[sascha_sl]

> Almost always asking for "meaningful" jobs. What even is that? I'll challenge the notion and call it "An inability to find meaning in the available work."

Having an impact. Right now, I'm stuck in a glue code + terraform + maintaining third party code job. 2 years ago I did platform engineering with high impact features for ~100 people across ~20 teams.

> Sense of entitlement, _YOU_ liking the hiring manager? It's your job to get the hiring manager to like you, not the other way around.

Particularly in tech, if you forego extreme salaries, you should pick who you want to work with. You spend more than half of your time awake with these people after all.

> Not knowing your place: You were supposedly not hired into some leadership position to change the world from day 1, you have opinions, they are based on previous experiences, made elsewhere. Shut up, listen, learn, observe and do your best to do what they ask of you, at least the first half year or more, and then start gently providing input and resistance, show that you can do it their way before trying to get them to do it yours.

This is the kicker. You can make things better, but you have to pick your fights, and even with those you need to be careful and have some diplomacy skills to seem helpful rather than a rude know-it-all. Remember, if you call something crap, you're probably doing it close to the person who is responsible for it being crap. They might even know it's not good but were restricted by time. Choose your words carefully.

[samhw]

> Remember, if you call something crap, you're probably doing it close to the person who is responsible for it being crap.

I got bitten by this once. It turns out there's a variable φ(crap) representing the amount of time you have to work at a company before – what I thought were – self-deprecating comments, about the app being a piece of shit, are regarded as self-deprecating, rather than an outsider trashing their work.

> if you forego extreme salaries

Just FWIW, to forego is to go before, whereas to forgo is to go without.

[bjourne]

What you're saying is that the app is crap, everyone knows it is crap, but it's a faux pas for the new person to say it? If so, it seems it is not really about the crappy app but more about the in-group pecking order. Wish adults would be mature enough to forgo things like that.

[samhw]

I think the other person got it spot-on in their reply. It's not about social pecking order - a long-time employee could well be at the bottom of the social pecking order - it's about whether it's perceived to be your own work that you're deprecating, rather than their and not your work. It doesn't matter if it's someone else's too, only that it's yours in part.

This is closely related to the ingroup vs outgroup distinction, but not quite the same: e.g. I could be a former employee, even someone who was disliked or who left in disgrace, and still be under the aegis of the 'us' in this context.

Edit: On reflection, I kinda ignored the rest of your message and got stuck on the answer to your clarifying question. I do totally agree with your point about maturity. I suppose my only caveat is that I was moaning/joking/joking-and-moaning at the time, rather than making a serious point that would have been relevant to our work, so I don't think it was immaturity in a sense that caused any actual problems.

[dusted]

Thing is, context means something to people, a new person coming in starting shitting all over everything has no context for saying that, they may be right, but the don't have any shared experiences of why it is so, and that makes a difference. Having suffered through things together, it makes a difference, it softens the words, or at least, it points them away from people, and into situations, situations of the past, that a newcomer cannot know, and so, cannot be referring to.

[bjourne]

Not having knowledge of the context should work in the new persons favor. They don't know how the app was developed, or what everyone else thinks about it, but can immediately recognize that it is crap and dares to say so. Bravery and honesty are traits to be cherished. And in your example, the app is crap is a true statement. So it still seem to me to be more about in-group/out-group psychology, the workplace's pecking order, and fragile bruised egos than anything else.

[samhw]

Thanks for the explanation! Like I said in my own reply (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29512035), this is spot-on and better than I could have expressed it – and, clearly, than I did express it – myself. It's about whether you're part of the 'we' whose work you're deprecating.