> The wrong strategy is to push every engineer to use infinite tokens. Companies doing this are celebrating 500% more pull requests. But customer outcomes don't match the volume of code being generated.
The goal is 100x output BUT NOT 500% more pull requests, folks.
Power dynamics. Usually the person making the giant PRs is the one with all the sway. An earlier-career engineer is unlikely to push back against that level of influence.
PRs are all about power dynamics and (un)spoken deals…
If you rubberstamp some people‘s PRs all the time, you can then get them to greenlight your unpleasant PRs via pm instantly.
The other way round, retaliation: I once added some serious review notes to the PR of a very senior engineer because it was a dangerous topic. He would then spend the next months nitpicking every single PR I created. Had to post my PR in slack whenever he was not online to get them merged. After that I never seriously reviewed his PRs again. Too much of a headache.
It can be a company wide policy rather than trying to target a single individual even if the outcome is that they are targeted. This is something that should be addressed to them through a manager etc or if not, it's time to leave while they ruin the product over time.
Perfect example of a non-sequitur. Irrespective of whether or not the statement is true, it has no bearing on the veracity of the original claim: that in the current market, the majority of workers simply do not have this leverage.
Same can be said back to you. Obviously mine and 50+ acquaintances experience is not the entire world but geographical clusters and/or work-area clusters do apply.
Can you pick up the phone and be in the next job the next week?
Well, I am upset. But -- bubbles. My health has been in decline for years and I am very slowly making some strides. Missed on a million networking opportunities by being unable to go to conferences and... yeah, I'll not turn this into a sob story.
LLMs really accentuated the importance of networking, did they not?
I envy your bubble, and I am not being snarky or vile here -- 100% honest.
My education and experience matter exactly squat. And have not ever mattered in my 24 years of career.
I know I've done a lot of things wrong but I can't spend the rest of my life beating myself over it. Trying to find a way to attack the problem from different angles. But it's impossible with a hugely demanding job and my fear of being let go and how generally terrible the market is for niche-ish languages (like Elixir that I work with; I am pretty good at Golang and Rust but have not actively worked with them professionally in years; really went all-in).
So currently I am trapped. We'll see if I can figure out an exit. So far it seems mathematically impossible. If I don't change the game, I am toast.
1.) What do you have to be doing, daily, weekly, to be happy?
1a.) What do you have to NOT be doing, daily, weekly, to be happy?
2.) Do you prefer to remain an individual contributor, for one reason or another?
Said another way: are you the right fit to seriously look at the path to management or consulting roles?
3.) You mentioned your bubble - a few times. Are you willing to move? Otherwise shake that bubble up?
PS my situation is not that enviable - the work I’m being offered is far from what I’d like to be doing - or enough to be comfortable financially.
> 1.) What do you have to be doing, daily, weekly, to be happy?
Be more in nature. I am in a tight metropolitan area and I hate my immediate surroundings. I've seen our multiple parks many times and I am not impressed. I'd prefer go hiking but my health condition is making me tired after a grocery shopping. Mind you, that is fixable but work is strangling me to the point of me not wanting to work out.
Also, just getting to one of those parks is an adventure; minimum 45 minutes. Not enough time or motivation for that. And that ruins a lot of stuff downstream in the graph of dependencies, sadly.
Also: be much more free. My work is demanding. Very demanding. A startup finally starting to make some money (far from the burn rate). CEO signing with new customers and not asking if we even can accommodate such a demand.
Work-wise I'd prefer to coast somewhere, cynically speaking, but more accurately: have more autonomy and time & space to show my talents. Have breathing room, if you will. Now I have nearly zero. Not like zero _zero_, but nearly.
> 1a.) What do you have to NOT be doing, daily, weekly, to be happy?
I don't want to care whether my CEO is going to make money. If I wanted to sign up as a cofounder (or start my own business) then I would. Normally I wouldn't mind but it's just too much work in this job.
Though on the other hand, I am getting priceless experience on what non-technical people value and generally finally started understanding that the techie's perspective is cripplingly limiting -- so I welcome the lessons. I just wish they were 1-2 a week, not 10+.
> 2.) Do you prefer to remain an individual contributor, for one reason or another? Said another way: are you the right fit to seriously look at the path to management or consulting roles?
I have been a contractor, consultant (somewhat), architect, educator, and IC (most of the time). I do fairly OK on reconciling differences and digging for the root causes of conflicts and misunderstandings (as I think I am proving with my recent replies where I try hard to ask people where do they see Rust zealots so we can at least argue from equal POVs, I get downvoted for me trying to be open-minded and then more or less trolled here and there). I am pretty good at compromising and changing my mind when faced with new info, as I think every science-profession-like professional must be.
"Strong opinions, weakly held" describes me fairly okay; though most of my opinions are not so strong either.
Management I don't care about. I am entering middle age and I need less calls during which I have to pretend to subscribe to the company's cult. No thanks. Only if I have generous equity and a guaranteed 9 months of severance upon being let go will I care enough. I am physically and psychologically extremely tired of all the circus and posturing. You want me to help you achieve success in your business? I WOULD LOVE TO! I take big enjoyment in turning business requirements into code; educates me every time I do it, in a way that I love and want to keep experiencing.
My problems however are crunches (i.e. soul-crushing fast speeds) and again, company cults. Just keep me the hell away from all parroting HR sessions please.
This is NOT to be mistaken with "typical introvert programmer hates meetings". Nothing of the sort. I am one of the first to exchange 5 Slack messages with you and if I don't see alignment I'll ask your permission for us to jump on a call. I love overcoming obstacles and don't hide in the corner. I just hate cults. Meaningful difference but many people conflate the two for some reason.
So TL;DR I'd prefer to be an IC simply because many other roles I've tried (the most trendy one: "product engineer") are masked N roles for 1 wage really, and even though I honestly don't care who in the org feels they scored some huge points by tricking an engineer into doing multiple roles, I still don't want to overwork myself -- and these roles kind of come with that implicit expectation. If my schedules and work regime are satisfying for me, it's all good for me and I'll not care if the CEO giggles thinking he "tricked" me to do the job of 4 people.
...But I do want to be left in peace to do my work. And my work =/= meetings. Meetings are a vehicle through which we (a) align with business / customers and (b) make sure we will write the right code. Managers have meetings as their main output. I am 100% against that in my life and career.
Mind you, I've been a team lead 3 times over the course of a 24-year career. All the devs that I was managing loved me and that by itself was a hugely rewarding experience, especially when multiple of them jumped in my defense when executives started criticizing KPIs that I was not ever informed about, but... that by itself can't compensate for the fact that I spent my days dreaming of being able to solve problems with code again while sighing deeply and opening the 7th spreadsheet barely into the 3rd hour of my workday. Never again.
I can and I do many adjacent-to-code activities in my current job. I don't mind it. I even enjoy the occasional pulls away from my IDE and Claude. But I would mind it if those other activities started taking >20% of my working hours, for example.
Hope that paints a well-explained picture.
> 3.) You mentioned your bubble - a few times. Are you willing to move? Otherwise shake that bubble up?
I am more than ready to GTFO from my country; we just got a full majority government with strong suspicions of strong Russian alignment (Bulgaria) and I am not keen on finding out how would that look in 4, or even 2, years. It's not only that though, I just hate the place already.
And also being an Eastern European, we are a target of extremely toxic companies for one reason or another. Guess we are known for soldiering on and never defending ourselves which I am very ashamed to admit: I was that stereotype for a _long_ time.
However, again: health. Even just moving all my and my wife's items from one location to another would put me into bed for 3-4 days only lying and reading books to recover. But also again: this is remediable, but not while being in my current job; too demanding, leaves no air in the room for almost nothing else. I need nature, I need my meditation, yoga, lifting and biking. I have not done almost none of those in 7 months and I am starting to feel it very acutely.
Before you say it: I manage my time and focus fairly well (recovering from ADHD-seeming symptoms all on my own with zero medication, and I never intend to get any) but I just don't have enough energetic hours in the day to outpace the hard demands of a startup. I manage to do a few good 2-3h 100% focused sessions of work and only hop on HN while I wait for a long Claude research and/or scoping/planning discussions.
I want to change my bubble but that requires me to make peace with what a frakkin nerd I was most of my life and took my programmer work position for granted and now I am 46 with zero contacts and shortening my lifespan in a company where I love everyone but still have to grind my arse off just not to fall _too much_ behind (progress? actual progress and outpacing the requirements? forget about it).
I would love to move to, I don't know, probably France or the USA. However, what I am _not_ willing to do is work in an office. I am a fairly serious guy who knows how to manage his time and energy and I don't need anyone looking over my shoulder; that would make me quit on the 2nd day. Trust culture or bust. I can prove myself in less than a month. If that's not good enough for a company then I don't need them. We all have boundaries. That's mine.
> But, I am finally sleeping well.
Same, for the last 6-7 months, first time in 8-9 years (health ruined almost to the point of a premature death). I very, very gradually recover, I'd say 0.1% a week. I can feel the difference from half a year ago but not from one month ago. Aiming to accelerate that but for that to happen I need to overcome despair and depression; not easy when your body betrays you and injects you with the desperation chemicals every day.
One final time: but to alleviate that, I need less work load! I need to know and see that if I concentrate I can do my work for the day in 2-3h and use the rest to invest in health, physical and mental. I know many view that as cheating and slacking but I'd vehemently disagree. I have worked a long time to build discipline and a plethora of skills to become much more productive than many. I am a heavy hitter.
Watched The Matrix, all 3 parts? If so, here's an analogy for you: if you remember the final fight, when Neo "died" shortly after, and even though he was fumbling and was visibly disoriented, he _still_ managed to hit Smith with strength enough to have him break through multiple layers of concrete.
If you pardon the dramatic expression: well, this is how I feel and conduct myself at work now. If you give me a good target, I'll demolish it with precision and strength even if I am half-dead. But make me do 50 quick weak strikes and I'll die on the spot.
(Or, as people say: "You don't pay me $500 because your task only took me one hour. You pay me for all the years I needed to become so good that I _can_ do your job in one hour." -- or something of the sort, don't remember concretely.)
Hope that helps. No idea why I even confessed as much but I still know enough to trust my intuition. So, full disclosure. Do with it as you please.
What's the alternative? You push back or you don't, leaving you likelier to leave in the future. For non-junior devs, the market is still humming along.
I don't see how the market is humming along for anyone.
Then again, I have zero network. Maybe you can just call someone on the phone and jump ship next week? I can't. Many other people cannot as well.
My idea right now is to find ways to do things mostly my way and introduce a near-perfect meritocracy in my team. No seniors or juniors; I am technically "the most senior" but we all have differing and unique experiences. I share my experiences and when I feel stronger about something I make it clear why but I don't go sad in the corner if the other engineers overrule me.
Regardless of how the market is, I like getting along with people. Of course sometimes (actually: often) it's not possible in which case either a team restructuring should be done, or one should indeed leave (which is the nuclear option; not just "oh well, things did not work out").
> I don't see how the market is humming along for anyone. Then again, I have zero network
I mean, yeah, that's the issue. Even without a network my LinkedIn is full of recruiter spam because my profile is optimized, which is a skill anyone can learn and do, same concept as SEO.
> I like getting along with people.
Sure, who doesn't? The issue is when one becomes a doormat, just as in other social situations; in this case, it'd be being nice to others when in reality you'd need to be firm but fair that their writing huge PRs is negatively affecting everyone else. It's the paradox of tolerance applied to the engineering world.
Yeah, you are sadly right. Took me a long time to stop being a doormat. Not sure I am nailing it even now to be honest, but I am doing _much_ better compared to two years ago.
And honestly, even if you do push back, you probably can't succeed. I used to work with a guy that made enormous, 10k line PRs to our Jenkins code, and would give only 3-4 days for people to review it. We tried to push back on it, but he was the golden boy of one of the people in charge of the project. Even the (inevitable) breakage of software builds when he merged his changes didn't cause any consequences for him. Unfortunately, sometimes with office politics there's absolutely nothing you can do.
"Korean girl Short I didn't know how to start a conversation with her, so I just asked if she was Korean and she said yes. Then I made her guess what kind of Asian I am. Then I rambled about being Asian in Syracuse before leaving. I initiated one more conversation but now we don't interact"
You bother people every day with your existence. You are one more car in their traffic, 5 minutes more of waiting in their line, you got the last bagel they were craving. Being a bother to people is part of living in a society, it would be impossible to live without ever being a burden or a nuisance to anyone. I wished I had accepted this earlier in life.
The important thing is to realize that this feeling is irrational. People aren't strongly bothered that easily. Quite the contrary, extroverted people tend to be much more popular than average.
> "Going to the gym, talking to strangers at the gym, ... these are both artifical replacements for human activity that is missing."
As opposed to what, our ancient hunter gatherer lifestyle? Going to the gym and talking to strangers at the gym isn't an "artificial replacement", it's a genuine activity lots of people do.
> "You try to form friendships with strangers because your daily routine lacks real and fulfilling interactions with other people."
How do you think people make friends? They make friends by interacting with people at shared spaces and activities.
everyone is different, even if I'm biking/walking everywhere and working outside, I still need to work myself to exhaustion if I want to get any sleep. I currently train muay thai, but even when I was young and doing yard work for a living I still trained with my friends and played sports. heck, growing up my life was american football training during the day and after school, regular football a couple of times a week with friends, running around for fun, and then doing heavy yard work at home and at neighbor's houses on weekends.
Not that your's isn't valid, some people (like me) have a big surplus of energy that needs to go somewhere and sometimes the best available outlet is lifting weights.
Isn't that a subjective value judgment? That's great that you enjoy gardening and building things with your hands. I don't really enjoy those activities and would rather sit down and read a book or play the piano in my free time. But I want to stay healthy so I exercise my muscles and cardiovascular system in "artificial" ways. What's wrong with that?
> As opposed to what, our ancient hunter gatherer lifestyle?
I guess the point is that lots of people before didn't need gyms for staying fit. Gyms in certain countries used to be viewed as a place where athletes go to train, and in many places people still view gyms as that
I don't have the numbers to back this up, but in places where you don't need a car to get around, like Amsterdam, lots of people stay fit by just driving their bicycle to work, school and so on
In parallel, they're also starting to downgrade their quality. In the latest season of Stranger Things there's a wild amount of in-scene exposition, where the characters explain what's happening while it's happening. I did some digging and learned that they may be dumbing down their shows because they know users typically look at their phones while watching Netflix and users are more likely to drop off of a show if they don't know what's going on.
> "If I delete a card, does it count against the 1000 cards?"
> "Yes, every card you create is counted, even cards that are deleted later. Each card ID increments by 1, so the next card you create will always show you how many cards you’ve created so far."
It's a lot to ask grandparents to take care of an infant full time during the work week. Here and there, on occasion, that is a completely reasonable thing to ask for. It helps strengthen family bonds. But I would never ask my parents or my in-laws to care for my toddler 8-5 M-F. They already raised kids.
> But I would never ask my parents or my in-laws to care for my toddler 8-5 M-F. They already raised kids.
This is disheartening to hear. You should not have to ask, like ever. My mother would KILL to have grandchildren and would absolutely love to repeat what she calls the best time of her life. She nags me for not having kids and I feel bad because she sees other grandparents and is saddened she is missing out.
I recently overheard a conversation between two older women who were both new grandparents and they conversation was about the pure joy of getting to raise kids again - BUT - you get to go home at night. They loved it!
If you have the right parents then you should never have these reservations. Otherwise it sounds like you have parents who had kids "because that's what you're supposed to do." So they never enjoyed it and dont want to repeat it. My condolences.
No, my parents and in-laws have routinely expressed how much they love to watch and spend time with my kid. But they're also retired and have lots of trips and hobbies going on. They're getting older and aren't as physically able as I am in regards to picking up and chasing after a highly mobile toddler. My husband and I aren't their only kids either. They also spend time helping out our siblings.
So it's really more of a me thing why I don't ask them to take care of him "full time". If I really needed them to, they would (and happily).
Doom and gloom that is somewhat substantiated by material reality. The world is getting warmer and nothing is done about it. Far right populism is getting more and more popular, with no end in sight. No way am I bringing kids in this environment.
I've found a lot of parallels between now and 1910s-1930.
Thru genealogy I see how families and extended families lived together to afford living expenses. MultiFamily housing was common and jobs were within walking distance. The automobile dispersed jobs and families, taking all the above away.
The needs we have now are no longer possible to fill.
"people are now putting up a gigawatt’s worth of solar panels, the rough equivalent of the power generated by one coal-fired plant, every fifteen hours."
will things still get somewhat bad, certainly yeah. but there's a very real chance we're on track to a mostly carbon free future in a ~ decade. Im pessimistic about a lot of things but there is a lot to be optimistic about here.
Putting up solar panels is great, but what is often missing from these optimistic pieces is the fact that globally, fossil fuel usage is still going up. Even in the west: coal, oil and gas plants aren't decommissioned as more solar farms go up (and economically, why would they?). And let's not get into transportation, where I don't see muany realistic plans to replace the current fleet of vehicles by electric ones.
So, all of this to say, I do not believe we'll live in a carbon-free world in a decade. At best, I can imagine something like that in 2060, and even then... My point is that we're already in a +3°C world when the "absolute limit" was set to +2°C 10 years ago. And it's not slowing down. We're currently on the worst trajectory envisioned by previous IPCC reports.
What about the doom and gloom that people are living? Low wages, expensive housing, unstable employment, and crappy medical care do not fill people with optimism.
The goal is 100x output BUT NOT 500% more pull requests, folks.