this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2024
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It's happening at my company right now. We just merged. I got a taste of power, performed well, then got written up for spending too much time on my power project. Now they have neutered any power I had, and I'm a glorified babysitter and messenger. The hunt now begins in earnest.
Good luck.
Damn that sucks. I've been laid off before, and I was lucky enough to have a bunch of references and ins at other jobs right away.
Just keep making friends and building marketable skills on the company dime, is what I am doing anyway
Yes, I'm in no danger of being fired it doesn't seem. I've been there 6 years and have an enormous amount of knowledge of our product and operations. And it was just a 'verbal counseling' (which is written down, sent to HR, and added to your record; totally verbal though). So I'll just keep on project managing timelines and crap, and collecting my Pacheck. But now I have like 8 months of successful product management under my belt to add to the resume
I thought the same thing at 5 years, and everyone I heard from said it was a mistake to lay me off. Last I heard, my responsibilities were being split up between 3 people. On top of that I found out I was getting underpaid, so I was a good deal on top of that :p
Anyway despite all that, I still wasn't part of whatever vision upper management had going forward, so they gave me a sweet severance and sent me on my way. I'm not mad, but it's definitely made me careful not to expect my job to be safe.
Last time I was laid off it started with "we need to really nail down the docs for these systems".
No one ever gives you extra time for documentation.
Like you, my responsibilities were split between 2 or 3 people.
I'll never again do documentation that well. Fuck 'em. That's not true - I will, for myself.
Those are really stupid managers.
If you don't have docs it's a tough competition between having your more knowledgeable devs re-explaining what they know X times to X new hires, or letting new devs figure it out on their own which is both costly in terms of their time and more importantly, risky as hell.
Bad managers love risk though. Since it usually is a choice between speed now and risk later, it only blows up in your face later, and quite spectacularly, and everyone looks like heroes while they are putting fires out on overtime.
That said good managers probably don't tolerate that shit from bad managers under them and can sniff out a firefighter culture pretty quick.
I guess what I meant to say was, managers that value doc do exist. If they really do, they'll let you know.
Yeah I can't feel good about that kind of stuff anymore (it's the same thing in my field with IaC - Infrastructure as Code). Even if I agree that these are good ideas, it all comes down to being able to treat workers like interchangeable cogs rather than people who can amass knowledge and expertise over time.
Then the dream: that you could sell an entire skeleton of a company with none of the old workers clinging to the bones, and another team of replaceable workers could just slot themselves in place and start making money for investors!
I'm not sure it'll ever get that extreme, but it's not ethics that is blocking it from happening, but material reality.
So yeah, fuck the docs.
I'm a big fan towards pushing for IaC and configuration as code too. What you have to do is also push for policy as code and finops too keep the managers and power point pushers on their toes too. At least it's seemed to engender some empathy from some for me.
An interesting proposition, and one I'll be thinking about for sure. Sadly we probably won't ever get "VC as Code" hah so none of us are safe
The crypto space is convinced they are that. ICOs instead of IPOs. DAOs instead of boards of investors. Etc.
I hadn't considered the impact of IaC type things, but I can see bean counters thinking "well it's documented, so any monkey will do", without being able to quantify to lost time/opportunity cost when people have to fumble through.
In my case, I'm always thinking ahead, trying to see the ways our imperfect systems are going to be a problem, and at least consider high-level options for those things, or for directional change we may see.
I don't make any plans, just some notes, in case any of those questions come up.
Someone unfamiliar with these systems will be in "fix" mode all the time, trying determine why something doesn't work, and reading through docs trying to comprehend things.
I've watched entire teams of people with 15+ years at a company get decimated. All firedwith made-up BS. From director level down.
All because a bean counter told senior management they weren't firing enough people (their firing stats were below some metric).
Maybe that's because, somehow, you did a good job hiring and on boarding people?
Not for nothing, it doesn’t sound so successful.
Working with people is a very core skill. You suggest that this came out of the blue - but I would bet that there were a lot of missed signals on the way. Escalating straight to verbal warnings and demotion in role or responsibility means you’re missing something very fundamental in what wasn’t working or was missed.