Okay.
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@polotek how does this related to the split between "big tech" and the rest of the industry? If you are working for a startup with 20 or so employees there is not a lot of room for titles even though the most junior position could come with the responsibility to "do whatever it takes"; big tech has all sort of pathological practices such as stack ranking, OKRs, bloated process and technology, ...
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@UP8 for what it's worth, most of my experience is in startups. This is absolutely happening there as well. Startups get away with it for longer by just not having a career ladder at all. But as soon as they do, they feel the same pressure.
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@polotek in platoon-sized startups you get the role based on when you entered not on being good at the job; eng teams can get some stuff done even if the eng. manager doesn’t know how long the build takes or has a meeting and tells you about a bunch of conventions we follow and we also do code review but then when you look at the code those conventions aren’t followed even though is the job of the manager that process is in place, followed and changed if it doesn’t work
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@UP8 I love when people shit on managers all the way up until something is happening that they think should be fixed. Managers can't make people follow conventions. Their only levers are firing people and not giving people promotions. Engineers don't get fired that often. And most of the time, they are willing to take the promotion risk to not to do things they don't wanna do.
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@polotek I think that's a pessimistic view; in 2024 "voice" seems to be missing from most people's version of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty
My current manager really does look at my code and send things back he doesn't believe in; certainly our code doesn't reflect all our ideals (test coverage is great for security code, poor for React where a "simple" test seems to take 4 sec to run) but there is not the complete disconnect from reality I've seen in many places.
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@UP8 it doesn't have anything to do with being pessimistic. And it's not about what your manager does or does not do. It's about what you do. If your manager asks you to fix the code, and you don't agree, what do you expect to happen?
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@polotek other areas seem so much more mature; they are building a building out my window and they have enough sense of schedule that they can schedule the rental of a big-ass crane when they need it; there are various structures such as trade unions, occupational licensing, etc.; I've seen places in industries such as food service and grocery stores where management cultivates espirit de corps and others that don't; just setting a good example is powerful
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@polotek the cases that bother me are where the manager tells me I can't fix the code and we have to soldier on; there was that time I put in a ticket about my 40 minute build and had to explain how this helps the customer and I said "the customer would have had the product 6 months ago if I had a 5 minutes build"; i did get it to 20 minutes and managed to ship two major revisions despite this
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@UP8 do you know what unions are for? And why they exist? I'm just not sure what world you're describing.
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@UP8 if you just want to talk about what bothers you personally, that's fine. But you don't really need me for that. Like I said, people love to shit on managers.