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Comment by MathYouF | Hacker News Reader

The grass is greener if you stop working for companies dominated by non-technical leadership.

Unfortunately the types who move from one corporate behemoth to another rarely see the light and continue indulging in the fantasy that one day they'll find a large old company run by non-technical leadership with respect for engineering, other good developers to collaborate with who haven't left, and processes focused on progress.

The rest of us learned the lesson and stopped working as engineers for such companies.

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- I am not coding anymore. - I am putting out the same fires I have been for the last 5 years. - I no longer learn anything on company time. (New technologies does not equate with improvement) - I have to devote my own time to growth.

My company's leadership is _entirely_ technical. In fact, engineering leads the whole organization, pretty much. We're still a feature factory.

Working for technical people is not a panacea to bad leadership. It just means they're better at bullshitting engineers to their face.

> It just means they're better at bullshitting engineers to their face.

They're also better at detecting bullshitting from engineers.

Oh, how much needed that is now days too. Engineers are becoming insufferable (I’m first on the list).

> they’re better at bullshitting engineers to their face.

Why did you call me out?

I've read somewhere that BMW and Audi have internal regulations in place, which dictate that at least half of the top level leadership group should always consist of people with engineering backgrounds.

I have not been able to confirm if it's true or not.

But it sounds as a healthy regulation to have in place for a technical company, since gravity seems to work in the opposite direction. Non-technical leaders will, in my experience, have a tendency towards hiring other non-technical leaders, and towards trying to mould the company operations into something which can be run without the need for technical knowledge.

And Toyota has (had?) the requirement that all employees, no matter how privileged, should regularly spend time on the factory floor doing the core business of the company: assembling cars.

I think that sort of idea makes a lot of sense to avoid losing touch.

and their cars interior is by far the worst for price range. Infotainment is so bad that sometimes the touch response happens like 4-5 seconds later on a four year old corolla hybrid. Worst interior in a car i experienced

Anecdata aside, they are one of (if not THE) most reliable car brands

i agree with reliability.

Just the rest of stuff is so bad, i mean for a car worth 25-30k i expect a touchscreen that is not absolute lemon from the start. Or just give me an api over network/bus that someone can create an app for it and i can just run a tablet which would be a total of say (300 bucks for a decent tablet, 100 bucks for the app ).

Not a fan of teslas at all, but i hope they put the direction of industry to have a decent infotainment as default. Korean/German cars seem to have a bit better infotainment.

> just give me an api over network/bus that someone can create an app for it

Be careful what you ask for…

I got a _very_ stern talking to by legal a long time back (~2013), when I demonstrated to my boss that using the Toyota telematics and some knowledge of specific vehicles, I could locate 2 of the fleet Prius we used. I’m reasonably sure I could have popped the door locks on them too with a little more work.

I was just “playing” with some api docs I found in the company wiki.

Legal and the CTO made it very clear to me that I’d never found those docs, I’d never written any code to use those APIs, I’d never connected to any Toyota never mind one I didn’t own personally, I’d certainly never tried exploiting those APIs, and I knew _nothing_.

I hope (perhaps in vain) that things are better than they were 7-8 years ago (and that 7-8 years and the company who’s NDA I was covered by company going into receivership is long enough to tell some of the story…)

That would be fun, i know its hard to trust car manufacturers with software, but one can alwys wish.

I just wish if some company create an android/ios app, it would be definitely easier to create than working on some random hardware found in car infotainment for which its hard to find developers.

Now any tablet can be my infotainment. I only need navigation and music to be integrated in app. No other features what so ever.

Basically what volkswagen e-up / skoda e-citigo has done.

Do you have any tips to share about finding places run by technical minded leadership, before actually getting yourself hired?

I feel my bullshit-job detector when interviewing at potential workplaces isn't as good as it could be...

I'm not good at it either and landed at a good place by sheer luck. But once I know what a good culture looks like, next time I have to look for a new job I would try to do an extensive reverse interview to learn what their approach to architecture, planning, development and testing is. Basically I'd like to make sure that these all are driven by developers, that people care about quality, not just metrics, and that there is a long-term vision of what the team wants to deliver.

Ask who your manager will be. Look them up on LinkedIn. Look at all the people on the technical side of the company and their LinkedIns. If their last few jobs for the last several years aren't technical, that's the answer.

In general, pretty much any company that isn't a technology company will fail this test. Working for companies which are young and specifically software companies is your best bet.

This is the conclusion i came to as well, but you said it better.

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