
Setting the story straight on quite a few issues - ciprian_craciun
https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/05/23/nope/
======
KKKKkkkk1
Reading this made me think why there are so few middle-aged engineers in tech.
There have been several theories for this, such as ageism and the field's
rapid expansion. Reading this made me wonder if they just get sick of it and
leave.

 _Friends had reached out to me. "We need a director for our reliability
software engineering stuff". They asked for my help. They wanted to build
something good, like the early days of a few former places I had worked at. I
was willing to help out, but honestly, only as a contractor. I had enough of
the full time tech thing for one lifetime already._

Tech has an image of itself as a magical place where we're changing the world
while getting to indulge our inner geeks. And yet a director title for an
individual contributor and top 1% pay is not enough to close a hire. The top
people are essentially taking early retirement. People in other fields
(doctors for example) continue working long after retirement age. Maybe tech
is not such a magical place?

~~~
toyg
Maybe supply is still way lower than necessary, considering that proficiency
requires several years of training and practice on technology that changes
very often. Maybe the supply pool is still effectively limited to certain
“socioeconoethnic” groups, and often companies self-sabotage by requiring
candidates to live in certain areas.

In my experience, the attitudes of software developers, as seen all over the
web, are basically the definition of “privileged” in a way that does not match
almost anything else. “I didn’t like my manager, so I quit and spent a few
months counting my $$$ until I found something I liked more” is something that
very few other professions can flaunt. This is, incidentally, why old-school
managers are basically incompatible with the sector: in any tech hotspot, you
literally cannot threaten or bully a tech employee, _unlike any other
employee_. I bet lots of people high-up hate this so much.

~~~
ken
And yet, lots of software developers _do_ quit and spend a few months off, and
then go work somewhere else. Because managers _do_ threaten and bully
employees. This is considered 'normal' for the field. One running joke in my
circles is that developers never 'take vacation'. They simply wait a few
months between jobs, because they're never at one job for more than a year or
two.

The other way to look at this is: companies pay programmers ridiculous
salaries _because_ the working conditions are so hated. Junior programmers
(even those who have never been to college) are paid about as well as
_dentists_ , and they still often quit after a couple years. This is way above
the $75K happiness threshold. We literally can't pay them enough to stay
working for us!

Hypothesis: software development is one of the few industries that I've
interacted with where the workers haven't organized yet. When there's no union
for collective bargaining, what lever does an individual employee have, other
than asking for yet more money, or quitting?

P.S., In what industries do you commonly see managers threatening or bullying
workers? I haven't seen that at all.

~~~
toyg
_> companies pay programmers ridiculous salaries because the working
conditions are so hated._

I think any blue-collar worker would be laughing his ass off at this
statement.

 _> paid about as well as dentists, and they still often quit after a couple
years. This is way above the $75K happiness threshold._

Fuck-you-money actually enables this sort of freedom, since you're less scared
of going jobless for a few months thanks to all the fat you've stored. So
might as well quit and think about things for a while. Over certain levels,
the _meaning_ of one's job can take priority over immediate compensation.

 _> We literally can't pay them enough to stay working for us!_

In the end, _everyone_ deep down would rather not have to work for someone
else, or to not work at all. Programmers in tech hotspots are lucky enough to
actually be able to do it, and pretty often too, without any serious
repercussion. For many, this is a golden age the likes of which we've never
seen.

 _> In what industries do you commonly see managers threatening or bullying
workers?_

All of them - we wouldn't have unions otherwise. There is a reason the word
"boss" has negative connotations.

~~~
majewsky
> In the end, _everyone_ deep down would rather not have to work for someone
> else, or to not work at all.

I very much disagree. I like that my company cares about things like
sales/marketing/HR/finance so I don't have to. And anyway, for most jobs, you
need a supporting structure that has your back, like a company or a government
agency or whatever. Sure, you could start your own company, but at that point
you'll most likely spend more time doing management rather than actual work. I
like that I can focus on my technical role since I'm very much not a manager
type.

~~~
toyg
If you didn’t have to earn money to live, you wouldn’t need to have a company
or whatnot - _that_ is my point.

~~~
majewsky
You still want to accomplish goals, and most goals require some sort of
organization that bears the initial/ongoing investment and provides you with
the back office etc. For instance, even if you're the best surgeon in the
world, you won't be about to run a hospital all on your own.

~~~
toyg
_> You still want to accomplish goals_

why do that when Civilization V exists?

------
ken
> What's odd is that at some point, I managed to stumble onto the Google
> spreadsheet (yep) they were using to track feedback for the process. There
> were dozens of entries, and they were all gushing about it, like oh it was
> so good, and so fun! Please do more!

> Part of me wonders if this is genuine, like these people actually enjoyed
> being gaslit

100%, yes.

I once took a class from someone who was, let's say, not my favorite
professor. He was one of those young "fun" types. Despite being a
science/engineering class in a department with a reputation for being rather
tough (with the previous instructor, just retired), it was not particularly
deep or rigorous. All the other students loved him because he was "cool".

At one point, we had to do a standardized Scantron survey about the course and
the professor. I looked at each question and answered truthfully: "Did the
professor provide a syllabus?" Easy: no. "Did the professor make it clear how
you would be graded?" Haha, definite no. And so on.

Normally that's the end of it, but the next week, he was chatting with some
students before class about the survey. "I think someone answered all the
questions backwards just to mess with me or something. Funny!" "Yeah, that's
weird, dude!"

Apparently when you're giving feedback on a popular leader, the correct
response is to ignore the questions and simply give them the maximum score in
every category. And when you're a popular leader reading feedback, if there's
any responses that don't match this, you can safely ignore them.

~~~
amiantos
People forget to address power dynamics. New hires at a company are often
grateful to have a job and nervous to make a good first impression. If you
immediately ask for feedback from these people they are going to do everything
they can to show that they’re (insert all the positive adjectives you can
here) so that they get to keep their job and impress anyone who may be
watching. On top of that, this effect continues indefinitely for some people,
who never stop feeling so grateful for having a job at all (or they’re just
that type of person, or they’re playing a game) that they have to be super
effusive indefinitely over every little thing. Some people also just like to
be butt kissers.

People like Rachel (and myself) who speak up from the very start and never
stop speaking up are unfortunately very rare. Employers who can recognize how
valuable we are, are luckily not that rare, so long as the truth-teller can
maintain their composure.

------
steve_adams_86
I've left new jobs over things much less annoying than this. That she stuck it
out is incredible.

If you start at a company and they can't have a computer/desk/whatever you
need ready without a good reason, that's a terrible start. I've worked with
people with very little money or resources who still manage to create a quick,
sane, respectful onboarding process. There's no excuse for anything else, and
in my experience it's a great indicator of things to come.

------
JabavuAdams
To OP: I wish you all the best. I didn't read or comment on the original
article.

One thing to consider is to not engage with the critics. It's hard, I know --
really I know. An engineering mind set might make you not want to "flip the
bozo bit", and to learn as much from your detractors as possible.

There may be strategic reasons to get your story out -- e.g. if your co-
workers or potential clients are getting a distorted story, but the personal
cost in time, annoyance, and loss of peace of mind is high.

So maybe, if possible, take a usefully arrogant / narcissistic view as a form
of sanity-protection. Why do you need to respond to a bunch of internet
nobodies? Why waste your time dealing with HN's mental illness?

Anyway, hope this doesn't poison your day.

EDIT> Everyone even moderately notable eventually learns that you don't read
the comments.

~~~
floatingatoll
Ignoring the critics allows them to swell in self-importance and gather a
crowd around them.

Why did you choose to pressure someone else here to ignore “HN’s mental
illness” and let it fester, rather than to pressure HN’s commenters here to
stop being poisonous to others?

~~~
JabavuAdams
Because I've been in similar situations. There's a saying: "Don't wrestle with
pigs because you both end up covered in shit, but they enjoy it." Also,
Admiral Ackbar: "It's a traaaap.".

> Ignoring the critics allows them to swell in self-importance and gather a
> crowd around them.

Strongly disagree. Making your case and setting the story straight is of
course reasonable, but in a way it gives power to your critics. Often it can
establish power/dominance better to just be like "Who the fuck cares what you
think? Replying to you is beneath me." But to do that without even saying it.
You don't come off as an ass, and they are just howling on the internets. So
... ghosting.

EDIT> By all means call out the bad behaviour, but like a comedian would, not
like an engineer. An engineer answers point by point and tries to make a
rational case -- too much effort and it won't stop the hate. A comedian says
"So, these morons said X, look how stupid they are ... and that's why I don't
read comments anymore." _applause_. <\- low effort and deliciously dismissive.

~~~
fragmede
As much as I try not to, I'll indulge in leaving (deliciously) snarky comments
at times (though less on HN). But, do they really move the conversation
forward? Comments for those that are reading for low-brow comedic value and
condescention may get more made-up Internet points and feel good, but
personally, if there's a rational engineering answer to be made, I'll try and
give that (eg: Kubernetes doesn't scale past 500 nodes very well because of X
due to condition Y that I dealt with.) rather than being dismissive
(Kubernetes? More like POOPERnetes! amirite? lolololol)

Readers can decide for themselves wether or not, eg, kubernetes is right for
them.

Additionally:

> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine.
> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic
> gets more divisive.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
renewiltord
Haha, the original story is straight out of The Daily WTF. I'm cracking up.
I'm not really going to read the HN responses or the responses to the HN
responses since the whole thing seems like Internet Drama™ but the original
post is condensed comedy.

2 minute timers to finish tasks like naming a dog! Love it.

------
AdmiralAsshat
It's weird how what I consider the same _kind_ of story can seemingly trigger
universal empathy or universal derision.

If the story is of the oft-posted, "My nightmare dealing with a legacy
codebase" or "My nightmare delivering a project for an inept client" flavor,
there's no shortage of people jumping in the comments to echo the sentiment
and reinforce with their own stories.

You change a few details, however, to the "My nightmare onboarding with a new
company", and suddenly the comments dogpile on "Wow, this person must be
incompetent!" sentiment.

What's the secret sauce here? Age? Reputation? Subject matter?

~~~
Lammy
> What's the secret sauce here? Age? Reputation? Subject matter?

Being a woman. The dogpilers are most likely cluing in on her name.

[https://i.imgur.com/Kowemhz.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/Kowemhz.jpg)

~~~
maest
Her gender does seem to cause divisiveness, but it affects both sides of the
debate. _Anyone_ who criticises anything in articles coming from these domains
is downvoted and _all_ arguments are hand waved away on the grounds that
they're made because OP is a woman.

What this means is that no measured discussion can be had either way and the
comments are almost always a disaster (at least here, on HN).

It's weird, I don't know what's the root cause of all this vitriol (other
women authors don't get this treatment on HN, it's just this particular
domain).

------
davidmurdoch
As a manager/lead who has personally fielded similar concerns from new hires,
I understand where Rachel's frustrations come from, specifically with painful
onboarding processes. I'm not commenting on Rachel's specific experience, but
just in general for those that might feel empowered by her response; I just
don't think it's generally appropriate.

The process was surely designed with good intentions, perhaps by committee.
And it's been designed to help those that need help.

For those that don't need help, these things suck.

Providing an out for new hires who don't need this handholding is problematic.
You can't just make this stuff optional. You don't know what you don't know,
and junior devs often think they know more than they do. Too many people would
miss information they actually need. I think a senior-level engineer needs to
understand this, and be able to cope with the anguish. Sometimes there are
actually useful processes in place, but only useful for a select few, but
because it's impossible to know who those few are, everyone must go through
it.

There are usually ways for anyone to affect change in an organization, but
unless you've been specifically hired to make changes, you're going to have to
wait a while, and even then, you may never be able to make the changes you
really want. But such is life. Figure out what truly matters to you, in the
long term, and you'll likely find you'll become much more influential amongst
your peers, and even upper management. If you can't change the things that
matter to you, don't torture yourself further; it's probably time to move on.

On the flip side: if you just want to work for a smooth-running, well-oiled
machine that aligns with your ideals already, good luck on your search!

~~~
munchbunny
While I definitely agree with the "you don't know what you don't know" point,
I also think there should be a healthy dose of judgement for what should be
considered "mandatory up front" as opposed to "you can learn it when you need
it."

My last on-boarding, for example, I thought was approximately the right
balance. Bootstrap the most basic credentials, set up MFA that covers 90% of
your needs, get your access badge, take care of HR stuff, get walked through
the HR stuff you will need to set up in the next month or so (health
insurance, etc.), get handed a list of resources you will probably find
useful, sit through a talk about company principles, and then you're off to
meet your team where the remaining 80% of your on-boarding that is more
specific to your division/team/role will happen. Your laptop will be waiting
for you at your desk.

I think, for example, being made to walk through exercises querying the
company org chart app is superfluous, but handing you a cheat sheet that
includes the URL to get to the org chart app is a great idea.

~~~
davidmurdoch
My point is that the onboarding process was already designed with lots of
judgement, and plenty of past experience. The process was decided upon by
others who are more qualified than you, as a new hire. Until you understand
more about the company, and its organizational flaws and quirks, you should
refrain from criticizing some of these things. Overwatch, write these
criticisms down and look at them a few weeks or months later, only then will
you be able to approach these problems with the appropriate knowledge.

Of course, there are places that are run by egocentric upper management that
aren't qualified and won't listen... in which case my comments don't apply,
but I don't think that is the norm.

~~~
munchbunny
_Of course, there are places that are run by egocentric upper management that
aren 't qualified and won't listen... in which case my comments don't apply,
but I don't think that is the norm._

In my experience it's not an issue of egocentric upper management. It's an
issue of a process that is 80% tuned and for various hard to solve
organizational reasons it doesn't get to 90%+ tuned.

For example, in my own latest onboarding about two years ago, in hindsight I
definitely feel that about 1 hour of it was dubiously useful and was a
political concession to someone playing visibility games, out of about 6 hours
of up front orientation.

I think that grade of "off for reasons but not always good ones" is the norm.
It's like the event planning equivalent of that one corner of the code that
makes no sense because someone bikeshedded it last year.

------
mjw1007
« I don't send out e-mails that are like this:

Please get on your phone, turn off your wifi, and then navigate to HN, then to
new, then find the post, THEN upvote it. Don't upvote it from the post itself.

The company, however, does. A LOT. (Explains a few things, doesn't it?) »

~~~
swiley
Yikes!!! I’d like to know which company this is.

~~~
KKKKkkkk1
Rachel's most recent job was at Lyft.

------
frereubu
Original article:
[https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/05/22/boarded/](https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/05/22/boarded/)

HN comment thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23280610](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23280610)

------
ReactiveJelly
I do still hate JWZ for that. I hardly ever comment, and I'm punished for it.

He's like those teenaged IRC admins who only let you on their server so they
can choose your nick for you. The web's not a dumb pipe, it's a pipe I can
beat people up with, apparently.

~~~
lonelappde
JWZ is a lot of things, but he's never claimed to be a nice person.

------
frompdx
I can relate to the author 100%. The on-boarding process just sounds absurd. I
have been there. It was awful. I hated it.

The worst that I experienced was a requirement that all new hires complete a
training course for Splunk, the log aggregator. Why? Apparently, Splunk was a
shared resource for this massive company. As a result, careless queries or
logging could result in degraded performance for other teams needing to query
their logs in Splunk.

Ok, no big deal, right? That's what I thought too. I dutifully started working
on my training to get it out of the way. I took detailed and copious notes
like my job depended on it. After an entire week of eight hour days doing
nothing but taking Splunk trainings I was finally done...with section 1.

What the hell? There is another section? As it turned out, it took most new
hires 2-3 weeks to complete the trainings. If a new hire did not complete the
training they could not access Splunk, and apparently this meant they could
not do their job. Absurd on many levels. To add insult to injury, this was a
new requirement and many on my team were given access and were never required
to complete the training. Those very same people kept telling me "oh, just do
it, we don't expect you to be productive right away".

Well, I didn't do it. I refused. I told anyone that asked that I thought the
requirement was unnecessary and a waste of time. Eventually, my manager got
very pushy about it. I continued to stand my ground. In particular, I told my
manager he needed to go to bat for me and get me access if he wanted me to do
my job.

LO AND BEHOLD, I was given access.

The author is right for not wanting to be forced to do stupid things and have
their time wasted. I don't know where some commenters get off calling the
author "entitled" or "not a team player". Why are they so invested in this?

------
kailswhales
The original article is clearly talking about Lyft, and having started at
there at the same time, I thought the onboarding process was much better than
at other companies that I have worked at (others are either too
broad/corporate or just a README).

Not having a desk to work at is inexcusable, and definitely seems like a fluke
rather than the norm.

What’s wild to me is the amount of people who are berating the author for an
_opinion_ post. She is describing what sounds like a garbage experience, and
it shouldn’t be that hard to understand/empathize with

------
hn_throwaway_99
I think it's kind of weird how a lot of commenters feel a need to take one
side or the other in these stories. IMO both of the following were true:

1\. The onboarding process at this company was absurd.

2\. The author's response was to show contempt and derision to everyone else
involved. The "everyone responsible for this is an idiot" vibe was so strong
throughout both posts.

Running large, complex organizations is extremely difficult. I wouldn't want
to work at that company, but I sure as hell wouldn't want to work on a team
with the author, either.

------
jondubois
Most corporations are inefficient to the point that nothing about them makes
sense so there is no need to complain about minutia. It's like being on a
sinking ship and remarking to other passengers about how bad the interior
design is.

------
swiley
The team player thing was a huge lesson I learned recently. If you just defer
to what other people say you’re likely to get things wrong, people hire you as
a software engineer because they expect you to share your thoughts and that
sometimes means disagreeing with the team.

~~~
kiawe_fire
"Team player" is one of those things that seems to go along with other, almost
contradictory things like "self-starter" and "takes ownership".

In theory, they _can_ be good things.

In practice, it feels like they're often just used to justify poor decisions
while "blaming the victim".

If someone wasn't willing to work long hours for free to build better tooling
to support the project, then she's "not a self-starter".

If someone feels strongly about using a certain tech stack or architecture on
a project and doesn't just go along with the old PHP 5.x or Python 2.x stack
the company has always used, then she's "not a team player".

To some extent, caring enough about your projects that you're willing to work
the occasional weekend means ALSO caring enough about your project to have a
say in the choices that are being made, or being unwilling to accept something
as it is when you think it could be much better.

It means getting frustrated when the feedback you are presumably being paid to
provide goes unacknowledged.

You can just not care, and show up, do the minimum amount of work and go home,
but presumably managers don't want that out of their top tech talent.

I'm not saying traits like "team player" and "self-starter" are mutually
exclusive traits, but they also have consequences. They shouldn't be code for
"just do what we ask of you".

What I find a bit annoying from this article's feedback, though, is how many
engineers seem happy to ALSO take these terms and weaponize them against their
colleagues' opinions.

------
draw_down
Oh boy. I don’t think this is a good idea, writing it nor taking such comments
too seriously in the first place.

------
mola
Who is rachel? I keep seeing her on the front page here, and I mostly find the
blog entries boring or just weird.

Is she famouse somehow that she gets to HN frontpage? It can't be because of
writing quality, it's pretty mundane.

~~~
mola
May I ask why the down votes?

~~~
probably_wrong
As someone who did not downvote you: both points (well, one and a half) are
addressed in the post itself. I bet that's why.

Quick, incomplete, and mostly wrong version: she's simply an engineer whose
writing tends to resonate with the HN crowd.

