Ask HN: Frustrated and stressed: Maang remote work and new team advice

They are probably intimidated by you. It will be an uphill battle because you are the only senior on the team. It's clearly a bad fit for anyone with your years of experience. No sane manager would build a team of 1-3 yoe and one 15+ yoe. That's a recipe for failure. I would start looking for better roles elsewhere.

I feel like I'm wasting my time here if no one wants to learn or discuss how to improve things in a concrete way.

One of my coworkers flat-out said he "Just here for a job and to go home at the end of the day." No curiosity, not interested in learning, and they don't have a software development background.

I'm looking for contacts in other departments, making notes of what sort of pain points there are at-scale, and trying to meet people who are outside the department.

This might be off-topic...but you're saying these are devs with only 1-3 YOE, have a "don't care" attitude, and are employed at a MAANG company? I must really be naive b/c I thought it was only cream-of-the-crop that got employed at MAANG companies. I keep telling myself those companies are for other/better people, not me. So what exactly is the barrier to entry if these devs are working there? I always hear "study leet code" but thought it was a joke. Is that really it? Nail the formulaic interview and you're in? I ask sincerely b/c your coworkers sound like a joke. I consider myself a "senior" dev in experience and abilities and would love to work under/with a more senior dev with 15 YOE that wants to engage and educate.

> I always hear "study leet code" but thought it was a joke. Is that really it? Nail the formulaic interview and you're in? I ask sincerely b/c your coworkers sound like a joke.

That's literally it. As in, not just algorithms (the "leetcode" per se), but also design/architecture interviews. And then, applying ad nauseam, until you get in.

A non negligible chunk of MAANG in my age group I've seen is "I want to make money, money is all that matters, job hop every other month in SF for salary increases, side project hustle just for money not to learn, what's your TC? ew"

Ha, is this me? Did I write this? I’m in the same boat at one of the big tech firms. I think it’s being new and remote, I’m out of sight and out of mind. No travel for now, so i doubt I’ll get to meet the team in person anytime soon.

I’m going to give it a year, and if it doesn’t get better then I’m out. I’m going to continue being very clear with them about what I want and will offer specific solutions but if it doesn’t change then I’m out.

You do you but if you’re asking if you should be interviewing then you probably should trust your gut.

I get the impression you are new on this team. Is that correct?

Sonewhat assuming so, I think when a team does not trust a person to get a lot done, they give them less. I think this can also snowball, lack of direction leads to churn and lots of lag time to get answers to hit task completion, which leads to slower task completion and more team apathy/disengage.

IMO, just focus on the tasks given to you. Get them done to a T, nothing extra, and be somewhat public about noting a recent task done.

I think this is something of a personal branding/perception problem. After some time of knocking things out of the park, there will be evidence for why the team should engage you.

I don't think this a healthy team dynamic, trust I think should be the default until otherwise rather than an earned thing. (If a manager requires a new hire to prove their trustworthiness, it can put a person in a catch-22 where the they can't prove their trustworthiness until they are trusted)

I went through this for literally the last 4 years before I finally got fed up and quit and went to a startup for good. The issue is entirely your management.

If your management doesn't respect and value you specially they will send signals to everyone else that you can be ignored. Like it or not, your peers entirely look to your management for who to respect and listen to and ignore.

If your VP etc are not telling them: "This guy is the shit! So valuable" they will ignore you. Nothing you can say or do will fix it. No heroic acts or genius insights will work.

Your peers are just drones that do what they are told. They will obey the signals being sent to them. If your management does not respect you and listen to you, no one is going to respect and listen to you.

I had 10+ years of experience in a particular domain at a leading FAANG-like company. In fact, I was a leading expert. The VP of that group felt threatened by me and sent signals to stomp and ignore me. So guess what? That's what my peers did.

I am sorry but nothing you can do will fix the above situation other than working for management who respect you. I left that situation and report directly to the CEO of my current company, who loves me.

Furthermore:

If you want to work with competent people, I have learned my lesson. Big companies are a complete waste of time. Everyone sucks, just does what they are told, there is no creativity and the talent level is low (as well as motivation level) even at the very top companies.

What snapped me out of it was reading an article by a recruiter who flat said: "Big companies don't actually want talented people, because they just argue with management. They want people in the middle of the pack who generally obey orders."

Will never go back to a large multi-thousand person company for the sake of my soul and sanity.

Finally:

All the signs you just outlined are signs of a company with way too many people who aren't being productive. That means arbitrary lay offs are coming.

I would just get another job. You're not a slave. You can just leave and take your business elsewhere. There's no shortage of work in technology.

d. Should I be confidentially interviewing at similar companies and startups?

e. I'm also working on my own side projects mostly related to automated installs of high-availability k8s, a minified server-oriented Linux distribution similar to CoreOS/Arch/Alpine, and the Rust ecosystem.

How long have you been working there? If it is a recent job give it time to see if things will improve. If you have been there for a while then it is time to find a better team in another company.

Why don’t you take charge of the situation yourself?

Why don’t you initiate any change you’d like to see in the team or in the codebase?

It might be a shitty team, but in the end it’s your responsibility to be proactive.

If i hire someone with 15 yoe i expect him to be the provider of ideas and solutions, not a consumer.

Of course I would also communicate my expectations upfront and help realize them. But there’s only so many good managers in the world.

There is still high demand for tech workers. Consider switching to another team, or if hiring freeze prevents it another company.

If you're just starting out in your career it makes more sense to tough out a situation like this, but for someone who has already put in a few years there's no reason to hang out on a team you don't get along with.

How many others are there on the team?

Have they recently been “burned” by another seasoned engineer and are not open to advice or feedback? Team abuse happens and it sucks to walk into that.

Set a deadline today for measurable things to improve. You have a good list of measurable things to start with. Discuss this with your manager. Measure progress and if they haven’t improved by your deadline, leave.

Supposedly, everyone's been with this team and company a "long time." They don't have much in the ways of recent departures.

My manager is difficult to get any time with and they're basically never around.

Lots of red flags. I’d chalk it up to a learning experience and move on.

Hiring freeze "officially". There's a promise from the director (my manager's manager) that I would be able to change teams either internally or in a different department if it doesn't work out. I don't know what that promise is worth, because I feel like I'm being gaslighted that "there's no problem" and "everyone in the team is nice."

Edit: Also, the senior people aren't interested in career advancement and I can't interest them in what comes after the craptastic technical debt we're working on supposedly cleaning up. I've been told not to touch X and Y because it's "special code". I feel like my hands are being tied behind my back and being setup to fail.

How experienced is your director? It sounds like there’s a (mutual?) lack of trust. If that’s the case, there’s not much there to build on.

Others have given you advise on how to change your situation. Those options take time to execute.

In the meantime, consider changing how you look at this situation so that at least while you work to solve it you don't feel stressed out.

I recommend reading on stoicism first thing in the morning before dealing with work.

Your post needs more context

Catch-22. I need to know what context you're looking for if I'm to add more of it. Do you have any specific questions?

Just earn the big bucks and stop complaining