I can relate to this. I am a 3rd generation American, family immigrated over from Norway and Sweden and our heritage and traditions are still very strongly observed. We are protestant as well and live in the northern U.S.
My family is a bit on the extreme of guessing culture to the point where we won't say anything and often folks find us very cold. I am made acutely aware of this everyday - from romantic partners, friends, and even strangers. My siblings and I were simply raised this way and it's all but impossible to change my behavior.
When we visit family in both Norway and Sweden it's almost like "whew" we can relax and breathe and everything feels very comfortable because the pace of society is slower, at restaurants and during normal activities out and about in the towns, you generally do not have to worry about folks approaching you.
My current partner is also a 3rd generation American, her family on both sides is Irish. They are incredibly social and outgoing and just 10 minutes she informed me we are having our neighbors over (he is a 2nd generation American of Irish descent and his partner is a 2nd generation Dutch). They are all very social and won't hesitate to offer a beer or help or anything really, which I certainly appreciate it but I'm uncomfortable accepting anything.
An even more extreme example is my older brother. I almost look like a social butterfly in comparison because I won't hesitate to complain about the weather, work, anything really. Whereas he is very stoic and quiet.
We were in the construction industry with our father and we all would mostly work in silence building homes and apartment buildings, and when we expanded and hired new folks it made them really uncomfortable.
Once, my brother fell off a roof and he just laid there in a daze. I rushed down to him and by the time I got to him (no more than 20 seconds) he was already getting back up on the roof and just said "I'm fine". Another time his lung collapsed and he didn't tell anyone until his 5th day in the hospital! It's really disappointing sometimes.
My grandfather’s parents were Swedish, and that attitude certainly describes their side of the family: don’t talk about how you feel, don’t complain, don’t express emotions hot or cold.
I am also selfish with regards to remote work. I don't have any kids, but to me remote work just simply works and makes sense. Having said that, there is an argument for in-person collaboration to an extent. But as a software engineer, I loathe going back to the office and refuse to under almost any circumstance.
If an employer wants me to return to the office, I'm very direct in communicating the additional cost to them and salary bump for me. My go-to response to any request to return to office is "I require a 40% salary increase or no bueno" and thus far they have backed down.
Back when I was working in the office, I had co-workers who liked to lounge around my desk making small talk, asking questions, and generally trying to be friendly and social, which I understand why they would, but it interrupts my "flow state" and leaves me more disgruntled than anything.
Work is work to me, and I don't care to socialize nor is it critical in my current job. Not hating on others who feel anything to the contrary, it's simply not my cup o' tea.
The benefits of WFH greatly surpass any conceivable benefit of having to return to the office, for me. And with my current employers, I cannot see any benefit of it for them.
Corporatism needs a wakeup call and it's finally receiving just a taste of it. Considering salaries are repressed and have been for more than 20 years, it's the very least of what we, as workers/minions/peasants, deserve (at least in the U.S.)
I'm a current DoD contractor (the coding type) and the agile/waterfall mentality still holds up. Different departments and different projects within each department will have different methodologies for planning and delivering products.
However, where I am, there is a huge emphasis on "getting shit done" well ahead of schedule. I'm lucky to work with smart and motivated folks who together, work well and we are wildly successful.
My biggest gripe, shared among many of my coworkers, is the level of micromanagement. Multiple business analysts, product owners, stakeholders, SCRUM masters, managers, etc. who all share essentially the same job - delegating and scheduling work. It makes every project 10x more difficult and complex than it otherwise should be.
An example just from this past week:
Project A: we are delivering a single product. Three managers, two SCRUM masters, multiple business analysts. We engineers have four different JIRA/task-boards to keep up with. All of them overlap, three of them are essentially the same board in different spaces.
Each day we have 2-4 hours worth of meetings spread across stakeholders amongst those three boards where we regurgitate the exact same information.
It's repetitive, backward, and a time-waste. Some engineers are currently "revolting" by saying what I'm saying now - in the meetings themselves. We've had multiple blowups with management.
Having meetings and discussions spread so wide leads to a lot of confusion because us engineers appear to be the only conduit with which the analysts and managers are communicating. Often times, the different stakeholders will ask for the same features in different meetings, other times they ask for different or conflicting features which leads to confusion and the need to schedule more meetings to clarify as they are not communicating amongst each other.
The issue I found in defence, when your software integrates in to a very large engineering project with a mix of hardware and software is that often times waterfall is appropriate because everything has to be decided upfront where possible.
For tight hardware integration, iteration on design isn't appropriate because the hardware design was locked in to begin manufacturing.
Quite often software life cycles miss the hardware rapid prototyping phase and so there's a desynchronisation of iterative design.
Within the framework of the hardware, yes you can iterate on the specific implementation but the contract with the external hardware and the timeliness to deliver was fixed.
Agile struggles without agile being applied end-to-end, and so you get agile/waterfall mixes.
In my experience, they can still work. In my case we have annually field deployed (and difficult to update) firmware. Firmware feature additions and changes are an up-front known quantity (even if they turn out to be insufficient for the in theater usage). We can't change them. That's the root where any agile approach reaches an external impact limit.
Hey no you're not declining!
I think this happens to a lot of us from time to time! I have become fairly good at recognizing it in myself (mid 30's) and have learned what I need to do to get over the hump!
For me - it helps to step away from work. I mean, really step away to the point I completely forget about work. Go play pickleball, take a day trip, hike, swim, camp, try something entirely new that you have never done before (skydiving, SCUBA lessons, cross-country skiing), etc. The goal is to become immersed in your environment to the point it requires a great use of your mental capacity - in a way that is engaging and fun.
Even if I don't feel like stepping away from work and I disagree with myself that the issue is actually becoming too immersed in my work for too long, I have learned to simply default towards leaning on experience and getting away for a while.
By the time I come back to the same problem if I haven't already gathered a good idea as to how to go about it, I will at least have a new perspective; it's a win-win.
Please take care of your mental health, take care of yourself and don't be too hard on yourself. Give yourself a second chance, draw things out, get out of the office, take a break, and come back and approach the problem after you've refreshed yourself!
I'm in the same boat with you. Been in the industry for 20+ years and I do not have any social media. One of my employers constantly pushes for LinkedIn involvement/activity but I simply refuse to participate. I did not become an engineer to share blog posts or comment on things in front of hundreds or thousands of folks.
However, I do have a few different websites that I used to be very active in but have since (for the past 5 years) rarely use them. It's usually only to share something interesting and to keep my web-deb skills somewhat sharpened.
I really don't know much about D&D but WotC had reached out to me a while back for an engineering position. The individual was incredibly unprofessional in just about every way imaginable so I cut things off and said I was not interested before we began talking compensation or anything. Weird company!
Basically the whole tabletop industry is like that, though I think a large part of that is that only Wizards and Paizo have enough sales in the first place to even act as workplaces rather than part-time hobbies.
I also had a weird professional experience with them that I'm probably not allowed to give details on. Not exactly shady or unethical, but they didn't comport themselves well. As a player since 1990, I was excited to work with (the inheritors of) D&D, then suddenly very disappointed with them.
1) Board member (advisor really) of a crypto/blockchain company. They pay me $5k per month to basically answer questions and help solve certain issues that might arise. There's also regular meetings but all in I spend 4 hours per week max.
2) Small contractor jobs. I was a contractor and home builder in a previous life. These days, I do side jobs both for the extra income and as a way to relax from my regular tech job. I build decks, sheds, small patios, and some indoor remodeling stuff. All of it is really basic because I have no interest in large jobs that would take a lot of time. A 10x12 shed will net me around $6k and I can build it in a weekend. A similar sized deck I'll charge $25k. Small patio pours I'll net $4k.
During Christmas season (right now) I also hang lights. I'll charge between $1500 - $2500 and net most of that. Takes me around an hour for a normal two story house.
3) Tech consultant. I help administer various Wordpress and other sites for clients. Basic stuff like plugins, changing font, layouts, etc. Super easy and I get paid a monthly retainer.
4) I work two six-figure engineering jobs. Neither is super difficult which gives me time to do the other things and still have free-time to spend with my family, friends, and hobbies.
5) Rental income. I built a few single family homes and apartment buildings (12 units per building). Nets very good income but can also be demanding because I prefer to do most of the management work myself. Just sold one 12-plex for $1.6MM in August and am sitting on the others.
I have no social life. Without diving super deep into my past or anything, I just prioritize things and go do it. Have no interest in movies, TV, concerts, bars, or anything else really. I suppose I inherited it from my parents who are workaholics. Also, grew up poor and never want to experience that again so there's probably a bit of a deep-seeded fear in the back of my mind that going broke and losing everything is always possible. Also, I really only sleep 3-4 hours a night and if I'm not doing something productive I feel unsatisfied and generally melancholy. I also only eat one meal a day, sometimes two which combined takes around an hour to prepare, cook, and eat. So that leaves me roughly 18-19 hours per day to work. And in all my work, I automate absolutely anything and everything that can be automated.
There's probably a bit of underlying depression involved where I feel like if I slow down all those mental worries and fears will manifest and send me down a dark path which want to avoid at all costs.
I try not to judge other folks because everyone has different priorities in life. Mine is working, but others may want to travel, try different beers, play sports, have dinner with friends, etc. I can never stop thinking about projects I want to do so I really don't enjoy a lot of socializing.
More specifically - my two jobs are typical 8-4 hours. Before and after I do whatever maintenance is required for the websites I admin. The crypto/blockchain company will have meetings in the evening, occasionally on the weekends.
I have friends and family assist with managing my properties and I pay them very well for their help because some properties are located in another state that they're closer to.
This mostly leaves weekends available for some contracting projects in my neighborhood (new development, wealthy folks who don't want to do any manual labor!). Additionally, I'm able to check on my properties, do walk-throughs with tenants, repairs (normally plumbing related - sinks, faucets, toilets, boilers), as well as move-ins and move-outs. If it's an emergency I have contacts for electricians, plumbers, HVAC, etc. who can get over there when I can't. My biggest gripe is with modern appliances. Normally use GE appliances, but the quality has gone down-hill, tried Samsung and same thing. I'm spending more to put in higher quality products like Bosch or Miele when possible.
You’re one of these special lucky people who only needs 4 hours sleep. I have a friend like that and he uses his extra time to complete video games and be a dad/husband. I’m more of a 8-9 hours person myself so I’m super jealous
Thanks for elaborating - and reminding me there are no magic tricks; it's about the effort we put in (which you pretty much max out).
It seems you will eventually accumulate enough assets to pay for a comfortable lifestyle indefinitely. I wish you well and that you can use that to enjoy life on your terms.
Thank you for your open and honest replies about your hyperproductivity and optimization. There is an expression, "the days are long, the years are short." Do you see yourself building toward a point in older age where you can either relax, or focus on something that you consider a major achievement? Of course, that could very well be creating a comfortable existence for your family, which it seems like you've already done.
Yes and no. I want a solid nest-egg in the event that something happens and prevents me from working. No interest in traveling or doing anything else at the moment but of course things can change and as I get older my train of thought will probably change as well so I try to be cognizant of that. In building some level of wealth, I'd consider it to be an achievement and follow-up achievement is using whatever funds I have to help others because I don't care for things other than tools, computer parts, and things like microcontrollers (Arduinos and RPI's).
Sounds extremely corny but I lost my best friends a few years back and their families are not well off financially, one in particular is struggling so I help them as much as they will let me because they're in their mid 60's and have always treated me like family. Another friend wanted to start a remodeling company so I helped him with that. I think these are the kinds of that brings a level of satisfaction and joy rather than buying new cars or taking vacation - for me at least.
Could you describe #4 in more detail? From adding this all up, I figure you must be working 30-35 hours a week between those two jobs, so less than 20 hours a week each. What is the process by which you limit your capacity to only fill a small number of hours? Do the teams believe you to be slower than you are? Is this an explicit understanding that you'll only work half time?
I have never had a job where there is not more than enough to be done, such that I could always fill more hours than I have with useful work.
Yeah it's right around 30-35 hours per week. Not to toot my own horn but I am very good at what I do, which is software & data engineering. Most importantly, both are jobs that have a large and talented support system of fellow engineers, scrum masters, product owners, and management. In fact, that's precisely why I took these two. My previous jobs were extremely stressful and left me no time for anything outside of my immediate work and I ended up switching jobs last year as a result.
Both employers allow me a lot of leeway and flexibility so long as I can continue to deliver products on schedule, which to this day, I have never been late. So number of hours worked is fairly inconsequential to actual work that is done in both jobs.
I'm sorry but I still don't get it. I've never had a job where being very good at it left a lot of free time during which to be very good at another job. It just left free time to move more things along more quickly or improving things. Like, I think mechanically I understand what you're saying; I think you're saying that each week or couple weeks or month or whatever, you commit to projects sized to fill about 50% of your time, and then you finish those commitments. But if I were your manager or tech lead or teammate and I knew you were employed full time at the company, I would instead want you to commit more than 50% of your time, like improving things or doing more projects or and same projects faster or helping other people with their projects or any number of other things, but not just, "welp, I got my tickets done, that's it for me!". So I still don't really get it, are you working part time at these companies, or are your managers happy to pay you for a full time job despite you working half time, or do they think you're actually filling all your time?
Without getting too specific - company A pays me to fulfill contracts we bid on within government entities. There's a ridiculously ludicrous amount of red-tape that translates into down-time for someone like me. I do one of three things: software dev, data engineering, or ML modelling. Only one of those three domains because the way this company works, everything is compartmentalized so there are specific folks for specific tasks. I'm a senior/lead so I do my part and pass it to the next fella.
Company B is more end-to-end full stack dev work. I just happen to know this domain very very well, along with the libraries, tech stack, and business goals involved in it which translates into rapid development on my part supported by mid and junior level engineers.
Also, having been burned by companies in the past, I no longer make it a priority to "go the extra mile", I do exactly what is expected of me to do and generally no more or less. Although, I am a stickler for documentation so I do write up a lot of our code-base, architecture, and other things.
The last couple of companies I worked for were fairly bad in terms of quality of life so I've moved around a bit until I found jobs that were a good fit for me. The last two years especially have been somewhat of a blessing because engineers are in high demand and I played it to my advantage.
I'm employed full-time at both companies, both know that I am doubly employed and have no issue with it as they are more concerned about project/task completion rate rather than hours on the clock. Which I would argue is how it should be at most companies. Additionally, I work from home.
The reason I keep having this discussion with you is that it's interesting!
I agree that work being accomplished is what matters, not hours. But you are clearly not working full time, you could clearly accomplish more for each of the companies within the boundaries of a single full time workload, hours aside, because you do indeed accomplish more than what you're accomplishing at each company individually.
But from your description here, based on the expectation situations with the companies, what you're describing here is just two part-time jobs that are well-paid, and I certainly don't begrudge you that!
I mean if you can negotiate well (& are absolutely amazing at your job), you might be able to convince them that they either pay you full time even though you only work part time, or they pay you more than full time (i.e. give you a big raise) if they want you to work longer, which would result in >100% output for the current position... which they might not need. The guy sounds like a f'ing machine (in a good way), so probably he has big leverage in his negotiations...
Yeah that's basically where I landed on this discussion. There isn't really a "pay you full time" vs. "pay you part time" - there is just what you're being paid and the kind of work you're putting in. It's totally plausible to me to work part time for the same amount of pay as your peers make working full time, which I think is exactly what the OP is doing. But what was confusing to me is calling that "full time work" because it really isn't; it's just well-paid part time work.
Pretend he’s an offsite consultant. Now does it make sense? His employers are aware he’s making them substantial money and it’s likely they’re aware he left his last, much more demanding job, for being too stressful. So they know if they put more pressure on him than he feels like dealing with he’ll leave. Whether he’s deceiving the two proper jobs he has as an employee or not is a separate matter but they have no leverage over him either way.
I understand it for contract work, yes, but full-time salaried work is different, for exactly this reason; the expectation implicit in the relationship is that you are working full time, not just on a contracted project basis.
He negotiated different expectations. He was explicit about wanting a job with different expectations than the usually implicit ones and if at any point any of the parties find it no longer to their liking they can just end it.
If you don’t like the usual game you can make your own new game with your own rules if you can find someone else to play with you.
I kinda get where they’re coming from. Those kinds of companies are really rare. Generally management wants to squeeze as much out of labor as humanly possible, to the point where they demand exclusive access to one’s entire labor availability.
The fact that xxEightyxx has found not one, but two companies willing to pay six figures for a functionally part-time employee is pretty mind-boggling.
The rarity of these companies varies widely on sector. I agree that it will be difficult to find typical tech startups that wont try to squeeze the maximum amount of time out of you.
If you want high chance of relaxed workloads, look for large corporations that exclusively contract with government out of a large budget. For example, the defense industry (e.g., the few companies designing and manufacturing planes, radars, avionics, communication equipment, guidance systems) is the biggest supplier of these type of roles that I know of. The pay in these roles is usually market competitive or better. At least from my experience, only about 20% of time or less is actually spent "working on something", much of which is sitting in irrelevant meetings. I would only recommend it if you are purely looking to collect an easy paycheck and you have a high tolerance for boredom, bureaucracy, internal politics and incompetence at all levels.
Post-covid remote work that much of government and contractors have moved to (permanently?) has likely also made it significantly easier to have multiple "full time" jobs. Management does not care about anything in this sector except that hard deadlines are met (the real deadlines, very rarely even gets close), soft deadlines are missed (used to justify "needing" more money), and nothing is completed too quickly (they want to give the illusion that hard work is being done).
> The fact that xxEightyxx has found not one, but two companies willing to pay six figures for a functionally part-time employee is pretty mind-boggling.
There’s an entire internet subculture of people devoted to doing this. Check out r/overemployed. And there are far, far more people who do similar things entirely above board as consultants and contractors.
Working by project with set deliverables as a consultant/contractor makes perfect sense to me. What makes less sense is doing so as a full time employee.
Basically, this is just not what salaried full-time positions are. Hourly positions pay you for your hours worked, part time positions pay you for part of your productive working time, but full time positions pay you to work full time, not part time. But I think I get it now from OP's further explanations, these are just part time positions that are in the books as full time.
A salaried role is paid the same regardless of how long one works. A rationally run business should care about what's produced, not the amount of labor-hours it takes to produce it. Developer productivity varies wildly, so in a fair labor market, time worked and compensation should vary with developer productivity (sometimes compensation is correlated with time worked, but generally at diminishing marginal returns).
Of course there is a dynamic between the business and the employee when it comes to their expectations of each other. All else being equal, a business would like to get more output per dollar spent, and an employee would like to get paid more in total and work fewer hours. Nowhere in the goals of this dynamic does hours worked come into the picture. What does happen is that businesses believe they would get more output per dollar spent if they can get a salaried employee to work more hours, so they pressure employees into doing so. People generally like to be in charge of others, so un-enlightened managers force employees to be at the office because they like seeing them there.
Enlightened managers care first about cultivating great relationships, secondly about the total output of an employee, and therefore not at all about hours worked. Marginal productivity per hours worked eventually goes negative as hours worked increase, and in my opinion the point at which it becomes negative is a lot lower than most people believe (probably ~20-30 hrs/week over the long term).
Besides, highly productive developers are in very high demand. You're just shooting yourself in the foot if you don't give them a fair deal, because they'll go somewhere else, unless they're on a work visa in which case they'll remember if you don't treat them well.
Please do note that this argument applies mostly to salaried employees in knowledge-work.
> Besides, highly productive developers are in very high demand. You're just shooting yourself in the foot if you don't give them a fair deal, because they'll go somewhere else
Ok, but "we expect you to work full time when we hire you for a full time job" is a fair deal. It is not "unfair" to hire people full time rather than part time.
A fair bit of luck really. Met the CEO at a specific crypto-development conference back in 2016 and we hit off and he gave me an offer right then and there. Initially, had to prove my worth for the first 2 years and when my full-time work and other life events started getting in the way I gave him my two weeks notice and he countered with more money and less day-to-day work so long as he could keep me on "retainer" which he did by creating a board and placing me on it. There's a few other folks on the board which I'm quite certain earn more than I do because they're former Googlers/Apple employees and I have never worked for a FAANG company. Company has taken a big hit over the last 1.5 years due to the poor performance of cryptos recently and waning interest from our existing and potential client base.
There's many ways - traditional banking being the route I took. Initial sunk-cost was $350k, interest rates were low, and my loan amount was small all things considered. I had most of the cash on hand and collateral in the form of a house. I did all the building and excavation myself, the only things I subbed out were plumbing, electrical, HVAC, and some drywall because I really don't like drywall.
Also fortunate because the last few years has seen a huge run-up and appreciation in property in my area specifically where the median house price 10 years ago was around $250k, it's now just under a million for a run-of-the-mill 4 bed, 2 bath, 2200sqft home. The buyer was a small investment company from out-of-state which is really unfortunate because I was hoping to sell to someone local but given the offer they made me, no one could match or even come close.
Making friends is easy, keeping friends and growing the relationships are difficult. I am mostly introverted but have periods of extreme extroversion. I'm 34 but all of my best friends have passed away from various accidents over the past decade.
I feel like a shell of my former self where all I do or have a desire to do is work. The only person I consider my friend is my former boss who, after losing his wife to ALS, I did everything I could to be there and support him because he took a chance on me by offering me a job that ultimately has led to a great career in the tech field.
I've noticed my personality has slipped away, I no longer have hobbies or anything of real passion in my life anymore and thus there's nothing I have to offer another person in a relationship.
It's incredibly lonely and a poor place to be yet I really don't know how to escape it. Most other dudes my age have families or many of them only care to go out to breweries which I don't enjoy.
There's still a bit of hope deep down that all isn't over yet and a ray of sunshine can still propagate itself somewhere, sometime.
> there's nothing I have to offer another person in a relationship.
I think that the most valuable (and appreciated) thing you have to offer are your atttentive ears and your time. That's what many people are looking for in a true, deep friendship.
The real frienship isn't about super-intresting hobbies or flashy personality but really basic things like listening each other, supporting i small or large difficulties etc.
Yup, exactly like the article mentions emotional support and debugging.
Listening with your whole attention and authentically sharing your experiences is a massive component of any strong friendship.
This is something I've only understood in the last year or two. It took me ~40 years to understand because I was very emotionally neglected as a child, so I never processed my emotions or helped others do the same. From my mid-teens through 35, I thought I didn't have the same emotions as other people.
First, let me say this sounds like the first stages of depression. It is VERY difficult to break out of yourself because by this point or a bit further; you start having trouble figuring out why you do anything, so you stop doing almost everything. Once you reach that point, it is very rare to be able to self-diagnose and get on a path to recovery.
This was me a few years ago. At some point, I stopped being authentic and sharing my experience with others (just saying what I was feeling, dis/liked, wanted/didn't want, etc).
There is likely an emotional block or a few in your past that you feel you shouldn't/can't/won't talk about to others (because it will bother them).
"Most other dudes my age have families or many of them only care to go out to breweries which I don't enjoy." <- this is a symptom of an emotional block.
You are saying No to yourself without considering options or asking people for ideas. There are an unlimited number of ways to adjust those situations to work.
This has been true in my personal life since I was about 13, but when it happened in my professional life too, I became very isolated and it wasn't until I read waaaay too much psychology that I started understanding that other people have had the same feelings (nothing I felt/feel is unique; what makes me unique is the combinations of those things) and then telling people bits of it, then more.
To continue that last two weeks ago I forced myself to cry for the first time since I was around 13. Then on Friday, I wanted to cry in the car during a sad song and I let myself. Then Sunday, I felt my sadness damn crumble and I was really sad about random things for a few hours.
It's a long process, but being able to feel sad again will let me WANT help from other people again and WANT to connect with them. It will let me feel lonely, which will motivate me to go find people to be around. Soon, this process will lead to more friends.
In many ways we've forgotten how to be human (as a culture) which actively prevents from connecting with other people in one way or another. I'm on an active journey to learn all the things I didn't learn as a child and I'm still pretty lonely, only one close friend, but I've already gotten past feeling empty inside and not interested in doing things.
Make two lists. One, an activities list. Every time you hear something fun to do, put it on the list. Eventually, after a couple years, you'll have nearly everything. If it's on the cheap side it's a good sign, although expensive things can be fun too.
The second list, is a content consumption list. Basically, building a twitter, but without the timeline. Write down categories you like, and people you like, and get a YouTube subscription so you don't have to have adds. After around 2 years, you should be rarely adding people & content to the list.
My advice: have a separate categories for movies to watch & tv shows to watch & only do so with friends & loved ones. Never watch tv or movies by yourself, would be my advice.
Sorry to hear that. Recommend you try an activity that involves physical activity and other people. Kayaking, capoeira, rock climbing, whatever feels interesting to you.
I built software to track our traders. This was at one of the largest investment banks in the world and at the time they had a rudimentary system for tracking and recording their in-house traders activities - orders, trades, and other order/trade related information. At the time, the rudimentary system was built mostly to comply with government regulations, and was later modified by someone else to capture and report a larger scope of information about the traders to a higher-up department.
My system was built entirely from scratch because the existing system was antiquated, poorly structured, and really not conducive to future expansions.
After testing and implementing my system, a handful of traders lost their jobs as a result. One criteria often looked at was their number and reasons for failure to delivers (FTD's).
Other than that, it's mostly automating things that I almost sort of regret. A lot of folks in the bank were fired after I wrote a series of apps that could do the work they do. Mostly repetitive tasks. Still feel bad about that but if I didn't do it, they would have hired someone else and at the time I was really, really in dire need for a paycheck.
An ex-coworker asked me to do a 3-month contracting stint at his company where he was the head of IT. The task was to "clean up the environment" because the servers were crashing often and performance was poor.
I quickly found the source of the crashes: misconfigured ethernet switch MAC address limits applied to VMware ESXi. I also cleansed the environment by finding the one working server in each cluster and then cloning it out to replace the faulty ones. These were all "pets" on life support, and I tried to make them more like identical "cattle".
I went back a year later and half of the IT support team was gone. I asked what happened and the answer was: me.
Apparently after I fixed up the platform the number of support requests plummeted, and a bunch of the helpdesk staff were made redundant.
I'm so torn about stuff like this. On one hand, yeah, it absolutely sucks that people lost their job based on a thing you did. But on the other hand, their jobs existed only because things were broken that didn't need to be. Essentially, bullshit jobs: it sorta feels related to the trope of someone going around a neighborhood breaking people's windows to drum up business for the local window-installation company, without the nefarious bits.
I feel similarly about the rise of automation. At a global/society level, I think it's great that there are jobs humans don't have to do anymore. That leaves more people to be able to pursue "higher" things. But the reality is that some people who had jobs now don't, and might be suffering financial insecurity because of that. Our society should be helping people retrain, and keep them on their feet financially while they do so, but many places just don't have a good enough safety net for that, let alone specific programs for retraining when jobs become unnecessary.
The worst part is that the helpdesk staff were nice. More than a decade later I can't remember anything else about them, except that they were all lovely people.
I'm sure they got new jobs and whatnot, but I still feel bad about the whole thing.
Intellectually, I agree with you that bullshit jobs ought to be eliminated, but I suspect that this process will continue to be morally a gray area until we have something like universal basic income.
It's all about how everything is implemented. I've worked in places where sprints were hard deadlines and there was no acceptable reason for missing said deadlines. We worked 12-15 hour days, including working weekends to try and meet our release schedules.
Run into a blocker? Too bad, should have seen it coming during our scrum meetings and follow-up refinements.
We engineers had two business analysts, a scrum master, and two managers that resided "above" us in rank all working to keep the "flow" of the sprints alive to help ensure we meet our deadlines.
It was the most stressful tech job/environment I've ever been part of and everything was micro-managed by said 5 people to the point that they were blockers to our progress - scheduling multiple meetings everyday that would easily consume 3-4 hours.
Our backlog would grow everyday as everyone scrambled to finish tasks and our architecture was a patch-work of systems that only one person truly understood because he had been with the company since it's inception.
I was hired as a senior engineer along with three other mid-level engineers - all three quit within four months. I left after six.
Sprints/agile/scrums are generally a good thing IF and ONLY IF you have a capable manager/scrum master leading and organizing the team who truly understands time management and finnicky nature of software development. Otherwise, it quickly falls off the rails and leads to churn and burn.
> Run into a blocker? Too bad, should have seen it coming during our scrum meetings and follow-up refinements.
One of the things that usually happen when they push and push and push for some feature to get rolled out in the next quarter is that it often turns out to be a gigantic flop.
Engineers are forced to spend hours they can't get back at the whim of management for something that was a complete and utter failure. I could imagine few things more demoralizing than this.
Agile is really meant to be about self organizing teams that take ownership of their own work and deliveries. The scrum master and product owner are just there to facilitate that.
When a team hits a blocker on a tight schedule -- particularly across third party teams, it's up to the management to figure out a solution -- even if it means gasp delaying the release by one sprint.
I love how they pay people by the hour to massively waste that time with this kind of Peter's Principle nonsense. Like that's gotta be a major bleed on the bottom line at every company which acts like this.
I believe some people within certain organizations are aware of the waste at some point or another, but it's the price said certain organizations chooses to pay in order to implement a great micromanagement system.
My family is a bit on the extreme of guessing culture to the point where we won't say anything and often folks find us very cold. I am made acutely aware of this everyday - from romantic partners, friends, and even strangers. My siblings and I were simply raised this way and it's all but impossible to change my behavior.
When we visit family in both Norway and Sweden it's almost like "whew" we can relax and breathe and everything feels very comfortable because the pace of society is slower, at restaurants and during normal activities out and about in the towns, you generally do not have to worry about folks approaching you.
My current partner is also a 3rd generation American, her family on both sides is Irish. They are incredibly social and outgoing and just 10 minutes she informed me we are having our neighbors over (he is a 2nd generation American of Irish descent and his partner is a 2nd generation Dutch). They are all very social and won't hesitate to offer a beer or help or anything really, which I certainly appreciate it but I'm uncomfortable accepting anything.
An even more extreme example is my older brother. I almost look like a social butterfly in comparison because I won't hesitate to complain about the weather, work, anything really. Whereas he is very stoic and quiet. We were in the construction industry with our father and we all would mostly work in silence building homes and apartment buildings, and when we expanded and hired new folks it made them really uncomfortable.
Once, my brother fell off a roof and he just laid there in a daze. I rushed down to him and by the time I got to him (no more than 20 seconds) he was already getting back up on the roof and just said "I'm fine". Another time his lung collapsed and he didn't tell anyone until his 5th day in the hospital! It's really disappointing sometimes.