49 karma · joined May 20, 2019
It's shitty, cuz their playing with people's lives. As soon as the acquiring company takes over, their like "what's with all these unnecessary people?"
If your workspace has shit smeared on the walls, you don't ask if you can clean it up. You just do it.
"Coding is generally a team sport. If you’re hacking away on your own then you can do what you want, but when we’re working with a team then we’ve got to discuss our ideas."
My current job has this quasi-team, where we all work from the same backlog, with very little coordination, collaboration, or communication. Everyone just pulls a ticket and runs with it in whatever direction they desire.
I can't stand it. When I raise the issue with my manager, it's just not registering. The turnover and retention is poor, so there are a bunch of new team members, and few people with tenure (like a single dev). The prevailing attitude is that if you reach out to collaborate with someone on your ticket, you're not only wasting the other person's time, but you yourself are incompetent. Because, why can't you just crush tickets all day every day without bothering anyone?
It's silly.
Which makes the line chart even worse. Pay is flat but the demands of the job are not.
As an engineer, the thought process goes: I can use the same old tried and true patterns that will just get the job done. That would be safe and comfortable, but it won't add anything to my skillset/resume.
Or we could try out this sexy new tech that the internet is buzzing about, it will make my job more interesting, and better position me to move onto my next job. Or at least give me more options.
It's essentially the principal-agent problem. And by the way, I don't blame developers for taking this position.
I think with people holed up in their homes doing the same thing, the experience is diminished somewhat.
Here is a pattern that I've observed over a few jobs that I've held as a developer at different companies. Wondering if anyone has any similar experience.
The first line manager (only manages individual contributors) exhibits these characteristics.
1.)He used to be a coder, but that was a long time ago. SQL hasn't changed, so that's the bit he's drawn to when he feels like he needs to roll up his sleeves and contribute.
2.)He has some form of attention deficit, demonstrated by the fact that he can't hold down a conversation really well. Especially if it gets technical.
3.)He really overplays the busy body persona. Always checking phone, always late for a meeting.
4.)He's really insecure in his position within the company, always fearful that he's going to be cut loose. This is extremely amplified when he gets a new manager himself.
5.)He has very little influence over direction. He's really just a proxy mouthpiece for higher level management. And he loves to have status update meetings where he informs the team of all the important updates he received in the big important meeting he attended with other big important people.
6.)Instead of being someone who is respected by the team, he becomes more of someone you have sympathy for.
7.)You wonder why he never asks the real questions, like "are you happy with your role?". And you realize it's because he doesn't really want to hear the answer. He couldn't really do anything about it anyway. See point #5.
8.) He's way too preoccupied worrying about his own safety to nurture the team.
9.) As a developer, you have the safety net of knowing that in the worst case scenario (terminated) you could find another job fairly quickly with pay parody. As a manager, you don't have that comfort blanket. So you cling on to your current job no matter how badly you are abused. And people lose more respect for you because you look pathetic without a backbone.
10.) As a cynical developer in his 40's, you realize that you don't observe many 50+ developers in the wild, and you bemoan the idea that you're going to have to suck it up and play manager eventually.
Anxiety and existential crisis is built into the tech career trajectory, and I feel like the only winning strategy is to be ok with moving backward income wise at various points in your timeline.
My questions is, is it still aimed at .NET? I know it leans on Nuget as the package repo. But have they broadened to embrace deployment of other tech stacks?
Is Octopus considered best in class for what it does? Who are the primary competitors? Does Azure DevOps spell the end for Octopus?
We've all known for a while that being unemployed, and having that desperation stink on you, is a bad situation. But I'd never really considered it from the hiring side, that when you are interviewing someone who desperately needs a job, you're interviewing more of an actor.