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Comment by robind2 | Hacker News Reader

Work for a startup, preferably one that is already somewhat profitable. I have worked for this type company my whole career and this "devops vortex" you speak of is a foreign concept. I run a small IT dept and we have one 30 min staff per week plus a one-on-one for each dev. And they code and solve other problems all day, and of course surf the web or socialize to break up the day too.

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I'm already in talks with two well known pre-IPO startups (<500 employees). The devops vortex is a new animal to me as well. I've never had so many problems moving systems into production than I have at this company.

Edit: I've talked with many in my professional network and they describe similar meeting loads (~1 hr/week) as you do. I'd estimate I spend on average 3 hr/week in meetings. And most of these meetings don't result in action items. They're essentially pointless.

Coming from an organization where I spent > 10 hours a week on meetings, I hear you. I believe I spent more time writing emails than writing code. The code I did write was done at night after everyone left and there would be no more meetings and useless phone calls. Managed to create the most used/useful application in the organization and still nothing changed.

When it occurred to me that things are not going to change in my lifetime even with all the promises of upper management, I started creating side projects where I am in control of the full direction. When that wasn't enough, I also started looking for a new job. Joined a startup as a CTO/Lead Dev and was happier.

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