Code and business value are worthless. Boss approval is literally everything.
It really doesn’t matter if your ideas make a ton of business sense if they are in conflict with your direct manager or any part in the chain of hierarchy. As long as they don’t like what you’re saying - you’re literally worse than worthless. Often this is because your idea isn’t their idea - therefore damage to ego. Damage to ego means get that guy out of here and make sure I don’t hear more from them.
People need to understand that you’re hired for a job. You’re a glorified and well compensated code monkey. Even at $1m/yr - still a god damn code monkey. You jump when they say jump.
I’ve yet to meet any hierarchy chains that are truly open minded to a low level IC saying anything that counters them. I’ve worked at quite a few places too and talked to a lot of folks about this.
You’ll thank me in ten years because you’ll become a bootlicker and actually make progress in your career rather than being stuck in senior/staff until you burnout from the industry.
Bosses are humans. They can be wrong. They can be convinced. Even manipulated, if that's your game.
> you’re hired for a job. You’re a glorified and well compensated code monkey
Only if you choose to treat yourself like one. I'm hired for my domain expertise that my bosses lack. I can understand 60-80% of their domain, they can understand 5% of my domain. When I'm saying that feature that they want is a nice-to-have and I don't want to build it unless I see evidence of it's value, they usually listen.
> I’ve yet to meet any hierarchy chains that are truly open minded to a low level IC saying anything that counters them
I worked at multiple startups (between 4 and 100 in size) and I always had a voice, even early in my career. Maybe you're the problem?
> you’ll become a bootlicker and actually make progress in your career rather than being stuck in senior/staff
Where exactly does the bootlicker progress? A code monkey doesn't become VP/C-level through bootlicking, there are plenty others with much better soft skills. At best you'll be a code monkey turned manager (which is worse than staff).
Code and business value are worthless. Boss approval is literally everything.
It really doesn’t matter if your ideas make a ton of business sense if they are in conflict with your direct manager or any part in the chain of hierarchy. As long as they don’t like what you’re saying - you’re literally worse than worthless. Often this is because your idea isn’t their idea - therefore damage to ego. Damage to ego means get that guy out of here and make sure I don’t hear more from them.
People need to understand that you’re hired for a job. You’re a glorified and well compensated code monkey. Even at $1m/yr - still a god damn code monkey. You jump when they say jump.
I’ve yet to meet any hierarchy chains that are truly open minded to a low level IC saying anything that counters them. I’ve worked at quite a few places too and talked to a lot of folks about this.
You’ll thank me in ten years because you’ll become a bootlicker and actually make progress in your career rather than being stuck in senior/staff until you burnout from the industry.