
Just some red flags. No big deal. Just ignore them - ciprian_craciun
https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/05/22/boarded/
======
meddlin
I really wish companies would start asking for anonymous, unbiased reviews of
this process. I've had a few companies come close, but they made it clear the
answers were (or seemed to be) heavily filtered.

Their onboarding processes all sucked.

Please stop with the cute HR nonsense. I'm not a kid. I don't need your cute
program. We don't need someone reading 10 pages from your legally
unenforceable handbook from a projector. Keep your gift bag; the squeeze ball
is stupid and you didn't pick the pen. (Have you ever given a gift?) If you're
going to lean into the sterile corporate decor, then at least hand me a
clipboard and let me fill out paperwork just like I'm at the doctor's office.

If it sounds salty; it's supposed to. I hope a C-level, or business owner,
takes it to heart. I'm not trying to beat you down. This first-impression is
important--I took 10 minutes on a Saturday at 2:50AM to let you know. I've
seen your "all-hands", your quarterlies, your launches, and your totally-not-
Christmas parties.

You already know how to do better.

~~~
pmiller2
You lost me at "anonymous." I treat every single one of those stupid surveys
as if everyone in the whole company was watching me fill it out. I never leave
free response comments, because I don't want to be identified by my words.
Maybe it's paranoid, but it's worked for me so far. And, yes, if other people
think the same as me, then it's surely biased the data a bit, as well.

~~~
spery
I'm quite the opposite. I always try to give the honest feedback hoping it
would be read. If company tries to use anonymity to track down people who give
negative feedback and try to mistreat them, I'd rather not work there anyway.
So its a win/win for me.

~~~
pmiller2
Long periods of financial insecurity in the past have trained (beaten?) that
impulse out of me. I'm glad you can still do it.

~~~
DevKoala
I am sorry. I empathize because I know that a great deal of my confidence as a
software engineer came thanks to financial security; I don’t fear being fired
so I will speak my mind. However, had I failed to achieve that, would I have
stood for myself? Who stays silent because of this? I always feel it is my
duty to listen to everybody in the room because of that reason.

------
donw
It boggles my mind how companies do not take onboarding seriously.

This is the best opportunity you have to set your people up for success, bar
none. Plus, many of the things your company should do to build a great
onboarding experience can also be leveraged to make it easy to do things like
"move people between teams", "expand into a new office", and "hire great
people".

Done properly, this is _cheap as hell_.

~~~
pedrocr
This sounds like an example of someone taking it seriously by actually putting
in the effort to build the elaborate program but then failing miserably at
making it effective. That's not at all an unusual experience for HR processes
in my experience. There's far too little feedback built into those kinds of
processes so they rarely know if they are doing well or not.

~~~
mrweasel
HR honestly have no business getting involved in hirering or onboarding. Most
people working in HR aren’t qualified for it. HR should be limited to
gathering enough info to ensure that you’re being paid and perhaps managing
how much vacation you have left. It’s a service organisation.

I had one HR drone complain about developers being bad at logging time. We
told her that the system sucked and made it to hard to correctly enter your
hours. She the proceede to demo how easy it was by entering her hours for the
week. Basically: HR stuff = 37 hours. She had no clue that the average
developer had more tasks during one day, each requirering it’s code, that she
had during a full month. HR, especially in large companies, are clueless about
the actual work being done.

Personally I no longer participate in personality test. If one is required
during the interview process I decline and leave. It always HR that require
the test, never the people you’d actually work for.

For onboard: The people I’ve onboarded for different companies all get the
first day to settle in, setup their computer, find the coffeemaker and just
look around. Day two you get a real assignment, ideally something you can fix
and have in production before four o’clock. After that it’s just progressively
harder tasks until you can manage on your own.

~~~
elric
> I no longer participate in personality test. If one is required during the
> interview process I decline and leave.

I do this as well. I've had companies send me online personality tests with
_seriously_ invasive questions. With no explanations as to the purpose, no
guarantees regarding data protection. Just a quick "fill this out to see if
you're a match". I'm sure it's designed to carefully skirt around anything
that's overtly illegal, but fuck that. They go on my shitlist.

------
narraturgy
The process described here is one that would honestly have me walking out the
door. I don't say that from a place of "this isn't worth my time" or a similar
feeling grounded in self-worth and healthy ego--the aimless, direction-less,
utter lack of structure or clear direction on how to proceed while being
deluged in busywork would leave me so anxious and adrift that I know I
wouldn't be able to return to that place. The concept of "working" for three
days before my direct supervisor even noticed my presence is so foreign to me
that I truly have no idea how I'd function, unless it was to sit in a corner
and panic about not knowing how to start doing the job I was (supposedly)
hired for.

As someone trying to figure out how to turn my diploma into a job despite
intense impostor syndrome, this tale is absolutely harrowing.

~~~
laurentdc
> The concept of "working" for three days before my direct supervisor even
> noticed my presence is so foreign to me

I left my old company for the same reasons. I didn't know who my boss was or
who I should report to for months.

Everyone was clueless. You asked for help or directions by pinging some guy
you didn't know on Slack and the best you'd get was "yeeeeeah I worked on this
project long ago, I forgot, sorry, nice to meet you though wanna go grab a
coffee sometime?"

Clients left hanging because somewhere in the sales process someone forgot
about them in the pipeline. When some work actually got through nobody did
anything for weeks until someone would promote himself to project manager out
of good will (which you could do by putting your name in the project charter
bullshit and on the Trello board of course) and assigned some teams (uiux,
dev, qa ecc) to it. When you needed e.g. design files for something your best
guess was to look in the Gdrive folder, find who has shared access, and ask
them who worked on the design if by any chance they know something about it.

The result of this was the worst time to market I've seen. Like 2-3 year
delays were the norm. I have no idea how companies like this manage to
survive. They weren't doing that bad economically either (they won lots of
government funding mostly)

~~~
sadfklsjlkjwt
9 months. I've been somewhere where it took 9 months before I realized that my
bossy colleague was not my boss and another person was! Amazingly it was a
profitable small business that had happy customers and employees.

~~~
clarry
How did you find out, eventually? That sounds like it might've been a very
awkward moment...

------
rainyMammoth
In my experience the first few days of onboarding is the only time when it's
easy to meet new faces in a company. You will always remember the couple of
people that onboarded together with you. Looks like going through a bunch of
nonsense together successfully bounds people.

That's the only real benefit of those onboarding few days. I usually roll my
eyes through most of the high level presentations that are full of Koolaid,
politically correctness or even straight up made up as you typically discover
after a couple weeks/months.

------
aww_dang
How many people opt-out of this kind of culture and become self-employed?

The theory of specialization and collaboration increasing productivity is
fine, but look at all of the time lost for this nonsense. Imagine paying the
salaries of these disaffected employees as they Svejk their way through the
workday.

Think of the overhead for the office space, medical and paid leave for all of
these people. I also wonder about the value of those who are compliant and
obedient. Not sure that those qualities go hand in hand with innovation and
critical thinking.

Solo-entrepreneurship limits the kinds of problems you can solve, but the ones
you do select can be low maintenance, passive income situations. After
building up a portfolio like this, there is no need to build resumes, learn
buzzwords or tolerate the nonsense described in this article. Your surplus of
free time can be invested in creating more revenue streams.

------
zhdc1
She's getting a lot of flak on here, but I kind of sympathize with her.
Multiday onboarding programs, unfamiliar (bad?) IT, and inflated expectations
aren't particularly fun to deal with.

------
neoplatonian
This post is actually written in retrospect with bitterness, so I'd avoid
reading too much into it: either as red flags on the author or the company.
Memories and lived experiences get colored in hindsight by what happened
after. For example, there must have definitely been positives that attracted
the author to the company, but they are diminished in memory, crowded out by
bitterness.

~~~
brailsafe
I wouldn't be so dismissive, and have found it interesting to see how negative
most top-level commenters have been. I think it's valuable to look back at the
first few bits of information that could have tipped you off early to a
negative experience later on. That's how we learn what not to do next time.

I think there's a lot more in this post than you might get at first read. For
example, a lot of people are interpreting it as bitter, and it seems to be,
but it also communicates some level of unmet basic hopes for the new position.
It seems to me like optimism carried her through this period, that only in
retrospect were signs that it wasn't meant to be. Likewise, many people are
missing the fact that this is a retrospective at all. Without knowing any
further context, this story could have literally taken place at any point in
her career, and I'm sure many developers on here have similar stories.

~~~
mjburgess
Or, in lieu of being able to offer any substantive criticisms is looking to
rationalise her failure by locating it with the company as early as possible.

~~~
brailsafe
That's an awfully uncharitable view, especially to assume she failed in any
way. I don't get the sense that the point of the blog post was to levy
substantive criticism at an unnamed company.

Regardless, would you say it's irrational or, to use some words from others:
arrogant, techier-than-thou, entitled, autistic, to conclude in retrospect
that there were early signs of the company and you not being a good fit? Seems
pretty reasonable. It's implied and stated how she tends to react to the
process she was tasked with.

~~~
mjburgess
I'm in part going off comments made by employees about her attitude.

I mean, I have little idea. I'm not claiming that the negative take is the
right one, only that there is some oversight in the author here leading to
this article.

I'm very sceptical about an HR on-boarding process, so-described, being a
redflag for anyone. As she claims, it's an irrelevant/missable process anyway.
The idea its some lens into the company, on this occasion, doesnt stack up.

However you interpret the motivation for writing, I dont buy the "redflag"
one.

~~~
brailsafe
In some sense I agree with you, but on the other hand I do feel like these are
implied caveats. It's perhaps unwise to look too far into an onboarding
process as a serious mark against a company. Even companies that invest a lot
in this will mess it up. I think it's implied that she didn't do this, simply
by consequence of her pushing forward anyway, and her also qualifying it at
the end with "red or pink flag".

My sense is that this was something that subsequently stuck out to her, and
maybe became a more significant pattern throughout her year at the company.
It's what's not said that sort of brings a bit more significance to these
particular things, because why else would these things stick out upon
reflection?

I've had worse onboarding experiences, that upon getting fired, I looked back
on and thought "Wow, maybe next time I'm handed a HP laptop and told that Macs
are only for designers, I'll just walk out", because they were significant of
events that would later cause me undue turmoil and stress that affected my
performance.

------
lifeisstillgood
Instead of bugs per LOC or anything else, the single biggest metric a CEO
needs to watch is _employee gripes per work day_. Goes up in a particular area
- get in there and fix something. It's like metal on metal for a engine
operator, CEOs need to listen for that grating sound.

And as such I will defend to the death an employee's right to moan and bitch
about working conditions.

------
smitty1e
Rachel comes off as someone with vast chops who is better suited to a start-up
than a large corporation.

I had a somewhat similar experience of being at a consultancy that is great
for people right out of college.

Made me feel a trifle old and ready to get to a place that was more work-horse
and less show-horse.

------
bjornlouser
"... You start feeling very old ..."

I hear you calling me.

And oh, the ringing gladness of your voice!

And on my career’s grave the mossy grass is green:

At the stand-up, do you behold me? Standing here,

Hearing your voice through all the corporate hell between.

------
tzs
> You're making lots of mistakes, despite having decades of typing experience
> at relatively high speeds.

It’s amazing how small a keyboard difference can throw you way off.

I had an Apple Magic Keyboard and could type on it high speed with high
accuracy. I wanted a numeric keypad and bigger arrow keys so got an Apple
Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad.

The latter is pretty much the former with extra space on the right for the
keypad. The letters and punctuation keys are the same in size, location, and
feel. If you are just banging out text or code, there should be virtually no
difference between the two.

In reality, I could barely type on the keypad version. It took a couple days
to get decent on it. Even after a couple weeks I was having trouble with
punctuation, making coding slow.

~~~
pmiller2
I need an ergo keyboard to avoid RSI. The first one I tried was this monster
$300 Kinesis Advantage keyboard, which I picked because it was the most highly
rated one on Amazon, it looked cool, and I thought it would solve my problem.
It did not. I could barely type letters on it, and some of the common
programming characters, like [{}] were in the "wrong" spot relative to where
my fingers thought they should be.

I sent that bad boy back in under a week and settled on the MS Ergo Sculpt. It
has a standard layout that works great for me, and I credit it with keeping me
in the industry for the past 3 years, and, hopefully, far beyond.

~~~
manuform
The Kinesis has been my workhorse for the last 4 years and now I have 2 (one
at the office). I think with any reprogramming it takes a while to settle in;
when I switched over to this from a standard keyboard was also when I took the
plunge to relearn touch typing with the Colemak layout - productivity plunge
as I struggled to do even 15WPM. Now I'm at 82-90WPM.

~~~
dkersten
I also use colemak and a kinesis and I honestly think it was the best decision
of my career. I held off on buying a kinesis for a long time because they’re
expensive and I greatly regret doing that. Its not at all about speed for me
and I don’t know my WPM, its about comfort and avoiding RSI (I’ve had some
problems in the past).

Now when I see people hammering their crappy keyboards, my fingers hurt for
them and I wonder why more people who need their hands to work don’t invest in
protecting them, but I get it, because I held off buying my kinesis for years
due to the cost...

~~~
pmiller2
Funny, I didn’t hesitate for a second about the cost. I would have considered
it well worth it to spend $300 on a new keyboard _every month_ to be able to
keep my well paying career.

~~~
dkersten
It sounds like you had worse RSI problems than I did (and when I was first
considering getting one, I didn’t have much problems and wanted one more as a
precaution). Do you have any thoughts as to why you couldn’t get used to the
Kinesis or found it hard?

~~~
pmiller2
I’d been touch typing on a standard keyboard since I was in 4th grade.
Inertia, I guess.

~~~
dkersten
I assume you would have gotten used to it then, but given that you found
another keyboard that works for you, I guess it wouldn't have been worthwhile.

------
dirtnugget
The first days in a company can really mark everything. I can feel her. Last
time I felt like that I ran out after 3 months and ended up freelancing ever
since. Maybe she should try that.

------
im3w1l
I dunno, most of it didn't sound that bad. I guess anything becomes stressful
under time pressure.

------
matsemann
I also think this shows a few red flags of the author. Definitely not a team
player, runs from boring stuff (instead of challenging it or trying to fix
it), and then hides in a corner a few days instead of actually talking to the
manager (who thought the person was busy a few days with the onboarding, so
naturally didn't show them a desk yet).

~~~
brailsafe
Upon not being offered the support that a good on-boarding process should
include, she worked with other members of the team to solve the problem she
was facing and get started on something useful, rather than trudge through the
rather pointless series of tasks that were assigned a higher priority than a
basic work surface. Sounds like a team player to me.

~~~
ozim
Uhm not what I took from the text: "Some friends who had already been at the
company reached out and provided their own take on how to get started, and I
went from that."

This looks like people from random other teams in the company. Not the team
she was hired for. Totally doing her own thing because she had some
connections.

~~~
brailsafe
I suppose that particular sentence could be interpreted a number of ways; I
see it more as leveraging connections _necessarily_ rather than
surreptitiously. Either way, having friends at the company would also help
cultivate a sense of optimism that carried her __through __this time rather
than being as significant _at the time_ as many are proposing.

------
naringas
the curious thing about such flags is that they are obvious in retrospect but
somewhat imperceptible when you needed to notice them

~~~
elric
I think this is down to being nervous for a large part. Maybe you could have
noticed some of these red flags when you were interviewing at the company. But
you're in a new environment, with new people, being bombarded with questions.
Sometimes you're there because your current job is a giant shitstorm you want
to walk away from. It's easy to miss things in that state.

That goes both ways, of course. When I'm hiring I sometimes dimiss red flags
because I think "they're just nervous, they're not really this dumb". But
sometimes they are.

------
hackily
This sounds suspiciously like the onboarding experience I had at my company.

In particular, Duo for 2 factor and LastPass, and the curl command to start
downloading a bunch of stuff.

FWIW I thought it was pretty streamlined, better than what I'd had in the
past.

~~~
philjohn
I was stoked when we moved to Duo at work - no more having to type in an 8
digit code off my phone, just tap "accept" on the push notification on my
phone or watch and I'm in.

It's such a great solution to make 2FA as seamless as possible.

------
SergeAx
> You're making lots of mistakes, despite having decades of typing experience
> at relatively high speeds

In Japan it was a duty of samurai to bring a sword to the service. For last 10
years I'm bringing my own keyboard and mouse to every new job.

------
kbenson
I should probably stop reading her posts when they are submitted (I think I
skipped the last few). Invariably I agree with portions of what she says, but
it's always couched in what I view as a very poor attitude. I get it. She's a
jaded bay area developer. I sure hope it's mostly just a persona for her blog,
because otherwise why put yourself through such misery? She obviously doesn't
respect anything about the companies she's working for, if her writing is
anything to go by, and she's obviously in demand enough to get jobs at big
companies. I think she would be happier if she looked for a different class of
employer. If that's hard to find here, move somewhere else. Do what you have
to to be happy.

> As for why I didn't recognize the CEO: I had just started, and it's not like
> I memorize names and faces of these people. Hello, stalker-ville or ass-
> kisser-ville, and I am neither.

That's just great. I'll just be over here, being a "stalker" and "ass kisser"
because I want to know who I'm working for before I join a company. But that's
just me, I'm sure I'm being overly cautious. It's not like a bunch of
developers have joined horrible companies helmed by horrible people that have
instilled a horrible corporate culture before because they didn't pay
attention to that... Right?

~~~
probably_wrong
> _I sure hope it 's mostly just a persona for her blog, because otherwise why
> put yourself through such misery?_

I don't follow her blog enough to fill in the details, but if I understand
correctly this is from a job she hated and left recently-ish due to how bad
everything was [1]. So she's not putting up with it, but rather giving
retrospectives on a bad couple of years.

[1]
[http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/03/04/annoyed/](http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/03/04/annoyed/)

~~~
kbenson
Honestly, that link reads like I remember all the posts of hers I remember
reading. In summary:

\- stuff sucks here, but I fight the good fight, and do the right thing even
though others don't always

\- I say the truth, publish it even, but people don't want to hear it.
Sometimes people people are so unappreciative they actually say mean things to
me. Sometimes they even put it in writing!

\- I have enough clout I can ignore some of the normal procedures and policies
for the betterment of all. Some people aren't appreciative of this. Some of
those people are managers, even my manager. Those are all the bad people
though.

\- they try to force me to change, but screw them. This is obviously their
problem. I'll stand by my principles by walking out and into some other high
position at another company, where they appreciate when I call the management
bozos...

After a few posts like that, it starts to to feel like maybe a big chunk of
the problem might be her.

At this point, I really hope someone will come out and point out how there
were all these positive posts I missed over the last few years. That's
entirely possible. The HN selection filter (which is how I see these) might be
biased towards a certain type of article of hers, and I might have missed
some/most that made it here. I would rather rather be wrong in any of numerous
ways than actually have her be as miserable and miserable to be around as she
sounds at this point.

~~~
mellow2020
> After a few posts like that, it starts to to feel like maybe a big chunk of
> the problem might be her.

I don't really blog, but I occasionally write lyrics. All of them are bitter
and critical, so over a the years I accumulated a collection of that. That's
not because I'm a bitter person, it's because I only _ever_ write lyrics to
complain. When I'm happy, I sing and dance, I code or call friends, I do a
million things and not _ever_ write lyrics. Similar with forums: I vote to
agree, I respond to disagree or correct or add a link.

Anyone who tried to judge me, as a person, by that and other output without
even having met me, because things "start to feel" or "sound" a certain way (
_for everyone, in their mind_ ), can come up with all sorts of "assessments",
many of them mutually exclusive. It's a fine waste of time and that's all it
is.

But I don't think the fallacious extrapolation of web output to the whole
person is the sole cause here. After all, if someone's blog is full of things
they installed and described their first steps with, without any follow-up
posts about their in-depth, day-to-day usage of the thing, people wouldn't
pile on to point out that this person "seems like" they constantly change
stacks, without getting to know any of them. And if someone had a blog with
just the crazy retro hacks they do, we wouldn't assume they don't have a phone
or have never seen a modern game. And so on. But when someone writes a lot
about negative work experiences, without mentioning the good ones, they _must_
be a terrible person and think they're better than everyone else, naturally.
Except it's not ever put that bluntly, e.g.

> it starts to to feel like maybe a big chunk of the problem might be her

1\. starts to 2\. feel like 3\. maybe 4\. a big chunk 5\. might be

out of 71 chars in that quote, 40 belong to weasel words.

That and other comments lead me to suspect it might be the confidence and the
chutzpah to talk back publically and not sugar coat things. If people can't be
snarky on their own blog without people who never met them, and don't even
know the company they describe, much less worked for it, telling everybody
what kind of person the author might be... how about a union at least?

edit: this sums this thread up perfectly:
[https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/05/23/nope/](https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/05/23/nope/)

> _But still, thanks for hyperbole to try to make me look bad! You have no
> idea what went on there, and you think you just HAVE to insert yourself into
> it._

Meanwhile HN wonders how a BBQ grill could ask to be the default browser, and
I can tell you exactly how: a bunch of people went along to get along, and/or
conditioned themselves to consider any inane crap awesome and a great growth
opportunity.

~~~
kbenson
> Anyone who tried to judge me, as a person, by that and other output without
> even having met me, because things "start to feel" or "sound" a certain way

Are your lyrics all about real life situations? Do they include references to
all your coworkers on a regular basis? Do you always publish them on a forum
for a global audience?

They decide to publish these thoughts, so they will get judged on them. If you
published all those lyrics, and they got linked to a forum on a regular basis,
I think there's a good chance someone might call them out as overly bitter.
Presumably, if you are putting them out for everyone to see, you're trying to
get something out of that, so perhaps considering what your goal is is
worthwhile.

If it's for personal catharsis, possibly to be shared with friends, a local
text document, shared text document, or group message achieves that fine. Why
would you publish them globally? Why would she publish these stories unless
she hopes that will achieve something? I'm not sure if that's to achieve
change at her place of employment (it sounds like they've definitely caused
change a few times, for better or worse), or purely to warn/inform others, but
freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom of consequence. Maybe she should
consider the consequences when she writes about the "broken ones" that are the
managers she's working with and for.

> After all, if someone's blog is full of things they installed and described
> their first steps with, without any follow-up posts about their in-depth,
> day-to-day usage of the thing, people wouldn't pile on to point out that
> this person "seems like" they constantly change stacks

If the person is constantly trying a new thing, complaining about how they
can't get anywhere with it, describing how broken it is and how they would do
it better, and then stopping using it, while plenty of other people fine ways
to work with that stack without too much of a problem, then yes, I think there
might be a bunch of notes how maybe part of the problem expressed has to do
with the person in question.

> But when someone writes a lot about negative work experiences, without
> mentioning the good ones, they must be a terrible person and think they're
> better than everyone else, naturally. Except it's not ever put that bluntly,
> e.g.

I draw a clear distinction between explaining poor work experiences, which
we've all had, and clearly blaming the people around you for those poor
experiences and for not listening to you since you have all the answers to fix
them. The former is looking for sympathy, which I'm happy to help with. The
latter is also looking for vindication without evidence, which I'm much less
willing to take part in.

> out of 71 chars in that quote, 40 belong to weasel words.

It's called opinion. I was clearly expressing how I _interpret_ her writing. I
try not to use definitive statements when expressing things which are not
fact. Feel free to call them weasel words if you like. It would be
hypocritical of me to be too upset about that, given I'm critiquing something
publicly.

>> But still, thanks for hyperbole to try to make me look bad! You have no
idea what went on there, and you think you just HAVE to insert yourself into
it.

As long as she continues to publish accounts the claim to be based on real
situations and real people and represents those people and institutions as
negatively as she does, she can expect responses. Those responses are doing
the same thing she is, in critiquing a situation they are exposed to. They
assume things about the situations she explains just as she assumes things
about people in them ("my manager wouldn't give a rat's ass what the results
of it would be.")

If you don't want people publicly critiquing your personal experiences, don't
publish them. That's how the world works.

Now, given that she's responded to some of my critiques specifically in that
link, and you've kindly linked to it and referenced it, I'll respond to some
of those here, as if addressing her:

> I had an opportunity to land and support them through the IPO. Then if it
> worked out, maybe it would be worth something some day. ... What would you
> do? You'd take the damn job. Of course you would.

I don't think I would, given some of your experiences. When I said maybe find
a different _class_ of company, I meant it. Whether that be a company not
looking to IPO, or a company with a mission that makes the work worthwhile
even if it's not as lucrative and/or interesting, maybe a work-life balance
change is something that should be given more consideration. Maybe that means
considering a non-profit, maybe that means considering a company whose goal
isn't the normal startup to IPO trajectory with stock options (maybe it means
avoiding those like the plague). For what it's worth, I've actually based most
of work life around that, so I probably wouldn't have taken the offer myself,
either. I have no plans to work in SH or the south bay unless forced to, I've
avoided it so far.

> Point: (anything about not recognizing the CEO on my third day there) ...
> Now, consider that I was supposedly there to deal with technical problems.

Unless you were hired as a consultant, I think this is extremely short-
sighted. You were hired to be part of an organization. It _sounds_ like you
weren't really interesting in being part of that organization, from the very
beginning. Really, it's fine that you didn't recognize the CEO. I really only
took offense that you portrayed anyone that would know who the CEO was as
problematic, when there are many reasons you might want to know ahead of time.
The ones I mentioned in the previous post (making sure you're not working for
an obvious scumbag), or just making sure you know who is who so you what
you're saying to which people. You might consider "being unfiltered" and
"speaking truth to power" important aspects of your personality, but I
consider not caring who you're talking to when you say things inconsiderate at
best, and more likely, just being an asshole. We might just disagree on this.

> Point: "why post this for the world to see?" ... Catharsis, and probably
> more than a little cabin fever.

Well, if you're looking for benefit from posting it publicly, you have to deal
with the downsides when they occur. To your credit, you do. That said, if you
don't want actual critique, you can publish to a smaller audience, such as
friends. It's your choice. Perhaps the public agreement you get and feelings
that brings outweighs the disagreement and those feelings. In that case, by
all means, continue on.

------
Jabbles
So this is Lyft?

------
trashburger
If the author didn't want to do the work to learn the ins and outs of the
company she's being hired by (and yes, almost every company has a few quirks
in their internal systems), why did she even apply?

Did she ask for a non-terrible laptop? Was she rejected? The article doesn't
mention this.

Did she _ask_ for a desk? If they're onboarding many people at once, there's
always a chance something can get missed.

I think a lack of communication was the main problem here.

~~~
spery
Not defending her but 'asking' for a desk sounds ridiculous. Should she also
ask for a chair? Power outlet? Access to toilet?

~~~
thiht
You shouldn't have to ask for a desk, it should be there when you start. But
if it's not, you should definitely ask for one, not wait in the corner until
one magically appears.

~~~
pas
So, how come no one greeted and guided her from her team? (Not friends from
other teams.) The team lead, the manager? (Whatever those mean, of course.)

This whole company sounds like a sitcom.

------
lifeisstillgood
On the other hand this is being done soooo badly across the board there must
be a saas opportunity here :-)

------
ramraj07
Who is this person, why is their weird holier than thou writing constantly
upvoted? Did they secretly invent the internet?

~~~
marvin
It’s a female software engineer that doesn’t filter her thoughts, so naturally
she will get punched down a few notches when she expresses herself in public.
I’m a bit horrified at some of the responses in this thread, TBH.

They’re probably upvoted because their writing resonates with a lot of people.

~~~
rumanator
Your post is the first comment I read in this thread that not only refers to
the gender of the author but also tried to portray it as a central point and
also, for some reason, try to pull the victim card by claiming it is the only
possible and conceivable reason why this sort of rant is not unanimously and
enthusiastically supported.

~~~
junke
1\. "the only possible and conceivable reason": you are extrapolating

2\. Sexism can happen even when everybody cautiously avoid talking about the
author's gender.

~~~
rumanator
> 1\. "the only possible and conceivable reason": you are extrapolating

I'm summarizing your assertion. If it sounds silly and a stretch that's
because it is silly and a stretch.

> 2\. Sexism can happen

Yes, I entirely agree. Yet, you're also fabricating sexism out of thin air.

Just because this blog post was not unanimously and enthusiastically well
received that does not mean gender was a factor. It might surprise you but
women are regular people too, and as regular people go they can also
occasionally say or do silly things.

~~~
junke
"your assertion": I am not the person you were replying too.

Summarizing done well does noy change the meaning, you just interpretated
things some way.

In fact it looks like you are replying to claims nobody but you are
fabricating.

------
LeonB
I felt so stressed reading this.

------
gregjor
A story of entitlement and expecting a job to work like a kindergarten
classroom. No matter how far companies go to cater to their privileged tech
hires they get ridiculed, taken advantage of, discarded. Ask why these
ridiculous onboarding processes exist in the first place.

~~~
brailsafe
Doesn't seem like they went even as far as to get a desk. Who are you
defending?

~~~
rumanator
> Doesn't seem like they went even as far as to get a desk.

In the last onboarding I endured, I was only assigned a desk after I finished
after the process ended. Considering how the author claims that she
unilaterally decided to skip the onboarding process and instead to present
herself unannounced to what she assumed might be her workspace then it's
better to take the accusations with a grain of salt.

~~~
brailsafe
Seems like your process sucked too.

~~~
rumanator
That comment makes as much sense as whining that an onboarding process sucked
because you were scheduled to start on a specific day instead of when you felt
like it.

~~~
brailsafe
It doesn't make sense to you because it seems you're of the belief that
onboarding processes should suck. If you don't feel that way, then you're less
likely to discount them as signs of negative things to come, such as in this
case.

------
FiloSottile
I can't believe how casual and normal "there was a dog in this room" is made
out to be in American work culture.

I have a potentially lethal dog allergy, so that's a room, a floor, an office
I could not be in at all. Maybe I couldn't even take the job, so that the pets
could have my spot in the company directory. I realize I have almost all the
other privileges but this really doesn't make me feel welcome in a workplace,
and I don't understand how pets in the office isn't considered an anti-
inclusive practice.

I guess it doesn't matter now. Previously:
[https://twitter.com/FiloSottile/status/1116418872519929859](https://twitter.com/FiloSottile/status/1116418872519929859)

~~~
rainyMammoth
I'm not a fan of dogs either. I have had what looked like a dog attacking me
in the past in an office and I was being told that I should not worry because
it is usually "friendly".

I really hope that this whole dog at the office madness stops sooner than
later. Hopefully WFH is going to resolve this.

~~~
pmiller2
Regardless of how you feel about dogs (I love them and would be thrilled if I
worked in an office with one or more dogs), no reasonable office dog policy
would allow an animal that attacks people. That's just wrong.

~~~
chrisseaton
I think a problem is that some people feel the dog is attacking them, when the
owner thinks the dog is being playful. That's how people get upset about dogs
in my experience.

~~~
pmiller2
That's still not behavior that should be tolerated in an office environment. I
would expect an office dog to behave to approximately the standard required in
the Canine Good Citizen test. My dog would almost pass, but she's not good
enough on the leash. I think that would be good enough for an office
environment, but I certainly would not let her "play" with someone who thought
she was "attacking" them.

~~~
heyoni
You can’t know in advance that someone is going to interpret a dogs playful
behavior with being attacked. If however you had a bad encounter and the owner
failed to exercise more restraint, I would say that’s madness.

~~~
pmiller2
Of course not. If I ever I found out anyone thought my dog was harassing them,
I would certainly make sure that she didn't get the opportunity to "harass"
them again, regardless of what it was she was doing. That's just common sense,
and no responsible dog owner would act otherwise.

------
hayksaakian
More context for the OP:

[https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/02/29/poof/](https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/02/29/poof/)

~~~
FearNotDaniel
Nobody _needs_ to spend inordinate amounts of time rewriting 18-year-old C++
code _just to put appointments in their diary_. FFS use GCal or Outlook like
any normal human being. Or if decades-old technology turns you on, use a
Filofax or a PalmPilot.

The reason I mention this is that nearly every post I read by this author, who
seems unaccountably popular on HN, stinks of some tech-fetishist with poor
communication skills who insists on doing everything by the most difficult and
convoluted means possible. This is not the sort of attitude we should be
idolizing in an entrepreneurial culture. I would love to be a fly on the wall
in the HR meetings and hear the other side of the story, because I would
certainly not want someone like this on my team, however gifted or experienced
they are.

~~~
vikasg
+1

In a startup you want to _actively screen for_ candidates like this. Someone
who idolizes technological "purity" above all else and looks down on business
will never be happy at a startup that needs to get shit done quickly. It's a
lose-lose situation. They'll eventually grow resentful and quit, or you'll
have to manage them out. Better to avoid the whole thing in the first place,
no matter how great a programmer they are otherwise.

~~~
JamesBarney
I am totally the type of person who values software expediency, and has a lets
just get shit done attitude.

But people like the author who have the opposite attitude are also invaluable.
There are parts of your code base at an organization that need to work, where
doing the expedient thing is doing the wrong thing. People who went told to
don't worry about that just ship the damn thing, fight back so your entire
organizations infrastructure doesn't fall down on itself.

It's more about finding the right person for the job.

------
FearNotDaniel
"CEO". "These people". Fortunately I have questions in my developer interviews
that filter out the snarky techier-than-thou types in favour of those who
actually take an interest in the business whose success their tech skills are
supposed to be supporting.

~~~
number6
That sounds interesting, how do you do it? Which questions do you ask? What
shows you that someone is interested in your business?

~~~
pron
Back when I did hiring interviews I used to ask people to familiarize
themselves a little bit with the organization (could be the whole company or
just a team, depending on size) before the interview, and then ask them why
they want to work _here_. This is so important that I would even ask
applicants to answer this specific question in their cover-letter.

~~~
slyall
I'm not sure that works in the majority of jobs. If you are the world's 27th
largest CRM vendor then how would you expect a programmer to answer that
question?

There is a good chance that after a couple of years they will be as passionate
about the CRM market is you are but 99% of the companies out there are not
Google or somewhere people lust to work at.

~~~
pron
I don't mean why do you want to work at this particular company more than all
other companies, but why do you want to work here at all? What is it that you
find appealing here?

This is also a good meta-question. Even after I write to a candidate to say
that they will be asked this, you'd be surprised how many are unprepared. I
remember one guy who told me, when I asked him, that he's interviewing at so
many places that it's unreasonable to expect him to know any specifics about
this company. I wondered if he thought it reasonable, given how many people I
was interviewing, that I try to know anything specific about him.
Unsurprisingly, that answer is the only thing I remember about him.

~~~
tomjen3
Then you filtered out an honest person.

Lets face it though, it is not that hard to jot down some notes for each
company that you can review in a couple minutes in the car before the
interview.

~~~
pron
Honesty is a necessary condition, but certainly not a sufficient one. If
someone came to the interview and said that they don't really know how to
program, I might appreciate their honesty, but still not hire them, and I
might think badly of them for wasting my time.

And while it's easy to jot down notes and review them (which is what I, as an
interviewer had to do), the fact that some people didn't even do that despite
being told in advance that they should, told me something about them. I didn't
ask them for a take-home exercise or anything too time-consuming, just to know
what it is that we're doing.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
And if the prospective employee asked you what you think makes _you_ special
as an employer, what would you say?

Would have an answer about what makes you unusual and distinctive compared to
tens of other possible employers?

~~~
pron
I don't think you understand. My question isn't why would you like to work
here more than anywhere else, but why would you like to work here? For
example, if we were McDonald's, the answer could be, because I like
hamburgers, or because I like giving service, or because I'm interested in the
supply chain -- not because Burger King sucks. And if the candidate asked me
why I'm interviewing them, of course I'd have an answer, because I prepare for
interviews.

The goal is to know if the candidate knows what we're doing and is interested
in the subject. And remember, we're talking about a high skill, high pay job.

------
fullito
What an attitude :(

If you don't like a company, you have 3 options: 1\. Try to change it, if that
doesn't work -> quit without complaining. It is not your company 2\. If you
don't wanna change it 2.1 quit 2.2 accept how it is

You should not complain and complain and complain. You only make it worse for
people who either like their jobs (for whatever reasons you can't see or
understand) or they have, in comparision to you, no other choice.

I'm not perfect in this, i'm more the 'i complain and start changing things'.

Really shitty old git hosting solution, 6 weeks later it was replaced by me
with gitlab.

Onboarding procedures might be shit, but you should be smart enough to handle
situations like this. Do i care if i have a desk at the first week? No, i will
just work less efficient and if the sitatuion doesn't change i either ask
around and take care of it or i quit. And with quitting i don't mean rage quit
i mean 'hey so yeah super sry about this but i have the feeling that we are
not a good match.' quit.

------
sergiotapia
I don't care how many years you have on the job, not knowing the CEO's
face/name of a company you're just joining is weird.

~~~
Aloha
I work for a 200 person company, I didn't figure out who the CEO was for about
two weeks from when I was hired

~~~
dkersten
As a counterpoint, I work for a 1500 company and was told/shown who the
management and such were in my first week. I guess it depends on the company,
you and your boss.

~~~
Aloha
I think it depends on how layered the company is, I have never interacted with
someone above the VP/Director level, my job just doesnt call for it.

~~~
dkersten
I haven't interacted with the executive team either, but I still know who they
key people are.

------
mister_hn
Although it might feel weird as onboarding, as developer you should get used
to use commands like curl or be able to set your development environment by
typing in the console.

Those who rely only on simple installers are the one classified as red-flags

~~~
toyg
I think the point of that paragraph is that it’s busywork: just type this
magic incantation to do things that some sysadmin could do (and probably
should have done) for you in advance, without any real explanation of why or
what you’re doing it. She knows what curl is.

~~~
heyoni
I bet it was homebrew.

