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Comment by specialist | Hacker News Reader

Had similar k8s experience. Because I took time to learn how it worked, not just make believe.

Yes, and:

> why I started taking too long in doing any tasks

I actually test my code, which makes me appear A LOT slower than my "fast" coworkers. So while I rarely do rework, my apparent "velocity" (Agile FTW) looks much worse.

I mean actual tests. Including negative tests. Which requires knowing how the system I'm changing actually works.

My last few gigs, I don't recall any one else testing their code, much less doing negative testing.

Multiple times, coworkers will discover that their code in production didn't actually work. Could never work. Ever. Like the "cache" which never updated its entries.

One of the curses of having been a QA Manager, doing actual QA & QC & Test, is I'm embarrassed when my code doesn't work. Which has become a career limiting character flaw.

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I have seen this before. Middle management graded teams on story points per sprint. Of course the shittiest team took that to the extreme. They had 15X the story points of everyone else. The problem is that every file edit was a story point. Every bug fixed was a story point. They shipped ridiculously buggy code constantly that cost us tons of money through lost customers. Fortunately each team owned separate service, so they had to handle the continuous calls for their crap. And yet, every time, management would scold them lightly and praise them for their hard work. The one time we had a bug that made it to production, management jumped on us. Thankfully, I left that company after a short time.

I now ask exactly how management attributes time for bug fixes. If they aren't allocated to the person, team, and story point for the original feature, then I explain to them my story and why I won't work for them.

This yet again proves that people just want to be shown on the basis of which criteria to judge others and once that happens they accept it as the universal truth and will not easily (more likely ever) change their views.

I've had colleagues in previous jobs that were times better than me and they got jaded by such attitude and left, leaving EVERY single manager "very surprised". But they were also kind of snarky and dismissive about it. Oh, they joy when they finally admitted 6 months later that they made a mistake by letting him quit and then the second negotiations when they wanted him back! He told them "eff you" twice in a row but eventually accepted 6-months contract... at 3x his older salary.

I feel that the under-appreciated engineers must learn to punish the companies with their absence much sooner. But yeah, a lot of programmers are rather introverted and shy and don't understand the leverage they have so sadly what we have as the status quo is pretty normal...

Just remember this when you see who gets promoted, and be sure to adjust your strategy accordingly ;)

Unfortunately most software companies (like all companies) are based on management ego and rah rah rah. This is an infamous problem which is part of why software quality is so low.

Never trained for any sort of a QA but can completely relate to your mindset. I am paranoid and love to add tests. They saved the bottom of my team (and sometimes the company, in my smaller customers at least) many, many times.

And it's still under-appreciated as a skill to this day even if I got handshakes and many "good job!"-s in chats.

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