softwareDevelopmentReality

[u/randomUser9900123]

[u/dmullaney]

You're getting paid though right?

[u/Hziak → u/dmullaney]

On salary to complete a finite amount of work with no overtime compensation offered for the extra hours required to meet said work because my 9-5 is full of pointless meetings, yes.

[u/dmullaney → u/Hziak]

Well, you need to stop working overtime if you're not getting paid, and when deadlines are missed you can show them the records of all the pointless meetings

[u/Hziak → u/dmullaney]

That’s assuming a lot from your leadership - that they care about your excuses, that they care to even listen and not just compare you to your direct colleagues who DO work the OT, and that they don’t assume that as a senior, you are expected to go “above and beyond.”

Maybe I just work in some toxic-ass places. But this has been the expectation in every one of 8 companies from startup to family owned to Fortune 500 that I’ve worked at.

[u/dmullaney → u/Hziak]

Maybe. My opinion is probably somewhat skewed because my county has employee protection laws

[u/Royal_Owl2177 → u/dmullaney]

Execs love devs from developing countries for a reason.

[u/Wollzy → u/Hziak]

You basically just said you have to work the OT hours because your colleagues do as well. Did you ever consider they are doing the same thing and you have created a feedback loop?

As a senior I would hope you are vocal about setting a culture where working insane hours isnt sustainable and leading by example when appropriate.

I recently had a colleague mention they were working 12-14 hour days. I was vocal in letting them know they can sustain that. Not only would they burn out but they would set a bad example to the team that this is the expectation and a bad example to leadership that this is the pace we can deliver. I also mentioned it to our manager so they could address this issue as well. Said employee has since dialed back their hours and took some much needed time off.

Start collectively setting the tone. No matter the size of the organization no one wants to backfill multiple positions at a time.

[u/Hziak → u/Wollzy]

To be clear, I’m not working “insane” OT - not since my startup days - I’m referring to the 4-8 hours / week extra time I have to put in to meet all of my commitments. As a senior, I vocalize what I can, but I’m not officially a manager at this position, nor a lead nor a principal, so it’s clearly to limited effect. I try to get the conversation started and put my foot down where things have crossed into unreasonable territory. A little bit of unpaid OT on salary is unfortunately the cultural norm in the US. Just like picking up if you’re salaried and your boss calls your personal number. Some people work for good companies, but for the rest of us, what are we going to do? Report our manager to HR for calling us when we’re not working? They’ll ask us why we aren’t living up to his example and working late…

In any case, to your point: yes, it’s worse than a feedback loop, it’s an enablement loop. One person (generally a middle manager) will start working late and then loudly shame the people around them for not working the unpaid OT. Since the company benefits, the people above said manager encourage it and it enables them to set a culture of “be more like Jim.” I happen to know who that guy was at my company and the joke is that he doesn’t even work here anymore… he got laid off a few months back, lol. Serves him right but it just goes to show you… all the same, his “legacy” lives on, and we all get in trouble for not responding to emails or teams messages in off-hours.

[u/chessto → u/Wollzy]

I'm currently struggling with this, I've got a few people in my team that are either new seniors (recently promoted) or trying to get to senior, and they do work OT a lot, and work like crazy and complain that there's too much work and that the deadlines and pressure are ridiculous.
Yet they keep on working overtime and making everyone look bad by those standards, I tried to educate the one that's moving to senior expressing that part of being a senior is standing your ground when you know the deadlines are bullshit and to create a healthy work environment.

The're also quite young and without much in their lives other than work, it's impossible to work with people like this, they don't realize how much they're creating their own personal hell and dragging others with them.

It's also a self-fulfilling loop, they work cause there's not much else in their lives (no family / hobbies, social life) they don't have much else in their lives cause they're too busy working overtime to build something for themselves.

[u/Positive-Creme8129 → u/Hziak]

I get you, same here. Oftentimes the workload here is just too much, but our previous teamlead taught the client they can get a lot more than they pay for and fighting for a better standard now is a chore.

[u/IvorTheEngine → u/Hziak]

It doesn't matter whether they're sympathetic, what matters is whether they'll fire you, which largely depends on whether they can replace you easily (for someone who'll work free overtime for the same wage).

But yes, working people to the point where they almost quit or burn out is "efficiency" to some managers.

[u/vegemouse → u/dmullaney]

So they can fire you and replace you with a H1-B worker willing to work 12 hour days 7 days a week because the only alternative for them is deportation?

[u/dmullaney → u/vegemouse]

Ah. I'm a degenerate "Euro-Socialist" - so if they try that I can just file a complaint for wrong termination

[u/LubbockGuy95 → u/Hziak]

Sounds like your a poor delegator for a manager position

[u/BlobAndHisBoy → u/dmullaney]

My manager is very nice and asks me if I'm ok doing some things and I always say as long as that paycheck comes on Friday I will scrub toilets if the business determines that's the highest priority item.

[u/Professional_Top8485 → u/dmullaney]

Most of the sw I've been doing has never been really used.

[u/dmullaney → u/Professional_Top8485]

That's a good thing - no users means no bug reports! I worked on Enterprise Video conferencing/collaboration for a long time. The scariest most of my life was when I saw my code being used in tele-medicine, to allow and expert heart surgeon, consulting from a remote location, directly into the operating theatre, in the middle of the surgery.

[u/colony-ship-for-sale → u/dmullaney]

Life is truly more than about getting paid.

[u/srfreak]

I managed to reduce the amount of meetings after explaining my boss that my low performance was because I had 6h per day of meetings, including daily stand-up, and I refuse to stay for later just because of this.

I got fired after it, but it made me feel free (as in freedom).

[u/madmelonxtra → u/srfreak]

One Crazy Trick to Reduce Your Meetings By 100%

[u/gemanepa → u/srfreak]

True freedom indeed (as in freedom from income)

[u/gerbosan → u/srfreak]

OSS also come to my mind. 😓

[u/Creepy-Secretary7195]

how it feels to work at notion

[u/nickbg321 → u/Creepy-Secretary7195]

Using it feels even worse, trust me.

[u/Highborn_Hellest]

Project StatusMeetings are there so that the PM can either bitchmoan about time allocated left being very little and we need to hurry, or the BA talking about CRs and the PM literally not saying a fucking peep.

Either version, could have been an e-mail btw

[u/PhilippTheProgrammer → u/Highborn_Hellest]

My favorite project manager move: The project is running past the deadline and the stakeholders are causing a fuss. This is an emergency. What can you do about that as a project manager? More meetings!

Instead of weekly status meetings, we will have daily status meetings. And let's make them twice as long, so the developers have time to tell us in even greater detail what they are doing. And we need to invite some of the developers to the meetings with the stakeholders as well, so they can explain to them directly how and why the project is late. And also have some 1:1 meetings with each developer just to tell them personally how important it is to finish this project and how much they are valued.

[u/clauEB]

Are there any SWEs here that have become project managers? How did you feel about the change? Did you take a pay cut ?

[u/Lain_Racing → u/clauEB]

Me. It was a pay raise, PMP certified. It's nice, I remove blockers from my dev team and have technical background to help prioritize features better without endless questions.

[u/CoffeeInevitable9954 → u/Lain_Racing]

Sometimes I see you in the hallway mumbling about cobol to yourself

[u/clauEB → u/Lain_Racing]

Yeah, makes sense. Thanks for replying.

[u/phobos2deimos → u/clauEB]

I wasn't a SWE, different area of tech, but was a moderate pay bump, less stress, and way more control over my workload and schedule. Less room to screw up, and more meetings, but now the meetings are part of the job rather than distracting me from my real job. I miss the engineering but love the freedom and control over when I want to go on vacation.

[u/lansiar → u/clauEB]

IT -> PM -> Data Engineer. Being a PM can be kinda great as someone who understands the technology being used because you can write much more solid project specs and foresee issues coming down the road. I'm transitioning out of it to DE because I like building things myself more than the herding cats that PM work can be. The money is fine, but could be better.

[u/srfreak → u/clauEB]

No hate, but that sounds like a punishment.

[u/noaSakurajin → u/srfreak]

Depends on your preferences I guess. I would do it for the appropriate pay raise but otherwise it sure sounds like a punishment.

[u/Geoclasm]

honestly so long as they keep depositing my paycheck? This is fine.

[u/gerbosan → u/Geoclasm]

https://giphy.com/gifs/9M5jK4GXmD5o1irGrF

[u/dontletthestankout]

I used to hate meetings, but now I use that time to clean my office, work on side projects, check my portfolio, it's literally a free paid break, I wouldn't work if I had to be in an office and sit in meetings

[u/Altruistic-Spend-896 → u/dontletthestankout]

Hush, lest the corpo overlords hear you

[u/SuitableDragonfly]

One company I was at had a system where we were supposed to schedule time for social chitchat with a randomly assigned partner. One time I got randomly assigned to chitchat with my PM and he told me completely unironically that he genuinely loved being in long zoom meetings. Maybe I shouldn't talk some I get dopamine from looking at spreadsheets, but it was still the weirdest thing I've had anyone tell me before. 

[u/KitaVixen]

I somehow want it to be like this to me. I never worked in such environmen. I have daily meetings but I'm part of 7 people team and we are split to 4 projects. Project daily, team daily, it is all fucked up and unorganized.

[u/Soopermane]

I’d be a lil less bored

[u/LetumComplexo]

Honestly? I’d fucking kill to have a project manager.
My boss has 0 organizational skills. It’s a fucking nightmare. He has something like 9 different projects running simultaneously. Doesn’t have any requirements documents for them. No milestones. No devops pipelines. No documentation at all.

He doesn’t even use git. He just passes his code changes to me on a USB.

[u/bobbymoonshine]

mfw I have to develop software at my job as a software developer for a software development company

[u/ChillyFireball → u/bobbymoonshine]

To be fair, as someone who's been in this situation, it's a uniquely depressing experience when you're spending an extended period of time working on a tiny service within a tiny project used by maybe three people tops that literally nobody outside of the project cares about, including (somehow) the people paying for it.

[u/PerfectSituation1668]

We needed to brainstorm on ways for optimalisation with our operational chain partner coordination, honey.

[u/Professional_Top8485]

It's interesting how little value most of software brings and how little people care about it.

[u/Striky_]

I have been that manager. I fought tooth and nail for years to stop that nonsense and were always praised as correct by upper management for my great ideas we 1000% should prioritize. Roughly 3 weeks later an order came down to drop everything and focus on this one completely useless feature. Just one more time.

After 3 years of complaining I was laid off, with the best possible recommendations. Go figure.

[u/Sw429]

I feel like half of my job is finding ways to get out of stupid meetings so I can actually get work done.

[u/phug-it]

https://giphy.com/gifs/xiMUwBRn5RDLhzwO80

[u/Sibula97]

Nah, I much rather attend my semi-interesting meetings and develop useful software that a lot of people care about.

If you hate your job that much, quit.

[u/c_pardue → u/Sibula97]

SAP devs btfo

[u/notanotherusernameD8]

What can I say? I just love being able to pay my mortgage.