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Comment by thawawaycold | Hacker News Reader

I don't think I can do either in my current position.

> either get by doing hardly anything

I have no interest in doing that, plus it would be unfair to those who may depending on whatever (little) work of interest I can accomplish as of now and would antagonize my team members.

> you can do anything you want

Lack of supervisors != lack of project and organizational perimeters in this case. I can't just start working on whatever I want by leaving the daily responsibilities behind, despite how clueless everyone seems to be regarding those, nor can I just take any decision I'm confronted with on a whim.

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> I can't just start working on whatever I want by leaving the daily responsibilities behind

Why not? Are they organized enough to have good oversight and fire people who aren't keeping up with their work?

> nor can I just take any decision I'm confronted with on a whim.

Why not? Who's stopping you and what's the consequence of doing this?

> Are they organized enough to have good oversight and fire people who aren't keeping up with their work?

In that there exists a CEO, CTO, and a manager above me who all can get reports from my peers? Yes. Do they care about the project or my role in it? No they have bigger fishes to fry. PM and project leader couldn't care less about my satisfaction but they sure as hell won't like it when they ask my team to provide statements that make no sense or technical decisions which we know are senseless but that will make their life easier. Can we refuse to comply? No.

> Why not? Who's stopping you and what's the consequence of doing this?

PM that asks me to do A in way X is sure as hell not going to like me doing B as Y, and it doesn't matter whether B>A in terms of quality/performance/whatever or Y>X in terms of efficiency/scalability/whatever, because they had A|X in mind and need to check some boxes.

Mind you everyone in my team is aware of that; they simply can't do otherwise, because ownership of these kind of decisions is discouraged and when it isn't, everything is thrown to the gutter for the nth time that PM changes and requirements have to be remade from scratch.

OK I guess you're screwed then. Good luck.

Thanks I suppose

I mean the reason I blew you off is that you didn't answer any of my questions.

I see this often and if you've convinced yourself that you have no control in this situation you should find a different situation. Or you should realize that you can do different things and have some control of your situation. Up to you.

> they sure as hell won't like it

What will they do if they don't like it? Does your company fire people often?

> Can we refuse to comply?

What specifically would happen if you refuse to comply?

> they simply can't do otherwise

They can't? What would happen if they did do otherwise?

Overall, someone not liking you at work is not a real consequence if it makes you happier. Plenty of people you've met in life don't like you and it doesn't bother you that much does it?

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