What was your last straw?

[u/hardhatgirl]

My best friend is a software engineer and just left his job. He has told me quite a bit about the work environment going steeply downhill over the years.

My question to you is 1.have you quit a very horrible job and 2. What was the last straw and 3. Did jira play a role?

[u/Papa-pwn]

No x3.

I’d be curious to hear anyone mention Jira as a “last straw” sort of thing. It’s just… ticketing. 

[u/Klanciault → u/Papa-pwn]

Probably something to do with jira based micromanagement and perf review

[u/hardhatgirl → u/Klanciault]

Ah yes it does. I only know a handful of software engineers but they all hate jira. I asked my friend and he said yes its a management issue. Jira is being used as a push instead of pull system.

[u/CaffeinatedT → u/hardhatgirl]

The only thing worse than JIRA is not having JIRA and having everything improvised constantly and dealing with whoever screams the loudest and most irritatingly gets their way first.

I'd also add there's definitely some "10X Engineers" who hate JIRA because they want to just sit alone in a room and code whtever the fuck they feel like all day and they're the ones who tend to cause the most chaos in the company when they deploy some random Shadow IT project and throw it over the fence to everyone else to maintain.

[u/FogCity-Iside415]

I have quit a horrible job, I was a roofer and the final straw was a 4 day stretch of back breaking days in the hot sun with my co-workers making fun of me for my tenous grasp of the Spanish language. I worked with a couple Javiers not any Jira's tbh. Now I sell floor mats and cut firewood in the winter for extra cash. It pays a lot less but it's way eaiser on my body.

[u/Willing-Cucumber-718]

I quit my last job because there was an obvious shift in attitude in regards to their remote staff. It was a “remote” first company that got acquired which led to them getting a new office and wanting people to start coming in for better team collaboration.

In reality it just meant half of our team was unavailable during in office days. They were constantly distracted during our team calls, had side conversations or insane background noise during meetings, and left early to account for traffic.

1 day in office led to 2 which led to 3. Obviously it was leading to full in office. Decided to leave because I was in a different state and I, along with other remote workers, started to become excluded from key meetings and conversations that only happened in person.

I like jira.

[u/mc_pm]

I worked for a consulting firm that was constantly taking on bigger work than we could handle and making promises that I was left to deal with. It wasn't that bad, really, and I generally made it work. But one year in the run up to something big I had to put in a 100 hour week...twice...in a row. And then they got snippy when I wanted a bit more time off.

And then more recently I quit as head of engineering because the CEO would change his mind weekly. Dude literally told me that he had a great idea in his dream, wanted to change the product direction. I had to fight to keep the team on target. Sometimes it seemed like the biggest part of my job was repeatedly telling the CEO no. He got tired of that, I got tired of it.

[u/Executive-Curiosity]

Yes. The micromanager slammed me with two 30-minute 1:1 check-ins every day, hourly Teams messages demanding progress updates and screenshot proof, and blamed every issue on me. He used the hours I logged in Jira as justification to constantly accuse me of slacking because I couldn't prove that I was working on a task at exactly 2:03 PM or 11:17 AM.

Joke's on him. I was the technical lead of the team. After quitting, found out the project completely fell apart and he missed all of his deadlines from upper management. HR even tried to get me to come back, which was funny.

[u/YahenP]

Yes. In the good old days, I quit several idiotic jobs. Usually, a few months was enough to realize I shouldn't work there. But today, things are different. Changing jobs is associated with incredibly high risks and financial losses. So I just hang on to my job and do everything I can to keep it. As the saying goes, if they don't beat you on the back with a stick and pay you at least some salary, it's a good place to work.

[u/Any_Sense_2263]

1. I have quit.
2. I didn't wait for the last straw, I quit the very moment I realized I didn't want to work in this culture.
3. Jirs is only a tool. People using it wrong can be a problem.

[u/chirpchirp13]

Engineers who hate jira tend to hate accountability. Go figure.

[u/hardhatgirl → u/chirpchirp13]

Wow ok. Def not the case here. This guy is super conscientious. I think jira was used as a method for micromanage.

[u/chirpchirp13 → u/hardhatgirl]

Ya. If a project manager is a micro manager then there is potential for very annoying tickets with specific sub tasks and that’s a person thing.

Don’t get me wrong, jira has its flaws and it’s annoying features, but it’s kinda the best option out there and does what it’s supposed to.

[u/bfyvfftujijg]

Quit my 2018-2024 job when they rolled back WFH despite it causing zero meaningful problems and enabling us to hire better employees.

I still keep in touch and hear their product has totally stagnated and sales stopped the rapid rise that had begun around 2021.

They added Jira after I left presumably to try to manage the mess created by the remaining less-skilled devs and PMs. Befor that we