Comment by RyanZAG | Hacker News Reader

Comment by RyanZAG | Hacker News Reader

> Just like the IT departments at large companies, I had created a scenario where I was building internal tools that I wasn't prepared to support and service. The excitement clouded my foresight - and I didn’t consider that each new project would require regular maintenance and ongoing support. I would get asked to add functionality or work on bug fixes, which amounted to several hours of additional work each week. Worse yet, I was on the hook when something stopped working at the worst possible moment.

Woah, he actually writes this off as a bad thing. The only real issue here is that he just created himself a new essential department with himself as the head. Most people would be thrilled - he needs to go approach executive leadership with a simple report on how much he is helping the company and how he needs to hire on additional help. It doesn't really matter that there are possible 3rd party solutions that would work - his solutions are already working and creating obvious value.

This is the opposite of a bad thing - he's probably just created himself a new position and massive raise. I think people talk a lot about all sorts of things missing from CS education, but clearly the best thing a school could do is shove in a bunch of business classes into the CS curriculum to prevent people thinking this is somehow a bad thing.

he's probably just created himself a new position and massive raise

This is not how the real business world works. It's just as likely to get a negative performance review for insubordination, not following procedure, and neglecting assigned duties.

True. But the day I find myself in a company where that's the case. I'll quit. There has to be room for personal inspiration and activities and management has to know that they are not always right and acknowledge when personal initiative (even if it goes counter to their plan) is doing the right thing. If my boss couldn't accept me ignoring him once in a while and just doing my own thing because it makes sense, I'd be looking for a new one..

It's a gamble, but one that makes a lot of sense, in a very selfish way: Building a career in one place without trying to take shots upwards is not good: Programmers get more pay by changing jobs, not by being very patient and hoping they'll get noticed eventually. So once you are in a place that isn't a tiny startup (which is in itself a risk), you should take risks for big internal payoffs. If those risks pay out, great. If they don't, then just go somewhere else and try again.

Few things are sadder to me than seeing to talent that is mildly disgruntled, being a key part of their organization, underpaid, not taking risks, just hoping that someone would notice them and pay them appropriately: Providing value without immediate recognition is just asking people to find ways to make you provide more value without reward, as you've already proven that you are too afraid to demand fair pay. I've worked with people that had spent 10 years at a company, working on my team, as pillars of the company, getting paid 60k/yr, sitting next to a contractor billing 125/hr

> Building a career in one place without trying to take shots upwards is not good: Programmers get more pay by changing jobs, not by being very patient and hoping they'll get noticed eventually. So once you are in a place that isn't a tiny startup (which is in itself a risk), you should take risks for big internal payoffs. If those risks pay out, great. If they don't, then just go somewhere else and try again.

> I've worked with people that had spent 10 years at a company, working on my team, as pillars of the company, getting paid 60k/yr, sitting next to a contractor billing 125/hr

The lesson isn't to take big internal risks. The lesson is to engineer your finances to allow you to weather the volatility of being a contractor, and then be the contractor.

Everyone shits on the idea of the contractor, when they're doing exactly what they're incentivized to do: maximize the value they extract in the shortest period of time possible, while providing value to the organization they're working for.

Screw your equity, your business culture/hierarchy, and paying your dues (colloquially known as "F*ck you, pay me").

I wonder how those people would react once he decided to leave the company.

I think the best path to get that department would be to make everybody aware of the situation, without asking anything, and then finding another job somewhere.

But I've never tried something like that, nor do I think I'll ever try, for several reasons.

I interpreted his comment here as being more about suddenly finding yourself in a position you don't want. If you're not trying to create a new "essential department with [yourself] as the head", you certainly don't want to wake up one day and realize you've put yourself in that position. I posit that most people would not "be thrilled" with a sudden increase in job responsibilities that they a. don't necessarily want and b. will have to jockey around to get paid for.

One likely motivator for writing the tooling in the first place was an attempt to automate away manual tasks, the point of which would be to never think about these topics / problems again. In that light, the idea of being anointed "head of stuff I don't ever want to think about" is likely a reason to find a new job. Some people like to do work that interests them, not manage other people doing work that bores them.

> The only real issue here is that he just created himself a new essential department with himself as the head. Most people would be thrilled

Only people who like managing other people would be thrilled. Those who do not want to manage, would not be thrilled.

Management isn't exactly going to be thrilled when you inform them that you've created a big new cost center for them and they need to hire new people to help you out on internal tools that were supposed to result in automation and lower costs.

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