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Comment by FractalNerve | Hacker News Reader

> * Give no feedback unless things go wrong

> * Treat your highly educated, intelligent and motivated devs like children by misusing agile in order to micromanage them

These two points made me cry. I suffered my very first burn-out due to that and although having a higher degree in computer science and love towards programming this really made me feel like a piece of shit. I have the feeling that it's really hopeless and it wants me to make the change to IT-Consulting instead of software-engineering.

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Also hits a nerve for me. Our mgmt just shuffles devs around from fire to fire without really just sticking the same devs to a single project until it's done.

Then we get questioned why projects are not done.

And don't get my started on our new Agile process. We have scrum meetings for our scrum meetings. We have mgmt. popping in the project level scrum meetings to tell us what is and isn't scrummy enough to talk about during the meetings.

And I moved to this company after thinking my last company didn't have it together. Man, I was wrong. No one writes comments here, or any tests. We just "make it work". Pay is awesome though...

define awesome? Currently in a similar situation...

~95k inc. bonus. Good healthcare, paternity leave, etc.

LPT: Don't complain, but suggest improvements. Stop looking at "management" as some evil superpower that can't be reasoned with. They're just people with different responsibilities. Align.

Oh dear, I'm really sorry for touching a nerve! I think management often have zero insight into how much many devs care about their work. Not all - I'm sure there are plenty with a thick skin and/or that care little beyond getting paid - but some of us are only capable of delivering our best given the right conditions. Lack of feedback is one of the most serious red flags I would say, and shows either the company is seriously dysfunctional, or that they absolutely do not give a shit about your progress. At that point the job should become just a paycheck until something better comes along. The funny thing is when they expect you to do your best work despite not keeping up their side of the bargain!

That is very true for me. A lot of managers don't understand my motivation at work, they don't understand that what actually keeps me going is the love for technology and for software engineering. That is being able to learn and develop interesting things, to research, to create, that motivates me. I can't bother on corporate politics. I don't care on going up the corporate ladder (I'm already in a top engineering position, I don't want to stop doing coding to become some sort of manager/architect/VP/etc).

Unless you're doing your own thing, consulting is often way worse.

> I have the feeling that it's really hopeless and it wants me to make the change to IT-Consulting instead of software-engineering.

Doesn't IT Consulting involve a fair amount of software engineering? Or by IT Consulting you mean like design high level architecture in a way that is abstracted from the app(s) it runs (e.g. setup a docker swarm)?

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