pair of knitting needles and enlist with doctors without borders
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Jun 28, 2023 19:40
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FYI I was a teacher 10+ years ago and was pretty good at it, please don't dreamshame thanks
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Jun 28, 2023 19:50
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Engineering rules and is probably the best place to work, all things considered, although there is a wide standard deviation and some engineers would get dropped from other jobs immediately for the poo poo they do. Teaching is great, too, but if I had a choice I would work with a voluntary club. Some kind of tech for non-profits thing would be good too. Sorry that google is bad, but I hope you can take what you learned and find someplace better in the future. kayakyakr posted:drat, sometimes I feel like I'm the only one that actually still enjoys development. 
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Jun 28, 2023 20:23
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Coding is fun and I think most other knowledge work jobs are much worse. From what I can glean from my wife's job it's just Oops! All Meetings!
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Jun 28, 2023 21:10
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Writing code for yourself is so much better than writing code for someone else.
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Jun 28, 2023 21:14
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