[0x264]

The situation is not going to improve as long as business stakeholders and engineering managers (some closer to MBAs than actual engineers) think of software engineers as construction workers. They think we are fungible, they don't understand the craft of programming etc, and have very short term mindsets. Took me a while but then I realised that I needed to interview my prospective employers as much as they were interviewing me, and to just ignore those not worth working for.

[ThrowawayR2]

> "They think we are fungible"

Most software people do web front end or web back end or CRUD. Most of the rest do apps, whether mobile or desktop. What's non-fungible about us?

[tukantje]

At the very least understanding of the specific domain comes to mind.

[lsdforme]

> I realised that I needed to interview my prospective employers as much as they were interviewing me

This is so important, and most of the “fit” problems working I’ve experienced are because I didn’t weigh something heavily enough in the interview.

If you are even the slightest bit concerned with an employer, that is a red flag in your long-term prospects there.

For example:

- If your future boss seems even a little clueless about the job itself, you may be lucky to find adequate structure or information available to do your job well.

- If your future boss seems guarded, they may be hiding something; they may not be equipped for the job or could be a psychopath.

- If they have greater than average benefits or the recruiter calls you a rockstar, it may be some form of hell, and you won’t find that out until a few weeks in.

- If more than one person seemed like they were afraid to say something during the interview and were very quiet, either the environment there will be weird or it may be a serious hell and/or there is no chance to be able to fill the shoes of the person that left.

- If you sense that they overestimated your ability or you overstate something accidentally in the interview, you may not overcome that as much as you want to believe in yourself. No, you can’t make up for years of experience with hard work. Your LinkedIn profile description must be essentially you, with the burrs removed and buffed up a little; It’s not just to get past a machine or recruiter.

- If anyone you interview with is an arse, even if they work in a different team, that’s not a good sign.

- If you are ___, and no one else there is, that may be a serious problem. This is age, sex, religion, politics, number of kids and ages, pets, what they do/don’t do socially, emotion, humor, tech stack, clothing, what vehicles they drive, style of workplace, and everything else that either you won’t like or they won’t like about you. Diversity is a sham if you’re the only one different, though I know that some may not ever realistically find a place to fully fit in.

- If you join when they’re hiring others for your team at the same time, and the business itself isn’t growing significantly, that can be a bad sign.

- Claims that they don’t fire people are a lie or a hope.

None of these are absolute rules, but find your people, and if anything doesn’t seem right or seems too good to be true, it probably is. Weigh that extra salary against the impact of having to find another job if you quit or are let go later.

[zahlman]

> If you are ___, and no one else there is, that may be a serious problem. This is age, sex, religion, politics, number of kids and ages, pets, what they do/don’t do socially, emotion, humor, tech stack, clothing, what vehicles they drive, style of workplace, and everything else that either you won’t like or they won’t like about you. Diversity is a sham if you’re the only one different, though I know that some may not ever realistically find a place to fully fit in.

This is impossible to satisfy below a certain company size. And beyond the things that can't realistically be hidden, I would prefer not to know a lot of that about my coworkers, and would prefer them not to know those things about me.

[nouveaux]

It sounds like what you're arguing for is that companies ought to have employees that are irreplaceable. Wouldn't that impose a huge risk to the company? If said employee gets hit by the proverbial bus or leaves, the company should just fold?

Companies need to build systems where everyone is replaceable to de-risk the business and not because they don't get programmers.

[bsoles]

If a company doesn't have irreplaceable people, then that company is not doing anything interesting. Conversely, if replaceable people can produce your (software) product, then any other company can also do it.

As much as I don't like LLMs that much personally, do you think ChatGPT was produced with replaceable people?

> Companies need to build systems where everyone is replaceable...

No they don't. They need to build systems where everyone is happy with their job and don't need to constantly hop jobs for better salary, environment, etc.

The way to mitigate the bus factor is not to make everybody replaceable; it is to have a process to develop more irreplaceable people with overlapping expertise in their areas.

[nouveaux]

Overlapping expertise is another form of replacing someone. At a basic level, employees need to go on vacation, parental leave and all sorts of other personal leave. If you were irreplaceable, you couldn't go on leave.

Companies who develop these systems successfully are able to allow employees to go on leave for 4-6 months and have them easily come back. This is a good thing.

[A4ET8a8uTh0_v2]

But they ( companies ) don't. Looking back at my career, what you do get is, various ranges of alignment to an idea ( whatever it may be ). Some companies do it better than others. Usually, the smaller the company, the easier it is for the owner/founder/main guy to make sure his vision is appropriately enforced, but that gets so much harder in bigger ones so the systems they generate get progressively less sensible. And yes, I don't think search for absolutely replaceable employees shows any kind of faith in one's company. It does, however, show an interesting frame of mind that I personally like to avoid.

For all the talk about innovation, you don't get that by making everyone an interchangeable cog. You want at least some people, who are difficult to be replaced, because they are your competitive edge ( I am saying difficult, because I personally also do not believe anyone is truly irreplaceable ).

And again, the risk to a company, especially a tech company, is falling behind. Losing an employee is a fact of life type of risk; effectively unavoidable. Still, that kind of fake modularity is wrong, not because modularity is a bad idea ( it is not ), but because companies absolutely fucking suck at designing that kind of a system ( as evidenced by reality itself ).

All this is before we get to some of the more human aspect of all this ( up until now we were talking about companies as if they are a living thing with wills and what not and an amalgamation of humans, where one action is a function of thousands little decisions ) like: people messing with systems in a way that does the exact opposite of what the company 'wants'.

All in all, it is an interesting argument, and I even agree with it at some level, but I do not think it survives closer inspection.

[scarface_74]

We are fungible. Most software development is not rocket science. If any of us got hit by a bus tomorrow HR would send our next of kin “thoughts and prayers”, a flower and tell them how to collect our life insurance and then immediately open a req and get flooded with hundreds of probably good enough replacements.