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thotsky posted:He could be struggling with the guilt of having to shitcan a bunch of people, for sure. I can't wait for somebody to figure out the first LLM-stroke-inducing shibboleth that makes a fully automated company send the writer all their money.
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Jun 30, 2023 16:40
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poo poo like csammis post is why I'll never be a manager. I would probably just quit if I was ever asked to unjustly fabricate a reason to fire anyone.
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Jun 30, 2023 16:48
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It shouldn't be necessary to make poo poo up. If the manager has any kind of performance indicators, that will point to who to lay off and provide the paper trail at the same time
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Jun 30, 2023 17:13
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cum jabbar posted:It shouldn't be necessary to make poo poo up. If the manager has any kind of performance indicators, that will point to who to lay off and provide the paper trail at the same time The point is that sometimes you're asked to poo poo can people to make budget work, in those cases what do you do if your team is solid?
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Jun 30, 2023 17:18
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Falcon2001 posted:The point is that sometimes you're asked to poo poo can people to make budget work, in those cases what do you do if your team is solid? It sucks, but you figure out who you can best live without. If the company is losing money, eventually nobody has a job
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Jun 30, 2023 17:47
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a dingus posted:You mean like people who just don't care or people who just poo poo out tickets?
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Jun 30, 2023 17:52
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Pollyanna posted:Tell me how you know a particular situation is worth navigating and when it is better to wash your hands of it and move on. Do other people in the organization see the same issues, are there people to partner with? If not, you are the lone fish swimming against the current, and that is a clear flag to move on.
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Jun 30, 2023 18:43
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Is there such a thing as a “right” current and a “wrong” fish, or vice versa?
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Jun 30, 2023 18:48
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Pollyanna posted:Is there such a thing as a “right” current and a “wrong” fish, or vice versa? There's all kinds of different styles and priorities at different places. Do you like tons of documentation and testing? You'll do well in medical and automotive. Hate it? Try anywhere else. In general, if you want to change something about a company, that won't work unless you have the support of the person in charge of whatever you want to change. If that person likes your idea, maybe it'll happen. If they don't, almost definitely not. csammis - It feels like there's something hidden happening in your situation. Maybe the manager knows people need to be fired and you don't, maybe they have brain worms, maybe the manager would have a completely different interpretation of the conversation. It feels like someone saying "My roommate keeps running around at night and spilling water just to watch it puddle on the ground" without mentioning that the roommate is a cat. Even if they were planning on firing you, if there's no paper trail then calling you into the office to tell you not to forward positive feedback has no impact on that, it's just the manager getting into a super awkward conversation.
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Jun 30, 2023 19:38
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wins32767 posted:It sucks, but you figure out who you can best live without. If the company is losing money, eventually nobody has a job You're talking about layoffs though, which don't require a pip or any faking of data. I'm talking about when companies basically say "you need to find a way to fire someone with cause"
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Jun 30, 2023 20:18
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Pollyanna posted:Is there such a thing as a “right” current and a “wrong” fish, or vice versa? Sure, every person and org has different circumstances. You gotta do what works for you.
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Jun 30, 2023 20:31
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drat. A lot of csammis' situation would make a lot more sense if the manager was a cat.
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Jun 30, 2023 20:39
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Pollyanna posted:Is there such a thing as a “right” current and a “wrong” fish, or vice versa? AC and tilapia
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Jun 30, 2023 20:42
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I drive alignment. I strive to achieve mutually acceptable outcomes. I minimize regrettable attrition. My tech stack of choice? Zoom meetings. My vision for the future? *looks at notes* AI
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Jun 30, 2023 20:53
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awesomeolion posted:I drive alignment. I strive to achieve mutually acceptable outcomes. I minimize regrettable attrition. My tech stack of choice? Zoom meetings. My vision for the future? *looks at notes* AI We must all efficiently operationalize our strategies, invest in world-class technology, and leverage our core competencies in order to holistically administrate exceptional synergy. We'll set a brand trajectory using management's philosophy, advance our market share vis-ŕ-vis our proven methodology, with strong commitment to quality, effectively enhancing corporate synergy, transitioning our company by awareness of functionality, promoting viability, and providing our supply chain with diversity. We will distill our identity through client-centric solutions and synergy.
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Jun 30, 2023 21:01
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is it punctuated like that? weird al sings it with a lot more exclamation marks
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Jun 30, 2023 21:09
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Gotta make it fit the melody.
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Jun 30, 2023 22:09
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Vulture Culture posted:Yeah, the whole culture of people who really don't care about anything, "check in" every once in awhile, and do their jobs by just reacting to whatever thing is immediately in front of them with no vision, strategy, or commitment I wonder what it is about modern tech company culture that could possibly drive people to this sort of behavior?
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Jul 1, 2023 02:21
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Pollyanna posted:Is there such a thing as a “right” current and a “wrong” fish, or vice versa? Adding onto what others have said: There's a limited amount any individual can do to affect an organization's culture, and so you do have to do some soul searching to decide 'am I willing to put up with this? Will I change or can I change things?' Sometimes the company practices aren't as bad as you think, and maybe you're overblowing it; other times it's a dumpster fire and you'll never be able to fix it. Other times, you might be able to be a force for good and help things improve; I'm finding myself (hopefully) in that last position. I'm in a team where higher level folks are very vocal about priorities I also think are important, and I'm able to help impact change at my level around those goals, and it works because I'm in sync with those goals. There's higher level goals I don't agree with, but I've made my peace with them for now. Another example: there's a category of devs who are very vocal about 'I just want to write code and not talk to people', and honestly, there's very few places you can do that anywhere that isn't just entirely personal projects. Open source projects are just as full of weird politicking as business, with the added bonus of the tyranny of having no leader and everyone just arguing about everything. Academia is the same and a giant cesspool of it. Working in government means you lose a lot of the dumb parts of business and replace them with bureaucracy and glacial pace.
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Jul 1, 2023 03:26
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Falcon2001 posted:Another example: there's a category of devs who are very vocal about 'I just want to write code and not talk to people', and honestly, there's very few places you can do that anywhere that isn't just entirely personal projects. I don't disagree that these people exist but I think the much more common sentiment is "I don't want to get pulled away from my work to listen to other people talk about things that barely concern me." In my old company before we got bought I generally had no meetings scheduled on any given week but I still spent tons of time chatting with the PM and designer about what we were building. I like that kind of talking as it leads to making a better product. What I don't like is sitting on hour long recurring cameras on meetings with people who I don't work with directly listening to them talk about projects I've never even heard of.
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Jul 1, 2023 14:41
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So in the interest of transparency and being forthright, I'd like to talk about the last 1-on-1 I had with my manager. See my last post if you don't know what the gently caress is going on. --- Background This week, I had my first 1-on-1 after last week's warning that I was not meeting expectations as an L4. In that time, my manager started a support check-in! Support check-ins precede Needs Improvement performance reviews i.e. PIPs. Therefore, a support check-in implies that your manager has singled you out as a potential target for a layoff or outright firing, to be determined at some point in the future. This means I'm on the chopping block. I take these very seriously as a professional and do not gently caress around with them. So I came into this 1-on-1 with a plan. My meeting prep My approach was to dig into and record the following: 1. Clarify and enumerate expectations for me at my level, and as a member of my team. 2. Clarify and enumerate where I am not meeting expectations for my level, and as a member of my team. Ask for and note down specific examples. 3. Clarify and enumerate steps to take to begin fulfilling these expectations, how, and what support I'll receive in doing so. I also decided to propose making a 30-60-90 timeline to track accomplishments and goals for shoring my performance back up to L4 level over the next three months. I hoped to leave the meeting with progress on this timeline. --- I was left unimpressed. What expectations? First, I asked if we could go over my first ask - what my expectations are as an L4 and as a team member. The only explicit expectation I was told about was feature and subproject delivery. Based on the role profile for my level, I am expected to work independently and come up to solutions to problems independently (whether those solutions be technical, procedural, or organizational in nature). Additionally, I should own and drive these features and subprojects and their delivery. In essence, the expectation is "figure it out yourself". That's it - my manager brought up no other expectation. What did I gently caress up? Next, I asked if we could go over my second ask - where and how I am not meeting expectations as an L4 and as a team member. I requested specific examples. Example 1: Configuring ACLs. Configuring ACLs started shortly after I first joined in Q4 2021. Requirements were determined by and set down by my predecessor, and then my predecessor left. I was expected to execute on them and own them (and the rest of the codebase) going forward. I covered this in my last post, so refer to that for my experience. My manager claims that I got sick of the back and forth and dumped the work on the lead dev over time. "The lead dev had to do it (and is still not done 8~9 months later)! You gave up!" Not in quite those words, but that's how it came off. Example 2: Testing BGP connectivity. According to my manager, this is the least impactful of all the examples. Once upon a time we made a change to our codebase that broke BGP connectivity for a given type of device and the QA team lead got really mad at us for it. I then identified that we should be testing our own output for valid BGP connectivity, which he said was a good example of my role. But then he said that I "gave up on it, as I see it". Which is NOT the truth - what happened is that I determined it to be a larger amount of effort than I expected and when I reported that we reprioritized it and backlogged it in favor of higher priority feature work. When my manager brought it up, he admitted that it was a pretty flimsy reason. Example 3: Expanded vendor testing. Right now, I'm working on running our tests against devices from other vendors. This involves uncovering blockers, dealing with hardware vs. VM feature parity, and figuring out whether something we're emitting is either correct-but-unsupported or just straight up wrong. It's been slow due to a combination of burnout brain, our existing code (both core and test) being written for a wildly different set of assumptions, and a lot of back and forth with vendor reps and NEs. My manager admitted that he had actually seen a lot of progress and improvement on this recently and that the decision to include it as a reason for the support check-in may have been premature. Regardless, it's one of the reasons I'm getting pre-PIPped. His words were that I "had a lack of urgency" and "should have figured out the blockers and the true cost in time sooner". The takeaway is that I "need to be more communicative about project state". In essence, his feedback boils down to "you gave up on too many things and dropped them on the floor and you're too slow and that makes you not good enough for L4". What should I do? Finally, I asked if we could go over my third ask - what steps I should take next to begin fulfilling expectations, how, and what management support I will receive. I did not get a clear or actionable response! My notes only have some discussion regarding the disparity between the expectations my manager and I write together for yearly performance review (things like "get feature Foo done" or "contribute to KPI Bar"), and the expectations of my role profile. The best I have is an echo of his response to my first ask: "Own things more and communicate more. Also read your role profile." We did not come up with a 30-60-90, which he had not even thought about as an option. I offered to work on it and bring it to our next 1x1. (I don't think I should bother.) The Check-In feedback I also got the official support feedback, the stuff that goes on file. Paraphrased: quote:"Where did the engineer fall short? Please give specific examples." My takeaway The expectations in the L4 role profile are valid. The implication that I am not meeting them for reasons that are specifically related to my competence as an engineer is not. When pressed on the reasoning for a pre-PIP, my manager already walked back part of his original justification for the negative review. The remaining justification is flimsy. When pressed on a plan for support going forward, my manager does not offer guidance or commit to any particular support action. Except for "I'll get one of the other devs on the team to mentor you". --- Uh, yikes. I don't see a future on this team. If I don't find a better fit elsewhere in Google, I'm moving on. I feel bad for the other team members. I wish them well, but...
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Jul 1, 2023 20:48
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Dude sounds like a bad manager and a bit of a dick besides
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Jul 1, 2023 21:05
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lol @ a manager letting their subordinates decide which things are important to work on then complain that they decided wrong
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Jul 1, 2023 21:15
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Sounds like he wanted you to deliver L5 work. I didn't think L4s were expected to work independently and own products/features. You should be compensated on an L5 level if that's what is expected of you though. If he's suggesting you get a mentor and check in with him more as a solution, rather than just going "do better", that's probably him recognizing he expected too much of you, and some humbleness from you might be adventagous if you want to have a future with Google, regardless of who is at fault here. thotsky fucked around with this message at 22:08 on Jul 1, 2023 |
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Jul 1, 2023 21:51
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That gets to my next point of what I really want out of my career, and whether now is a good time to re-evaluate it in general. I’m not ready to talk about that yet, though.
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Jul 1, 2023 21:55
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Yeah there's a long distance between an individual contributor and a fully independent engineer. They have completely unrealistic expectations of how you should function in that role.
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Jul 1, 2023 23:17
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If I recall correctly, for greenfield development, the levels basically break down as: L3: Leadership hands you a fleshed-out design, at a fairly detailed level (i.e. "create an API function that does X/Y/Z by using this algorithm and talking to this database"), and you implement it. L4: Leadership points you at a subsection of a design doc and you implement it, figuring out any minor technical issues en route L5: you make the design doc and drive its implementation (by doing work yourself, resolving complicated technical issues, and farming tasks out to team members) L6: L5 + organizational leadership (identifying strategic and tactical concerns, driving collaboration across teams, etc) ACLs might have been conceived as an L4-appropriate task, but they're clearly not, considering that we now have three separate devs who have taken on and failed to complete that task.
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Jul 2, 2023 00:02
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Hey all, More large tech-co FAANG questions. I’m currently an L5 team lead with room to grow to L6 on my current team, but I honestly am insanely bored with the space. We have enterprise customers so everything moves insanely slowly, but the work life balance and career growth are great. The people are also great and fun to work with despite the work not being interesting. I have the opportunity to switch to a different team in a different organization which is more user focused and is in my passion area. The people seem good on the team, but I fear losing the WLB and known “good” of my current team. I also worry about abandoning my team while I’m in a lead position. I can’t put two and two together: should I just focus on programming + interesting projects outside of work and enjoy my current lifestyle? is the grass really greener on the other side?
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Jul 2, 2023 00:32
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That's really something that only you can answer.
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Jul 2, 2023 01:17
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I often worry that it is part of the package for creative people to get good at something and then want to do something else, while the direction of capitalism is for folks to keep doing what works. Maybe the real team you need to lead is ... yourself. Or you can try talking to folks on the team, but there are too many details for anyone outside the problem to be able to help. Can you try it for a project and see how it goes? Pollyanna, you're right, your manager is wrong, but the path laid out looks good. The mentor should be breaking work down into chunks you can do with a realistic schedule, and someone should have been doing that at some level from day 1. Make sure you're manager knows what the schedule is, and keep in touch with them about "I'm working on X, doing this kind of stuff, running into some complexity, but this should be set in 2 days". If you don't get the work and schedule because your mentor and manage are busy/unable, you can email your manage and cc the skip level, but that has risks.
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Jul 2, 2023 01:35
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I think Pollyanna was absolutely correct to try to get some specific and measurable items out of their manager. The fact that said manager resisted doing this is absolutely not a good sign.  ASAP, because there's no winning this situation unless leadership drastically changes or some other deus ex machina occurs.
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Jul 2, 2023 01:56
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i dont think it was a pre pip i think you're in the paid interviewing period
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Jul 2, 2023 01:57
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StumblyWumbly posted:Pollyanna, you're right, your manager is wrong, but the path laid out looks good. Not much of a path was laid out. My manager didn’t commit to anything other than “more meetings with me” and “more meetings with some other engineer”, with the details and plan basically left up to the assigned mentor. Chances are that whatever engineer he assigns to me will not receive much support either, plus all of the other engineers are already pretty busy. I’m not really sure what he’s trying to accomplish by assigning a mentor other than to make me their problem and not his. TooMuchAbstraction posted:I think Pollyanna was absolutely correct to try to get some specific and measurable items out of their manager. The fact that said manager resisted doing this is absolutely not a good sign. With this org, all I gotta do is wait a month or so.  bob dobbs is dead posted:i dont think it was a pre pip 
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Jul 2, 2023 02:30
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Sorry I may have been making stuff up. Someone should be setting plans and schedules for your work (in 3 day long chunks or whatever), and all 3 (mentor, manager, you) should be agreeing on it. What the manager has so far is "this _feels_ like it takes too loooonnnnnggg", and that's them failing at their job. Fight to get schedules attached to your tasks. If your manager and mentor aren't familiar enough with your work to do that, then you're in a poo poo position as an L4 with no architect above you, and management should be aware.
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Jul 2, 2023 03:34
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Thank you all for the great feedback. So, my next question is... how do I tell my manager + team I'm switching without feeling guilty? I know this is also more of a personal question, but not sure of what the tact is here.
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Jul 2, 2023 03:50
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i recommend the bloody maneuver
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Jul 2, 2023 04:00
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sailormoon posted:Thank you all for the great feedback. So, my next question is... how do I tell my manager + team I'm switching without feeling guilty? I know this is also more of a personal question, but not sure of what the tact is here. Spring it on them unannounced, honestly. That's how everyone always does it. If there's people you're particularly close with you can let 'em know, but only if you trust them to keep it quiet.
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Jul 2, 2023 04:41
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sailormoon posted:Thank you all for the great feedback. So, my next question is... how do I tell my manager + team I'm switching without feeling guilty? I know this is also more of a personal question, but not sure of what the tact is here. Depends on your relationship with the other person but in general I'd say don't say anything until the ink is dry on your new offer. Especially these days you can't risk saying your leaving too early and having something fall apart.
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Jul 2, 2023 04:59
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Usually if you're a team lead switching teams, your boss will announce it, and then at standup or whatever do a follow-up and end with "if you have any questions about why or how project continuity will happen, I'm always available to chat"
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Jul 2, 2023 05:47
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I actually really enjoy spending time with my old team doing Q+A about the product I used to own because the new dev is very smart and easy to get along with so we just have periodic one hour meetings where we dive through code. It's fun. Now the reason we have to do that is because it was an untested, undocumented nightmare. 
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Jul 2, 2023 06:26
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