My Time Working at Stripe
jondlm.github.io
jondlm.github.io
I'd rather not have my manager forcing me to do group therapy. I owe the company some work hours and they own me money.
If I want to have personal relations with someone from my work, befriend somebody, share personal things, that is my choice. My personal life is not the company business.
Of course I wouldn't say all that to the manager, but 'I'll put him on the list of people I should be careful about, and fake some confessions.
It was the author and colleagues that decided to overstate, and seemingly did not regret. Groups of humans sometimes have connections like these, whatever the environment they are in.
I am sure other similar meeting with the same prompt only generated people saying they have two cats, they I am anxious about learning a new programming language or that they do not quite understand Stripe business model
And they have absolutely no right to do that. "Being vulnerable" is not part of any job description.
I ask because this is exactly the type of comment one of my siblings would make, and she is on the spectrum. She wouldn't be able to understand the social dynamics at play here, whereas for other folks it's just common sense. "Optional" is not really optional in some social settings, and that's something autistic folks struggle with being aware of, much less understanding. The activity may be optional in the most pedantic sense; you won't be struck down by lightning if you decide not to participate. But there will be consequences.
All of which is another reason why this whole exercise is an awful idea, considering that the number of autistic folks in software engineering is probably a bit higher than the population baseline.
What didn't work, however, was the office manager's increasingly awkward attempts to force socialising. When at some point we raised the issue (politely!) that this was often distracting, he became offended and lashed out. We later also found out that he was basically spying on us and reporting back to HQ.
It's one of the reasons why I'm incredibly wary of people who try too hard to be my "buddy" at work, especially if they're not peers.
Related: [Goodhart's Law](https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority...)
You can achieve that vulnerability via being a likable and honest person. I think often us technical-minded people forget that relationships aren't an optimization problem and don't respond like you think they would. Just being decent and trustworthy will take you there, saying things like "you can trust me guys!" often has the opposite effect.
I'm pretty sure this is not what they are expecting.
Really? If you are too honest, I am pretty sure you can fail spectacularly. Therapy is confidential for a reason.
Playing "I am somewhat therapist myself" in the workplace should be sackable offence.
Anyone starting to over-share becomes very problematic, because it forces everyone to conform. One of my colleagues didn’t feel like sharing anything personal, and he was silently outcast for the rest of the offsite and it continued to bite him in the ass for the rest of his time in that team.
The examples were very similar to those mentioned - people talking about their divorces, sex life, etc. I don’t think it’s fair to force colleagues to share such stories with each other.
Is that more than 10%?
Another option would be what Norm Macdonald did when Larry King asked him "what's something nobody knows about you" and he answered "I'm a deeply closeted homosexual." Just go over the top.
All the best to the author of the post, hopefully they can find more meaningful work.
It is funny how the more unimportant the company is, the more this kind of reverence is expected.
For me there was a stark contrast between two jobs I had:
Consultancy where I worked on software for local government that millions literally depend on? Keep your work-life 100% separate.
Marketing startup that spammed Google with crazy amounts of SEO-spam? Lots of instructions from HR to ask about personal matters in 1-on-1 meetings, weekly 2h mandatory confraternization followed by free beer, random CEO speech about his favorite topic for 1h every month.
This makes total sense if you have a therapist and / or have friends you can be vulnerable with (and know how to). But there are undoubtedly those who do not have that. For them the risk of career sabotage vs a change of improved quality of life might be worth considering. I don't know where the breakdown is, probably against mandatory sharing in the work setting on the account of an average workspace being pretty adversarial. However, if I could make a call for my younger self I would choose to share.
I think this shows that the boss was going out of his way which I "personally" appreciate.
I don't know what people expect managers / boss to do. Somebody on team expects their boss to X and somebody else on that same team expects their boss to be anything but X.
If I ever become a manager , I am probably taking this boss's approach , I think its good to have some talks like this. I am also much inspired by the likes of charles schwab and dale carnegie's how to win friends and influence people so probably there is a bias here
What they do should be related to the company work, otherwise they're overstepping. They're not social workers. They have to respect the privacy and independence of their coworkers.
> If I ever become a manager , I am probably taking this boss's approach
Please don't. Coworkers can obviously have social relationships but they should grow organically without being "managed".
You know the best way for that to happen is? Let them work together. They'll build their own relationships. They don't need your help. If they don't work together enough for this to happen naturally then they're strangers to each other anyway and that's ok too.
Friendships increase team communicability which bolster project success.
The actual respectful and considerate way is not to put people in such positions in the first place.
Like asking something from someone where it would be some unusual imposition or favor (like something that would be ok to ask a friend or family but not a mere aquaintance) and telling them it's ok if they say no. That is an empty statement. You were not supposed to put them in the position where they had to say no.
You can allow for people to not be robots without putting other people into awkward positions they didn't deserve to be put in.
It's definitely favoring some people at the expense of others. Like the gp comment, now they not only have to do their normal job, they also have to generate bs for their manager. The manager should be the one who has to figure out how to work with their different people, not the other way around. That is the managers explicit role that they supposedly get paid more for and what gives them the authority to manage and judge anyone else. That's their actual job rather than coding or whatever. Instead, they are making their team members all conform to them, on top of their actual jobs which are supposed to be something other than managing people.
I've read that, too, e.g. something from Google about psychological safety.
It seems to me that these "be 10% more vulnerable" increases safety / friendship for some people,
but decreases it for others who don't want to share anything.
Maybe there's better ways to go about increasing psychological safety ... For example, about Psychological Safety on Wikipedia:
> Two aspects of leadership have been shown to be particularly instrumental in creating a psychologically safe team. They are leaders using:
> Participatory management > Inclusive management
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_safety
Here's a nice comment (in this discussion): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42026278
The risk is way too high
Reading this comment and others feels like people have read a bit too much Sun Tzu and are treating what could be collegiality as warfare.
You got the order of events wrong. That was with the first manager, before the "10% more vulnerable" meeting. (Not saying it's a good idea though.) (Or did you mean sth else?)
From the article:
> I told my team I was struggling with depression and took some time off. ...
> My team was extremely supportive.
I've noticed this trend in recent years to be "open about mental health", etc. And I think by itself this is great, mental health is important. But invariably, especially in management/HR settings (or in the entertainment industry), it is done in an incredibly shallow way.
Mental health is hard. Just talking openly isn't magically going to fix things and may even initially make things worse. It may release feelings that need to be carefully managed e.g. by a therapist. Obviously, no company would ever be able to provide that. Instead, they're just looking for "I started running every morning and was able to fix my depression" kind of stories.
"Being on-call 24/7 helps me feel like I'm a part of something, fulfilling a deep want for belonging that being kicked off the Girl Scout troop created in me."
"I've always lacked a father figure. When you told me to spend less time browsing HackerNews and more time on Jira, I felt like I was part of a real family."
- secret slack room to help me overcome my depression (wasn't invited of course, I just spotted it several times while looking at my colleagues' screens)
- lowest paid member in the team, while also being one of if not the most productive. 12x: verified. 30x: speculated if I had control over the architecture.
- 70h/week, no vacations, for 3 years. No paid overtime of any form.
- Double bind situation where I was used as a punching ball between the CTO and the #2 employee.
- Excluded from secret negotiations to obtain a raise.
You know what I did ? I quitted, cold turkey. That's when the CEO started to hate on me, feeling betrayed. The #2 left shortly after confiding he wanted to punch the CTO in the face. After realizing hiring someone to replace me wasn't cutting it, they distributed overtime to everybody on the team. Result: unionization. One year after my departure I received a call from the COO telling me he was willing to hire me back at the condition I would behave (since I was thrown at every hot issue, semantic propagation tied in their mind the idea I was also problematic). He was let go shortly after and replaced by a manager from the holding company (if you know what I mean). I haven't worked in 6-7 years. Most colleagues who left have had a similar empty period.
Very creepy
HN doesn't smile on frequent account cycling, but throwaways for sensitive disclosures are possible.
OP could likely walk from their ID easily should they choose. It would be difficult to tie the account to a specific legal / professional identity, though there are some personal-ish details in their history.
We are not ready to discuss this kind of things. We are not equipped to deal with the kind of storms this can raise on the collective level and proactive openness on the individual level we're restricted to, no matter how hard we wish for a transcendance, is an enabler of these situations where no isolation of individual responsibility can pin-point the source of the issue. I mean I got along with everyone and the people I had the most temporary conflictual relationships at some point were also those I was closest too. In the beginning we all had good intentions. Nevertheless, double-bind propagated in the group like an epidemic, preventing us from having innocent relationships. Suddenly, invoices were issued, each party establishing accounts in different currencies.
In the end, from a cold-headed analysis of the situation, I still think I was the one that was behaving. If this was a story about my circle of friends, I'd be the asshole, placing economical matters in a central position, as if we were in a corporate setting. But it's my employer who behaved as if we were friends, and started neglecting economical considerations to its detriment.
In short, speaking of mental health made everybody unhealthy. In fact I'm not the one who overshared, my father did. I didn't show up for a couple days and blacked out communication-wise (because of a girl, a half-truth). The CEO phoned my dad who confided I was suffering from bipolar disorder since my teens which just isn't true from a clinical perspective (this is my sister's diagnostic in fact). Shortly after everybody was in the know. I could tell from their terrified eyes when they glanced at me when I came back. They were afraid I'd flip my shit. This is something we can't deal with. You can't just be designated as being a "little crazy". This expands to "a little [very-weird]". There is a perceptual threshold, including among health and sometimes even mental health professionals that makes people assume past a certain point you just flip your shit, that's your thing, an irreducible otherness that sleeps within you. Needless to say this has never happened to me (unlike my sister).
You can't just unveil taboos, you always end up exposing a mask. There is something very archaic to what happened to me, something attuned to the idea that naming illness is what propagates it: to deal with the mask, you have to wear one yourself (in the form of a secret slack channel for instance, even though as someone who used to belong to it told me, it was set up to find ways to help me). This idea is not as far-fetched as it sounds. Although I have only explained how my employer was contaminated by what ought to be called "panic" in light of its etymological and anthropological roots, I think you can easily picture how this kind of situation can make you crazy. And if I'm responsible in any way of letting myself get contaminated, this is by entertaining this very idea, that being designated as crazy was slowly turning a lie into reality. The epitome of madness, supreme injustice, that isn't that different of accusing someone of having cast a spell on you. Tough stuff that puts all of us back into the jungle.
To conclude, I'm not even out of this hellish loop, since I still have a gaping hole in my CV I can only mask. There is no way explaining the reason behind it like I'm doing here would diffuse or at least atone this red flag. Innocence is impossible, I have to maintain the mask in order for it to not cause explosive contagion.
To those worrying this I'm posting under my real name: I'm not. And I was able to work as much for so long because I was enjoying it. This wasn't that different than alpinism.
jesus, i don't know how you managed that for 3 years
I would have reported manager to HR for this and if they didn't take action I would take company to tribunal.
This is pure simple coercion into sharing personal data that then other workers could use against you.
I can't see the world where sharing personal stuff at work is ever appropriate, let alone be subjected to peer pressure to share it.
The jobs I stick with are the ones where colleagues have got each others back.
All this zero-sum game playing toxicity is what ruins work for the collaborative pro-social people. Find a work place that doesn't reward that kind of behaviour.
America is supposed to be this super-freedom, super-individualistic place. Except when you are a worker at a workplace. Then you are supposed to spend at least 40 hours a week (except you are supposed to want to spend more time than that; and most do [except they don’t want to]), you are supposed to leave your politics behind, don’t talk about politics at work, you are supposed to do everything your boss tells you without question, and certainly don’t bring in your morals. Your workplace is a dictatorship (in a freedom loving country) and you are not supposed to complain about it. You are supposed to like your work, so you are not even entitled to your feelings. And suddenly your workplace is supposed to be this communist utopia, where every worker has a task, and the work is supposed to make them happy, and the whole workplace has a comradery of peers. Except you are all making money for your boss (or worse, your shareholders) and only keep a tiny portion of what you produce, but you are not supposed to complain and definitely not supposed to unite in bargaining for better, only unite in being exploited (except you aren’t supposed to see it that way).
The American workplace is probably as far away from the American dream as it possibly could be.
Ignoring that, your characterization isn't accurate at all for American software companies in my experience. I'm an American and I've worked overseas in Australia. In addition, most of the current technical team that I am currently on is based in the UK.
If anything, I've found other western cultures to be more discouraging of openly challenging management decisions. However, the differences are very very small. Working for a UK/Australia/German company is exactly the same as working for an American company. The day-to-day culture depends a lot on the people who run the company rather than their nationality. Trust me, there are jerks everywhere in the world.
Any corporate environment. You'll get stabbed in the back sooner or later.
> where colleagues have got each others back.
That doesn't sound healthy if people have to get each others back - usually means there are some bad actors that you'll need to cover up for. Do the job, be polite and leave ego at home. There is no need for politics, gossip and other meaningless activities.
> work for the collaborative pro-social people.
That sounds dystopian to me. I prefer to have social life outside of work, with actual friends that I choose, not HR.
This. Companies doing social thing is nothing but trying to fool employees into feeling like they owe to company.
The boss had also become vulnerable asking you to be 10% more vulnerable.
I think I would respect it more than harsh cold calculating boss.
And also the chinese gospel's taking its effect here , the post above this paraphrased it differently and this has taken it to completely different level.
Nobody is forcing you with a gun to tell things or else you are fired
the boss just said , " Hey if you are comfortable , lets try to be a little vulnerable " and if you didn't like it you could've said " hey boss , I appreciate your gesture but I really really wouldn't like to share it as it would be a violation of my privacy , hope you understand "
This would probably be my approach if I was one of those people who hated boss asking him such thing but I don't. I think I like it.
Agreeing to work with a new manager is putting you in a vulnerable enough state. Build that trust over time - you likely don’t even need to hear about coworkers failed marriages.
That's really irrelevant. It's like taking your pants down, showing your privates and assuming your coworkers will do the same.
Absolutely unacceptable especially when it comes from position of power, where workers may think that if they don't engage they'll get fired or won't get promotion. It's coercion.
> the boss just said , " Hey if you are comfortable , lets try to be a little vulnerable " and if you didn't like it you could've said " hey boss , I appreciate your gesture but I really really wouldn't like to share it as it would be a violation of my privacy , hope you understand "
This is never innocent. If someone's life depends on the job, they'll comply as they don't want to second guess if their refusal will lead to them end up being homeless. They'll share details they don't want to and get injured.
People bring a lot of context into these conversations and make a lot of assumptions. There is a lot of nuance here and that's tough to sit with.
It could be just me enjoying remote work, but I am not looking to be friends with them 4000 km away. I’m too old for this, I know all my work friendships faded away in a couple of years and even in those years we focused on work and chat about career.
Don’t force me to share personal things with everyone. I’ll share it if I feel like it with the ones that I feel like it.
I find it strange that the same people that ask you “How are you doing?” Without expecting an answer, are so into this kinda fake buddy buddy thing.
This comment: "I'd rather not have my manager forcing me to do group therapy."
How did "if you’re comfortable" become "forcing me", and "try and be 10% more vulnerable" become "group therapy"?
Like will anyone care? Probably not but it's an incredibly awkward situation to toss people into when they're at work.
which would probably even work okay because everyone loves and applauds a success story or something that isn't your fault, but imagine someone sharing their ongoing drug addiction. People who think that workplaces are "safe" spaces for personal issues should try envisioning what the reaction to that would be.
It would be OK to discuss drug addiction with your parents. It would not be OK to discuss steamy night with your wife with them.
It's almost like adult people can understand environment and make conscious decisions what is acceptable and what is 10% they can bend the rules if they want to switch the mood a little.
Honestly it's hilarious how supposedly emotionally mature people panic and over-analyse in this thread.
Apparently not because in TFA, the author shared personal facts about their divorce and other people shared even "deeper" things they'd "never heard in a work setting". Quote: "it was awkward".
These aren't things that belong in a workplace context (sure, if you're going out for drinks after work maybe you can volunteer such things - but not during a workplace meeting!).
What does that even mean? Seems like it triggers people to share very deep stuff.
The boss mentioned above would be a “B” boss - good intentions, but a forced execution that shifts more of the burden to employees. I don’t necessarily mind these types, but it can be incredibly off-putting for those of us who work to live, rather than live to work.
Above that you have the “A” bosses, who invite that level of vulnerability by repeatedly displaying their trustworthiness to you and the team. I’ve had a few of these bosses before, and they’re amazing; sadly, they rarely last long in the face of “maximum profit” corporate cultures that demand everyone be a replaceable cog in a machine.
Okay, so at what point does that become “forced group therapy?” The C-D-F bosses.
C-rank bosses will demand vulnerability because they mistake it for honesty or loyalty. Good employees pick up on this and will placate them with some useless trivia nugget but otherwise have mediocre to bad rapport with said boss.
D-grade bosses are even worse. They’ll push and pull and drag and yank something suitably vulnerable from everyone, and even try to solutionize whatever was shared with the team. This is (in my subjective experience) the most common form of boss, born of MBA coursework and saddled with buzzword-laden articles of “how to be a better leader” from magazines no C-Suite would be caught dead reading.
Finally is the F-grade boss, who literally just wants to know who is going to need replacing imminently. Don’t get me wrong, this is something every other grade is silently doing as well (hence the “forced group therapy” metaphor), but F-grade bosses are bad enough to be overt about it. Got a coworker who mentions they’re trying to have a baby? They’ll make sure said coworker never has a positive review again, so it’s easier to replace them once they’re pregnant.
All of this is to say that if YOU are a boss, and an employee is being vulnerable with you in an unprompted or non-coerced manner, you have won their trust and you better respect that. But if you’re forcing them to be vulnerable somehow, you’re actually harming the trust relationship in the long run and will make your staff wary of your motives.
Prove they can trust you, and they’ll open up on their own.
Interesting to know. Seems people who reply here, a bit assume it's a group of competitive coworkers who mostly don't know each other, in a big cut-throat corp?
I'd been ok with that meeting at my first job (together with my closest coworkers only). It'd been weird at my 2nd job though. I guess it depends :-)
(But it wouldn't have been needed at all, there. I guess that's related to why it would have been ok.)
I get they are trying to create a sense of psychological safety for people, but this is a bit much.
Worked out great, didn't it?
Now the above is probably a bit over top but it shows the typical American company culture effect. Going through this at work right now since we got bought by Americans and more and more fakeness is coming in.
It's completely fine to get to know your coworkers. But let the oversharing ones (the extroverts) congegrate together naturally. We had someone like that on the team. Was likeable enough but wouldn't stop talking about everything in their life. That was their choice tho and I am fine to listen but I'm not "sharing back".
And then there were introverts. Some that spoke very very little and some that were in the middle. They randomly shared some things from time to time in quieter moments with less people around and when they felt comfortable. Very real people and it was nice to get to know the a bit more.
I'm more on the introvert side there and if you group pressure me into this sort of thing I will remember that for a very very very long time. As in we are never gonna be friends. I'm still sour about what an extrovert HR person did 4 years ago and I don't speak to them any longer. They are also showing from time to time that they haven't changed and they'd be the type to use whatever came out in an oversharing session against you.
Now tell me to "report them to HR".
Now I understand that with remote work there may not be enough space for chit chat. But there are other ways than a forced group pressure situation to set that up.
For example, we decided as a team when Covid WFH started to basically use our daily 15 min stand-up for whatever. Sometimes we just did stand-up and we're out of there after 5 min coz nobody felt like talking. Sometimes it'd be a half an hour of just talking about whatever. We also have a dedicated time each week blocked off on the calendar for it as well and when we have ad hoc working session calls we get in some chit chat here or there as well. It's not all just business but it can be.
RE cat: see this is the internet and it's an anonymous forum. I used that example because our cat actually just died a few weeks ago. You thought it was over the top. Interesting indeed.
I don't quite get the difference between a blocked off time for chit chat and the way the manager asked for it here but totally, being forced like you have to say something you don't want to sucks.
I guess the difference is the same what I mentioned about stand-up changing: The team decided to do that. It wasn't a manager saying that's how we do things now.
EDIT: I also just realized you gave out condolences. See if I was in the situation from the article I might not be able to quickly come up with something fake and I'd instinctively just mention the cat thing (coz I don't want to be the guy that gets shunned). And then the next few weeks are gonna be very uncomfortable coz people will keep mentioning it.
There are ways of lighten the mood that are decidedly less abusive, such as "tell us something funny about yourself" or "what is your hobby?". You don't have to like such questions either but at least they're not open invitations for trauma dumping.
I'm a parent. You can probably pretty easily infer what my greatest fear is.
Would I share that? Fuck no! Not only am I not particularly willing to get that intimate with a bunch of strangers, I also don't want to be a huge fucking downer. What I do want is to recognize that while you can speed-run friendship & bonding to some degree, it's fucking inappropriate to try to do so at work. It's work. I'll make friends if I make friends, but otherwise I'm out at 5, physically, mentally and emotionally.
“Whoo. OK. I’ve never talked about this, but here goes. When I was 12 I used a Hello Kitty doll to kill a man. Wow. Feels great to finally get that off my chest.”
I really don't like this trend of employers trying to act like we're all friends or one big happy family. It only serves to blur the very real boundaries of power in favor of the employer. Engaging with it in earnest feels like self-exploitation to me.
That attitude is a liability at work and I’ve learned the hard way.
We’ve all heard the phrase don’t shit where you eat. In modern workplace cadence that means don’t use your workplace as your source of therapy or friends or certainly family.
The way we present yourselves at work has to intrinsically be a performance because that’s how money works.
Find another place to express emotions and thoughts and find friends. That place should not be the workplace.
You choose your friends because you have shared interests and you make each other feel good. You have family because they brought you into the world and you have shared qualities and bonds. You chose your job because it pays you. You do it for the ducats. Don't get it twisted.
I thought he was a weird outlier, but I joined an invite-only Slack for management a while ago where I’d estimate 1/4 of the topics in the #1-on-1s channel are from managers trying to psychoanalyze their team or act as therapists. The good news is that the Slack is very good about correcting these people about their role and what is appropriate for work. The bad news is that these new managers are getting the idea from somewhere that they need to be some type of therapist and patriarch of the team. It feels like a weird iteration of new-age management philosophies that breed in B-list business books and social media like LinkedIn.
Otoh when dealing with peers at director or C level, things tend to get significantly more psychological, likely because their facility of judgment, which is ultimately psychological and moral, is functioning with far higher leverage due to their organizational authority.
A team isn’t a family. A company isn’t a family.
Both reasonable.
> and fake some confessions.
Could you find some other way to handle it, without lying?
That way I tick the participation box without making it therapy.
So it seems to me that it was voluntary, right? You could be okay sharing nothing, author felt better going proposed path.
Coupled with the fact that, as you yourself pointed out, there is a literal endless amount of work to do, forever. This is also due to the nature of the company being so big.
All companies always has work to do, and no one is ever «done», but in a giga-enterprise all meaningful deadlines and deliveries sort of tangentially rounds down to zero in terms of impact.
I almost burned out from this myself working in Microsoft. I was succeeding in my work by most metrics, but I am motivated more by my work being MEANINGFUL and having impact more than anything. That is almost impossible to achieve in any large enough company.
Jumped off to be a startup CTO and life started smiling again instantly.
Take time away from work, but not too much time. Comments such as «it takes years» can be true if you have ground yourself down to a nub, but trying (and being ok with failing) to do some work that lets you feel like you mean something and contribute back to society is an understated and important part of the healing process.
Good luck!
It’s led me to wonder how one could structure a knowledge work job in a similar way. The tough part conceptually is how to make progress long-term while still only keeping your focus on a day at a time, max.
No investors, no board of directors, just a woman and her son who owned the business. They wanted to grow it but were very reasonable about it.
That being said the salary was probably 20-30% below market. At the time I wanted to make more money so I chased that for a while instead.
Most of the problems in tech are of the employees own creation. Unreasonable requirements and unreasonable timelines, often coming out of thin air for no reason other than some middle manager's political interests.
It is super hard to fight against it, and it's even harder to demonstrate how forcing tech to work more than necessary is bad for business.
Small businesses deal with it by being small. Big companies are just chaotic complex systems where you don't have much of a choice.
Companies that can kind of do anything and it’s fine. Like Google with AdWords. Whatever they do, AdWords goes to work every day and pays the bills.
Other companies get high on their own supply and invent things like “Holocracy” and claim it is responsible for their success.
You can try to find your own thing that you'll focus on after work. After 5 I would switch off any company equipment, phone etc. Make sure that there is never an expectation that you could be available outside of your work hours. Feel free to forget anything you worked on after 5, you'll catch up next morning. Some workplaces will be against that and make fuss. Find another job then and if it is not possible, just deliver as little as you can without being sacked. If manager is unhappy, but not unhappy enough to let you go, then you are doing great.
Sure, it sometimes happens that I'm working on some interesting project, and I may find myself thinking about it after my workday is done. But it's because I generally love what I do. It wouldn't surprise me that, say, a pastry chef would possibly think about combining ingredients in some different way, too.
I think the only job where you absolutely wouldn't have to think about it is if you don't have any kind of agency and only do what you're told. I'm not sure that I would enjoy that kind of job.
Where I work, a normal workday is 9 AM to 6 PM with an hour lunch. There's some flexibility as to the actual hours, I usually do 8-5, others do 10-7. Yet, some people always put in very long hours for some reason, complete with gulping down a sandwich in front of their computer for lunch. I'm not sure what gives them the impression they have to do it, since it's clearly not expected from our common higher-ups.
Guilty. The reason was living with abusive partner and not being brave enough to end the relationship. Things were bad, but not bad enough to do something about it.
This is just how I like to work and approach problem solving. I can take breaks when I make the effort, but, when work starts, I rarely think about anything except climbing whatever mountain I find myself on, helping others at my company, or exceeding my own (or others') expectations. That intensity helps me think deeply and solve problems effectively.
There are people in my company who do good work but draw boundaries clearly and sharply. I respect that. I just love what I do and find it interesting and absorbing partly because I love the intensity of striving and struggling, constantly refining, improving, growing, and exploring.
My company generously rewards good work, too. That also helps; my effort never feels wasted, unacknowledged, or unrewarded.
This seems quite distinct from what is discussed in this thread, which is people feeling some kind of pressure to work long hours, or to be available after work hours when they're supposed to be doing personal stuff. And, usually, the reasons for being called up don't seem to be some genuinely exciting problem that it feels invigorating to tackle. Instead, it's typically some form of TPS report that needs pushing around.
The work amounts to super overpaid (thanks unions) retail using antiquated software that it modernized could eliminate at least half the jobs, but since there are union staffing minimums and salaries the employer has no incentive.
There’s something nice about helping customers for a couple hours, doing some other mindless work which could be done in half the time if automated, and then going home.
And the group of folks in the industry are mostly great to be around. Particularly after nearly 5 years of working from home in roles that are increasingly more isolated and less collaborative.
Do you have any guiding star for what work gives you meaning?
I thought getting closer to the users/customers would help me. After all, software is for humans. But I found the social aspects of that, handling bugs, setting expectations for features, was tiresome and not meaningful. The only happiness I did find was when I saw my client/users flourish without me with the software I made tailored as best as it could be for the money. But that doesn't make a business unfortunately...
It helps to be close to your users, or to build software that has a clear purpose. It’s good to work on a small team where your input has a clear influence on the quality pf the product.
Like, I’m not going to work overtime for free or anything, but the time I do work gets my best effort.
I think you are rationalizing your choices by thinking everything does the same. It is not true, some are not stuck anywhere, some choose to live a simpler life that needs less money, fewer compromises, etc. etc. the world is a big place.
I think we forget the big picture that "no one gets out alive" and that it's up to each of us to spend the time we have in a way that makes us happy. If you can afford to not spend 1/3 of your time at a job in order to fund the remaining 2/3 of your existence, lucky you! But if not, choosing to slack off at a job you hate is essentially choosing to throw 1/3 of your life away being miserable. (Not judging if that's your choice, but its baffling to me.)
Is it reasonable to accept/leave a job based on no interesting connections?
You can't move the needle unless you are part of management and learn how to do politics. Large companies mean lots of politics being done. And you want to position yourself on the part of the winning team.
Also, people skills always trumps technical skills. Being aware of that helped me immensely on my career, much more than anything else I could have done.
People skills matter , But I suppose in large organisations. I don't think people skills matter "that much" in open source (other than documentation and hey not messing up like attomatic and being a little bit nicer in general)
Hell we should all try to be a little nicer in general , not just in open source.
Now, you might say that the Linux kernel is a large project, and you’d be right
I’ve been trying to make that switch as it’s the only career prospect I have, but…
Would love to hear how others have solved this
There’s still plenty of time to change gears, or move back and forth between the two choices. There are also other paths; see my comment above.
Important part is to not ignore the discomfort. I suggest reading Charity Majors’ blog posts around leadership vs engineering roles.
I think my future is moving towards consulting and building my own products. If people want to fight each other to get a seat at the table, be my guest. I see it as a waste of life. I can already build significant projects on my own, and it’s long overdue for me to reap all of the profit that those efforts generate.
Hence the issue xD I’m at the top of what my track offers, but it feels silly to stay in the same place for the next 30 years.
finding things that could be better or tools that should exist but don’t, and that if materialized would solve multiple problems at once instead of just one; and
explaining why that’s important in a way that everyone can buy into and dealing with naysayers who’ll want to cut you down and doomers who will say it’ll never work; and
have the focus, discipline and grit to make it through a 10k LoC project and land it on the other side while ekeing out code review along the way and not tripping over loose cables and uneven steps of your initial design / architecture / model that was either flawed from the outset or not malleable enough to fix after a month of entrenchment into your code; and finally
once you’re ready, to then go over the entire codebase and lift the old code up into your new way of doing things so that there is no split brain between the old way and your new tool:
then you can make it as a 10x engineer. It is exhausting but so is running up and down a football field, cycling laps around France, or serving tennis balls at 90mph for three hours at a time. Taking the elite-coder staff-engineering path isn’t for the faint hearted.
Now given a fixed level of technical skills it’s obviously always better to have more people skills, perhaps that’s what you meant.
Though maybe that’s why you can move those needles; nobody is guarding them jealously.
In some jurisdictions you need to check your employment contract as company may feel entitled to your idea you are developing outside of work hours. Ensure you don't have any such stipulations in the contract.
Thankfully I'm not ground down to a nub. I've found a lot of support over the last few years outside of work.
He expected doing something meaningful that will change the world. He expected to be applauded like a hero for his efforts.
But things don't work like that.
If you work your ass out, don't expect more than a pat on the back. Managers won't care about your efforts, your mental state or your sleepless nights. They care about looking good in front of their superiors.
So it's better to do just that is expected for you, enough to get a good evaluation.
If you come out with a brilliant idea that might help the company a lot don't just do it. Find some allies in the higher hierarchy, explain to them what is their advantage, do a POC or MVP, then let the top management know in a public meeting. That way you get a lot of credits and applause for doing great things for the company and fighting the good fight.
I mean, I get them, as I went through the same thing.
Never do it. It will never end up benefitting you, even if you find "allies" - who might even stab you in the back and take credit for the idea and then let you go once they get a promotion.
If you have a brilliant idea, keep it to yourself, try to think of a way it could be used outside of the company and if it is strong enough start your own business based on the idea. Otherwise forget it.
Never do more than you are asked to do.
As opposed to working on that pointless crud thing your boss likes.
Yeah, I know this annoys the senior devs, but after 20 years on this grind I totally get why people do it.
I take the stance of, the job I do for 8 hours 5 days a week might as well be something I actually enjoy doing above and beyond the financial incentive. Working on something I think is really neat is enjoyable, and I'm lucky to work in an industry doing things not so far from what I would spend my time doing anyway if I were retired.
If you are that great, it is much better to contribute to Open Source projects than to someone's already fat pockets.
>Never do it. It will never end up benefitting you, even if you find "allies" - who might even stab you in the back and take credit for the idea and then let you go once they get a promotion.
That's why I said to get allies from the higher ups. Not your boss or your peers. Preferably business people. And you don't need to give them all the details. Just let them know if would make them look good, have their approval and use them as a shield.
It's corporate America, so I'm going to be unceremoniously fired eventually anyway, but in the meantime I might as well enjoy myself, impress my coworkers, snag a promotion or two, and get a "made a cool new thing increasing profits $XX million/yr" line item on my resume.
> start your own business
Probably eventually, but starting a business is very different from being at a place big enough that I can profit my salary many times over just from faster code. If I start one, I'll write fast code there too, but "fast" isn't a business idea by itself, and I don't see anything wrong with doing a good job for whoever happens to be writing my paycheck.
Been there. The savings were never passed down, but you could always enjoy photos of boss's new sports car or their month's trip to Borneo to "recharge" and think of new challenges. Ah sorry! I got an iPod once as a thank you.
> "made a cool new thing increasing profits $XX million/yr"
That may backfire. Nobody likes a new kid on the block that has tricks up his sleeve that could jeopardise someone senior's career.
Sure, that's the game. I get an extra bonus or raise or something with promotions, and more when I switch jobs, but nearly all the profit goes elsewhere. If you want to leave the upper-middle class you'll need to set out on your own eventually.
If you don't have a solid plan and life circumstances for building your own business yet though, why would you not do things the business likes, especially when it means your day-to-day is more palettable, it doesn't actually require any more work, and it has some moderate career impacts in case you never set out on your own?
> this may backfire
That's the same sort of logic that leads people to have asphalt roofs instead of white roofs in southern climates. You do, absolutely, alienate a significant fraction of buyers (employers). You command a premium at every place that's left though because they want you _because_ of the things that make you different. So long as you don't shrink the pool too much, each individual job is more lucrative.
It was always a pretty competitive place, with a lot of smart people working a lot of hours, and a culture of attention to detail that left many people with impostor syndrome. There were pretty good expectations of being nice to each other: No infrastructure team giving your request the cold shoulder, because that was just not OK. So people working really hard and burning out to try to meet every growing expectations was common.
The post also had the other weakness of the culture: A lot of management changes, along with a culture of performance among managers that would be fit for Amazon. So a manager might change teams, and the person that used to get exceed expectations would end up with a PIP with the next manager, often by surprise. You can imagine what it does to morale to tell someone how they are the most helpful person they've worked with, and then see them gone two weeks later. It was a great place to work in many ways, but the negative parts took their toll.
So, if anything, the story showed me that even though it's been many years, a lot of Stripe is still recognizable.
Always be building solid, interesting things and make sure that if someone, for some reason finds them, that they would say "wow, this is cool, who made this?"
Then I casually share links to those things in the right context. If I get a 10% hit rate then I'm happy.
Do this all day every day between assigned projects 9-5 and you'd be amazed at the network you can build outside your own team. Keeps the options open for lateral movement.
I'm not smart or quick enough to consistently do that and my job without it taking a toll, so it ends up not being worth it most of the time.
So I took a few hours one day and made a Chrome extension that did it for you. Wasn't hard to write. Saved people maybe 5 minutes. Some folks appreciated that so much they spent the 5 minutes nominating me for a peer bonus! I never really capitalized on that in any lasting way though.
People pleasing, approval seeking makes you the battery in somebody else's flashlight. You will always find yourself used up by others. Don't give others control of your joy.
In a complex job with a fast pace, a fair amount of tech debt around every edge, a relentless pace of innovation happening, and - yes - growth, there’s too much to be invested in everything. It doesn’t have to matter that much. The parts you really care about, the craft and quality of your work, your relationships, mentoring and growing the people around you, seeing things get better one piece at a time, and a few things - they can matter. But everything can’t. And even those you have to at some very deep level realize don’t matter really.
Stripe doesn’t really exist in this world. It’s a shared fiction to help frame the interactions between you and a few people you actually interact with in a day. The real truth is the only thing that happens in your days is you type on a computer and talk to a few people. It actually doesn’t matter in any meaningful way what you typed or some higher purpose around humbling honesty or exothermic curiosity or PMEs or whatever stories we tell ourselves to create some sort of reality out of the fiction. The only important things you really do is how you shape the lives of the people you interact with, and how you shape your own life.
Burnout is hard. Adopt a daily meditation practice. Let your mind heal by letting go of meaning and practice enjoying the moment you’re in with whomever you’re with, but most especially yourself. The joy will come back faster the faster you let go of things needing to matter or have deeper meaning, especially when those things are a fiction like a company or a career or any of the other small and big lies we’ve been told and we reinforce to ourselves daily. I know I’ve been there man, and I know exactly - exactly - the sensations and experiences you describe. It gets better, but I think once you get there it never totally goes away and it’s easier to slip back.
FWIW I don’t think burnout is the same as depression. I’ve felt both and burnout is different. It’s that loss of ability to engage - which overlaps with depression - but usually doesn’t come with the thoughts of hopeless despair and desire for life to be over. It’s just more of a deadness and inability to initiate what you think you should want to do but can’t, and it pervasively impacts everything.
It gets better.
Of the many many hours I've spent on this website, this comment probably made me feel more relaxed than anything else.
Please continue your kind and helpful words on the internet:)
What books/resources do you suggest to follow more on this path of meditation (possibly also stoicism)?
I think these things helped me a lot in my recovery but I also don’t think it’s necessary or sufficient. I think my advice above is the real key, but vipassana and Buddhism give a pretty structured approach to achieve the appropriate detachment from what’s not truly real and the appreciation for what is. IMO that’s the basis for recovering from burnout durably. But the other thing is there’s no magic, it takes time.
0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gil_Fronsdal 1 https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/1 2 https://www.insightmeditationcenter.org/
Thank you for pointing it out.
Eventually, I got married, had a family, found things to do in the community, and do plenty of sports and hobbies that involve shutting off the computer. Even though my jobs after my 20s have been even more soul-crushing than the ones I had earlier, I've never had a hint of burnout. When I'm done with work, I shut off the computer and that's it. I'll go build a piece of furniture, or repair my car, spend time with my kid, anything that doesn't involve office politics, two week sprints, or status reports. Just having a life outside of work has done wonders for my mental health. No meditation or spirituality needed!
If you do get burned out, the only remedy I've found is time away, sometimes many months of it. That's really tough (or impossible) for many people's financial situations, though.
I think what’s universally important is to keep active and engaged in what we’re doing. Some of us have to tell fictions that what we’re doing has meaning, whilst others just know what brings meaning to their life.
It feels flippant to say, "stop caring so much about things", but it's actually great advice.
We should think of ourselves as having a limited "caring budget", and be judicious in how we spend that budget. Part of the trick is figuring out what that budget is, since it can be different for different people, or even different for the same person at different times in their life.
I think framing burnout in this way is helpful: you get burned out when too much is too important to you, and you've overextended your emotional ability to give a part of yourself to each of those things, for too much time.
An important thing about that to me is that it doesn't at all consider whether things are going well or poorly with all those "too important" things. Certainly things going poorly will increase stress, but even caring too much about too many things that are all going well can burn you out.
when your mental health collapses nothing else holds value, it really doesn’t matter if you achieved your dream job, got all the prestige and income you initially desired, being mentally healthy is the basis of the pyramid.
Something I learned based on that is to really prioritize it!
Even if someone considers their career to be everything, realize that spending some of your earnings seeking professional help (therapy) is even a cheap investment considering that if you break and have to quit, you’re going to lose hundreds of thousands, and to recover it will suck (I’ve heard of people trying to quit tech altogether after burning out)
Sneaking something else related to mental health: sleep should be #1 health wise, when you’re consistently not getting quality sleep for months, there’s nothing you can really do to get around that, it will eventually just break you (your body won’t care if you’re coping with coffe or exercising!)
Btw that’s great writing and I really appreciate your courage in sharing this! I hope you’ll find your joy again.
On a serious note, in my book there are hints of perfectionism right from the start of the story (fonts dimming, wait 30 sec to join the meeting..). And too much fragility in personal attidudes. S/he is probably a relatively young idealistic person, early in the career. Such people often don't last long, if they can't change inside and take manager's or corporate shit. One needs at least some "fuck it" attitude to preserve one's dignity. Your performance review does not and cannot define you as a person. Else you're likely to end up disappointed and/or emotionally exhausted. And that's what I see here.
The second I learnt this and started living by it my happiness shot up and my anxiety went down.
Who cares if you mess up, you have to stop living by your ideas of other people's ideas of you.
a large part of this experience has been overcoming things by applying a healthy dose of, "fuck it -- this is for me." [1]
[1] obviously one can suggest there is an element of hedonism or selfishness inherent in the attitude, but i think we can appreciate framing it in the context of not using this attitude or mantra to justify being self-destructive, or harmful -- that is not the point. it's more about applying it in a way, that combats the mundane insecurities i've faced and experienced in a range of extremes, which otherwise get in the way of personal growth.
They idolized a company that is known for top-shelf engineering talent and, more importantly, brutally hard interviews...and they just got an opportunity to interview with them.
You have no idea what the interviewee will "no hire" them over, so you assume they want perfection because obviously. You're deathly afraid of making any mistakes because not getting the job you've been dreaming about for years is not an option, so spiraling straight into the ground after your first minor oops makes total sense.
Once you've gotten the dream job, you now have to work even harder to keep it because, shit, have you seen the engineering talent in this place? Getting a "failing" perf review from your management sends this anxiety into overdrive, so you work harder to prove your worth.
Some people barely last under these conditions. Others will gladly torch everything and everyone in their life to succeed, whatever that means.
Everyone has some of these feelings but it's just a feeling like 10% of your mind not 100%. WTF idolizes a company? That is just wrong. Who raised someone to let them even think like that?
Companies don’t care about you, they care about the work you do … and if you don’t bring less to the table … surprise. But everyone has to learn it the hard way, some earlier than others.
Just because you didn't face it, doesn't mean there are people who tie their identity to work success... in fact there are many.
Something has gone wrong for an adult human to be quite this fragile. Many people and even whole systems have failed them.
It's not about being uncaring or unsympathetic.
If you sympathise with someone like this (the ideas in the comment I responded to here more than the main article) because of the difficulty and unhappines of their state of existence, you should wish them to have been empowered to exist in the world without being flattened by the totally ordinary things that the world is full of that they will have to handle every day in ordinary life.
> I’d already had a successful career as a software engineer for the better part of a decade.
OP's resume suggests they've been a professional engineer for over a decade.
I agree with your points about perfectionism and idealism, but they are not isolated to Gen Z.
As an Elder Millennial myself I hope HN and our industry is free of ageism against young and old. Comments like yours don’t help.
This is just a consequence of being inexperienced, and in this case it correlates closely with age.
I do agree that bucketing people by "generation" isn't helpful. Just saying "it seems like this person is early in their career" is sufficient, and is the actual relevant bit.
I definitely got people-pleasing vibes, and I agree the whole "making my screen look neat and tidy" and "engineering my arrival time to the meeting" bits were too much. If I had an interviewer who cared about or was impressed by those "metrics", I would consider that pretty shallow.
Based on that first performance review they got, my feeling is they had a bad manager. I agree with the manager that communication is a crucially important part of work, but you don't give someone a low rating when they completed an otherwise wildly successful project. That's just cruel and demoralizing. You can attack the communication problem without demotivating your employee and possibly hurting their career progression.
Whenever a poor performance review is a surprise to the employee, that alone is a management failure. Don't wait until review time to discuss problems; bring them up immediately and try to address them. Maybe by the time the review comes up, the problem will be gone. And if it's not, the employee won't be surprised by the reasons behind a less-than-ideal review.
But if on most days we're spending most of our time with these people, what do we gain from automatically disqualifying them from human connection just because they work at the same place as us?
And let's not pretend that the manager in this story forced anyone to do anything.
That’s why you have to volunteer to go first, because then you have plausible deniability about the expected level of vulnerability.
I'm not the least bit opposed to connecting with peers. I've extracted two cherished friends of 10+ years from prior jobs. I just require it to occur organically and with peers, separate from groups led by the person signing my paychecks and writing my annual reviews.
Reduces people to output. And if that output can be done cheaper by someone in another country or automated away, why even hesitate to change out the things that generate the output anymore than a lightbulb?
On the other hand, I do know of a few companies that manage to team members socially engaged, mostly in ways that don't feel like forced "mandatory fun time". It's not easy, and it's a cultural value that needs to permeate everything. But it can be done.
And I wonder if companies are motivated to invest in that and/or if once you’ve made that investment if wfh really saves money relative to hybrid work.
As the number of wfh jobs gets closer and closer to pre-2020, but the share of workers who want it doesn’t decrease equally, it’s much easier for companies to use it to exploit people (“want a wfh job? Then accept all these other things.”)
I know that he doesn't mean ill or harm by it, but how is the new hire who's anxious to be starting the job supposed to react to it? How can you expect them to say no without feeling like "not being a team player" or whatever other stupid cliche HR types like to use?
> But if on most days we're spending most of our time with these people, what do we gain from automatically disqualifying them from human connection just because they work at the same place as us?
Some people just don't care to make people from work anything more than an acquaintance. They have their own social lives which they invest infinitely more energy into than their work lives, and that's completely fine. I personally can't remember the last time I've spoken to any of my ex-colleagues after they or I left the job, I definitely wouldn't call any of them friends. I still hung out with them at the bar on Friday evenings after a tough sprint, we had a good working relationship, we just weren't friends. I have actual friends who I'd rather spend the time with for that.
I've also been in a situation where I tried but realized behind the work persona they were assholes I would never be friends with.
I've considered quiting at that point but decided to just not socialize with them. Work interactions are fine.
It's a bit sad because in previous job I got along really well with most coworkers but such is life. I have enough friends and if it ever becomes a problem at work I'll just leave.
It's easy for someone to assume you are asked to open up about non-work related stories, but it's never the intention. For example, talking about how your Aunt passing away being the reason you got into software engineering, is not really going to help the team in any meaningful way.
However, it is quite valuable to share a story about how a coworker left you a huge unfinished project before abruptly going on vacation, and how you struggled to pick up the slack. You can use that story about the pain and frustration you felt and how you learned the value of having your work in a proper hand-off state when you eventually plan to take extended time away.
Don't ever feel like you need to talk about your hobbies, or family, or even your love of cats or dogs. In time you will build your work friends and connect with people who share some your interests, but it will never be forced, and a few of them may become lifelong friends.
It doesn't really matter what the manager intended; if they were primarily looking for vulnerable professional moments, they should have said so. And if they were indeed looking for personal stories, that's inappropriate.
I imagine at some leadership training, they were probably encouraged to get their direct reports to open up and misunderstood the scope of that.
If you don't get that, then you are probably out their making life 5% hell for half the people around you, in blissful ignorance thanks to the effort they all put in to catering to your inconsiderate interactions.
Not even sure what this means
While I agree that it wasn't forced (and I know that I would personally have no problem sticking to whatever level of sharing I was comfortable with), I bet you that at least one person on that team felt uncomfortable with it, but also felt like they could be penalized in some way (even just socially) if they didn't share. That's not ok.
If you can't forge bonds with your teammates without your boss asking people to share vulnerable moments during a team meeting, there are deeper problems that this sort of exercise is not going to address.
From my most recent job, I have quite a few strong friendships that we've maintained over the years, even though we've all left that company years ago. But most (if not all) of my so-called friendships with coworkers at other jobs faded quickly after one of us left the company. That's pretty normal, and there's nothing wrong with that. There's also nothing wrong with having a vibrant social life outside of your colleagues, and not really being interested in those colleagues beyond acquaintance level.
Imagine your manager asking you to share something at 10%, you share something modest like "sometimes I really feel anxiety over my work / deadlines / performance" and then the next person shares a deeply personal, super serious story about their almost collapsed marriage. They either set the tone for the whole conversation, forcing everybody else to follow along, or they hijack the conversation since what they shared is more serious.
There is no way to know before hand what someone is going to share, so there is no way to know before hand that everyone is going to feel comfortable.
"Human connection" could be discussing your hobbies with your coworkers, doesn't have to be a round table where everyone is sharing difficult experiences.
- Refine your definition of what’s “meaningful”: anything that helps you, your colleagues, helps you to learn a new thing or simply allows you to create something beautiful can be meaningful; there’s a lot of meaning in giving a meal to someone starving, even though you’re not solving any big societal issue or being applauded by many for that single act.
- Don’t take people like the OP’s first manager too personally: with time you realize they’re generally not evil or terrible human beings, they’re just in a different mission. Usually they are also as lost as we are, trying to find meaning and recognition. Just lower the importance you give to them (if you’re really incompatible with their personalities) and focus on your work. If even then it becomes toxic, then move.
- Most importantly: reshape your relationship with work. Who you are and what you do are not necessarily the same thing. I don't like the advice of "slacking and collecting your pay check" (been there, you also feel shit after a while), but I think that going a bit to that direction helps to find balance.
The one thing that immediately pissed me off was you doing something awesome, then having management attack you for reason X, where X attacks everything but the results. The reason never really matters, the real reason is that you threatened them in some manner and they need to justify their job.
Honestly, I would have just quit at that point. You're a saint for staying any longer.
This sounds like an absolutely terrible company to work for.
The manager sounds classically awful and I hate that the world rewards such people w power over others.
I'm sorry for that. I went through something similar and I managed to bounce back up but it took longer than I anticipated. Years, not months.
Be gentle with yourself and forgive yourself.
This is so hard for people like me who have high standards and are hard on themselves. I always wanted to buy a home - I graduated at the right time but I never got a job at big tech. When I did get my full time job it paid a good chunk below market, provided no equity and now post-pandemic whatever was at my fingertips is at least an arms length away.
I have not done poorly for myself but I continue to rent in my mid 30s whereas my buddies at FAANG are much farther ahead in life. I was/am not kind to my past self in the current phase - constant thoughts of should have done this, should have known that, etc.
With the current economy I feel like another chance might not come for another 5 years at the minimum, so I’m trying to learn my lesson and go to therapy, and accept it gracefully. I can’t even type “life isn’t a race and I shouldn’t compare myself” without putting it in quotes.
Point is, don’t be like me. Yes it’s good to be driven and ambitious, but unmoderated it can be destructive.
Anyway, on-boarding was awful and codebase is terrible. For the first four months I have been struggling, suferring, getting frustrated, and everything impacting my life outside work (weekends, sleeping, etc)
Then I realized. This is just a job. What is the worst it could happen? Getting fired and these people thinking I'm an idiot? I can live with that. I won't probably meet them again (perks of remote) and I could find another job down the line. And that helped me.
What you do at work and how are you seen at work, as long as you are responsible, shouldn't be that important. Leave it at work and try to enjoy your life. Don't carry it with you, especially when it is a position where you don't have much control.
Having had something somewhat similar happen in the past, it seems like this is common at high-growth tech companies. Everyone pretends to be your friend, and there are definitely some genuine people, but getting ahead is clearly number 1.
I feel like I had a similar experience. Start working at a new job, hustle for several years, get promoted, projects do well, then ended up feeling bored and unexcited. Not exactly burnt out, but burnt out on the current pattern of life. I quit and moved to another country.
I don't know if the author is "burnt out" or not. This is a privileged take, but sometimes it feels like a full time job is a leash. Life becomes so defined by your job it can feel suffocating. You can take a few weeks off, but a few weeks a year is hardly enough to have your own life.
I quit trying to find meaning in my work long time ago. And work never depresses me. I work to have food on the table for me and my family. That is enough of a motivation.
If I want to do something meaningful, I either work on a personal project or contribute to one, outside work.
It is too dangerous to attach meaning to a place that can fire you, or push you into burnout.
That's from the "values" section of the website under the "Tech as a tool" subsection. How does working for Stripe fit with this value?
As a mere user of "tech", and a concerned observer of what I perceive to be its negative effects on society around me the last 5-10 years, it feels impossible to deny that the main drivers of the tech space haven't been "protecting well-being" and "promoting human flourishing", rather the opposite, and often rather brutally.
The article leaves the question unanswered of what actually led to the depression, and I'm left wondering if the author explored that question specifically. Perhaps Stripe aren't building technology that promotes human flourishing, and perhaps the author's core values were clashing with the reality of a modern tech company.
Note too that "chronic fatigue" is NOT "lack of sleep".
The brain fog is the net resultant of the body being in a constant "fight or flight" mode for too long. Psychologically, you've been doing WWI "trench warfare".
Some of the situations feel familiar to my experience in other companies, so here's some advice to younger folks, which took me some time to grasp:
- Communication with the manager is critical. Better to overcommunicate than undercommunicate. It's a natural tendency for curious folks to do "side quests" and while you were supposed to work on X, you noticed that you can improve Y which in your opinion is more important. At the very least, drop your manager a Slack message like "hey, I was supposed to work on X but I have an idea about Y which can bring more benefit, I will take N hours/days to dig into that if that's ok with you" and see what's their response (also make sure to time constrain it to avoid getting sidetracked for too long). I was definitely burned by this in prev job: I shipped some nice things but I was supposed to work on something else which I didn't do, and each time my manager mentioned this (i.e. N months later in performance evaluation), I knew it was correct for him to point it out, but it made me feel bad.
- In bigtech the work happens in quarters. If you're unhappy about things you work on currently, take some time to prepare the work items you do want to work on, and seed your manager's mind before next quarter planning about things you DO want to work on, why, how is the impact and so on.
- When feeling overwhelmed with too many things on your plate, talk to your manager to dispatch some responsibilities to other team members. Don't be the messiah who needs to fix everything by yourself silently and burn out.
- For candidates: When doing interviews, you absolutely should do everything to streamline things and avoid distractions. Most likely use JS or Python for coding. Probably avoid TS, definitely avoid C++. It's too easy to get lost fighting the compiler or "reinventing the world" with languages like C/C++. You won't get extra points for going uphill, but you will get minus points for not finishing.
Stripe is a great place to work in some ways but judging from the writeup they had a ton of context switching preventing their productivity and the needs of the team didn’t align with what they did best. I’ve seen this feedback many times in many jobs.
I’ve been there myself! No doubt this person will find something exciting in no time.
Apropos of nothing as interviewers we do not put any weight on your submitting solutions after the window closes because we have to evaluate candidates consistently for business and legal reasons. We can’t give one person extra time because that’s not applying a consistent bar. Smaller companies may be more flexible but big tech won’t be. On the plus side big tech knows interviews are often a function of luck and setting and will generally always invite you to apply again without prejudice a few months later.
Being in a position to recover by getting bored and hacking on stuff you’re passionate about without pressure is something we’re really lucky to have, and I always try to do this between jobs.
How does this not mean "we hire at random"? It's especially egregious after explaining all the reasons you can't give a candidate extra time, because you're so precise and consistent. Which is it? Consistency and luck are opposites.
I'm glad you got out. Gotta look out for you, always; (most) companies sure as shit won't.
Unrelated, but if OP is here, about this:
> Things were moving rather smoothly despite my sweat soaked armpits. I silently resented my wife’s decision to unilaterally give up anti-perspirant due to chemicals.
Check out Arm and Hammer's Essentials deodorants. They don't contain aluminum and smell great despite being all natural. I switched to this deodorant after noticing that Mitchum deodorants were staining the pits of my shirts.
With time you learn to put everything in perspective.
I am worried that the author did not learn that lesson in the end since he quit with no job behind, which is not a sign of emotional stability.
I think this is a ham fisted attempt at trying to solve one of the most isolating and painful issues of modern day work environments: the complete lack of any friendship or camaraderie whatsoever.
I was not born in the 1980’s but just reading stories of how people worked then, makes me feel that there was a level of trust and friendship somehow that is completely lacking in a modern job. It is a painful life when you cannot be friends with the folks you spend 40+ hours a week your entire life. I don’t know why or how it has gotten to be this way. Modern pop psychology recommends you to be vulnerable and open, but that’s definitely wrong, maybe even opposite of what you should do, I was never vulnerable with my college friends, but we did have kickass time in college and we were friends. I would much rather that just have continued into my professional life, but instead we get a sterilized environment, that we just live through trying to find meaning in our work, to make the passing of 40+ hours more pleasant.
I'm almost certain this is talked about in most managerial training curriculums.
This manager's tactic sounds like a tip from a book they read. Creating a safe space for teammates to feel comfortable enough to be vulnerable is ver hard, but asking them to be a smidge more vulnerable than last time is inauthentic and potentially dangerous in the hands of management with ulterior motives.
I think a good approach would be to consider asking for adjustments to your work hours or talking with your team lead about creating a plan to make your work environment feel more manageable. It might also be helpful to discuss with a therapist why Patrick’s success affects you so strongly. Understanding the root of this could help you focus more on your own growth and well-being.
The challenges you experienced at Stripe aren’t unique to that company. These same lessons are likely to come up in future roles if they’re left unaddressed. You have the choice to face these issues now or later, but life has a way of bringing them back until they’re fully understood and resolved. Taking proactive steps now can set you up for a healthier, more resilient future in your career and beyond.
My attempt with the article was to simply reflect how things have felt and leave analysis largely absent. I realize it's left folks with a lot of questions and rightly worried about me.
I'm in a much better place now.
Thank you for taking the time to write this comment.
Sure, job is a big part of our life, but it’s better to leave as “just job”, and not focus on it too much.
Wishing the best to the author!
For anyone coming by that would read the situation as inappropriate or abusive, what's different? Why do you see it abusive where I might see it a waste of time that I would just opt out of?
And the power imbalance compounds the problem. Good on you for feeling comfortable and confident enough in yourself and your position that you'd be fine telling the boss that you're not interested in participating. I think most people wouldn't be able to do that, and some would feel pressured to participate ("because the boss asked") even if they were uncomfortable doing so, even if it's presented as "if you're willing to..."
I wouldn't be comfortable with that kind of sharing in a work setting either, but my approach would probably be to share a "vulnerable" professional situation, or, if I wasn't even feeling up for that, to just share a situation that I was fully comfortable talking about.
And being a teammate I'd also be uncomfortable if someone I didn't know on a close personal basis started talking about how their marriage almost fell apart during a team meeting. This stuff isn't any of my business, and I'm not at work for this!
(Re: your "showing your age" comment, FWIW, I'm in my 40s; not sure if that's old or young by your standards when it comes to this sort of thing.)
> During one of his early meetings at a team onsite he asked the team, “for this meeting I’d like us to try and introduce ourselves a little differently. If you’re comfortable, I’d like us to try and be 10% more vulnerable than we normally would in a work setting.”
I had to go back and double check the original post here to make sure I remembered it right. This may actually be part of where I read it differently, if I heard a manager say this in a meeting I would have still assumed it was to be more vulnerable in a work context rather than breeching the wall between work and personal life. Maybe I would share a code review that made me feel uncomfortable, not a personal trauma in my life.
For better or worse I do tend to have a habit of speaking my mind, hopefully in a kind way that makes it clear I'm being genuine. I'd speak up in this kind of situation in part hoping that it makes others less likely to speak up feel more comfortable or willing to then speak up.
> Re: your "showing your age" comment, FWIW, I'm in my 40s; not sure if that's old or young by your standards when it comes to this sort of thing
It may not be a generational thing at all. I'm not far behind you, in my late 30s, and my initial reaction could very well have been the bad (and timeless) trope of "kids these days just don't ..."
At the end of the day work won't love you back. Managers will come and go. Projects will start and end. Colleagues will join and leave.
For most of us work is an important part of our lives, after all we spend a big chunk of our life there. But try to find meaning outside work.
It is because a lot of these jobs are oriented towards PERFORMANCE REVIEWS that are based on BS unrelated to the actual work - such as feelings of others or sometimes # of commits.
Big tech management has departed from being leaders to being raters and rankers of things they are unqualified to rate and rank. They have organizational authority which they should be using to make good choices for customers, employees and projects. But the management only uses it for reviews.
Of course, this is toxic. No one wants to be led by people who don't care more than them and don't contribute in helping the work. Why wouldn't someone get burned out in such an environment?
Kudos for having courage to write it up. Enjoyed my time with you at Stripe.
Large company cog syndrome is very real. Especially when performance reviews are not tied to reality but someone’s inner monologue that you have no access to.
Take care. Time heals most wounds. Oregon is a beautiful place.
Past one and a half years, have been years of self-discovery. I have been hacking on projects full-time (hopefully, I will make sustainable money soon). And it's been so fun, and relieving, and joyful to direct your creative energy to projects, with no authority to answer to. It's not without difficult times though. Sometimes, I feel blocked to the point of abandoning months of hard work, but I am slowly learning how to avoid those situations.
Honestly, everything I was advised was a lie (or at least, didn't work for me). I like being able to shape things, and use my creative energy to do useful things. Politics, and bureaucratic processes, drain my energy to an extent that I simply can't function. And no matter how hard I try, I can't ignore it with the mindset of "it's just a job." I can't find happiness in "being promoted" or whatever rating I am given.
I just want to ship good software. When I am driven, I will forget about everything and just dive in to solve the problem. Sadly though, it's not an easy ask in a modern-day corporate environment.
So, I would say what you're experiencing is normal in many ways. Don't kill yourself over it. If you have a list of fun projects, attempt them. For many of us, creative energy is precious, and needs to be directed well to keep ourselves sane.
Sure, because that's too late. Once you've already collapsed, pretty much the only thing that's going to fix it is quitting and taking a break, possibly with some therapy.
You need to "treat it as just a job" from your very first day there. You need to "find happiness elsewhere" every single day of your life, not just when you're feeling burned out.
Regardless, I'm glad you've now found a path that's working for you!
Oof. Allowing other people to dictate your own self-worth is always a bad sign. I'll take a five figure bonus pay out over a "good job old boy" pat on the back any day.
https://thecontextofthings.com/2014/10/15/don-draper-thats-w...
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=camaraderie%2C...
It's the U.S. vs England spelling thing again, except this time the U.S. spelling doesn't seem to be catching on, for some reason.
To get a feel for the whole thing in Ngram I looked at "labor,labour", "color,colour" and "organize,organise" and for each one the U.S. spelling was winning by a little or by loads, but "camaraderie" heavily dominates "comradery" in terms of usage. So, a little bit mysterious, maybe.
[Ngram is a great tool].
You are software developer, not a manager. It is her job to worry about things like that.
>"for this meeting I’d like us to try and introduce ourselves a little differently. If you’re comfortable, I’d like us to try and be 10% more vulnerable than we normally would in a work setting"
What a fucking moron. Most likely he was fishing for weak spots to be exploited. I do not get how one can fall for this type of crap.
Anyways this whole thing reminds me why I've never wanted to work for big companies and eventually went on my own. I do not need somebody else to organize my life. I do job, client pays money and this is where it ends.
> He gave me a coderpad link. I started to read through the question. I could already feel my mind moving like molasses. On the surface the question seemed straightforward enough. It presented a simple data structure and asked me to do some filtering based on a set of constraints. “No problem!” I thought.
I fired up vim and got to work.
My interview with Stripe felt similarly nerve wracking - with writing code in what may as well be TextEdit.app contributing to that feeling
I don't like those interviews at all. It feels invasive if you aren't prepared with a VM already, and then you have to worry about undoing whatever their script did afterward.
I think it's really brutal to those inclined to the highly sensitive person archetype (overly sensitive to external stimuli). Every little thing you do is analysed and the perf process is intense.
It can also be illogical - despite attempts to not be - as subjectivity in the perf process is almost unavoidable. Just take this author, who had a successful project, but got below expectations simply because their manager or a senior lead got a bad impression from probably a handful of interactions with them.
At these companies you _have_ to learn to not get emotionally or mentally invested in this process, or it can wreck you. Therapy can help a lot here.
Serious question, what is this mentality?
tl;dr Look at this guy! He left a job without another job lined up after making half a million for 4 consecutive years! but only thought it was a big deal because he learned how to write but was disillusioned by his masters in other ways.
Really, I don't get resignation posts. Like the ones on linkedin, or other social media. Just surreptitiously go like all the other people who just weren't there the next day. Whose slack randomly said (deactivated).
Live your life
But sure, whats the other perspective?
Had some bad managers and then some good ones. Did my time and got out.
Definitely keep writing, the "like a peacock" line made me chuckle :-)
I thought the internal memo was going to just be the background to set up the actual point which would be something they learned or something.
Actually at first I thought it was going to be about Stripe's culture but there was really nothing too exceptionally bad, just ordinary bog standard work in a too-big company issues. The standout most offensive thing Stripe did to them was something they actually liked.
So, fine, it won't be about how good or bad Stripe is, just about some process they went through and it starts with "I'm not feeling much purpose to my life and I'm not sure why not, but work as a developer in a generic bog standard tech company is not providing it."
Ok, got it. Setup established. Ready for the point now. But then that's it. 'No "and then"'.
Ok like, so what? The mere fact of deciding to quit a tech job for the vague reason of non-specific dissatisfaction is relevant to this person's direct close friends & family, barely relevant to anyone else at their company, and not relevant at all to anyone else.
At a minimum, some empathy for the person writing to start with.. being nauseous or in a cold sweat over work situations, interviews, the expectations of a spouse over stable income.. lots of reasons.. This person is being a lot more than ten percent vulnerable in writing this.. they say right away they were torn over writing it in public.
All this is the posing of a problem, or the reciting of a sequence of mere events.
"I tried to go to work today, but there was too much snow in the driveway."
I gather from what he wrote that he's a software engineer. How is it his duty to "pull other engineers into the project"? What does management at this company do, besides invent contrived criticism to mash into a compliment sandwich? American corporate management culture has become laughably toxic over the last several decades.
* it depends if the "other engineers" are on the same team or not. If they're a different team, it's not so much a manager responsibility.
* in tech, it helps to already be doing the next job level up to get promoted to it.
> What does management at this company do, besides invent contrived criticism to mash into a compliment sandwich?
The primary job of a manager is to get their employees promoted. The second job is to do whatever you promised your own management you'll do. So yes, that's what they're supposed to do - the "compliment sandwich" is the yearly performance review.
That doesn't even make any sense. If you need people from other teams, your manager should absolutely be coordinating that.
in tech, it helps to already be doing the next job level up to get promoted to it.
That is not justification for negative comments in a review.
The primary job of a manager is to get their employees promoted.
I have never, in my entire life, ever come across anyone inside or outside of management who held that view.
So yes, that's what they're supposed to do
Yeesh. Agreeing that management should invent contrived criticism to form a compliment sandwich? Okay. The important part here is the contrived bit, not the compliment sandwich.
Also, Stripe is barely profitable. As an engineer in big tech, I wouldn't even consider applying. You're better off targeting Principal engineer at Big Tech since it implies doing some really ground breaking software work. At that point, you probably don't have to worry about middle management and that bs. Outside the big 4 I had an experience where the manager read a Software engineering management book and would follow the things down to the letter like a superstition. It was a stupid exchange but ChatGPT really helped build my repository of meaningless corporate soeak. I find it to be a very useful skill.
That doesn't sound like a customer/external developer-facing position.
It can be hard to make a visible impact when your work is hidden behind many layers. But that's the nature of their job - it's not a "rainmaker" position, it's a cost centre.
But it sounds like they wanted to have a job that had more visible impact.
Instead you do artificial projects and it either impresses people enough to get you a good performance review or it doesn't.
This often produces customer surplus (like when companies release cool open source projects they didn't need to write) so it's a good thing, maybe.
Having trouble thinking of examples of this from my own experience but they're all mostly social/political (often trying to hard in these realms can be to your detriment)
can you say more? maybe i read to much into a snarky remark but i think your idea is interesting
Hoping this is satire
It's the painful truth of how I felt. I'm not saying it's good. In fact, it's _very bad_.
"Until I had my next one on one with my boss. She shared with me some concerns about my communication and project management. She, and apparently others she gathered feedback from, felt like I hadn’t done a good enough job pulling other engineers into the project. She spoke of how proud she was of the outcome but that it didn’t excuse my less than ideal methods."
Manipulative managers like her willingly fuse themselves with the beast that is corporation, and become its tentacles of some sort.
But this guy has also learnt a lesson that he shouldn't seek happinesses in someone's approval. What his manager thinks of him matters very little and once he has grown out of this kindergarten mindset, he'll realise that he is his own judge and the only thing that matters and the only source of happiness is whether he does the right thing.
When you see that a company is playing games in an interview, the questions are what other forms will the doofus/jerky culture take if you join, and how will it affect you.
> He introduced himself and we settled into the usual ritual of a phone screen. ... He gave me a coderpad link. ... It presented a simple data structure and asked me to do some filtering based on a set of constraints. ... He kindly ended the interview and asked if I had any questions.
Everything else is about the author struggling and being anxious. Where do you get "stereotypical brogrammer hazing"?
The CS101 hazing interview style was popularized by some CS students with no work experience, and then cargo-culted as religious rituals by others who also didn't have any other conception of what interviews for experienced professionals should be.
Actually one could argue if it kept being “stereotypical brogrammer” on the actual job, it would end up being much better outcome for the author
If you are worth your salt as a manager your reports should know exactly where they are going into performance reviews and that process should just be a formality to make the HR department whole. Unfortunately, a lot of dipshits end up in management because once you make it here it is a lot harder (ironically) to get performance reviewed out.
The second manager also sounds pretty foolish, but at least in a more endearing and earnest way. That kind of emotional thing can and should be discussed on 1:1s once you have built up the relationship. As a manager you should be looking out for your reports and trying to set them up for long term success, and that means learning about their personal life to the extent that is mutually decided to be appropriate. Forcing emotionality out into a group setting sounds like a cringe moment in the Silicon Valley sitcom. This is a bad idea for so many reasons.. for one a lot of us are introverts and doing that is crushing anxiety.. and the innate peer pressure if others are doing it are going to lead to overshares and yet more anxiety. No.
If the depression era fell under the same manager they also missed the importance of momentum. Momentum carries you through failure, depression, hard times.. and you need to give your team easy wins if they are falling behind to rebuild momentum. Otherwise it feels like jumping back on to a moving train.
Based on this I'd wonder what's going on at Stripe. Run not walk from a situation like that, author made the right call.
It's "macro, structural".
Prohibited Businesses:
By registering for Stripe, you are confirming that you will not use the Service to accept payments in connection with the following businesses, business activities or business practices: (1) door-to-door sales, (2) offering substantial rebates or special incentives to the Cardholder subsequent to the original purchase, (3) negative response marketing, (4) engaging in deceptive marketing practices, (5) sharing Cardholder's data with another merchant for payment of up-sell or cross-sell product or service, (6) evading Card Network's chargeback monitoring programs, (7) engaging in any form of licensed or unlicensed aggregation or factoring, (8) airlines, (9) age verification, (10) age restricted products or services, (11) bail bonds, (12) bankruptcy lawyers, (13) bidding fee auctions, (14) collection agencies, (15) chain letters, (16) check cashing, wire transfers or money orders, (17) counterfeit goods, (18) currency exchanges or dealers, (19) embassies, foreign consulates or other foreign governments, (20) firms selling business opportunities, investment opportunities, mortgage consulting or reduction, credit counseling, repair or protection or real estate purchases with no money down, (21) credit card and identity theft protection, (22) cruise lines, (23) essay mills, (24) flea markets, (25) drug paraphernalia, (26) extended warranties, (27) fortune tellers, (28) ?get rich quick? schemes; (28) gambling (including but not limited to lotteries, Internet gaming, contests, sweepstakes, or offering of prizes as an inducement to purchase goods or services), (29) sports forecasting or odds making, (30) illegal products or services, (31) mail-order brides, (32) marijuana dispensaries and related businesses, (33) money transmitters or money service businesses, (34) multi-level marketing or pyramid schemes, (35) online or other non-face-to-face pharmacies or pharmacy referral services, (36) prepaid phone cards, phone services or cell phones, (37) pseudo pharmaceuticals, (38) quasi-cash or stored value, (39) securities brokers, (40) sexually-oriented or pornographic products or services, (41) shipping or forwarding brokers, (42) substances designed to mimic illegal drugs, (43) telemarketing, (44) telecommunications equipment and telephone sales, (45) timeshares, (46) travel agencies or travel clubs, (47) online or other non-face-to-face tobacco or e-cigarette sales, (48) weapons and munitions (49) virtual currency that can be monetized, re-sold or converted to physical or digital goods or services or otherwise exit the virtual world, (50) personal computer technical support, (51) selling video game or virtual world credits (unless you are the operator of the video game or virtual world), (52) selling social media activity, such as Twitter followers, Facebook likes or Youtube views, (53) human hair, fake hair or hair-extensions, (54) any product or service that infringes upon the copyright, trademark or trade secrets of any third party, or (55) any product, service or activity that is deceptive, unfair, predatory or prohibited by one or more Card Networks.
No hair extensions?!?
Of course then the customers are going to get scammed or killed a lot more and will sue Stripe!
I've processed with added value high risk processor platforms who'll handle hair extension transactions. For 15%. All it required technically was an html widget link.
That processor also used to not require the annual mcvisa fee. Amazing loophole lasted for a decade. They do require the fee now. Progress.
As for the main topic of touchy feely confessions that is 100% directly out of the communist struggle session playbook.
As a human who values freedom I agree with your objections 100%. Would be great if payment processors weren't in a position to be moral gatekeepers for the economy
But when the company is public or on their series Z funding round and the once nimble startup has devolved into a big ball of bureaucracy- the psychologically healthier thing is to not care. Your project may be no-scoped by a higher up for no discernable reason. Your trash manager was probably imported from a similarly bureaucratically burdened company and will import and impose their bullshit. You don't have any real agency or identity to this company which will treat you as an interchangeable resource. Sure, try to be useful where you can but seek validation and meaning outside of work. I generally recommend a side project you have agency in that can maybe one day replace your primary employment.
"Having his avatar beside mine on an unfinished google doc felt invigorating" - are you fucking kidding me.