Yes, the manager’s sheen. No matter how you’re feeling you should always strive to exude and instill positive energy into any interaction you have with the team.
You define success in terms of houses, cars, and tech gadgets? This is in view of widening wealth gap and increased isolation, depression, and an opioid epidemic. Meanwhile people in Europe have less stressful lives and enjoy hobbies and relationships. I think I’d prefer having a smaller house, last year’s tech, and smaller car with more friends and neighbors than being isolated in my McMansion.
You're 9 weeks in? It takes months to get used to it.
> But most days, something will happen among the team, where, before I leave, I'll realize "That wouldn't have happened here before you rose up the ranks. You've made all of these people's lives better." and it'll bounce me back a bit.
This is what you need to focus on. Everyone has parts of a job they don't like. What you described here is the reason you're a manager.
The more I learned the more terrifying that statement has become. The mind exerts incredible power of the body (and vice versa) and it's much harder to get rid of pain caused by a something in your brain than a cut or a broken leg.
Thanks! This is the condensed version of what the OP's manager is asking him to do. As mentioned elsewhere, also keep in mind you can't change peoples' minds or make a decision for them, you have to present the your case so that your audience comes to the conclusion you want them to.
> I agree that the condition is real, but at some point we all have to take responsibility and control of our own careers.
Impostor Syndrome is, or has, become like Asperger's, where every dev thinks they have it. It's a "humblebrag". I honestly tell people I mentor, be confident, but humble. You have this job because you're qualified (or you made yourself qualified), so have confidence in your skills - sit up right, answer questions, take ownership. But also be humble. Don't be afraid to say I don't know, admit you don't know everything about developing.
It's OK To say "I don't know, but I'm doing my best, and if I did, I could answer you."
> What? Work is work, regardless of whether paid or not.
Most certainly not; within the context of providing services to a legal business entity within the United States, work is defined be receiving compensation for your time, skills, and knowledge. If you are doing something for a business entity and you are not receiving compensation, then it is defined as volunteer work, and there are strict limits on what can be done by a volunteer, chief of which is the volunteer's work must not be crucial to the operations of the business. Otherwise the DoL will classify it as work, and force the business to pay the social security and unemployment tax for your time.
The free software project is not run by a for-profit entity and as such is not bound by those laws.
> What matters more than the payment is the scope/amount of such work.
That's fairly idealistic. This tells me you value your time (and by extension, yourself) very low. Also, the Dept Of Labor would disagree with you.
You didn't work since you weren't paid. You volunteered your time to aid in a transition period, help reduce workloads, and keep your skills sharp. However I'd probably not mention that as that could throw up warning signs that would attract the DoL as there are strict rules on what constitutes volunteer work.
Stop trying so hard? It sounds like you're spinning your wheels and just getting further stuck in a rut. Find another activity, area of study, or topic of interest you can go deep in. The true masters of a given field are known for both depth and breadth. Find something else that sparks your interest that's NOT programming.
The health insurance industry spends millions in donations to politicians on both sides. So, the reason we have a poor health insurance industry is money.
Some context is needed. The goal of Your Money or Your Life was to get more people familiar with financial independence, the idea being once you have saved enough to "retire" early, you can pick the projects you work on and the people you work with. So in that case, yes, you do optimize for resources.
Whenever I find myself falling for this, I keenly remember the advice given to me from Your Money or Your Life, which is that you are at work for 1 reason and 1 reason only: money.
Many people say they work for other reasons, like socialization, meaning, etc. Robinson (the author) makes a point that you can find these things in volunteer activities, and that your loyalty ends at the paycheck. Your company will not hesitant to eliminate you when it's financially viable. Why should you be any different?
Perhaps Firefox should research why Chrome is so successful and adopt that? I use Edge, Safari, FF Dev Edition, and Chrome, and I consistently return to Chrome because of the smooth user experience. In my uninformed opinion, FF is losing for the same reason the FSF's products never went mainstream, which is they're focusing too much on their message than delivering a solid product. Which is sad, because I do remember when Firefox was released just how good it was.
I suspect it's because most Java and C# engineers are "enterprise" engineers who work on mostly CRUD applications. Go and Ruby would be more aligned for a startup. Given that TripleByte's interview process is more technical and computer science oriented, I'm not surprised they score less. It's mainly about the types of problems you solve at work and how well you keep technical knowledge fresh.
Why would they line up for them, though? The only time I can remember that was for Windows XP. Most companies use O365, which keeps the office desktop clients up to date, and when people buy a laptop it has Windows 10 on it.
These are the key points that people should read. Ballmer is constantly criticized, yet under his watch, revenue and net income doubled. The release of the Surface, Azure, and o365 also started under his watch. Natya was a great choice to take the reins, but the people who think Ballmer was terrible only paid attention to his poor PR and stock prices. The man knew how to make money.
The stock price remained stagnant, but under Ballmer, both revenue and net income doubled. He may have sucked at the PR game, but he was far from the worst CEO of the 90s.