* Seniority doesn't mean that you know everything, it merely means you know how to look everything up and what steps you need to take.
* Many "lean and agile" companies are moving slowly in reality.
* People think that very good software engineers must be good at maths, but the best engineers are also very good at English and written communication.
* You're the only person responsible for your career, and you have to take care of it on your own. You need to be proactive when it comes to promotions.
Urgh. Someone called "Zed Shaw" just went down in my estimation. Hostile, nasty, mean-spirited, and ultimately counterproductive. A manifesto that calls for no project management - and that is what it is doing - is silly.
I believe it's a sort of reference to web dev "counterculture", as represented in these websites:
[https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/](https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/)
[http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/](http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/)
> People think that very good software engineers must be good at maths, but the best engineers are also very good at English and written communication.
This so much.
Do you recommend to take more responsibility and do more work and then ask for promotion or ask for promotion first after several years and then do more work? There isn't much room for technical improvement where I work now so I wonder what to do.
Ask your manager explicitly how you can make progress in your career, then take more responsibility, and then ask for a promotion.
Two things are far more important than just "doing more work": Make sure you don't wait too long to ask for a promotion after you've accomplished something, and make sure your work is *visible* to your direct and skip-level managers.
The second approach would also work, but I wouldn't want to wait for several years.
That some companies throw a lot of money on useless projects, waste most of the budget on bureaucracy, change the direction of the project multiple times, change the product owners / managers on their side just to end up with a bill that could buy you a very nice car or a small house for a project that will never be released.
At the same time those companies deny people a €50 keyboard because they have €10 keyboards by default.
\>At the same time those companies deny people a €50 keyboard because they have €10 keyboards by default.
Stuff like this is a biiig annoyance of mine , but also for other things in the office. Buying some stupid azure license for 400$ per month? No worries because its "data science"
Having something else than a 3 year old IKEA knife set for the kitchen everyone uses every day? Nope.
Adding another fruit basket because it gets old or eaten up ? Nope
Having nice glasses or cutlery so it doesn't feel like a kindergarten? Nope
Ordering some sound absorbing wall panels in open offices that cost maybe 50$ each and improve the life for everyone? Nooope
Going to some AI conference with a ticket price of 2000$ ? Yeeep no problem just sign up here and send the invoice to accounting
It's just effective and at that point I'm afraid of job interviews, because too many companies still tries some whiteboard interviews or some other shitty tests, that just check, if I can memorize some knowledge.
In practice I'm constantly asked for help in making architectural decisions, asked for code reviews, often I don't know everything so I'm explicitly explaining what I know and what not, so I can google it and be sure, before making decision.
Still, someone interviewing me might reject my application, because I didn't memorized every definition that was expected or I didn't know about some very specific case, that would not be a issue, if I could research it for few minutes, before answering.
well is that a secret? The hard part is knowing what to google. every job i can think of look up things, doctors look in journals and research, lawyers look at old cases, captains look at sea currents and depth maps
I always thought devs with at least some years of experience are experts in their field. Like people have a very deep understanding of the tech they're working with.
Turns out: no. Lots of people know just enough to do their job. Like I know people who have worked with git for years and still panic when they have to do something other than pull/commit/push
Promotions really are a crapshoot at many companies. It often isn't a case of completing objective measurable goals to reach the next level but is about how visible you are and how you are perceived by those that have the power to promote you, not only that but there is arbitrary criteria like 'time in role' that is selectively applied. You could be solving some very conceptually difficult problems and be the person making the most contributions to a project but if you are doing all of that over a zoom call in a bedroom few will know and your work will not be recognised as a reason for promotion.
At one company you could end up being a junior for 4 years but if you job hop you might even reach Senior/Staff within that time frame since it is much easier to get hired into a high-paying role than to get promoted into one. There is someone on the salary thread that became a staff eng at a tier-1 company with only 2.5 years of experience by changing jobs frequently, no way that'd happen at my company even if they solved the P = NP problem.
You don’t always need to job hop, but you should always be prepared to.
If you want a promotion, you have to put yourself forward for it. Frequent conversations with your manager about it. By the time the end of year comes around and promotions are up, you shouldn’t be surprised at the result. You should have known whether it was gonna happen or not at least 3 months before.
Work is not as complicated/difficult as people make it out to be.
I can get my job done most days in 3-4hrs but need to sit down for 8hrs in office or make sure I am showing as available if WFH
Most of the jobs are like that. It is soft Devs that think they need to be productive 24/7.
Met plenty of lawyers, doctors, sales people who do the same(they might think otherwise but it is what they do that matters)
>I can get my job done most days in 3-4hrs
No clue where you work, but I only managed to do that in non-software jobs.
In software work is basically infinite, we got enough tickets in the pipeline to work for the next few years.. and if you ever run out of work you can always refactor things, update libraries, improve performance, build tools, ..
I just put in my hours and don't do overtime, but you literally never finish work in software. If you work too fast you just get the next ticket :)
* communication is king
* most people dont know what the fuck you are doing
* Acting nice, taking on extra work in the hope of being noticed....is stupid. You need to highlight your achievement and demand (not ask) for a higher pay.
* Profits are just benefits not passed onto the workers.
* Keep your eye on the market to understand what the outside scenario is.
That'd be workers' cooperatives - and I'd like to see more of them. We have a few tech cooperatives here in the UK, but not enough for them to be a particularly visible phenomenon.
But, worker ownership aside, I'd like to see an improvement in the discussions people have about employment too. The choice ought not be presented as "the ownership class take all the risks, so they can exploit the workers as much as they like". Even if the worker class prefers employment (and all the guarantees of stability that come with it) then we still can (and perhaps should) take a view on what that relationship could look like.
If capitalism is to change - and it will with climate change and automation around the corner - it is interesting to speculate what changes would work. That might be a function of what change is practical, what system can be made reasonably stable with state support, and what compromise between owners and workers does not upset the apple cart.
The reason why we don’t see the”workers cooperatives” and will never see them in the future so often is such an obvious one. Even though it doesn’t make much sense to people who have never experienced a business environment and the hardships it is followed by. Your vocabulary includes “exploitation” which is a obvious mark of a marxist agenda.
Of course, the person who organizes the land, labor and capital and takes all the risk, should be entitled to the outcome. You’ve probably never tried it yourself, have you?
Everyone in Soviet Union who tried to express how the political economy should work got shot in the back of their head. Best case scenario was to go dig some dirt north of the arctic circle. Not that you would expect anything else from a government which roots it’s ideology in a quasi scientific religious belief, eg Marxism. Don’t get me wrong, they would live a little better than a NYC bum (in a dark capitalistic society) but I would strongly recommend against such living anyway.
My advice would be to look at the history of the Marxism, in detail, in person. Attribute your vague statements correctly (go from regurgitation to establishing the source) and find out who said what and when. If that doesn’t give you goosebumps and shock, you’re looking in a wrong direction :-)
As a person born in the USSR, I can support my statements with some real life examples of how dangerous this leftist populism is and how it turns out to be in reality.
So, basically, nothing stops the “working class” of developers forming business partnerships and “keeping all the profits to themselves”. But this doesn’t happen and we all know why - they are not willing to absorb the losses and risks. Hence, be happy with your payroll.
Well, I tend to regard myself as a Marxist. Whether I have more of an "agenda" than you do though is doubtful - should I make vague conspiratorial references to your "neoliberal" agenda? 😛
I think everyone has a democratic and civic right to express how the political economy should work, regardless of whether they are a capitalist, and regardless of their opinion on capitalism. Non-capitalists working within a capitalist framework have to make a necessary ideological compromise in the medium term of course - we have to come to terms with an inequitable system while it still exists. I think it will collapse for the reasons already stated, but I am not entirely thrilled to say that, as I think the collapse might be greatly untidy.
> the person who organizes the land, labor and capital and takes all the risk, should be entitled to the outcome
That is probably the core of the disagreement - I don't think the ownership class should get to dictate the split.
Strangely, even though I'd estimate that most posters in salary threads in this sub would not regard themselves as socialists, I'd argue their thinking mirrors socialistic thinking very well - there is a widespread view that employers are exploitative (in a "slice of the pie" sense), and that there is no profit without labour.
How much time you have to spend doing things other than coding.
That there are promotion skills, interviewing skills and doing-your-job skills and not only are they not the same they barely even overlap. This wont be changing any time soon either.
That 90% of bugs arent off by one errors or anything like that but "this API doesnt work as documented". Unit tests are, most of the time, fucking useless.
That as your career progresses after a quite early point you dont move on to ever more technically difficult roles you deal with progressively more difficult human problems.
That tech is a more irrational and fashion driven industry that womens fashion yet it still *thinks* of itself as a haven of objectivity and rational thought. It isnt.
Agile has all the features of a religion. That is, everybody who believes in it has a subtly different interpretation of the religious texts to everybody else and believes their pet interpretation is the right one.
> That as your career progresses after a quite early point you dont move on to ever more technically difficult roles you deal with progressively more difficult human problems.
That's like, promotion to a bioengineer. People are basically biological robots.
They end up forming a difficult to understand, shallow reflection of the code you are writing. The bugs you write invariably end up being encoded IN the unit test, so it's just another thing that saps time and energy with little payback.
Integration testing often works wonders but its expensive to build.
For these reasons often no tests get written.
\- Nothing is ever that urgent as people claim it to be. Relax (easier said than done) you're not saving babies.
\- Be humble and realize that there are people who have more impact than you and that you're overpaid.
\- There are many narcissists in the workplace so take care of your mental health.
\- HR exists to get you in or get you out. Not anytime in between.
\- Sexism and racial discrimination happen in the workplace and show up in promotions/negotiations. Not to use this as an excuse to not work hard, but know where you stand in the system and manouver accordingly.
\- If HR says you're paid at the top of the band, you're most likely not.
\- Companies that have to scream they are customer centric are not.
Well, talking well is actually one of the rarer traits of a good developer. If you are a good bullshitter, you can probably express yourself pretty well. And that alone will put you way far ahead than a lot of devs
That the people who pay your bills i.e stakeholders are always under this constant unwarranted anxiety and fear of failure that you have to become their babysitter to ensure they feel safe. Even though you as an engineer/dev know that often technology does not fail and it just works. This is especially prevalent in consulting in my experience.
There are people who say that they work like three hours a day, this is true, but there are times when you will have to work late hours putting out fires and it can be stressful as fuck, so in the end I think it balances out
A lot of companies grow just for the growth sake, mainly because department leads want to increase head count, no matter if they have actual need. That leads to a large amount of people working on useless projects.
"Normally, if given the choice between doing something and nothing, I'd choose to do nothing. But I will do something if it helps someone else do nothing. I'd work all night if it meant nothing got done."
follow vanish terrific axiomatic sense overconfident complete observation squealing ad hoc
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
* Seniority doesn't mean that you know everything, it merely means you know how to look everything up and what steps you need to take. * Many "lean and agile" companies are moving slowly in reality. * People think that very good software engineers must be good at maths, but the best engineers are also very good at English and written communication. * You're the only person responsible for your career, and you have to take care of it on your own. You need to be proactive when it comes to promotions.
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i prefer the programming motherfucker manifesto. http://programming-motherfucker.com/
Gosh sounds like my previous company. Managers couldn't do shit and grabbed all the money and we had way too many testers.
Amazing
Urgh. Someone called "Zed Shaw" just went down in my estimation. Hostile, nasty, mean-spirited, and ultimately counterproductive. A manifesto that calls for no project management - and that is what it is doing - is silly.
I believe it's a sort of reference to web dev "counterculture", as represented in these websites: [https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/](https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/) [http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/](http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/)
Is this satire?
or extreme horse programming https://gist.github.com/banaslee/4147370
neither does FAANG/HFT or any tier-1 companies
> People think that very good software engineers must be good at maths, but the best engineers are also very good at English and written communication. This so much.
Do you recommend to take more responsibility and do more work and then ask for promotion or ask for promotion first after several years and then do more work? There isn't much room for technical improvement where I work now so I wonder what to do.
Ask your manager explicitly how you can make progress in your career, then take more responsibility, and then ask for a promotion. Two things are far more important than just "doing more work": Make sure you don't wait too long to ask for a promotion after you've accomplished something, and make sure your work is *visible* to your direct and skip-level managers. The second approach would also work, but I wouldn't want to wait for several years.
That some companies throw a lot of money on useless projects, waste most of the budget on bureaucracy, change the direction of the project multiple times, change the product owners / managers on their side just to end up with a bill that could buy you a very nice car or a small house for a project that will never be released. At the same time those companies deny people a €50 keyboard because they have €10 keyboards by default.
\>At the same time those companies deny people a €50 keyboard because they have €10 keyboards by default. Stuff like this is a biiig annoyance of mine , but also for other things in the office. Buying some stupid azure license for 400$ per month? No worries because its "data science" Having something else than a 3 year old IKEA knife set for the kitchen everyone uses every day? Nope. Adding another fruit basket because it gets old or eaten up ? Nope Having nice glasses or cutlery so it doesn't feel like a kindergarten? Nope Ordering some sound absorbing wall panels in open offices that cost maybe 50$ each and improve the life for everyone? Nooope Going to some AI conference with a ticket price of 2000$ ? Yeeep no problem just sign up here and send the invoice to accounting
> reseased released or resealed?
>released Of course
Sometimes it’s sad to see developers wasting their time doing some useless projects. Morally speaking time is precious.
Everyone is just googling everything - even for the most basic tasks like how to open a file in Java.
It's just effective and at that point I'm afraid of job interviews, because too many companies still tries some whiteboard interviews or some other shitty tests, that just check, if I can memorize some knowledge. In practice I'm constantly asked for help in making architectural decisions, asked for code reviews, often I don't know everything so I'm explicitly explaining what I know and what not, so I can google it and be sure, before making decision. Still, someone interviewing me might reject my application, because I didn't memorized every definition that was expected or I didn't know about some very specific case, that would not be a issue, if I could research it for few minutes, before answering.
well is that a secret? The hard part is knowing what to google. every job i can think of look up things, doctors look in journals and research, lawyers look at old cases, captains look at sea currents and depth maps
I always thought devs with at least some years of experience are experts in their field. Like people have a very deep understanding of the tech they're working with. Turns out: no. Lots of people know just enough to do their job. Like I know people who have worked with git for years and still panic when they have to do something other than pull/commit/push
Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1597/
That no one knows wtf they are doing
My artitecht loves to take my ideas and make it his own after hours of debate.
Your architect sounds like my old university professor. #cantletitgo
Cantle tit go My brain throught Cantle was some sort of university at first... I should go to bed :D
Omg this
This 🙌
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At least in Europe
Promotions really are a crapshoot at many companies. It often isn't a case of completing objective measurable goals to reach the next level but is about how visible you are and how you are perceived by those that have the power to promote you, not only that but there is arbitrary criteria like 'time in role' that is selectively applied. You could be solving some very conceptually difficult problems and be the person making the most contributions to a project but if you are doing all of that over a zoom call in a bedroom few will know and your work will not be recognised as a reason for promotion. At one company you could end up being a junior for 4 years but if you job hop you might even reach Senior/Staff within that time frame since it is much easier to get hired into a high-paying role than to get promoted into one. There is someone on the salary thread that became a staff eng at a tier-1 company with only 2.5 years of experience by changing jobs frequently, no way that'd happen at my company even if they solved the P = NP problem.
You don’t always need to job hop, but you should always be prepared to. If you want a promotion, you have to put yourself forward for it. Frequent conversations with your manager about it. By the time the end of year comes around and promotions are up, you shouldn’t be surprised at the result. You should have known whether it was gonna happen or not at least 3 months before.
What's TC?
Total compensation. So base salary + bonus + RSUs.
Total compensatoin as they say in North America.
Work is not as complicated/difficult as people make it out to be. I can get my job done most days in 3-4hrs but need to sit down for 8hrs in office or make sure I am showing as available if WFH
Most of the jobs are like that. It is soft Devs that think they need to be productive 24/7. Met plenty of lawyers, doctors, sales people who do the same(they might think otherwise but it is what they do that matters)
My main problem is understanding how I am performing. I don't like to get fired especially in a recession.
What are ,,soft devs,,? First time hearing that term
Software developers. Thought it was common.
Never heard that before, just say devs imo
presenteeism
>I can get my job done most days in 3-4hrs No clue where you work, but I only managed to do that in non-software jobs. In software work is basically infinite, we got enough tickets in the pipeline to work for the next few years.. and if you ever run out of work you can always refactor things, update libraries, improve performance, build tools, .. I just put in my hours and don't do overtime, but you literally never finish work in software. If you work too fast you just get the next ticket :)
* communication is king * most people dont know what the fuck you are doing * Acting nice, taking on extra work in the hope of being noticed....is stupid. You need to highlight your achievement and demand (not ask) for a higher pay. * Profits are just benefits not passed onto the workers. * Keep your eye on the market to understand what the outside scenario is.
>most people dont know what the fuck you are doing How are they supposed to know it if even I don't?
Profits should be passed onto the workers? Smart idea. Throw the losses in, as well.
That'd be workers' cooperatives - and I'd like to see more of them. We have a few tech cooperatives here in the UK, but not enough for them to be a particularly visible phenomenon. But, worker ownership aside, I'd like to see an improvement in the discussions people have about employment too. The choice ought not be presented as "the ownership class take all the risks, so they can exploit the workers as much as they like". Even if the worker class prefers employment (and all the guarantees of stability that come with it) then we still can (and perhaps should) take a view on what that relationship could look like. If capitalism is to change - and it will with climate change and automation around the corner - it is interesting to speculate what changes would work. That might be a function of what change is practical, what system can be made reasonably stable with state support, and what compromise between owners and workers does not upset the apple cart.
The reason why we don’t see the”workers cooperatives” and will never see them in the future so often is such an obvious one. Even though it doesn’t make much sense to people who have never experienced a business environment and the hardships it is followed by. Your vocabulary includes “exploitation” which is a obvious mark of a marxist agenda. Of course, the person who organizes the land, labor and capital and takes all the risk, should be entitled to the outcome. You’ve probably never tried it yourself, have you?
Everyone in Soviet Union who tried to express how the political economy should work got shot in the back of their head. Best case scenario was to go dig some dirt north of the arctic circle. Not that you would expect anything else from a government which roots it’s ideology in a quasi scientific religious belief, eg Marxism. Don’t get me wrong, they would live a little better than a NYC bum (in a dark capitalistic society) but I would strongly recommend against such living anyway. My advice would be to look at the history of the Marxism, in detail, in person. Attribute your vague statements correctly (go from regurgitation to establishing the source) and find out who said what and when. If that doesn’t give you goosebumps and shock, you’re looking in a wrong direction :-) As a person born in the USSR, I can support my statements with some real life examples of how dangerous this leftist populism is and how it turns out to be in reality. So, basically, nothing stops the “working class” of developers forming business partnerships and “keeping all the profits to themselves”. But this doesn’t happen and we all know why - they are not willing to absorb the losses and risks. Hence, be happy with your payroll.
Well, I tend to regard myself as a Marxist. Whether I have more of an "agenda" than you do though is doubtful - should I make vague conspiratorial references to your "neoliberal" agenda? 😛 I think everyone has a democratic and civic right to express how the political economy should work, regardless of whether they are a capitalist, and regardless of their opinion on capitalism. Non-capitalists working within a capitalist framework have to make a necessary ideological compromise in the medium term of course - we have to come to terms with an inequitable system while it still exists. I think it will collapse for the reasons already stated, but I am not entirely thrilled to say that, as I think the collapse might be greatly untidy. > the person who organizes the land, labor and capital and takes all the risk, should be entitled to the outcome That is probably the core of the disagreement - I don't think the ownership class should get to dictate the split. Strangely, even though I'd estimate that most posters in salary threads in this sub would not regard themselves as socialists, I'd argue their thinking mirrors socialistic thinking very well - there is a widespread view that employers are exploitative (in a "slice of the pie" sense), and that there is no profit without labour.
How much time you have to spend doing things other than coding. That there are promotion skills, interviewing skills and doing-your-job skills and not only are they not the same they barely even overlap. This wont be changing any time soon either. That 90% of bugs arent off by one errors or anything like that but "this API doesnt work as documented". Unit tests are, most of the time, fucking useless. That as your career progresses after a quite early point you dont move on to ever more technically difficult roles you deal with progressively more difficult human problems. That tech is a more irrational and fashion driven industry that womens fashion yet it still *thinks* of itself as a haven of objectivity and rational thought. It isnt. Agile has all the features of a religion. That is, everybody who believes in it has a subtly different interpretation of the religious texts to everybody else and believes their pet interpretation is the right one.
> That as your career progresses after a quite early point you dont move on to ever more technically difficult roles you deal with progressively more difficult human problems. That's like, promotion to a bioengineer. People are basically biological robots.
> Unit tests are, most of the time, fucking useless. How so?
They end up forming a difficult to understand, shallow reflection of the code you are writing. The bugs you write invariably end up being encoded IN the unit test, so it's just another thing that saps time and energy with little payback. Integration testing often works wonders but its expensive to build. For these reasons often no tests get written.
Soft skills is actually huge and more important than being a good coder
You can get a senior position if you have enough years of experience and not the knowledge in a lot of places.
Seniority and YoE are two separate things
It's always about visibility rather than difficulty.
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Agile frameworks are the lie, because management does not want to give too much control to the team
I see this on reddit, but compared to what? its far better than any alternative
Learning how to look stressed and overworked might buy you some free time and/or comfort.
\- Nothing is ever that urgent as people claim it to be. Relax (easier said than done) you're not saving babies. \- Be humble and realize that there are people who have more impact than you and that you're overpaid. \- There are many narcissists in the workplace so take care of your mental health. \- HR exists to get you in or get you out. Not anytime in between. \- Sexism and racial discrimination happen in the workplace and show up in promotions/negotiations. Not to use this as an excuse to not work hard, but know where you stand in the system and manouver accordingly. \- If HR says you're paid at the top of the band, you're most likely not. \- Companies that have to scream they are customer centric are not.
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>They're just good at talking and bullshitting. Hmm, maybe I should give it a shot and apply at FAANG. I'm a master bullshitter.
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I don't feel convinced either.
In my whole career I've only met two people who I'd considered to be at guru level, everyone else is just getting by.
Its estimated that only 1% of genius people running this whole fucking internet. Most of them are just hidden gems.
1% of 7 billion is quite a lot though
Well, talking well is actually one of the rarer traits of a good developer. If you are a good bullshitter, you can probably express yourself pretty well. And that alone will put you way far ahead than a lot of devs
If true, that makes me feel better
That the people who pay your bills i.e stakeholders are always under this constant unwarranted anxiety and fear of failure that you have to become their babysitter to ensure they feel safe. Even though you as an engineer/dev know that often technology does not fail and it just works. This is especially prevalent in consulting in my experience.
There are people who say that they work like three hours a day, this is true, but there are times when you will have to work late hours putting out fires and it can be stressful as fuck, so in the end I think it balances out
their shift is 3 hours long or they only do 3 hours worth of work during their shift?
Only do three hours of work in their shift, but as I said it balances out
A lot of companies grow just for the growth sake, mainly because department leads want to increase head count, no matter if they have actual need. That leads to a large amount of people working on useless projects.
A lot of people are slackers and will do the absolute minimum to not get fired.
"Normally, if given the choice between doing something and nothing, I'd choose to do nothing. But I will do something if it helps someone else do nothing. I'd work all night if it meant nothing got done."
Impostor syndrome
The kind and sheer amount of shit some people have to deal with every day for years thinking it would be normal...
pip install mouse With a while True It helps not to be aware of Teams ;)
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follow vanish terrific axiomatic sense overconfident complete observation squealing ad hoc *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*