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Comment by seanc | Hacker News Reader

I've been in high tech for 30 years, and I've been laid off many times, most often from failed start ups. I _strongly_ disagree with a fully cynical response of working only to contract, leveraging job offers for raises, etc.

There are a few reasons for this, but the most concrete is that your behavior in this job has an impact on getting the next one. The author is correct that exemplary performance will not save you from being laid off, but when layoffs come your next job often comes from contacts that you built up from the current job, or jobs before. If people know you are a standout contributor then you will be hired quickly into desirable roles. If people think you are a hired gun who only does the bare minimum that next role will be harder to find.

On top of that, carrying around bitterness and cynicism is just bad for you. Pride in good work and pleasure in having an impact on customers and coworkers is good for you. Sometimes that means making dumb business decisions like sacrificing an evening to a company that doesn't care, but IMO that sort of thing is worth it now and then.

To be sure, don't give your heart away to a company (I did that exactly once, never again) because a company will never love you back. But your co-workers will.

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It’s worthwhile to “go above and beyond” for individuals who will help you, who may exist in a company… but never for the company itself. A company is no less and no more than a pile of someone else’s money that will do literally anything, including destroy your life, to become a bigger pile.

You should do a good job for individuals who will repay you later on. Companies themselves these days can sod off—they stand for nothing.

that's true with publicly traded C-corporations

for private companies, it literally is the people you work with (and whatever legal enchantments they've decided on). some of those people will still fuck you over, but it's not a legally-conjured sentient pile of money the way a C-corp is

B-corps are an interesting attempt to avoid being a sentient pile of money. in theory, it's an egregore that is capable of valuing things other than money. (they haven't really been tested in court. and they might fuck you over in pursuit of some other value, even if they do work. or fucking you over for money might not conflict with its other values)

Was not familiar with the terms C & B - corp. For others in the same boat:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B_Corporation_(certification)

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/c-corporation.asp

turns out, i actually meant benefit corporation. (i've heard people refer to them as b-corporations, but didn't realize there was another thing called b-corporation)

If you’re interested in learning about this, be aware that S-corp and C-corp are widely used misnomers. A corporation is a corporation (and an LLC is not) but they all can be taxed under sub chapters C, S, K, and others based on the specific details of the entity.

C corporation is just a shorthand way of saying “privately incorporated voluntary association taxed under sub c (probably with dreams of being a public company someday, otherwise they’d be sub s).

Not trying to “but acktchually” you, just suggesting that your next stop after reading about corporations is probably the tax code. (Enjoy that).

extra bonus -- actual attorneys who are familiar with those codes learn not to discuss it at all .. for whatever reasons.. it really is valuable information, as in scarcity

Why did I just discuss them, then?

glad to see an exception to that rule :-)

"Going above and beyond" at a big company, if done in a smart strategic way, is the best way to get promoted, and getting promoted results in significantly higher pay. I've gotten promoted twice at my current employer over the years, which has roughly doubled my total compensation, and none of that would have happened had I just did my previous level's responsibilities and nothing beyond.

That's the exception rather than the rule. Most people have to switch employers to get a significant pay raise.

As with all things, it depends where you are. It’s not the case for big tech employers, who tend to have very clear “levels” and (from what I can tell on levels.fyi) it’s often a 25%+ jump in total comp.

And these are the biggest employers of talent. It may not be most people in a startup forum, but it’s a lot of people.

For all others, I think it’s because tech isn’t seen as such an important revenue driver. Lots of places we are still seen as a cost center.

> It’s not the case for big tech employers, who tend to have very clear “levels” and (from what I can tell on levels.fyi) it’s often a 25%+ jump in total comp.

You're misinterpreting the data, because you can't see for data points on levels.fyi whether they obtained their reported salary by being promoted within the company or by doing the very common "side-promotion" of getting hired at a higher level at a competitor.

I was young and naive and unwilling to play the company hopping game, I got promoted from L3 to L6 at Google, after a year and a half at L6 I was paid in base salary less than some of my colleagues who got recently hired at L5 and negotiated well, plus they got significantly higher stock grants as part of their signing bonus (like, around 2x what I was getting through standard yearly grant refreshes).

I've always called that a "diagonal promotion" because it's over-and-up.

It's also the only way I have ever gotten a significant increase in compensation, responsibility, and title.

Over the past 7 years, it wasn’t comp I was optimizing for over a certain amount it was increasing in scope and impact and autonomy when it came to managing projects and getting closer to the “business”.

I realized that it would be my competitive advantage as everything else got commoditized and outsourced.

I went from the second highest tech IC at a 100 person startup setting the direction of the overall architecture, to a mid level cloud consultant at BigTech (full time, direct hire), to a “staff” level at a smaller company (same responsibilities as a senior at BigTech).

Funny enough, the company that acquired the startup pre-BigTech offered me a staff position responsible for strategy over all of their acquisitions 3 years later.

My next play if I cared about comp, would be to go back to BigTech as a senior or a smaller company as a director/CTO.

Those L5s negotiated a good hiring wage, but would see stagnant growth until they hit the median of wages for level + performance rating in their location.

Also since COVID, they've been very aggressively squishing the pay bands.

They also have the advantage of getting L5 pay immediately, while for someone who got promoted internally it can take 4-5 years for all the equity to catch up

Managers who are handing our perf-review changes in comp are often very constrained when handling those who negotiated well. They'll typically get inflation level raises for a long time until they're lower in their band

The signing bonus stock grants may also have compensated them for giving up the stock grants of their previous employer, so they probably still received less than you had accumulated.

Anecdata, for sure, but my experience working at several big companies in tech is that they won’t significantly bump your pay (and especially not your stock grant!) when they promote you. If anything, they will move you to the minimum of the salary band for the new level.

In my experience, you’re better off getting the promo and looking for the next job at your leisure. It sucks that that is what the system rewards, but I certainly don’t fault people for playing the game that is given.

> that is what the system rewards

Commensurate to the risk, of course. If you ignore the risk component then your best bet is to forget having a job and spend your days playing Powerball. The system offers much, much, much greater reward there.

If you keep risk in mind then it's not so clear cut. Staying at the job you have, even with lower pay on paper, may end up being the most profitable option in the end. But sometimes you just have to make the gamble and find out! There are winning opportunities for sure.

Risk depends on the market strength. In good times, you could easily jump to a new job with a raise in weeks and there's little risk as long as you're not outing youself at work.

In bad times like this, probably not worth it. The search takes months not, if not over a year, and there's a non-zero chance you're laid off anyway.

Weeks can be a long time if it doesn't work out. And that is, by your own comment, in the good times. The good times don't last forever. Upon some dice roll it is going to turn, and when that one doesn't work out now you could be looking at months or years.

Staying put isn't risk-free either. Not by any stretch. But is comparatively less risky. It is the devil you know, hence the lower risk premium.

Pay bands for different levels are typically pretty broad, and typically overlap between levels. Just because median pay at level N+1 is significantly higher than at level N, doesn't mean that you will get that being promoted from level N.

CydeWays post is very similar to my experience as well

Most people who think they deserve a significant pay raise probably don't (or maybe not enough relative to others competing for limited promotional budget).

over the last ten years the tech industry has 10x'd the value it has created, which is obvious if you look at the accrued wealth of the leaders in the industry.

you know what has NOT gone up 10x in the decade I've been working in this industry? MY SALARY

we all deserve a significant pay raise you scab

Why don't you start your own company, make a lot of money and hire people with 10x salary? Who's stoping you? Show us how you pay 1M to each of your SWE.

He cant start one because he doesn't have enough money lol

It doesnt have to be 10x. Working in "Mid Tech" should at least guarantee you a raise that beats inflation. Sadly, it seems the only way to guarantee a raise that is proportional to the companies increased productivity is to shop offers around.

Either you're too bad (at best average; same thing I guess?) or the company management is shit. Either way you should not be in that company. So what's the problem?

Productivity going up and wages stagnating is a skill issue. got it.

Are employees at google not being paid for what they're risking?

An investor risks their post tax capital, and then when it works like google gets the upside and when it fails they get...shares in blackberry or IBM.

An employee risks their time, which they are guaranteed by law at least for the time they risk, to be compensated in cash and benefits.

An employee also risks their reputation and career opportunity cost for which they get...checks notes...options that go up/down the same as an investor.

An employee is participating in both value buckets, and one might argue at Google specifically, in the most compensatory bucket proportion in the history of all people ever.

You’re hired! /s

It doesn't matter if you "deserve" the raise or not. If someone else will pay you more, the raise is yours.

I've seen enough people extremely qualified being denied promotions because they were "too good" at their current role. Meanwhile I've also seen as of late "promotions" that are just a title change while only adding to your workload with no extra pay. There's no winning with many companies.

If it's not your dream job or it truly is the best comp in your area, you need to be very careful with promotion tracks and have a plan to keep poking the people involved. But all that already means it may not be a good fit of a company who cares about growth anyway, so...

If I can find someone to pay me more, whether I deserve it or not is irrelevant.

Many people also confuse how hard they work for how much business value they create. Staying late, working long hours is only beneficial if it creates value. Is that work something that anyone else could do? Does it reduce costs or increase revenue? Reducing costs has a limited upside. For a lot of work, the difference in productivity between two workers might be 10%, 50%, even 100% you can still be a commodity. From my experience, doing something that only you can do that results in enduring, increased revenue is the best way to make real money. Learning the business, becoming indispensable, and help to grow the business takes time and experience, but will be rewarded. And if it isn’t, move on!

> Many people also confuse how hard they work for how much business value they create. Staying late, working long hours is only beneficial if it creates value.

Ok.

> Is that work something that anyone else could do?

Maybe not anyone else, but someone else, sure.

But here is the real point. In order to get promoted you have to be selfish. You have to shirk doing the work that isn't perceived as creating the highest value, and leave it to some other sucker. If no-one did that work, what then? It's not like plumbing fields around SBE messages is difficult, or writing some additional business logic is difficult. And the same goes for running some performance tuning, and shaving a few micros here and there. Any developer on our teams can do either task. But the person who can prove that they shaved a few micros off tick to trade latency and made us a bunch of money is going to get noticed a lot more than the poor sucker who plumbed in a few fields to allow risk team to monitor things more carefully.

Almost all work that moves the company forward is valuable. Some just has greater perceivable value, and results in the higher reward.

We've all been through this, we know how it works.

I don’t think your point disagrees with my point. The better aligned your perception is with management on where/how value is getting delivered, the better you will judge how to invest your time. You might be right and they might be wrong. But if you know the business better than your bosses, then you might be working for the wrong people.

And I think you're missing my point. If everyone is perfectly aligned and recognised what will be rewarded, no-one wants to do any other task.

I work in finance. We have a lot of regulatory requirements. Assume some boring regulatory requirement comes in that all of your agorithmic trading on electronic venues needs to stamp an algorithm id on each message to the venue (this was a real thing). Someone has to do a huge amount of boring work aligning everything to do this, and in the end, there is little visible value creation from this work, and you're not going to be rewarded for doing it (people weren't). But without it, your business will cease to function entirely.

The problem is the stakeholders controlling reward are far from perfect. They will judge this project against a project that tweaked the algorithms for better performance (as I already alluded to) and reward the latter, because it made dollar sign go up.

So basically you end up in a shark tank where developers are acting selfishly, desperately trying to get their name attached to the correct projects, and the loudest voices win.

The value of a quiet, but excellent developer, who writes correct code, doesn't introduce stupid complexity, makes the right decisions for the future, even if it takes longer, is very high. But that value isn't easily visible and I'd argue this is rife across the every industry that employs developers, not just big finance.

I think your assumption that everyone gets to select the tasks they want to work on is probably inaccurate for most organizations. Any reasonable manager will ensure that important but unglamorous work is getting done. They might assign this work fairly or not. It probably depends on the org. I was speaking to how a developer should try to maximize their career potential and income. You are assigning a personal value on several factors (simplicity, functional correctness, future maintainability) that may or not be shared by an organization. My stance is, unless you have equity, it’s not your company. Deliver what your company wants. If they’re not smart enough to figure out what’s right for their business, find somewhere else or start a competitor.

> If they’re not smart enough to figure out what’s right for their business

This is an uncharitable response, no need for that.

My implication is that if you think the company doesn't understand the business value of something you think is valuable, you should try to see it from their perspective or at least verify your assumptions. Most of the time they are right.

Still being uncharitable and assuming that an employee doesn't see that.

I am not seeing how charitable applies here and to whom. But, I am not interested in a back and forth. Have a good day.

Pay isn't about "deserve". It's about the intersection of supply and demand curves and the amount of friction.

Companies have low friction firing you to get someone cheaper. Will you have low friction firing your company to get more expensive?

There's virtually no relationship between who gets a raise and who deserves it.

The people who get raises take active steps to obtain them. Typically that means pushing, or getting a new job. The reality is that life is not fair and corporate America is not a meritocracy.

It's not an exception at all. People get promoted all the time. Most people I work with have been promoted at least once since joining the company, some multiple times like I have.

Based on my anecdotal experience and the people I've known in industry, job hopping is way way way easier than getting a promo if you're trying to maximize salary. Mine has doubled after a few job hops.

Even better is working for yourself.

Right because “working for yourself” is likely to lead you to the same profit as even the comp of a mid level employee at any of the BigTech companies.

At least your performance has 100% impact, so it's all up to you rather than someone else.

Can I exchange those good feelings for goods and services?

> if done in a smart strategic way, is the best way to get promoted

This alludes to the other bit that's not taught enough: Working effectively, efficiently is not about how many problem reports you close, or lines of code you ship or number of hours at your desk. It's about recognition. Pay attention and work toward the stuff that will get you recognized. Pay attention and measure how much effort you put in the day to day stuff and the stuff that will be seen. This work is not "for your company", it's "for your career".

Watch out also for what kind of recognition you get. If you become known as the expert in day to day operation of tool XYZ, you might be parked doing that for the rest of your life. Probably not what you intended.

I don't think this is true of all companies. My current company doesn't base bonuses on individual contributions, and even went so far as to reduce the number of "story points" that top contributors did in sprints so that the rest of the team wouldn't look bad.

I don't think that's a good thing? (rest of the team wouldn't look bad part)

Fine, what else counts? A company may deliberately lower the effect of this in order to favor that - which they feel matters more, or which they feel is not done enough at that time. What else did you notice that they favor?

>It’s worthwhile to “go above and beyond” for individuals who will help you, who may exist in a company… but never for the company itself.

That feels like the correct way to think about it. Everyone else seems to think it's one extreme or the other but really thinking about it on an individual level vs a company level seems more accurate to my own experience.

This can be generalized to life in many situations in my experience.

E.g. replace "company" in the quoted statement by "nation"/"religious organization"/"political party" etc.

I don't think it's just about who will repay you. Our responsibility to each other is not nearly that transactional.

For example, the individual who is most likely to live with the consequences of your decision is... future you.

Future-me isn't going to pay me back, but I am always grateful to past-me when I set future-me up for success.

> Pride in good work and pleasure in having an impact on customers and coworkers is good for you. Sometimes that means making dumb business decisions like sacrificing an evening to a company that doesn't care...

Right.

The company doesn't care.

But I do.

I don't work hard on my craft, push myself to be better/smarter/have more impact, or go above and beyond for my employer.

I do it for myself.

Indeed. Although I find it increasingly hard to find work that aligns with my expectations about technical excellency (too many companies chasing big returns on half-finished products for example) or even methods of creating software. This is hard to manage from a personal perspective but I guess life goes on... I wholeheartedly agree with the author - life's too short to be wasted on work that may get you some good words in one quarter and not matter the next.

Well said.

My experience has been that caring about your craft is a great way to get in trouble. As a previous co-worker once told me "it turns out that the less I care about this job the more happy my managers are with my performance."

Was that before or after “the consultants?”

I have the same exact experience at my current company. My official performance, which is given by my boss, improved since I started to not care. My output fell, the quality of my work is the same, just less quantity, but for some reason my scores are higher.

On the other hand, I had a job where my performance was rewarded greatly, and I was lucky to be at the right place for that. Almost all of the employees at the same company were not that lucky.

There is an exact and correct amount to care. It varies job to job. It's mostly a matter of just turning the big dial inside yourself until you get it in the sweet spot for where you are now.

This is the wise, pragmatic answer indeed!

Find the Middle Path.

Neither extreme is correct.

Doing the absolute bare minimum to not get PIP'ed is corrosive to your own soul.

Going "above and beyond" when you might get laid off tomorrow, is naive and opening yourself up for exploitation.

That's because time pressure is real. We can't all be Knuth and spend our life looking for the perfect algorithm to solve all problems we could ever have. Most of us must ship something that works well enough for a particular scenario, as soon as possible - tomorrow, next week, next month, not next year. If you care too much about the quality of your work, you might end up never shipping; at some point you have to stop caring and just push the damn button.

It's not always time pressure. It can also be, for example, calling out others for doing things that don't make sense or hinder what's actually needed for the job/company, which in turn makes them uncomfortable and leads to discipline for you and not them. My response after having that happen? Fine, I'll look the other way and not care how much we're getting done anymore.

time is always going to be a valid term in the equation, probably with an exponent > 1

The quicker we make peace with the fact that hard work alone will not get us ahead (in most cases) the better it is for our mental health. We can put as much effort into our jobs as long as we accept that the only guaranteed result is our own joy, pride in our work and nothing else (not even a thank you from suits) is guaranteed.

If we are not able to accept that, then just do the bare minimum like most people. OR find a better job, but there is still no guarantee the new job would actually be better than the old job. But hey, at least we might get more compensation in our new job, so there's that

Perhaps. Pay attention to the time you spend "doing the task well" so that YOU are satisfied. You are now smarter (say) but is your hierarchy going to promote you for this? Or park you and make you do this indefinitely, or blame you for the rest that didn't get done? Is your network as a whole now more inclined to hire you out in their next venture?

The question to ask yourself then is: why is it that the behaviour that brings you pleasure/meaning/satisfaction happens to align exactly with what the company wants?

I spent most of my career with a similar attitude to yours, and TBH it's still my default. The question I find myself asking more and more is: can I maintain/increase my level of satisfaction while giving less of myself to a company that simply doesn't care?

That smells like something a person with very little choice would say. At least I was saying similar things to myself in times I had very little choice. It's a very good way of regaining illusion of agency.

I draw the line at doing work that I can be proud of. That doesn't mean going out of my way and overworking myself, but it does mean being a good person to work with and writing quality code.

I tend to stick to the scope of work asked of me (though not always) for the reasons in the article, but I don't just phone it in. I put effort into writing good code, tests, and PR reviews.

In my experience, when it comes to getting the next job the only thing that really matters either way are references. If you were a too co-worker and did at least put in the effort to do good work within bounds of the scope asked for, you shouldn't have a problem.

> I draw the line at doing work that I can be proud of.

That's important. I spend more awake time working/thinking about work than really else. I don't know that it's healthy, but at least I want to be proud of the outputs if I am going to spend this much time on something. I just can't really show up and mail it in, I'm just not wired that way, and suspect that a lot if us aren't.

Some of that is inevitable when developing taste, or if the problem has you (so to speak). The problem is when this is the case all the time instead of a season here and there.

Your ability to page out work is a great thing to track.

"The problem is when this is the case all the time instead of a season here and there"

I hope I'm not projecting, and misinterpreting, but I try to explain this to a colleague all the time. His work style is 8 months of the year a couple hours here and then 2-3 months of crazy, intense work.

But I have to show up for 25-30 (I'm self-employed) hours a week, 48 weeks a year, and I find it really difficult to then squeeze in 2-4 months of 50+ hours weeks on top of this.

There is sprinting and there is distance running and for most of us, these are very different things.

Yeah this is super important IMO. Set your own standards for what that means. Makes it much easier to handle the slings and arrows of normal 9-5 headaches, and to understand when you're being pressed to do things you wouldn't be proud of.

I agree with your comment. I have never been laid off, and I hope I don't ever do or at least I see the signs early on to be prepared.

The way I see "work" is that you are going to spend 8hrs of your day doing it, so you better feel positive about it and enjoy it. I couldn't care less about the corporate lords and I very well know I am just a line on an excel, but when I work I want to be sure I feel satisfied, I enjoy it and build trust with my team and meaningful relationships where possible.

I am not a religious person, but there is a famous saying in Hinduism - कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन | मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भूर्मा ते सङ्गोऽस्त्वकर्मणि|| It roughly translates to "You have a right to perform your prescribed duties, but you are not entitled to the fruits of your actions. Never consider yourself to be the cause of the results of your activities, nor be attached to inaction."

I love the last line of it where it says "don't be attached to inaction" which means just because the fruit of labour isn't in your control, doesn't mean you can just start behaving like a someone who doesn't care.

I read the Bhagavad Gita a few years ago, and this quote is much of the core lesson that I took away from it. It's one of the most impactful texts I have ever read.

I would take 'duty' in this context to refer not to your obligation to your employer, but rather to people your work is ultimately intended to serve, your coworkers, and perhaps also to yourself. If you've prioritized your efforts well, then you won't regret failure or gettin laid off, because you did the best you could given the information available to you at the time.

> I _strongly_ disagree with a fully cynical response of working only to contract, leveraging job offers for raises, etc.

Early in my career I watched a coworker get denied a promotion to management and make a hard turn toward cynicism. To be honest, he was not ready for a management promotion and the company made the right call. However, he was so insulted that he immediately started looking for new jobs and stopped doing more than a couple hours of work per week.

I thought his cynicism was going to backfire, but over the next several years he job hopped almost every year, getting bigger titles at every move. For a long time I was jealous that his cynicism and mercenary-style approach to employment was paying off so well.

Years later I went to a fun networking lunch. His name came up and many of us, from different local companies, said we had worked with him. The conversation quickly turned to how he had kind of screwed everyone over by doing Resume Driven Development, starting ambitious projects, and then leaving before he had to deal with consequences of, well, anything.

He hit a wall mid-career where he was having a very hard time getting hired because his resume was full of job hopping. He was requesting reference letters from past bosses multiple times a month because he was always trying to job hop. One admitted that he eventually just stopped responding, because he'd write a lot of reference letters every job-hop cycle only to have him bail on the company with a lot of technical debt later.

He eventually moved away, I suspect partially because the local market had become saturated with people who knew his game. He interviewed extremely well (because he did it so much) but he'd fail out as soon as someone recognized his name or talked to an old coworker.

The last I talked to him, he felt like a really cynical person all around. Like his personality was based on being a mercenary who extracted "TC" from companies by playing all the games. He was out of work, but asked me if I had any leads (no thanks!).

I'm no longer jealous of his mercenary, job-hopping adventure.

I’ve known many people like this throughout my career, and I have seen the absolute opposite that you observed. These people are perfect candidates for management positions and their focus on office politics pays off handsomely. It’s not for me; might not be for you; but in reality these machiavellian tactics work if you wanna move up and get promoted in most large corporations.

The problem with getting ahead via Machiavellian tactics is that it only works at toxic companies.

Every good company I've worked for has been a bad place for politics and Machiavellian personalities.

So if you're using politics and Machiavellian tactics you may get ahead at some company, but then you're going to be surrounded by people who are also toxic and Machiavellian. Perhaps more so than you. Playing politics is often a short-term win at the expensive of the long-term.

This is a great point!

The question isn't what strategy works at miserable companies that expect 60+ hour work weeks: it is what strategy will get me well-paid at a job I actually want.

I think there are plenty of toxic companies around and your friend's gamble is just another strategy at succeeding in them. I sometimes too feel envious that I don't have the chops to do this job hopping game.

Welcome to every company that pays at top of band…

> The problem with getting ahead via Machiavellian tactics is that it only works at toxic companies

Right, so... every company.

It may be hard to see or realize this, but the higher you go up the corporate ladder, it's all politics. Maybe at the individual contributor level this isn't the case and it's a meritocracy, but at C-Suites? All politics.

Don't believe me? Look into the most desirable and successful CEOs. They stay at a company for maybe 5-6 years, make a lot of money for the company but run it into the ground, and then just jump ship. Not only does this work, but these are the most desirable and the highest paid CEOs.

In my experience this tactic tends to work well for manager positions and backfire easily for technical positions.

If a manager screws things up they get pro or side moted. If an expert screws up and leaves technical debt behind, they just get a bad name.

The standards for managers are also so much lower than for engineers. Most of the time companies don't know how to judge how good a manager is at their job, much less how to interview people for those roles.

Instead, people rely on "how confident do they sound?" as a proxy for competence. It used to be that you could do that in development, but then we started having engineers write code during interviews.

"I've been in high tech for 30 years, and I've been laid off many times, most often from failed start ups. I _strongly_ disagree with a fully cynical response of working only to contract, leveraging job offers for raises, etc."

I've been in tech for 15 years and twice was enough for me. I now take on multiple contracts at the same time and make way more than I ever did as a regular employee.

I also won't work for startups as a full-time salaried employee anymore. They will always try to squeeze the hours out of you because they are usually trying to make a fast approaching deadline to get that next round of funding.

I had a well paying 6 month contract last summer and they wanted to hire me as a full-time, salaried employee. The problem was that I worked closely with their salaried employees and they were always overworked (many working on multiple teams) and working long hours on extremely tight deadlines.

The space was also over-saturated and when I researched the company, they were not turning a profit after a couple of years and continuing to take on rounds of funding.

When I refused the offer and wanted to continue as a contractor, they cut off all contact with me and I haven't heard from them since. It really showed me that they just wanted to overwork me and not pay.

What sites do you use to find good contract work?

The usual job sites like indeed.com. Even when I have enough work, I look a couple of times/day.

What types of contracts / work do you do? Website design type stuff (front/backend)? Mobile apps? Other?

backend development.

How do you define “good”? When I looked at contract work briefly in 2023 and 2024, contract rates for enterprise dev and the type of work you find on Indeed was around $60-$80/hour W2. Which is really on the low to median end of even enterprise dev once you take into account no paid PTO, no health insurance, and you can’t even count on working 1800 hours a year.

I'm very cynical but I also kinda agree with this.

Don't be loyal to the company, because the company isn't loyal to you. Don't overwork, don't neglect family, friends and hobbies. It's simply not worth it, you'll burn yourself out, and it won't save you when the ax falls.

But do a good job, because it's good for you, your self-esteem, your mood and your skills. If you "quiet quit", you're doing yourself a disservice. (Barring extreme cases, of course).

Yeah - hard agree with this. There's a lot to be said about giving your best effort in proportion to all the other things you're doing in your life.

I'd rephrase this to: don't be loyal to work but be loyal to your coworkers. Be the person everyone wants to work with.

Love this distillation!

I would nit and say "quiet-quit" to give you the time to work on finding your next job. Do it as a means, not an end.

> There are a few reasons for this, but the most concrete is that your behavior in this job has an impact on getting the next one

This is completely false. I literally haven't seen someone do a reference check once in the last 10 years. Early 2010s it was more common but this practice is dead. Now every company is a new slate. In fact, I've seen people repeatedly rewarded for jumping ship and build there career on that. Companies have stopped investing in devs, so why should devs not reciprocate?

And there are so many startups. More than you can count. There are more new ones every day than you could ever have time to apply to. They don't all have time to talk to each other.

Not saying it's not good to have pride in your work, but within reason, and within a framework of fairness and quid pro quo. Don't let people exploit you any more than you exploit them. Employment is 100% transactional and the moment you forget that is the moment you get taken advantage of.

Their point wasn't reference checks it was the power of a network of people who want to work with you again because they know your work is more than just transactional.

And sometimes it's funny how little it takes. Some people called me simply because they knew of me (I barely had heard of them). They did that because that was soooo much more efficient that some automatic "job posting" circus and they valued their time and deadlines.

The effect’s source is much more direct than that.

It’s not a reference check to see “is sam0x17 a good dev?” at the end of a hiring pipeline, but rather “I’ve got an open role and remember that sam0x17 is one of the best devs I’ve ever worked with; let’s get them into the company!”

Or you can drop a line to someone who you've worked with in some manner and ask to meet. That's how I got my last 14-year job.

“okay boomer” (context: I’m 50, I am being sarcastic/self deprecating).

That might have been feasible pre 2020. But once I started working remotely and looking for jobs outside of the metro area where I spent most of my career, the usefulness of my network dropped dramatically.

In my case, I also did a slight pivot and my old network of people who I worked with for the first 25 years of my career can’t speak to my current suitability for a job.

You would see the same from someone early career. Their skills would progress so fast it would be crazy to ask someone for a reference who worked with them when they were 22-24 and now they are 27-30.

Can confirm 17 years in, past performance has never impacted future job prospects.

In 17 years you never had a past co-worker contact you about a job? That's confirmation that your past performance is affecting your future job prospects. And if you have had that kind of contact, then your statement above is a lie.

People are vastly overestimating network effects when you and your peers have similar experience and backgrounds. You'd likely get the job anyways, and the job probably isn't that great (in terms of upward momentum) to begin with.

As someone who's done hiring look at the people who have a list of good references. It's basically just the same position/level for _years_ because that's all your network can give or feels comfortable giving you (why would they give you a better job than they have).

It's a socioeconomic trap.

Just job hop. I promise you nothing else matters.

Relevant username

By all means, feel free to demonstrate where your network has gotten you. I'm sure we'll all be envious!

That advice is valid for dime-a-dozen coders working dime-a-dozen jobs, which, granted, is the majority of developers, but we're on Hacker News. The more specialized and deeply technical a role is, the smaller the pool of qualified people is and the really senior folks tend to know each other. Networking matters much much more in these smaller tight-knit communities.

We also get paid a lot more than the dime-a-dozen coders.

As is so often the case, optimizing for the short term comes at the cost of the long-term.

It's the opposite? You don't need someone to vouch for you if you have a highly specialized skill set. I certainly haven't.

You might rely more on your network when you don't have any notable skill sets that set you apart from other developers.

Your claim isn't rational or practical?

This is what I mean, your attributing certain outcomes to an action that's effectively just a placebo effect. It doesn't actually matter.

I had to look for a job both in 2023 and last year. For me it was both a network and specialized skills.

Specialized skills for me was cloud + app dev consulting and working at AWS (ProServe) and even more specialized was that I was a major contributor on a popular official open source “AWS Solution” in it niche and I had my own published open source solutions on AWS’s official GitHub site.

That led to two interviews and one offer within three weeks.

My network led to offers where a former manager submitted me to a position at the company that had acquired the company we worked for as a “staff architect” over the technical direction of all of their acquisitions. They gave me an offer.

My network also got me an offer from a former coworker who was a director of a F500 non tech company. He was going to make a position for me to be over the cloud architecture and migration strategies. He trusted me and he had just started working there.

Last year, my current job just fell in my lap, the internal recruiter reached out to out to me and that led to an offer.

I also had another former CTO throw a short term contract my way to tide me over.

But on the other hand, my plan B applications as a standard enterprise CRUD developer working remotely led to nothing.

Is all you care about in a job the money? And are you looking at your total comp, or your hourly rate?

In my experiences, the places that pay the most _have_ to pay that much because the job sucks. By the time you divide their salary by hours actually worked, people at FAANG end up making significantly less than I do. I value all my time, not just my bank account.

What does my reputation buy me? In the worst job market in the last 20 years, I had two offers in hands within three weeks. I can bring top performers willing to work for regular salaries into wherever I land. All of that is because a lot of people who worked with me in the past would like to work with me again, and the companies we build software for benefit.

I've built my career on jobs with _actual_ advancement, not just a bigger number. And it has been plenty lucrative.

Startups don't succeed because the code is good, but they sure can fail because it is bad. When a company needs to save itself after the underqualified mercantile engineers have left a spaghetti mess of lambdas scattered all over the org or a spaghetti mess of a monolith with every model in one folder, they are very happy to pay for actual expertise.

I care about my well-being and being able to float for extended periods of time if necessary. I can go many, many years without a job at this point and suffer absolutely zero quality of life issues.

>the places that pay the most _have_ to pay that much because the job sucks.

I mean don't overwork for an employer who doesn't care about you (none of them do)? Just go switch jobs.

>I've built my career on jobs with _actual_ advancement

This just reads like a no true scotsman fallacy. What does "actual" advancement mean here? Again, I have plenty of security (not job security) right now.

>I can bring top performers willing to work for regular salaries into wherever I land.

So you're fine with exploiting people? What? Just because someone is willing to be a fool doesn't mean you should stand by and let them be one.

And also, I question the "top performers" part of this, given your other qualifiers throughout the post. Especially the comment about big tech. The numbers don't add up in your favor.

> In my experiences, the places that pay the most _have_ to pay that much because the job sucks. By the time you divide their salary by hours actually worked, people at FAANG end up making significantly less than I do. I value all my time, not just my bank account.

This is the type of copium that you usually hear from people who have never worked in BigTech…

BigTech could afford to pay me 50% more as a mid level employee than working a lot harder at a 60 person startup and that company was paying about average for a local enterprise dev in a major metropolitan area.

I’m no longer there. But I had to get a job as a “staff” level employee to even get in the range when I left of my job as a mid level employee at BigTech. Comparing the leveling guidelines, it’s about the same as a “senior” at the equivalent job at BigTech.

My go to reference is a CTO of a startup I worked for. He is now semi retired and a “fractional CTO”.

But honestly, I’ve leveled up so much in the past five years, anything that any of my previous coworkers could say about me would be outdated

> when you and your peers have similar experience and backgrounds.

Then you’ve done a shitty job building your network. No wonder you don’t see any value.

I got laid off a bit ago - after announcing I was looking, I had several C-level folks reach out with roles.

You’re hot shit on an island until the day you aren’t. shrug

>Then you’ve done a shitty job building your network.

Even better! I've been in a position to see "network effects" over and over and over again at the highest levels.

I'm telling you an uncomfortable truth: Job hop.

>I had several C-level folks reach out with roles.

See, this is how I know we're speaking past each other. You're acting as if this means something. It doesn't. Until you can even being to accept this is just a placebo effect it's unlikely you'll accept the effort was wasted.

Something something can't convince a man he was fooled.

Job hop. Get more money. Retire.

> This is completely false.

It's not completely false at all - but it does depend greatly depends on which country you're based in.

Where I am, in Spain, your network, and your reputation within it, are _everything_. Good jobs will sometimes not even be advertised, as the first thing a hirer will do is ask around their network for recommendations, and those recommendations count for _a lot_. On the other side, when you are looking for work, the first thing you do is ask your network for an intro - and again, that intro counts for a lot.

That's not to say that the traditional interview process will be skipped, but candidates coming from recommendations will have a massive head-start over others.

Well... That doesn't bode well for me. I'm in Spain but I've always worked for companies in other countries (including my current remote job).

You can still cultivate all these people in random places in your network. Apparently you are in a line of work where other country corporations will do fine, and these people will still need you in their next ventures or posts.

It's not about references. It's about building a network of colleagues who respect you and your work. Many years ago, when I started doing consulting/contracting work, literally all my of my jobs came through people I had previously worked for or with across a variety of companies. And if you play your cards right, as the years roll on, you won't even have to apply for jobs other than as a formality. Instead, people who's respect you've gained will try to bring you into where they work.

> It's about building a network of colleagues who respect you and your work.

The network is actually holding you back. You don't need a network to get a new job AND if that person in another company has enough pull to get you in it's actually likely a sign they've been there too long themselves if they're not directly in control of the hiring budget.

Just job hop. This ain't your daddy's profession.

They're talking about referrals, not reference checks. Getting good referrals is hugely important, especially at smaller companies that don't the capacity to do a rigorous hiring process.

I spent the last few months interviewing at various bay area startups for senior SE roles. About half of them wanted references. This was my experience so YMMV

A lot of companies tend to ask for them. No idea how many actually follow through and contact them.

When I was a hiring manager, I found that reference checks were _more_ predictive of eventual performance than the interview cycle was.

After the first time I got burned hiring someone I couldn't get a strong reference for, I got over my laziness and did my job.

How so? I’m never going to give you a reference of someone who isn’t going to say glowing things about me

Seems a bit weird. Unless you're really bad, surely you can round up a few buds who who will say glowing things about you.

2 points:

I've had people not know why I'm reaching out; I've also gotten references selected by the candidate that did not have good things to say. eg "X is difficult to work with."

And most people aren't good impromptu liars. So pushing a bit with a reference on what did you work on together? Why is this person fantastic? Would you hire this person? can get you far. And if the reference has left their shared employment, the classic: why haven't you hired this person?

You’d be surprised by how many people don’t think that through. There are always a surprising number of people apparently just going through the motions.

Truly bad candidates can’t provide references at all, or are entirely oblivious to how poorly they are perceived.

True. In spite of my earlier comment, someone earlier in their career who didn't work out--especially at a smaller company--may have trouble providing a reference. It is also the case that I've seen people get fired who just had no clue that they were obviously unsuited for their job and were totally blindsided.

reference checks are pointless if employee gives you a list of favorable references

> This is completely false. I literally haven't seen someone do a reference check once in the last 10 years.

I understand this might not be your experience, but it's far from being "completely false".

I have had background checks/reference checks done on me (thankfully my would-be boss told me they were a formality and nobody cared about the results. I say "thankfully" not because I had anything to hide, but because the contractors doing the background checks asked for the dumbest things). I was also contacted by US-based consulting firms and asked to provide references on a former boss of mine, who was now applying for an engineering position... and to my surprise, the reference check involved getting on a call with me!

More recently, a relative was applying to a fintech and was asked for references for all her pasts jobs since she started working in the relevant field.

I know lots of companies don't care, but many others do.

Besides, like other commenters said, it's not only about formal references checking. It's also about the networks you build with coworkers whom you can potentially meet again in other jobs, and whom you want to speak favorably of you. I know I've informally vetoed coworkers whom I knew were terrible at their jobs and I heard recruiting was thinking of making an offer to. Likewise, I've enthusiastically recommended past coworkers who I would enjoy working with again.

It happens all the time as you get higher and higher on the org tree, I had jobs not only call my references by ask if they could also speak to my former bosses.

When the money is seriously on the line people care.

I'm not sure which market you're in, but companies here absolutely do reference checks. They will even reach out people you didn't list if they're a shared connection.

My standing recommendation to everyone is to do good work and get better at advocating for yourself to make sure you're either getting the experience or the comp you need to achieve your goals. If you're not getting that, switch jobs. It's much much better to switch jobs every few years if that's what you need to stay motivated than to stay, do the minimum and collect a paycheck.

I can guarantee you that no large tech company takes the time to find shared connections.

On the other hand, why would I have connections who I didn’t make a good impression on? they are useless to me.

I currently work at a 600 person company, I just invited everyone as reference that popped up as a suggestion - I did the same at AWS. Good luck trying to find the people who actually worked with.

Reference checks aren't what matters, it's referrals and getting a job that wasn't ever advertised, because someone knows you're good and offers you the position directly.

Reference checks happen a lot. You just don't see them.

Most companies stopped asking for references because everyone just games the system. Managers are afraid of giving anything but glowing references because they want to keep their own network opportunities strong. Giving positive references is basically a networking game these days.

So that's not how people reference check. Now, they go on LinkedIn and look for mutual connections they trust. They check for people they know whose work history overlapped with the candidate's time at a different company. They go ask that person without the candidate ever knowing.

I get probably 10X as many backchannel reference requests as I do formal reference check requests.

Why would I even have as a connection on LinkedIn with people who I don’t think I made a good impression on? They are useless to me.

It's not at all false IME, though I'm not in SV or the US. Most job want up-front references from at least 2 people, one of whom must be your current supervisor/boss (or someone else higher in the chain of command). You can occasionally get away without it, but it's difficult.

No one is going to let you talk to your current manager and let them know you are looking for a job.

On the other hand, many companies don’t allow managers to give references.

> No one is going to let you talk to your current manager and let them know you are looking for a job.

What on earth do you mean? Who is going to stop me from talking to my manager?

Over my 20+ year career, in all-but one case my current manager has always been one of my referees and has known that I'm looking for other jobs.

Maybe this is a cultural thing. Here (Aus) references from colleagues are basically disregarded and all that prospective employers are interested in is referees from current and former managers.

Typo, I meant no one is going to let you talk to their current manager.

There is no way I’m going to let my current job know that I’m looking for a job. That would be completely illegal advised.

It's a job; not a cult. People come and go. If I were working somewhere that made me feel like I couldn't leave without being super secretive about it, that would be a huge red flag.

What do you think happens once a company knows you are looking for a job and then you don’t get the new job? Do you think they are going to give you the plumb assignments? Raises? Promotions?

If you think Australia is some utopia where the advice isn’t the same

https://www.seek.com.au/career-advice/article/should-you-tel...

https://www.sprintpeople.com.au/should-you-tell-your-boss-yo...

https://mane.com.au/news/how-your-boss-can-tell-you-are-look...

> What do you think happens once a company knows you are looking for a job and then you don’t get the new job?

Maybe it depends how useful you are. IME, they're grateful to have you say a while longer.

One of the guys I work with had accepted another job and was virtually out the door when the new job fell through. My company gladly welcomed him back, kept giving him challenging work and eventually promoting him.

A couple of months ago I told my boss and my boss's boss I was going to start looking for other jobs. They tried to see if there was something that'd make me stay, and when there wasn't, they were 100% supportive. If I said tomorrow "actually, I've had a change of heart, I'd like to stay" they'd be genuinely pleased. This has basically been the story my whole career.

Sure, if your boss is an arsehole they'll do arsehole things. My advice is not to work for arseholes.

You are touching on what I would classify as two different kinds of layoffs.

If you're working for a startup, a layoff is a likely outcome. Most startups fail. Those that don't often end up pivoting, often more than once, and cutting costs tends to go hand in hand with that.

Layoffs from big tech companies is a relatively new phenomenon, really only since the pandemic, and they're fundamentally different. It's actually the sort of thing that Corporate America has been doing for decades. In this case, big tech companies make money hand over fist yet they have layoffs, typically ~5% of the workforce every year.

These layoffs will be perpetual because the reasons for them aren't around controlling costs, avoiding bankruptcy or any of the "normal" reasons for layoffs. The goal is suppress labor costs. People fearful for their jobs aren't demanding raises or better benefits. Plus you can dump the work the 5% were doing onto the remaining 95% who won't say no because they're fearful for their own jobs. And that's the point.

The veneer of tech companies being mavericks who were employee-focused is completely over. A lot of the "perks", which are really just part of your cojmpensation package, are getting and will continue to get cut or just made worse through less funding. At some point, you'll start getting charged for those "free" meals.

In 10 years, all the big tech companies will be indistinguishable from Boeing, Lockheed Martin or Northrop Grumman.

Actual salaries haven't fallen. The point of paying those salaries is you have to earn every penny. If they overhire and a bunch of people start taking the money for granted, that breaks down the social contract

Half of the perks e.g. sabbaticals or sleeping pods don't even make sense in a competitive working environment

Compensation gets attacked in a number of ways.

Your base salary won't tend to drop but at the same time you'll get an annual 1.5% increase when inflation is 9% and the company made $300 billion in profits last year.

Bonuses for normal employees (below VP) are essentially formulaic at most big tech companies, for the most part. So if you're a senior SWE with a 15% bonus target, well that's based on yoru base salary. It hasn't gone down in nominal terms but it has in real terms.

Also, depending on your company, there's a pool of discretionary funds on top of the formula. Your bonus can even be taken away and given to someone else on the team (yes, this happens). How big is that pool? Has it increased over time? Decreased? Or stayed the same? On a per-employee basis. You don't have visibility into that unless you're a manager.

Next is stock compensation. Your initial grant is obviously known. Annual refreshes if you get them tend to be formulaic too. But what about discretionary grants? That's where the big money is. How much is being thrown around in total? Is it going up or down over time? You have no visibility into that.

All of the above have, as input, your performance ratings. There are quotas for each performance level at a certain level (usually 150+ people or director level) so not everyone gets Greatly Exceeds Expectations. What are the quotas ("target percentages") for each bucket? Has that changed over time? Some compoanies now have targets for subpar ratings (ie ratings below "Meets Expectations"). It's the pipeline for getting rid of people and getting people to do more for the same money.

So technically you have to do more now to maintain a Meets Expectation rating than you did 5 or 10 years ago. Is that a pay cut?

And then we have promotions. The typical way this works is a company will divide promotion candidates into pools. A promotion committee will essentially rank the packets they have. At a certain level there is a quota for promotions to hand out. Those get distributed to those from the top down until there are no promotions left to give out.

Companies have allegedly reduced costs by simply reducing the promotion target percentages / quotas.

And then there are all the benefits that have a tendency to get worse over time. Health sinsurance, 401k matching and less tangible benefits like food, facilities and so on.

But supposing this happens across the economy, there's less inflation. E.g. if housing costs track tech salaries and soak up most of the surplus available, the relative wealth gained/lost is hard to predict

> Layoffs from big tech companies is a relatively new phenomenon, really only since the pandemic.

Not really. E.g. I remember the mass layoffs at Microsoft back in 2009, and that wasn't even the first one. Google also had plenty.

> your behavior in this job has an impact on getting the next one

Don't over index on this. It's a small factor among many.

strong disagree. from extensive experience. it's a huge factor, and good referrals are really the only way to definitely get the job

Yeah, and companies pushing that angle are losing top employees because of it.

Because it's stupid.

Kissing ass and doing good work are two entirely different activities.

Strong referrals almost always leads to a job that your network can place you in. You might have limited options for companies and teams, based on who is in your network. If the job market is abundant then having a strong referral is less valuable, but is often the best path to more senior positions. If the job market is not abundant then a job referral might be a way to be placed in a position in weeks instead of months.

I keep hearing about these "network placed" jobs on HN, but in 25 years, I've never seen it myself. I keep good relationships with former co-workers, we maintain group chats for each of my previous companies where we keep each other up on our careers. I even went to barbecues hosted by a former manager, until he moved out of the Bay Area. None of these have ever actually materialized into a job. It just doesn't work that way. We're all entry level worker bees and don't have any way to put our thumb on the scale at our own companies. If someone in my network reaches out to me asking for help with getting a job at MyCompany, the best I can do is review his resume, coach him on interviews, and then ultimately point him to the link in the job board, where 90% chance he will be ghosted.

Where are these companies where I can tell my boss "Hey, Mike is a good programmer and he just applied. Just give him the job without interviewing! Or accelerate him through the process!" I suppose if it were a two person startup where it was me and my boss you could do that, but at a normal 1000 person CRUD shop with dedicated HR machinery? No way.

On the flip side I’ve worked in 4 companies over 12 years and 2/4 were jobs that I got because I knew someone. The other two, a significant cohort of the people who worked there knew each other from previous workplaces.

Nobody is getting jobs without any interviews, but people are absolutely getting interviewed before/without a job listing, or starting the initial screen with recruiter/hiring manager with an upper hand of “Mike said you’re good to work with”. Even at a 1000 person company with HR.

That's not how it works. What happens is an organization decides to hire for some reason, now has the problem that good candidates are hard to find. So people say "well I know this guy who I worked with at xxx that's looking for a job".

Well, there's also a difference between liking someone and liking to work with them. I've had a lot of coworkers I liked that I wouldn't bend over backwards to hire. That said, this process might not work at Google or what have you.

I've never worked in a company so large that I couldn't go a step further and actually talk to the hiring manager and tell them they would be stupid not to take someone's resume seriously. But it's more about fast tracking the interview than skipping it. No one is just going to blindly hire referrals. They shouldn't anyway.

>> I keep hearing about these "network placed" jobs on HN, but in 25 years, I've never seen it myself.

Same here, also =~ 25 years (working as a professional programmer since 2001). I never had a problem finding a job myself (either switching jobs or being laid off, it happens) but it was always "cold calling", apply on a job board / Linked In and go through the interview without any referral or inside help.

And when I tried to refer someone, they were blissfully ignored. Even had managers / HR go after me: "we need someone ASAP, don't you have some referrals?". Reached my acquaintances among former workmates, convinced them to make a personalized CV so I can send it to HR, nothing happened next. They didn't even call the guy, completely "forget about it".

So I learned my lesson of corporate helplessness and don't give a fuck anymore. Don't recommend anyone, don't care if HR or managers need someone urgently, I do my job and don't get involved with anyone else anymore.

Yup, another similar situation here - ~20 years in Bay Area, almost 15 years at one company, no one in my "network" said anything about jobs. I did contact a few directly and "not hiring right now". A bunch of others (since I was one of the younger ones at this company when I joined in '08) had since retired.

Got a new job through a LinkedIn ad, found a former co-worker here.

I mean, it could be that I'm not a great networking person, but.. I'll agree that network hasn't helped me much so far.

> We're all entry level worker bees

Not one of your former managers that like you has gone on to high-level positions?

> We're all entry level worker bees

You're going to need to pitch your buddies a lot more aggressively than that.

You've worked closely with Mike in the past at ExampleCorp, where he was one of the team's top contributors. He was great at code reviewing, a calm and reliable voice during production incidents, and always ready to help out new graduates. Mike was the guy people turned to with their most difficult WidgetStack bugs, fixing problems that had stumped other developers. He would be a great asset to the company, and a great fit for this role - which you note needs WidgetStack. He has your strongest possible recommendation.

The thing is - the pitch also has to be true.

I'll give you a couple of examples I've been involved with:

1. I was applying for a job at Company A and I had a former co-worker working there. I think it was down to me and 2 other people and the manager asked my former co-worker about me and I believe his feedback tipped the scales in my favor.

2. Same situation as above but in this case it was my feedback. A different former co-worker was applying for a job at Company A(now that I was working there) and the manager hiring asked both me and my former and now present co-worker about the candidate as it was between him and another person.

3. A former manager straight up offered me a position at his new job because I'd be a good fit for the role as they were building exactly what I had done before. I turned him down(nicely) as I had stepped away from that particular type of work.

4. I've given negative feedback on a candidate that I'd worked with that was interviewing for an open role but it wasn't just me. All 3 of us including co-workers from (1) and (2) above had previously worked with the candidate and we didn't think he'd be a good fit for our org but it was ultimately up the manager of the team that was hiring to make the decision.

Granted I'm at a smaller company but these "network placed" jobs do happen. Sometimes it's just tipping the scales and sometimes it's a straight up job and sometimes it could be the reason you didn't get the job.

There's a power law here.

Most developers don't work in giant companies, but the programmers who do work in giant companies mostly don't know many programmers who work in the medium-sized companies where most of the jobs are right now.

If you are interested in diversifying your network, you can purposefully choose a job at a different scale of company when you are next looking, but you can also start going to conferences or user groups or get involved with an interesting open-source project.

Not every piece of networking has to be with coworkers. Not putting all your networking eggs into one basket can give you options, especially as the layoffs are flying fast and furious.

My first job was a student worker at my school district in Information Services. Got that because my physics teacher put in a word for me (and I interviewed ok).

My first 'real job' out of college was a 'noc techician' at a company a good friend was working at. Although that wasn't a great use of my skills, at least it got me started, and I think there was a chance of moving towards development, eventually.

Next job was through a niche job board.

Since then, I've been hired my original skip level boss from that job twice.

Job interviews are a lot different when they are trying to convince you to join, vs you trying to convince them to let you.

Making an impression on someone who has opportunities for you later can work out well.

I've also had a couple other people reach out for what I think would have been a similarly easy interview for me, but one of them I didn't want to work with again, and the other one, the company location and business wasn't a good fit for me.

Strong referrals may lead to interviews at larger companies. But rarely jobs. You still have to go through the interview process and most of the time how you came in isn’t even known to the interviewer.

Now if your network includes directors and CxOs who can just push a job through specifically for you, that’s different. Especially if it is a strategic hire for them. Those types of jobs usually don’t involve formal interviews and they are more of discussions about mutual fit.

At least for me that was not true, I came back to Google after more than two years and did not have to interview.

That's returning to a former employer. That's very different if you left on good terms - they already "interviewed" you for some number of years.

Referrals may operate within a network, but references do not necessarily so.

> good referrals are really the only way to definitely get the job

Yeah, no. They're one factor in many. I've managed just fine throughout almost 4 decades of career without referrals.

I'm fairly OK with how that career turned out.

It has drawbacks. Some of my jobs were odd kinks in the career curve - though I did enjoy them. (Roughly, ESA -> Industrial Automation -> Consulting -> Startup -> Video Games -> FAANG. It is not the straightest path :)

Referrals are definitely a large plus (IIRC, the industry stats say about 1/3rd of job offers are internal referrals, even though they are far from 1/3 of the candidates).

They aren't the only way, though.

An internal referral by someone at the company you are applying to might carry some weight, or at least get you a foot in the door (interview), but I think it's been years/decades since past employers were willing to say more than "yes, he worked here", for fear of lawsuits.

This is true in giant companies, but in smaller companies it is less true.

In smaller companies, "I worked with this person and they are really solid." carries a lot of weight.

References these days are usually with individual coworkers, rather than a company reference.

It usually isn't "is this person a good developer?" either. Instead, it is open-ended questions without any one right answer. How much structure did this person like? What about your work place helped them be successful? What role did they play on the project you worked on together? What impact did they have on the team?

If someone's reference didn't work with them closely, that's as strong a no-hire signal as if they outright said "this person sucked." If they don't have anyone they can hand you the phone number for who has specific, detailed praise about them and their work, you can safely move on to the ten other candidates who do.

I respectfully disagree. Parent comment is hardly over-indexing; it's a big factor. The world may be big but the communities are small.

Usually when you’re in a shitty situation, all the people who know who you are are also in bad situations and probably can’t hire or protect you. That’s how business works—things go bad at the same time. All correlations go to one in a crash.

Not today or tomorrow, but next month, when one of them has started a cool startup, another is VP at her friend’s company, and the rockstar made it into Big Co

What ends up mattering more is your ability to form good relationships with co-workers at your last job and sell yourself on your resume.

Most of the people who end up getting high paying, high ranking jobs are not very skilled technically, but are skilled personally - even engineers.

So I'd say - do your job as well as you can (don't go too crazy with work), be friendly with people in your company, and phrase your achievements in terms of % value/speed/users added.

When you are just starting, yes. But after a while, if you pay attention to cultivating it, you amass a significant network. Small factor initially, big one later if you work on it.

> Sometimes that means making dumb business decisions like sacrificing an evening to a company that doesn't care, but IMO that sort of thing is worth it now and then.

I sacrifice an evening - but not to my company, but to studying Leetcode to move on to the next company. I also have side hustles that I devote time to.

> when layoffs come your next job often comes from contacts that you built up from the current job, or jobs before. If people know you are a standout contributor then you will be hired quickly into desirable roles. If people think you are a hired gun who only does the bare minimum that next role will be harder to find.

I am helpful to most people when they need help, and they remember this. My code is clean and well architected and well tested, and they can see this too. They also know that I know the language and platform we're using, and general programming (and business) knowledge. Few care whether I'm a "standout contributor" in terms of getting many stories done. Actually if I have a good lead or manager I might go above and beyond for them in terms of doing more.

> a company will never love you back. But your co-workers will.

Well, this is correct. I help my co-workers.

Things are situational. If I got a job helping set up LLM's or something, I might dive in and work a lot of hours just because I feel it is benefiting me too. On the other hand I can be somewhere where it doesn't make sense to work more than forty hours (if that) a week.

Don't really agree. The benefits you mentioned are already there for 50-70 percentile employees. Like doing a bit more than minimum, occasionally helping others, not slacking too much so others had to pick up your work etc. No benefits to bust your ass to be the top 5%.

And when more and more people are like this, the average quality goes down, so it is even easier to be average.

Pride in my work? Sometimes I have pride in my work. Doesn't mean I should open myself to be exploited.

My perception of work changed after a layoff last fall. I had the typical C-Suite reaching out and 6 months of severance. After giving over a decade of my time to a company and given 6 months of pay in return my thought process changed. I was offered a job due to their contacts, but I would be in a similar situation with no laws to protect me, so I decided to decline and left the country. I had a contact in Mexico... after reading about their labor laws I decided while the pay was 50% of what i made in USA. I didn't have to worry about layoffs. For perspective had I been laid off in Mexico and worked the same amount of time my severance by law would have been about 3 years salary. That was the bare minimum by law (if the company offered a savings accounts, which most larger ones have here). A friend in HR down here did some calculations and said I would have been most likely closer to 4-5 years because of stipulations in contracts.

Why would I recommend a standout performer for a position at my company? So they can outshine me? I never recommend the "true believer" tool, always the average performer I got along with.

true corporate strategist here... i recommend people i trust and beleive in and want to work with. if they can outshine me i can get better by working with them. i dont give a rats ass about my performance reviews. just quality of work and nice collaboration , preferably with people better than me.

I bet you're a joy to work with.

"A players hire A players and B players hire C players”.

I’m not saying I am necessarily an “A player”. But I am secure in my skills and the ability to convince someone to pay me for my skills. I was instrumental in hiring three people at a job who were all better than me at the time. I learned so much from them while I was there, it helped set me up for my next job that was my first job as a lead.

Why would I want someone that can’t help me be successful at my current job and whom I can’t learn from?

Even there I would ask my then former coworkers first advice.

99% of people hiring are "B/C players”

And that’s often good enough depending on what your needs are…

The reality that nobody wasnt to say out loud is that the top 10-20% of the people you interviewed for a role would all have been just as great as the "best" candidate (and often enough the amazing candidate turns out to be terrible anyway).

If you are hiring for your standard enterprise CRUD developer or “full stack” developer, once you have a few seniors (real seniors not “codez real gud” seniors), you can go down to the top 50%

Or you can hire juniors, and after a couple of years have a whole team of A-players.

It's like the story about the coach who watched two runners run the same time, one with perfect form and the other a total mess. He let the total mess onto the team, and the runner with perfect form got mad, "but I ran better than he did!!!" The coach replied, "I can't help you go any faster than you are, but the total mess is going to be incredibly fast with just a little form."

The juniors are doing negative work. I need people who are neutral or positive shortly after they come on board. Besides that, once a junior gets experience, they are going to jump ship.

My expectations of a mid level developer is once given mostly clear business requirements, they should be able to turn those requests into code. They should be able to handle any “straightforward” task I throw at them.

From the definition I have seen from leveling guidelines:

Straightforward problems or efforts have minimal visible risks or obstacles. The goal is clear, but the approach is not, requiring the employee to rely on their knowledge and skills to determine the best course of action.

I expect a senior to handle “complex” tasks.

Complex problems or efforts involve visible risks, obstacles, and constraints. This often requires making trade-offs that demand expertise, sound judgment, and the ability to influence others to build consensus on the best approach.

I don't think most people would agree on what is an A, B or C.

I don't think it is consistent company to company what is an A, B or C.

If you think so, I'm sorry for wherever you've worked.

A vs B vs C isn't some fixed thing we're assigned at birth: it's a matter of learning, investing in ourselves, having both humility and pride in our work, maintaining our boundaries and building up our coworkers.

People who have fully replaced intrinsic motivation with extrinsic motivation won't ever get to A level, because the incentives are non-linear. Actual A players keep investing and collaborating, whether they get rewarded for it now or later or never, just because it is the right thing to do.

It's a simple numbers game - the A teams hire rarely and don't turn over staff constantly and when they do hire they pick up talent internally if it exists.

The rest hire as per the quote previously, turn over staff, build empires for their own egos etc. This makes up the bulk of market facing hiring.

This is utterly false. My motivation and I assume most people who go to work is their insatiable addiction to food, clothes and shelter. “Passion is Bullshit”.

Everything I do at work is and has been since 2008 (I have been working a lot longer) is to feed those addictions. While we did get off the hedonic treadmill and downsized a couple of years ago and I focus much more on work life balance, I work hard now not for the maximum comp. But to maintain my autonomy at work and be trusted and because my current job is pretty straightforward (for me at least) and has unlimited PTO and allows us to pursue our travel hobbies.

It should be about raising the bar, not lowering it. You’d grow if you weren’t the smartest person in the room. Unfortunately this stance prevents one from seeing that.

Yeah... the overenthusiastic tool bringing up labor intensive ideas for minimal gain just means I can't hit the gym at lunch. Not putting up with that so a meaningless metric can go up by 0.5%.

Even if I am, and I’ve been hired multiple times to be the “smartest person in the room” , I want to hire people who can outshine me because that means I can just delegate high level concepts and they can run with it so I can move on the other initiatives.

While doing that was half the reason that I got let go from my last job, I delegated the work I was doing to the person I hired and moved on to a newer initiative that was pulled, I still have no regrets.

I got a chance to put leading an impressive “AI” project on my resume and it helped me get my current much better job.

Before anyone starts groaning , it was a framework to do better intent based bots for online call centers (Amazon Connect and Lex). The perfect use case for it.

So you don't have to spend a lot of time cleaning up their messes.

> leveraging job offers for raises, etc.

That is a double-edged sword. You can do it, but it really should come from a place where you're fully prepared to leave, and you'd really prefer you didn't. Sometimes, companies underpay. You should be continually engaging in price discovery, and you should demand to be paid what you're worth.

Just be aware that your company may well say "oh well, good luck", and the new company may be worse. In smaller companies, you might set yourself up for resentment if you stay. Large tech companies really will just coldly look at "is she/he worth it? Yes/no", make that decision, and move on.

> but when layoffs come your next job often comes from contacts that you built up from the current job, or jobs before.

You build those contacts by helping people, not by helping the company. (Also, referrals are massively overvalued, IMHO. I'm not seeing them happening very often - but maybe my friend group is an outlier. Wonder if there are stats)

> carrying around bitterness and cynicism is just bad for you.

Realism, however, is helpful. Your company will throw you away like a used paper tissue. Make peace with it. Don't believe the "we're family" BS, because you aren't. You're at best the equivalent to a sports team. And when the team doesn't need you anymore, you'll be let go.

And that's fine. What makes it painful is lying to yourself, pretending a company could actually care about you as a person. (Small carve-out: Tiny companies, with <30 or so people, still can manage to care)

That doesn't mean phoning it in, or doing shoddy work. It does mean being clear about the fact that you have to look out for yourself, your wellbeing, your health, your career.

You're right in that your co-workers are the only ones who have the capacity to love you back. But I can guarantee you that working harder won't make you more loveable. Work well, but be clear where your boundaries are.

> If people know you are a standout contributor then you will be hired quickly into desirable roles. If people think you are a hired gun who only does the bare minimum that next role will be harder to find.

That hasn't really been true in my experience. This might be another one of those cultural shifts. work connections in general are looser and you need to do a lot more than just casually chat at work to really "stand out". People are arguably overworked and have no time to perceive who does what work how efficiently unless you're a direct co-worker or a lead.

I agree with don't be a grouch. No one like a grouch unless its calling out bad leadership. But I think being nice is better than trying to be the best. People remember how you made them feel, and current work (epecially WFH) may limit how much you get to impact a specific person's workload.

>On top of that, carrying around bitterness and cynicism is just bad for you.

YMMV. how you process that matters a lot. If you use some cynicism you can protect yourself. If youre all cynicism you become a grouch.

>Sometimes that means making dumb business decisions like sacrificing an evening to a company that doesn't care, but IMO that sort of thing is worth it now and then.

only in a market as bad as this where you don't want to go back to job searching. But normally, I wouldn't do this. Especially in my industty: give them an inch give them a country mile, and then that "crunch" period has become 70 hour workweeks for 6+ months.

> To be sure, don't give your heart away to a company (I did that exactly once, never again) because a company will never love you back. But your co-workers will.

Yes, and that hurts that first time. Especially when you gave a lot (like some 70hrs weeks and then you immune system shuts down) or working during a funeral, in the back room...

This is surely a healthier take than the article's, but isn't there more to work than selfishly pursuing what's best for ourselves? If we pursued our careers because we find the products interesting and their objectives valuable, then shouldn't that be a big part of why we work?

Companies will grow and shrink, layoffs will happen, employees will make bad or unfair decisions, but at the end of the day, companies exist because we are more productive as an organized group than we could be on our own. Of course you have to be strategic, but ultimately the healthiest motivation for working I can think of is to just focus on creating something of value.

The core fallacy of this blog post is that he expects the company to value and appreciate him. He gives positive examples of helping customers and coworkers, but concludes that they were for nothing because he got laid off. But a company is not a person that can affirm or reject you. It's just some abstract way of organizing labor with some CEOs and managers doing their thing. It makes no sense to work -for- the company. Yes work for yourself, but also for your coworkers and the people the company serves.

I’ve also been working in tech for almost 30 years - 28.5 to be exact.

Work is purely transactional, I give the company the benefit of all of my accumulated skills and experience for 40 hours per week, they put money in my account and I then use that money to exchange for goods and services.

Whenever one party or the other decides that the transactional relationship is no longer beneficial, we part ways.

If I find a company where the transaction is more beneficial - pay, benefits, work life balance, etc - depending on my priorities at the time, I go work for that company. I’ve worked at 10 companies in the past almost 30 years and 6 of those have been in the past 10 years.

> Sometimes that means making dumb business decisions like sacrificing an evening to a company that doesn't care, but IMO that sort of thing is worth it now and then.

Uh yeah that won’t happen unless it benefits me in some way like I’m learning a new to me technology or finishing a project I am leading will look good on my resume.

I made an exception when I was working for a company that sent nurses to the homes of special needs kids and they wouldn’t get paid on time if the project wasn’t done - before Christmas. They would have gotten paper checks that they would have had to either pick up from their central office or get it mailed to them and when I was working for public sector clients during Covid and it helped them get their disability and unemployment checks on time.

I can relate. My perception is that a company is for me, not the other way around. This really flips how work is handled.

"sacrificing an evening to a company that doesn't care...is worth it now and then" That same company will fire you and escort you out but expect you to give 2 weeks notice.

The brutal experience of “fire and escort you out” is a consequence of Usonian fondness for firearms: before that, another typical location for mass shootings besides schools was the workplace, where angry terminated employees would lash out bullets at the “sucks being you” managers that just doled out the news.

> I _strongly_ disagree with a fully cynical response of working only to contract, leveraging job offers for raises, etc

Would you consider employers to be "fully cynical" about their affairs and interactions with employees? I do. Being a happy little cog is it's own reward, but ine has to be clear-eyed about it.

> If people know you are a standout contributor then you will be hired quickly into desirable roles.

You are presenting a false dichotomy - one can be an outstanding contributor while working 40 hours per week.

I think employers are, and I think it costs them a ton of money.

My intrinsic responsibility isn't to the person handing me a check: we have an explicit contract. It is first to myself, second to the people whose lives are affected by the software I write, and third to my coworkers.

When developers pretend the relationship with an employer is just the two of them, they are giving up most of the leverage they have to change how their work functions.

My first responsibility is to the people - including myself - who depend on me to have money in my account to support our addictions to food, clothes and shelter

I think your comment bears some truth in that turning to bitterness is only going to tint a persons worldview towards an overall undesirable shade. Also it is absolutely necessary to keep up that "above and beyond" image for coworkers/managers to improve chances of a next successful hire. Mix that with the reality as described in the article and you get the play-pretend so many of us find exhausting

I can strongly agree with you while understanding how the OP feels (and I certainly don't condone all his advice). IMO, culture plays a role in it; as an EU citizen, layoffs are effectively rare here.

I was laid off once, when I was being widely praised for my work. It's been 5 years, financially it was probably the best thing that ever happened to me, and it still hurts that it happened. So yeah...

It feels like that requires an outgoing personality and great people skills that many people just don't have. There's lots of people who are friendly and pleasant to work with, but they don't have the dynamic personality that's going to lead to someone remembering them when an opportunity arises; even if they have they went above and beyond in their work.

It's certainly true that the charismatic have a better go of this, but after 12 years in the industry I've built up a solid list of quietly excellent engineers. Whenever I see an opportunity they could shine, I reach out to them.

Fortunately for them (and unfortunately for me), the industry seems to be fairly market efficient, and they're usually already happy at some other highly compensated position (Empirically, 1 M$/yr seems roughly to be the going rate for "Damn, I really wish I could work with that person again")

Guess what. That's cynical too.

> On top of that, carrying around bitterness and cynicism is just bad for you.

No, it's not. Cynicism is just having the correct model of reality and learning to thrive with it is the best skill you can possibly develop. But the first step is becoming a cynic. Overwhelming bitterness is of course bad, but it's not the end of the road for cynicism, it's just the beginning. A non-cynic can see only this and it looks to him like a cliff that would crush him. Seasoned cynic sits high on top of the cliff of bitterness he climbed, quite happy, having a clear look on both sides. On the world of people who fear cynicism and on the smooth hills on the other side that non-cynics can't possibly fathom.

> If people know you are a standout contributor

Yes, each person's network is more important now than ever - as we seem to have achieved pretty thorough uselessness of classical job postings, job boards and applications. Some parts of building that network are simple: do ask people for contact info for example. And another part is simply showing up, doing work and getting it recognized by the people around you - that's more long term effort certainly but has nothing to do with how much you don't respect the corporation that employs you or the least palatable of your co-workers or managers. On the contrary, find the more competent people in that mess around you, and favor them.

Even the people you don't respect might easily some day be among the people in other companies that will need you. You may then do everything you can not to work for them, but even keeping that lack of respect out of sight is in your interest. (And okay, for some of these people it's hard.)

Anger can be a strong motivator. It's a double-edged sword, you don't want to sustain it.

> but the most concrete is that your behavior in this job has an impact on getting the next one.

[ citation needed ]

Every job I've worked at has specified when we provide references, we're to say "X was employed from Y to Z" and if we would hire them again, yes or no. The employee described here would get a yes from me. The fact that they didn't go "above and beyond" will not help them get a job, at least if they happened to work for any of the companies I have.

> If people know you are a standout contributor then you will be hired quickly into desirable roles.

I guess we could quibble over definitions then, because I as a senior dev managing other devs am perfectly happy with someone who clocks in, does the work on-time and to-spec, and then clocks off as a "standout contributor." I've chastised a few people in my time for committing code on the weekends too, not because I don't appreciate their contribution, but because I consider it part of my job to prevent burnout, voluntary or otherwise.

Burned out devs turn out worse work, and they feel worse in the bargain. Textbook definition of a lose-lose. Whatever code is being a pain in the ass today is just that; code. It will be there when you get back from the weekend, it will be there when you get back from a doctor's appointment, it will be there when your kid is done being sick. Life matters. Code... does, but to a lesser extent.

> On top of that, carrying around bitterness and cynicism is just bad for you.

Which is why I don't want people feeling bitter about their job, and putting in the extra work to, by your own admission, be just as damn likely to get the axe for reasons that are out of your control? That's embittering as fuuuuuuuck.

> Pride in good work and pleasure in having an impact on customers and coworkers is good for you.

False dichotomy. I love what we build, and I want my subordinates to have fulfilling, happy lives. And I proportion my energy to both of those things in accordance with their importance.

I don't think it's references that matter, as much as reaching out to former coworkers who have jobs elsewhere, and can be your "in" to a new job.

> I've chastised a few people in my time for committing code on the weekends too, not because I don't appreciate their contribution, but because I consider it part of my job to prevent burnout

The best way to avoid burnout in my experience is to work when you have "the itch" to do it. If you're feeling it on a Saturday, why not go for it? You might not be feeling it on Monday and will need the break then instead. If you forego the prime opportunity and then force yourself to do it later when you are not in the right mindset, that is when the burnout is going to get you.

Answering the rhetorical question - because it may set a bad example for other, more junior employees; it may set a new expectation; if the good manager who prevents burnout gets fired, and is replaced with a worse person, they may come to expect you to work six days a week, and instead of preventing burnout by working when you want, you're now being burned out by working not only 5 days a week without any break, but also on one of your weekend days.

1. Will you survive to see a new manager if you don't work on the weekend? Without that, under the given scenario you are either:

- Forcing yourself to work on Monday. Burnout ensues. Will you be able to continue while burnt out?

- Skipping Monday too, seeing you only work four days a week. Will you be able to continue under performance expectations?

2. Do you really need to worry about this hypothetical future? If the bad manager shows up, are you going to stick around even if working hours remain the same? He is still going to express his badness in many other ways. He wouldn't be bad otherwise.

> Without that, under the given scenario you are either:

I reject the false dichotomy that my options are "work on the weekend when I'm excited to write code, or suffer and burn out during the week". Maybe that works for you, but I have to show up on Monday regardless of whether I wrote something inspired on Saturday.

> 2. Do you really need to worry about this hypothetical future? If the bad manager shows up, are you going to stick around even if working hours remain the same?

Weirdly, the bank expects monthly mortgage payments regardless of whether my manager is bad or not.

> I have to show up on Monday

For what, exactly? If it is simply to appease the whims of your manager, you already have the bad manager. Another hypothetical future bad manager is the least of your concerns at that point. Chances are the hypothetical future bad manager will be less bad than the horror show you are already in.

> the bank expects monthly mortgage payments regardless of whether my manager is bad or not.

There is some risk there, but most tech people already price in that risk by demanding much higher than normal compensation at their job, allowing them to have their mortgages discharged before the bad manager arrives. You might get caught in the unlucky case, but on balance the good managers don't disappear that quickly.

If any of that cohort of most tech people has enough money left over to pay off my mortgage, I'd be open to that. But I'm not a member of that hallowed club.

If you are not a member of the tech club then you don't have the tech risk. So, yes, while that may mean it will take longer for you to pay off the mortgage without a high tech salary, you aren't under the pressure that necessities the high tech salary to get the mortgage paid ASAP.

Do you not have coworkers?

There are more people involved in software creation than just you and your manager.

I don't have coworkers who buy into mob programming. If I write code on Saturday and withhold pushing the commit until Monday afternoon or write the code Monday morning and push the commit thereafter, nobody is ever going to be able to tell the difference.

You must work in one of those cults that stand around the meeting room to recite the commit log as if nobody in the place knows how to read, exclaiming "no blockers" to signify that the metaphorical torch is being passed on to the next person?

To add: it also sets bad expectations from other leadership. If managers consistently see your guys putting in off the clock hours:

a) it makes me look a bit of a moron, because it implies they can't get their work done within office hours, and my job is to ensure that

b) they then expect that level of work regularly and will feel slighted if it stops being put in. See aforementioned comments about burnout.

> within office hours

You are running a factory over there? That makes the weekend perspective a bit more reasonable, given the constraints. Tech work, on the other hand, descends from agriculture. You work when the sun is shining and rest when it is stormy, metaphorically speaking. There is no reasonable concept of defined working hours. The brain doesn't operate on a set schedule like that, and trying to ignore that reality is where the burnout stems from.

If we were talking about tech, you certainly would look foolish applying factory concepts to an entirely unrelated field.

If it were me, I would write the code, commit it, and open the PR Monday afternoon

That is what the individual is going to end up doing if they encounter the guy who thinks software is built on an assembly line, but is not ideal. The reviewer might get "the itch" before Monday. It would be a waste to see him fall into burnout because he had to artificially wait because you had to pretend to wait.

You don't burn out because you weren't working. That's not a thing.

I am concerned about how you describe coding as an addiction. That sounds like something worth bringing up with a therapist & investigating the root cause of. It can be literally dangerous to identify that much with only our work, especially in this economy.

But if you don't want to do that, if you have some rare code-or-die health condition, just contribute to some Apache project instead. The entire internet is build on projects people wrote that their companies didn't pay them to write. We don't have to give our whole creative selves to our employers.

> You don't burn out because you weren't working.

If you never had to work then you would never burn out, sure. But returning back from la-la land, most people are going to have to work. As was stated before, burnout ensues when one forces themselves to work when they are not in the right frame of mind to do so. If you code by the rule of the calendar, that is what is going to put you at risk of burnout. If you code when your mind says "Let's go" and stop when your mind says "That's enough", chances are you'll never experience it.

Denying a "let's go" moment on Saturday, to fight with a "that's enough" moment on Monday because the calendar says you cannot work on Saturday but must work on Monday is a good way to end up with burnout. But why fight it? Why not just work on Saturday and take Monday off? It is not going to make any difference in the end. The deliverable will be there at the anticipated time either way.

> I am concerned about how you describe coding as an addiction.

What is this addiction you are referring to? I can find no mention of it anywhere in this thread before this.

Not a matter of when the office is open, it's a matter of how many hours have been worked vs what's expected. I'm obviously fine with folks working whenever they want, that's half the benefit of work from home in the first place. What I'm not fine with was this particular dude clocking in code at all hours all week, then putting even more in on the weekend. And mind you this is not simply from commits, it's from when he's emailing me his time spent on various tasks and I can see he's wildly passing the 40 hour mark.

> it's from when he's emailing me his time spent on various tasks and I can see he's wildly passing the 40 hour mark.

I'll grant you that it is red flag that he would want to take your energy telling how long something took. It doesn't even mean anything in the given line of work. An interesting problem might be given hundreds of hours of thought – in the shower, while sleeping, etc. – but only take 15 minutes to type afterwards. What would you report? The 100 hours? The 15 minutes? Invent some kind of weighting system to offset parallel activities? And for what? None of them mean anything.

The manager's job is to take the unnecessary burden of externalities off the rest of the team, but it is a team and that means it has to cut both ways. The rest of the team has to take the unnecessary burden of internality off the manager. If that was the best political way to say "please stop, you are needlessly wasting my energy", then that makes sense, I suppose. Or, perhaps a good manager is brutally honest above being politically sensitive? A team is, after all, characterized by their willingness to remain bonded even amid strife. Without that, you just have a group of people.

I was at one place where we tracked every bug introduced, and discovered more than 90% were in code written after 5pm. We dramatically cut our bug rate just by shutting down PRs outside of business hours.

The problem is that when our performance declines, so does our ability to judge our performance. We can feel more productive while actually doing a much worse job.

> more than 90% were in code written after 5pm.

Intriguing. Did you find that remained true through DST periods, assuming DST observance? Meaning, did you find that it was literally the clock that determined when bugs would seep in, or did bugs also increase if you didn't counteract times changes for whatever human factor (circadian rhythm?) made 5 PM significant?

> The problem is that when our performance declines, so does our ability to judge our performance.

Sure, but what sees performance magically decline at 5 PM?

If it was the clock, did you try removing the clock from the equation? Did bugs show up the same if developers had no idea what time it was?

If it was some other human factor, did you see uniformity across all participants? Were the "night owls" who were just getting started at 5 PM just as likely to introduce bugs after 5 PM as those who had been working since 9 AM?

Exactly this. I worked for a place long ago, where we had this junior guy who basically didn't have a life. He just wanted to code. He stayed late every day, and would occasionally come in on the weekends and code all day. He was not making any extra (in fact since he was junior he was probably making much less than the rest of the team). He was not angling for a promotion from what I could tell. He just liked to code and that was his entire life. Well, his manager gave him some public praise once over E-mail, basically saying the project was moving along much faster due to how productive you are. That's all it took. Suddenly, the whole team felt pressure to pull 60-80 hour weeks and burn themselves out. And we didn't really get that much more done, because it was 80 low-quality burned out, demoralized hours, not 40 high-quality hours. The team eventually disintegrated along with the company during one of the tech downturns. All that wasted stress because one guy doesn't have a family or hobby.

There sounds a lot more issues with that team, personalities, and company vs "one guy doesn't have a family or hobby"...

> All that wasted stress because one guy doesn't have a family or hobby.

It reads like the real problem was that the other developers fell into what developers seem to love more than anything: Pedantry. Instead of playing along with the false praise, they set out to prove the claim in the email wrong.

Regardless, there was a problem.

Yes, no doubt the person who sent the email ended up feeling a little silly when the pendants showed him.

This is what open source was made for.

I once had a coworker like that who hadn't taken a vacation in two years. I told him that vacation time was how the company funded his open source work, and suddenly he took his full five weeks off each year to recharge by coding different code.

FYI that burnout is not "working a lot". Burnout is the feeling of little control, ineffectiveness, COMBINED with stress. Working weekends could instead be an indication of excitement and enthusiasm, which as a manager is worth nurturing. Over time those kinds of people should be given broader ownership and the ability to delegate, where they see fit.

Yeah, but what always happens is the more you give, the more they squeeze, until you have nothing left.

A response to a feeling of ineffectiveness or lack of progress can be 'I need to catch up' which can result in weekend work. That IME can be a spiral. You don't get the rest you need. You feel less effective...

spoken like a person with other people in their lives that they care about. You seem good to work for. Thanks.

We're not as far apart as you might think. Clock time is correlated with performance, but by no means determinative. More important is initiative, enthusiasm, leadership, reliability, etc. All in, I work very little overtime.

And you're right, this is a marathon, and working sustainably is absolutely the most important thing. One can do both. If you love what you build and you're leading a balanced life then I would say you're Doing It Right.

If people are seeing the only way to be a "standout contributor" being about putting in more than 40 hours a week, we may have found the disconnect.

I don't work more than 40 hours a week, but when I slack off I just do the work put in front of me. Rather than hours, it's about energy.

If companies want more than 40 hours a week, we can negotiate overtime. But I put extra energy in during the work week not because I think it makes me extra money or protects me from layoffs. I do it just because I think it is better.

> The author is correct that exemplary performance will not save you from being laid off, but when layoffs come your next job often comes from contacts that you built up from the current job, or jobs before. If people know you are a standout contributor then you will be hired quickly into desirable roles. If people think you are a hired gun who only does the bare minimum that next role will be harder to find.

This is an argument in favor of managing optics. Whether people perceive you going above and beyond may matter, even if actually going above and beyond truly does not.

> I _strongly_ disagree with a fully cynical response of working only to contract, leveraging job offers for raises, etc.

Totally agreed. A big downside of taking contracting job is that one does not get equity. There can be exceptions but in general equity is reserved for permanent employees.

That aside, I highly recommend people view the employment as an alliance. When employee aligns with the company, work hard. When the alliance is not there, break apart and no hard feelings.

By “equity” do you mean statistically worthless equity in a private company?

Most companies don’t give equity. But even if you are talking about equity in the form of RSUs in public companies. It’s just comp. I’ll take guaranteed cash comp any day. When I was getting RSUs, I had it set to immediately sell as soon as I was vested and diversified.

Employment is not an “alliance” it is a transaction, they pay me money, I give them labor

I'd go with transactions too. Either way, a company is not a family. No hard feelings if I leave my company or my company lets me go.

Contractors can get equity, it depends on the contract. But ISOs are available to contractors, and RSUs are too.

> Pride in good work and pleasure in having an impact on customers and coworkers is good for you.

My thoughts, exactly.

I do good work, because I can’t live with myself, if I don’t.

> next job often comes from contacts that you built up from the current job, or jobs before

I've been in this field for ~7 years and have never found this to be true, yet people parrot it all the same. I have never once received a job via reference, and only once was able to get someone else a job by reference. I feel this is only true when you're at the very senior level.

Only my first job after university was via a regular advertisement and application. The other jobs and contracts happened thanks to:

- one of my bosses

- me talking at an event and meeting another speaker

- getting recommended by a person that knew me

>There are a few reasons for this, but the most concrete is that your behavior in this job has an impact on getting the next one.

No it doesn't.

The most your ex coworkers can do for you at a decently paying corporate job is get you past the resume screen. And even then, there are constant complaints at my employer about our recruiters never contacting our referrals. The person referring can certainly not be allowed even the appearance of influence over the interviews or debrief.

You might be hired on the strength of reputation or recommendation into an early stage startup, but these roles only make sense if you’re 23.

The referrals come from the c-suite. They can call up board they're on and friends that they have. I was laid off last fall and went straight HR told them where i applied and they reached out to the ceo and he called someone with me in the office. Had a job offer 1 week later

Also you get payed 60% for a year on unemployment benifits in germany (or until you find a new job), which is amazing.

There is a cap to unemployment benefits, and at salary levels of most tech workers it is nowhere near 60%

2.5k, tax free. you'll need to earn about 100k to hit that I think.

This is good advice.

People who do good work, and get good at craft, do it as much for their sense of pride as they do for some kind of reward. Rewards are nice, but the joy you get from them are fleeting. Enjoying the work itself is evergreen.

Work is work. Even at a job you like, you'll have days where you'd just rather be out having a day off. Don't get indoctrinated into hustle culture.

But don't get cynical and start being a pleb about jargon or whatever. It's like a person stuck in traffic complaining about traffic as if they aren't... traffic?

> your behavior in this job has an impact on getting the next one

Not my experience.

I’ve never been hired from contacts so maybe they all accurately think I’m a sellsword and it hasnt affected anything

I mean sure I’d love smooth sailing at a FAANG interview with all my friends in the process. I know some of you guys are getting on niche teams that way

but in the mid market and other startups, I’ve found there are enough to go around. Reputation doesn't matter one bit, and the “glut” is in entry level and former FAANG employees only looking for FAANG compensation.

I just keep 2 mid market and start up roles at once if I have some financial goal and its close enough to decent FAANG compensation. I don’t put short stints on my resume, and get exposed to a lot more.

My only studying is bombing another startup’s interview process and using what I had forgotten to ace a subsequent one

I could study to get above average FAANG compensation that would eclipse my 2-job situation. but I’m pretty busy with 2-jobs and the market for speculation and trading carries the rest.

Realism is easily mistaken for bitterness and cynicism.

The TL;DR of the article is about not doing more than you are paid to do. Not going above and beyond, and that's a reasonable approach to take in today's environment.

Companies have been exploiting these type of people for decades, and its gotten worse in recent years so much so that people have died working for some black companies.

At the end of the day, there is no amount of pay you can receive that is worth your sanity or your life.

You have no self respect.

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