
Ask HN: Enterprise, what to do, when it sucks the life and fun out of you? - antocv
Seriously, you see in my profile I love GNU&#x2F;Linux, it was just very fun to do, even Gentoo back in 2002 or something.<p>Now I am payed to work with Linux, to make some kind of distribution of it basically. And I hate it, I fucking hate it. Not Linux per se, just its not fun anymore. I think its because of all these managers running around taking really retarded decisions concerning the product, just playing politics, like house of cards style, and still manage to convince the higher leadership what we are doing is quality work. While I sit here and see the pile of shit the product is. We&#x27;re too few developers who want to do the right thing, quality way, and now we&#x27;re known as the complainers and obstructors of the project, and as over-engineers.<p>What to do?
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Varkiil
My brother knew a guy back in highschool who was of the genius kind. After
graduating he went to become a pilot in command and succeeded being one of the
best as the genius he was. He had a dream job and a dream pay yet he didn't
like it so he searched for what he really wanted to do, deep down. He
afterwards left his job and went to Scotland to herd sheeps. Never heard of
him since, probably because he loves it and never came back.

You should do what you love, not what people want you to love.

Or be a willingful humble slave, the most wanted employee ever.

~~~
mak4athp
> You should do what you love, not what people want you to love.

While that part's very true, one should be wary about running off to herd
sheep. It's really quite likely that your brother's acquaintance is nearly as
unhappy in what he's doing now as he was then. Discontent has a way of
following you around until you figure out the internal factors that drive it
for you.

------
pvaldes
Your problem is that you are thinking too much. You have a job, a lot of
people just don't have any.

Stop being too worried about the possibility to fail because, 1) this don't
helps you and 2) sad news, you can't control all aspects of this. Some crap
software sold millions, enough money to became a very good software in the
next versions; some very good software instead was largely ignored because,
bad luck. Maybe they were not enough smart to sell himselves, or they were too
smart to be understood, or they think that their good software was unfinished
or a crap and give up... maybe

If the product that you are creating is "a pile of shit", just pick up a
shovel and make a better product, step by step; Just make it slightly better
that the other piles of shit out there.

And, for Pete's sake, you are being paid!. Learn how to spend your money in
creative ways.

You are tired? Ask someone to give you a massage. You are boored?. Just have
some fun with your money. Try a new sport. Do something that you never did
before. The planet will not explode if you just have some fun this weekend.

------
bengali3
I can lose passion for a task when i'm not solving genuine problems, sometimes
it seems like i'm just shuffling bits/paper from pile A back to pile B. He're
my 2 bits:

Connect: - Conferences & online - hey wanna talk product ideas? - i'm game?
email me at [uname} at g mail

Teach: - I love teaching what I know. Got no one?

Give: - Figure out what your friends want, help them get there: promotion,
skills, pay?

Learn something new: - For me, I restarted my flight training and picked up my
daughters guitar.

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itnAAnti
Also, check out the Spotify Company Culture video on YouTube. Find a company
like this to work for.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mpsn3WaI_4k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mpsn3WaI_4k)

~~~
bengali3
This is great, thank you.

What resources are out there for finding companies great cultures? What should
this look like?

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gadders
If work was non-stop fun, they wouldn't have to pay you to do it.

If your work is your whole life, then I would suggest moving somewhere where
you are happier. If you work just as a means to live, then suck it up
(assuming it's not completely toxic). It's work, not fun.

~~~
6d0debc071
> If work was non-stop fun, they wouldn't have to pay you to do it.

My work's fun enough I do essentially the same thing in my free time. But if
they didn't pay they wouldn't profit from the work I do for them. What they're
buying is the ability to impose scarcity.

------
thorin
Well, you have 2 options (possibly 3!)

1\. Get a new job doing something more to your taste. Easy if your skills,
salary expectations and local job opportunities are compatible. Remember
though it's a job, so it will always have some bad parts. Or do a startup if
you don't have money worries.

2\. Stay and do what you are told (with an occasional moan!) This is a pretty
common scenario for a lot of people.

3\. Try and change things. Slowly... This may require compromise and improving
your communication and influencing skills to people who may not have technical
knowledge but have some kind of power.

Good luck!

~~~
tuyguntn
1\. Don't quit immediately if you have choice, I will probably disagree with
this.

2 and 3 is almost similar. Lots of us here try to build something cool, if you
think your product will be loved by others stay there and just finish product,
do not think about code, hardware spec and anything other than product, just
build that product, make it work. Clients will not look at your code or how
you designed your system, they will look for result, it works or not.

Just make it work and when others (especially management) are happy, tell
them, hey guys because we had deadlines and other shit, we built product with
shit design, let us work on it and fix it, otherwise when clients ask for
improvement we will fail. when management is happy they will give you a time
to fix shit.

I guess in every product there are lots of bugs and shit stuff inside, but
they are selling and improving, as Donald Knuth said "Premature optimization
is the root of all evil".

If it doesn't work than you can leave, just don't forget when deadlines are
coming every "cool" startup, every "cool" hardware creates monkey patch, just
to make it work and sell well.

~~~
antocv
No offense but you are expressing is what I hate the most

\- "just get it done", "just make it work", cut corners, allow shit design

Its not going to lead to any product at all, its not bad low quality product,
its shit noone would ever want to touch with a pole, hardly to pay for. Thats
the state of the product.

In fact, what these managers and some developers do is generate more shit by
taking more time, more unnecessary code and tools, and more resources
involved, I think they hired this many people totally unnecessarily, like more
than half could be fired and noone would notice.

~~~
tuyguntn
"its not bad low quality product, its shit noone would ever want to touch with
a pole, HARDLY TO PAY FOR" \- then you got your answer, if you are doing thing
which nobody needs or no one wants to pay for it, just leave. But consider the
fact, you are tech-guy, for many tech-guys some products may seem useless, but
there are lots of people who may pay for it and use it everyday. Saying "leave
your job" is very easy, because as OP I am not leaving my job, you are going
to leave. think about cases, eliminate best cases if they are unrealistic.

\- best case: top management says: ok, seems you got it right, lets make
product as this guy said.

\- worst case: you leave your job

\- something in the middle(1): you will make that shit happen, you get salary
for it, if product fails you leave

\- something in the middle(2): same with above, but you don't leave, you try
to make product better

\- something in the middle(3): you fight for better design, better product,
present your arguments, show people that you know more about product, about
market than any other managers, so they may consider your facts

------
itnAAnti
This isn't advice per se, but rather a slightly different perspective.

The frustration and friction between technical staff and management staff that
you describe is reality in every company that I have worked, from 50 employees
to 50,000 employees. I hear that some new engineering-driven company cultures
(Spotify, Zappos) are different, but I think those companies are extremely few
and far between.

I am a software engineer by training and hobby, and a Director of IT by
profession. One of my teams that is responsible for some Linux sys admin and
some web programming is led by a very diligent and smart manager, who happens
to have comparatively little technical knowledge. When I first started
overseeing the team, there were occasional flair-ups between some engineers
and the non-technical manager, which made both sides miserable. Since
intervening a few times and employing a specific tactic, things have become
noticeably better.

First, here’s what I have observed that leads to manager/engineer friction,
and if not addressed, eventual misery.

Generally speaking and in my experience, engineers want to create things that
are engineered beautifully: robust, elegant, simple, extensible, and easy to
maintain. That takes time, patience, care, and hard work. To be asked to call
a half-finished project good enough, or worse, to throw things out and
consider all of the invested time as wasted, is naturally infuriating to
anyone, but engineers are asked to do these two things more often than most
other professions, in my experience.

Managers are paid to make sure what is being done is in the best interest of
the organization, which has financial obligations to maintain. Many
organizations are just squeaking by financially; they don't have the luxury of
taking the care and patience that most engineers want to put in, and it’s
managers’ jobs to find the right balance between good technical solutions and
good business. The results of those decisions are messy, and rarely will
management and the technical staff see things eye-to-eye.

These different perspectives and different motivations lead to friction, but
poor communication exacerbates it. Managers have their own language, which has
been parodied all over (drill down, actionable, win-win, ROI, etc.) and
engineers have their own language (insert programming jargon and/or tech
acronym soup here) that has been similarly parodied, and the two don’t overlap
much.

When this happened on my team, I took a lot of time to talk to everyone
involved about what was going on. Since I speak both manager-speak, and
engineer-speak, I pretty quickly understood that what both were saying was
reasonable. They just didn’t have a good understanding of what pressures and
job-realities the other was dealing with, and didn’t have a common vocabulary
to communicate their respective frustrations and challenges.

To smooth over the fraying relations on my team, I sat down with the
engineering staff, and the manager, first separately, and then together. To
the engineers I explained the goals and motivations of the manager, what
pressure he/she was receiving from me, and what pressure I was receiving from
the CIO and CEO. To the manager, I explained the realities that the technical
team was dealing with – the occasional unknowns of software engineering, and
how estimates can be dramatically off in ways that is not incompetence or
malice, but merely unforeseen technical compilations.

Over time, I was able to teach the two factions to understand each other a
little better. I asked them each to over-explain problems to one other, in
simplified (shared) terminology, rather than throwing up their hands at what
they thought were unreasonable demands or seemingly insubordinate responses.
Over time, they have come to realize that the other group isn’t malicious or
incompetent, but merely functions very differently from themselves. They trust
each other a little more now, so when the engineers say something will take a
week, the manager trusts them and doesn’t demand that it should be done in a
day. When the manager explains that unfortunately we have to pull the plug on
a project because our funding was cut, the engineers can trust that management
genuinely fought for the project, but business reality dictated otherwise.

So if I have any advice for you, it is to get more involved in the business
side of your organization. Business decisions and playing politics are rarely
as stupid as they seem once you understand them.

~~~
egor83
That's a great writeup, thanks!

Would you mind putting some contact info here (or in your profile - email
address you provide for registration is not shown publicly)?

~~~
itnAAnti
Best way to reach me is tchad@me.com Alternately, linkedin.com/in/tchadrogers

