515 karma · joined March 21, 2020
I've been at my current company for ~4 years. Every January the upper management folks kick off the same project and every year it dies in the planning/discussion phase. Maybe one or two other "big" projects or initiatives will "start," but it's always the same: lots of meetings between the managers without the engineers or designers, lots of hype about the "big project," meetings start to get delayed, roadmaps and plans never materialize, then people stop talking about the project altogether. Sometimes I buy into the hype because I believe in the projects, other times I try to point out issues/risks. Either way the engineering team as a whole is always ignored.
What keeps me motivated is doing what I can for the people who _actually appreciate_ what I do. I work in manufacturing and spend a lot of time talking to the people on the factory floor. There's nothing better than hearing about their struggles and then a few days or weeks later coming back to them with "Hey, I heard you saying you're having an issue with X, so I made Y. Want to try it out and see if it makes things easier?" And then when they stop by my desk to say "Hey sibit Y is awesome!". That makes the job just tolerable enough to not leave.
> If that isn’t available, it’s time to change jobs.
From what I've seen most people want to keep their cake and they want to eat it too. They're not willing to change jobs. They're also not willing to work on anything outside of work. Then they complain that their careers are stagnating.
Then again I'm biased. I work on stuff out side of work and I change jobs every 2-4 years so I can work with new technology.
As someone who _really_ enjoyed requirements gathering for many years and now has become one of the "I don't care let's just build it" people I can assure you that some of us crashed out thanks to Scrum Masters™, Project Managers™, Product Owners™, or any of the other big "A" Agile™ cronies.
When I get home I start a pot of coffee
Shower
If it's a work from office day I leave for work at 5:45 (~15 minute drive)
1-2 hours of reading HN, twitter, blogs
I grab my sticky note pad and I create a checkbox list of 3-5 things I want to accomplish
I start working through the list
In my experience, their thought process starts with "I know framework/library X" and ends with "What library/framework solves my specific problem".
In recent years it seems like they've completely outsourced their thought process to tools like ChatGPT. However, it's been a while since I've worked with a recent college graduate so outsourcing ones thought process may be the new normal?
I have worked with a few bootcamp grads who didn't start their thought process this way but that's something they've had to learn on their own.
You don't. My employer switched to this type of project structure 16 months ago and so far all "projects" have been useless short sighted solo work.
The only benefit I've seen is it's a great for anyone who wants to coast until retirement. For example my current "project" is to stand up our production Kafka cluster. I provisioned and configured the servers within a day and now I'm sitting around twiddling my thumbs for the next 89 days.
I can't figure out why they didn't use it as an opportunity to bring back Clippy.
While it's not a very interesting project it's my favourite because of what happened after I published it. While I was at work I noticed the plugin was installed on one of our new client's websites. I went to my boss and asked him if he installed the plugin and what he thought about it. He said he did and it was better than <old plugin>. AFAIK they're still using it years later and I don't think they ever realized it's my plugin.
I also work on a React site and I wouldn't want to move away from it unless someone dared to utter the word rewrite.
That'd be nice. I figure I'll revisit EV tech in ~10 years when I'm ready to start shopping again. Fingers crossed.
As for anecdotal evidence I don't see a lot of EVs driving around in my mid sized midwest town (~200k pop). At most I notice 2-4 Teslas a week and as of today I've seen my first Rivian. If they're popular they ain't popular around here.
Do you think there is an equation where the larger the company the more they treat the employees like toddlers? I've primarily worked for small companies where management treated the employees like adults. They expected us to be professionals so they treated us as such. Sometimes that meant they provided just enough rope for someone to hang themselves but for the most part, it worked pretty well.
As I've moved to bigger companies it seems as though management treats the employees more and more like children. The HR department is especially notorious for treating people like toddlers. I find it odd and a bit frustrating. I don't think I could be easily convinced that anyone within my team, department, or adjacent departments could be equated to children yet the actions and tone of management makes me think otherwise.
I can agree it's unacceptable for security while also disagreeing with this statement.
I was on a 2 week camping trip and a nasty storm rolled through my home state. Power went out for 5 days and I wouldn't have known if it wasn't for the SMS notifications. I immediately cleared out my fridge and freezer when I got back.
This is all I've seen within the last 5 years.
For context, I've been working in-industry for ~8 years. I don't live or work in one of the big tech cities in the US nor one of the biggest within my state.
Within the last 5 years, I've worked at two companies and have seen 12 developers join. Of these 12 ten came from various local React bootcamps. When I've asked about their history with creating software it's always the same response: "I've never written any before <insert boot camp name>" and when asked why they decided to get into this industry it's always "<insert tech influences name> said I could make great money with only a 3-month boot camp".
The other two are oddities and also the most recent two hires I've seen. They both had ZERO programming experience before getting the job. No college/university, no at-home learning, no boot camps. Not even a basic printf("hello world") attempt. The company decided they could do 'on-the-job training' by letting them watch Udemy courses for the first 3 months then they just threw them at the senior devs like a grenade with a loose pin.