[pyrophane]

Yeah, I've realized that the things I don't like in tech have everything to do with the culture and politics. When I've been able to work with a small team of people I really like and respect, I've generally been quite content.

[hylaride]

I've rekindled by passion by working for a startup again.

My previous employer (which I also joined as a startup) ended up in a situation where the head product manager became VP of engineering (it's a complicated story - don't ask). We also had a yes-man director of Eng and together they went all-in on very orthodox scrum, where they sat in the sprint planning/point meeting and overrode every decision of what to take off the backlog and enforcing "themes" of each sprint to ensure that only product work got done. It was very rare that any tech-debt work got dealt with, and security work was only done if it burned down CVEs or other "quantifiable" metrics that were contractually obligated.

I ended up ok as there was eventually an exit, but the core experienced engineering team all left within 6 months.

Now I'm not only allowed, but encouraged to take initiative and while of course I do product work, I can also take a step back before taking two steps forward again.

[xp84]

Good for you. It’s so exhausting dealing with these people who are constantly chasing a fantasy that through some process, or through sheer force of will, we can achieve a system where all the feature work gets done super quickly and we never have to pause or slow down to handle engineering concerns because they simply don’t exist.

[dreamcompiler]

The only thing worse is when they expect you to do all the above after they cut your budget in half. I'm so sick of hearing "Do more with less."

"Yes we want you to build a faster-than-light spaceship. Your energy budget is this candle."

Why do we give managerial control to insane people?

[xp84]

I think they get that control because they promise this nonsense to whoever hires them. Essentially, they're flim-flam men. They low-bid to get the contract and then try to make their underlings make good on the promises they made.

I'd never be hired as a CTO because I'd probably tell them "Yeah, you can have 95% less bugs, just stop trying to ship 100 features a quarter. Maybe do half that. Or you can ship twice as many features as you do now, just put up with way more bugs and instability! Instant "Strong No Hire."

[anonymars]

I think to paraphrase Plato's Republic, who else would want it?

[nwhnwh]

The ERP field is filled with these people.

[skeeter2020]

>> they went all-in on very orthodox scrum

do you mean "unorthodox"? What you describe sounds both terrible and not very scrum-like, at least ideally (I too have experienced when whatever terrible approach you use is labelled "agile" by leadership...)

[ElevenLathe]

I somewhat recently had a conversation about how we were going to start being more "strict" about how we do Agile (with a straight face). And they were right!

[hylaride]

Well, except for the fact that they took over the planning process, everything else was orthodox. From the fibonacci pointing system to the retrospectives where we had to go into detail about how the timelines didn't line up perfectly. But we were "working faster" because we were gradually getting more points into a sprint! (queue eye rolls)

What's worse is that I kept getting written up because my main role was DevOps, which meant I was highly interrupt driven...which isn't something you can point reliably.

[SlightlyLeftPad]

Any tips on finding this again? I had a great situation turn sour in exactly this way once growth and leadership change came.

[skeeter2020]

nothing tactical from me, but I've fostered a strategic approach over the years that's lead to a deep appreciation for the real-time experience. You can probably recognize when it's good (and bad) once you've worked for a while, and you really need to consciously pause and remark "If this isn't nice, what is?"^1 at those times when it is good.

A decade of consulting had me always ready to wrap my engagement at the end of any day, and (for better and worse) I carried this with me to future jobs. I always miss (at least some of) the people, but never the situation when it turns sour and I leave. The good news: you often get a chance to work with the good ones again (even if that's because you entice them away to your next gig).

^1 https://archive.org/details/ifthisisntnicewh0000vonn/mode/2u...

[simgt]

Same here, it has always been a state transition. There's always that snake showing up who forces everyone to watch their back and eventually disband. A tech coop seems like a good option, but it's almost exclusively web dev.