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Comment by librish | Hacker News Reader

There seems to be a valuable lesson for OP about the cost of not playing ball here.

Assuming OPs side of things is mostly true it sounds like:

- OP was working for a bad director, one so bad that they eventually got fired - Instead of placating this director and pretending to take their concerns into consideration, OP fights back more than other teammates (reading between the lines of the quote "However, given that I was far from John’s favorite (we never openly came into conflict, but I didn’t put the requisite amount of enthusiasm into jumping through his hoops to really get onto his good side)" here) - The director gives him a very poor performance review, that seems to have had serious impact on OPs career, team selection possibility, and personal finances, despite the director eventually getting fired

It just seems like a very high price to pay just to be able to tell yourself that you're not putting up with bullshit.

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The philosopher Diogenes was sitting on a curbstone, eating bread and lentils for his supper. He was seen by the philosopher Aristippus, who lived comfortably by flattering the king. Said Aristippus, "If you would learn to be subservient to the king, you would not have to live on lentils." Said Diogenes, "Learn to live on lentils, and you will not have to cultivate the king."

Right. Spend 5 minutes flattering the king, and benefit from the outsized rewards from it.

Spend 5 minutes flattering the king, and benefit from the outsized rewards from it.

Sure. The first time. But the king isn't stupid. He'll make you more and more subservient until eventually you'll be flattering him for bread and lentils else you'll be put in prison. People in power do that a lot.

In this story it sounds like the king was kind of stupid. And if the deal is no longer good, just walk away, but now with more options than OP.

The great thing about business unlike monarchies is there is always more than one king. Go find another one.

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand is largely based around this topic as well.

Giving up who you really are can be a very high price to pay just to be able to receive some (more) money.

People are both complex and can change though. Maybe we should give up our worst aspects as we grow and learn. Figure out your core essence and protect it; identify the accidental and be open to alternatives.

I know that as my experience has accumulated i care about a few things more and all things a lot less. O also better understand life is a spectrum of many different perspectives, versus the black or white zealot i was in my younger days...

Except our intrepid hero didn't want to live on lentils, did he?

He signed up specifically for a large amount of money in form of stock - live-changing, in fact. At that point, you have to accept that never compromising is not your winning strategy - because the people handing out the money want something in return, and it's not your charming personality.

He did play ball. He played ball for month after month, even as the cost of playing ball kept ramping up and up and up. Eventually it became higher than he could stand, and he started showing symptoms of mental health problems. At that point, he wisely left rather than end up with full-blown depression.

When you are dealing with people such that what they want is not for you to get a job done, but to humiliate you for the pleasure of wielding power, there is no fixed cost that will qualify you as having played ball, no bargain such that you can keep your side and trust them to keep theirs. The cost will always keep going up. The only questions are when the endgame will be reached, and what you will do then.

I can't really judge from the outside, but it sounds like maybe he played the wrong ball-game a little bit. He overdelivered technically and underdelivered politically. This is still absolutely a problem caused by John and not the author, but it sounds like there might have been an easier path if he'd spent a little more time working John's ego and a little less time delivering technically.

Good point. If you are going to try to stick it out in that environment, focus less on the tech and more on the politics. If your geek instincts rebel at the P-word, think of it as Defense Against the Dark Arts.

As a facts-driven engineer, i can relate to being incredibly annoyed by a John and finding it distasteful to spend time with a person like that. It’s not just that it’s a bother to get through, it’s physically revolting and I find it hard to not get flustered at having my time wasted this way. If delivering politically means kowtowing to a John, I just can’t bring myself to do it and can totally empathize with the author.

I worked with a "John", with the added bonus that I was expected to be the hatchet man telling developers that they couldn't use any language features introduced post Java 5 or that they had to restructure all of their solutions in line with the latest edict. Thankfully we had some very good teams who saw exactly what was happening, and were able to schedule a round table so we could talk about how this was both demoralising and causing things to go extremely slowly. (At one point "complying with edicts" was taking up 80-90% of engineering effort).

The net result of the big round table with every senior dev in attendance was "John" spent an hour trying to deflect us from the topic at hand, 30 minutes pretending to listen to us, then within two days it was back to, "I want you to tell the teams to go back and rename all the DTO objects they've created".

In the end I just left. There's no point fighting that kind of environment. Someone hires "John" and is happy with what they do.

I haven’t worked with Java in over a decade. What is the rationale for not allowing newer language features? Thanks in advance!

In this context, the rationale was little more than this being the last version in which "John" had done significant day-to-day programming, and therefore felt informed enough to interfere with on a daily basis. My personal take was that a lot of the negative behaviour was being unable to "let go" and accept no longer feeling like the best programmer in the organisation.

> What is the rationale for not allowing newer language features?

"They aren't proven"

"They aren't mature enough"

"They are bloat"

"They make the code too complex"

"They don't scale"

"They are slow"

"They make it hard to read the code"

"The language vendor might pull the plug on them"

"They have bugs"

"They aren't any easier than <MY_WAY>"

If you read between the lines, people that object to new language features are almost always doing it for a single reason, which they may not even admit to themselves:

"I'm not a competent enough developer to understand the language feature, so nobody should use the feature"

It's called workplace bullying in the UK.

When I started my career I put up with it for the money. About 7 years in I walked out (quite literally) after the most amazing amount of verbal abuse I've seen delivered in an unjustified tantrum. One of the best memories of over 30 years in tech.

"It just seems like a very high price to pay just to be able to tell yourself that you're not putting up with bullshit."

That would be funny if it wasn't so sad. 'Specially given the recent events/news about Stalman.

High price? He got to keep his professional integrity and self dignity. He's an SV tech worker - He will bounce into something else. It's not as though he had a special needs kid on a ventilator to care for, while working in a job where there was no equivalent for 100 miles away.

That was LA.

OP didn't really stand up for himself - most of his complaints are because "John made me do it". Even a good director would dislike an engineer whose explanation for technical decision making is "X made me do it". OP appears to have no technical leadership IMO so the moral of this story is if you are going to be a spineless peon instead of a technical expert then at least be a placating spineless peon.

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