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>What you are experiencing is the symptom of working in a large company where no matter how well you perform, you can not significantly move the needle yourself.

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.

This is an extremely important piece of advice. To drive change in a large org, you will need support, which will either come from management, or people on the ground - this is purely people skills. Just writing amazing code and shipping it isn’t enough.

hmm surprising because I had mentioned how to win friends and influence people book by dale carnegie in some other comment on this post and one of the most sticky / remembered lines of this book is that even in a highly technical post , much of the success (approx 70% IIRC) can be because of having people skills.

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.

Well, I’m not sure that the Linux kernel would have been that successful without Linus’ people skills - granted some it is slightly subpar, but his ability to organize a large number of people and have them follow his lead ( that’s the tricky bit ) is actually quite striking.

Now, you might say that the Linux kernel is a large project, and you’d be right

While this is true, I find myself depressed by the idea of exchanging coding for herding everyone in the right direction.

I’ve been trying to make that switch as it’s the only career prospect I have, but…

I can relate

Would love to hear how others have solved this

In some sense, you don’t solve it. You are correct to perceive you are at a crossroads. And the hard part is knowing that either choice may foreclose some possibilities on the other path.

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’m in early 40s and going thru a minor midlife crisis around this. Feeling that I’d wasted time in my 20s building technical prowess only to see myself still be viewed as mostly fungible.

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.

Don't feel bad about the technical prowess part. Just consider you are "done" with growing the tech skills and start stacking other skills on top and you'll do great.

Many companies have parallel IC tracks. And even though higher level ICs do need to “herd” more you’re still doing a fair amount of technical work (maybe at least until director equivalent).

> maybe at least until director equivalent

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.

The director equivalents I know ("distinguished engineeer") still do plenty of individual work if they want to; it's simply expected that they know how to do things in a way that has the same leverage as a director. And yes, that can include temporarily recruiting people to do work outside their team.

I agree and this is good advice that works well. My counterpoint is that if you are very good at:

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.

first i think what you’ve presented is a fiction, in most environments such large projects are surely going to involve multiple people if not multiple team. and then why? unlikely you’re be financially compensated for all the impact you’re really delivering. anything less is just exploitation

My experience is that this is quite common. Especially at startups but also at fortune 500s there exist staff engineers who have no team and just exist working on whatever catches their fancy that day/month. The grandparent talked about a month long project which is where these engineers tend to live in my experience. Its not that they get no help more that they jump around and maybe grab someone from the team when theyre almost done to integrate the new feature with the existing codebase.

I wouldn’t say people skills “always” trump technical skills. Some projects require strong technical chops such that no amount of people skills will be sufficient. If everyone thought this way we wouldn’t have made so many of the recent major tech advances.

Now given a fixed level of technical skills it’s obviously always better to have more people skills, perhaps that’s what you meant.

People have wrong priorities when working in big corporations. If you want to make an impact you should work towards creating your own business and working in big corporation is just a mean to achieve that. Focus on growing your bank account, good credit history, live lean and in your free time nurture the idea you have, make steps to make it happen.

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.

Yeah this is why I sometimes miss the jobs I had in my early 20s, working at bakeries/ice cream shops/etc. Obviously the pay wasn’t great and the working conditions subpar, but there is a genuine psychological benefit to making a simple thing, giving it to people, then finishing work at the end of the day and being done, without an ongoing to-do list, sprints, daily meetings, and all the other requirements of contemporary white collar jobs.

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.

I couldn't find it after searching, but I remember reading about a company where they just relaxed and got done what they got done. To me, this would be the ideal workplace.

With any form of investor expecting a return I dunno how possible this is, but I’ve worked for one family owned business (non-tech industry but had a small tech team) and it was super relaxed like you mention.

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.

20-30% lower on a hourly basis or total compensation?

I often find that even investors can be reasonable.

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.

I’ve heard similar stories, but I think they tend to have some runaway hit cash cow in their rearview enabling it.

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.

> finishing work at the end of the day and being done

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.

That's definitely possible, but in my experience it's not the same thing as actually being done when you're working at a bakery or wherever. Then you don't need to turn off your phone, avoid company messages, think about what project you have to do tomorrow. You don't need to care about the job at all until your next shift starts.

I work in IT and I don't need to think about that project that's running late or whatever. Yeah, I have to turn off my work laptop, but that's more akin to taking off my apron if I worked in a bakery.

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.

Indeed. And I think this is both a case of managing expectations (if you're always available, people will learn to expect it) and also of realizing what is and isn't expected of you.

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.

> Yet, some people always put in very long hours for some reason

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.

> 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.

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.

I don't think you're talking about the same thing as GP. I've had spells like you describe, and I did enjoy them. And I don't know about you, but I never felt like this was expected of me by the company, so there was no pressure involved. I think that this actually being my choice made all the difference.

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.

I’ve had a chance recently to moonlight doing the work I did the first half of my 20s almost a decade after I left it for tech. Despite its dead end nature, I’m seriously thinking about returning to it.

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.

> motivated more by my work being MEANINGFUL

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...

I would say that anything that is opposed to Marx’s concept of alienation would fit the bill. Work should feel impactful and your decisions should lead to some tangible output.

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.

Work satisfaction is a meme. Yes, there are people satisfied with their work, but realistically, this is not going to happen to you. Stop giving a fuck about your work, slack off as much as possible, and look for coworkers with whom you can build real human connection, instead of corporate NPCs.

I don’t know if that’s sustainable. We’re all stuck with this work-thing being one third of our life for the foreseeable time, so spending 33% of like, everything I’ll ever experience on something I don’t give a fuck about seems like both a lot of dull time and a bad decision overall.

Well, your choices are that or death - no matter whether you give it bare minimum effort or a lot of effort.

You you actually feel fulfilled giving anything minimum effort?

Like, I’m not going to work overtime for free or anything, but the time I do work gets my best effort.

Cynicism is a cope for not doing the work. Minimum effort is exhausting for the long term.

Work from home exists for a reason

"We're all stuck with this..."

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.

Sure. I was specifically talking to people browsing hacker news, which have a high probability of working a job in the capitalist economy. Of course there are other ways of life, but the predominant part of humanity does not choose those. So I still think it’s appropriate to talk about ”all of us“ in this case.

You still have to give people the impression you do a terrible good job and that you are working your ass out.

That's the tricky part

If I could pick a comment to explain a “self-fulfilling prophecy,” it would be this one right here.

Exactly... if you want to be miserable at work, by all means, "slack off as much as possible".

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.)

That’s my opinion, too. I also find that by taking this attitude, you guarantee that you’ll only end up working jobs that confirm your worldview. I have friends who think my work experience is a wild fluke.

And it makes your colleagues miserable because they have to carry the load or slack off too, which inevitably means the whole team is disfunctional and should be let go

I agree completely. I’ve had periods where I just slacked off and I was miserable, leading to a negative feedback loop. The only way to break out was ironically to actually work more, which led to more enjoyment of it. Cognitive dissonance is powerful.

How is making this human connection w/ coworkers done remotely? Is it possible? I'm struggling with that.

Is it reasonable to accept/leave a job based on no interesting connections?

As someone who has been on a journey from a 6 man startup to a larger company going through a merger I’m really feeling the pull of creating/joining a new startup. If nothing else for the joy of being a small team on a mission and work with people who are really invested.

Or sometimes the needles you can move seem unimportant to the org, even if they have objective value. You get a few pats like OP but no real recognition.

Though maybe that’s why you can move those needles; nobody is guarding them jealously.

It’s taking me a long time to learn these lessons - thanks for the tip

Thank you for the kind words!

Thankfully I'm not ground down to a nub. I've found a lot of support over the last few years outside of work.

I work at a much larger company than Stripe and I’ve definitely “moved the needle” myself. It’s all about finding high leverage projects to work on.

There are absolutely a lucky few at even the biggest mega-corps that are seeing their work make huge impacts. But most people won't find those projects or there won't be space in them.

"Just find high-leverage projects to work on" is a truism. Of course everyone would love to work on high-leverage projects - finding them is precisely the challenge that we're discussing.