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Comment by devmor | Hacker News Reader

Your job doesn't have to be that way.

You can't always change your circumstances, but if you work to make little changes to improve your environment, the people that work with you probably will too.

My current team is like that - we all see the roadblocks that make our job harder, and we know we can't solve them all, but we talk about and work on making our own solutions to get around those things - like making a habit of asking those questions to better understand what's really desired by the stakeholder.

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I has only been approximately 11 hours since your job was expressed to be quite different. I am glad that you recognized the source of your frustration and managed to turn your situation around — and so quickly at that! — but be aware that it is still early days. Temporary aberrations are common in the workplace.

I don't know what kind of things you are inferring from my comments, but they are quite clear and do not contradict eachother. I'll ask you to stick to the literal text of my words rather than guessing new meanings for them if you want to discuss them with me further!

No need to guess new meanings. The message was loud and clear:

'"What problem are we trying to solve?" is a question I have to ask constantly in corporate development environments, and rarely does anyone presenting the task to be done actually know the answer! It's very frustrating.'

We talked about that for a bit, and then, only hours later, we got:

"Your job doesn't have to be that way."

So, again, I am glad you realized you have the power to change your world and did so. But, again, know that there were only hours between your job being a complete frustrating mess and it ostensibly becoming a well functioning system so there is not yet any evidence of it being a long-lived change. People can modify their behaviour momentarily but old habits die hard.

I am not sure what is confusing you here, but just to be clear: I have been working as a developer for about 15 years. I have not worked for the same company that entire time.

The confusion is in the story changing each time. At one point you earlier asked us to take the literal text of the words, but in that text there is no literal mention of one company. It also literally asserts that you are currently frustrated ("It [is] very frustrating", not "It was very frustrating").

Now this seems to imply, to the best of my interpretation, that you only experienced that job at a single company some time in the past. Okay. But where did you think that was found in the earlier text? As far as I can see this is new information. And why are you still (at time of writing that comment, at least) frustrated by something that you are now suggesting, as best I can tell, was already no longer a part of your life and, given you finding significance in noting that you've done this for 15 years, likely hasn't been for a long time?

I’m not sure why you’ve taken so much offense and made so many aggressive replies to being told that you misunderstood something, but again - none of my comments are contradictory.

You have repeatedly confused yourself by assigning your own meanings to my words instead of asking for clarity where you didn’t understand.

I think that most people who read my comments understood that I am speaking broadly about my career, and that while I’ve encountered this problem at my current job, my team and I have worked to make it better.

Your primary issue comes from the fact that you asserted that my frustrations with corporate development are in fact the real job, and your seeming offense at being told that no, your negativity and hostility are not a universally shared experience.

I hope things get better for you in your career, but please stop harassing others for not succumbing to cynicism.

> You have repeatedly confused yourself by assigning your own meanings to my words

As instructed, the words were taken literally. Now that you are telling us that we actually needed to read between the lines to understand what you really meant is informative, but curiously late to make that known, especially in light of earlier instructions.

> and your seeming offense at being told that no, your negativity and hostility are not a universally shared experience.

Uh, what? That doesn't make any sense. If I were offended or felt negativity or hostility I would have turned off the computer and went outside. This is a completely voluntary time use. It had better be good. The fact that I am still here proves that there is no negative emotion felt whatsoever because the instant there is anything else I'm gone. Presumably the same holds for you because there is no rational explanation, assuming you are of sound mind, why you wouldn't have equally found something better to do if there was anything unpleasant experienced on your end.

I guess this is supposed to be another case where we cannot take what you have written literally?

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