"It is a cold Anzac day in Melbourne, and I am brooding."
I'm in Sydney, and Lest We Forget.
"It has become exceedingly clear to me that the average company is not a suitable environment for someone that cares about the craft of programming."
I'm not in a position to do this topic justice as it's a too big a subject to cover in a post such as this. Nevertheless, l'd extend that statement to include essentially any craft or expertise. Companies have profit as their primary objective and this rarely fits well with the specifics of one's craft or expertise.
The worst case comes when the stated objectives of the company or organization (what it does to make money) are very different to those of the employee's skills. For instance, the employee is employed in some technical area of a company that has nothing to do with technology such as banking, finance, the arts and various government bureaucracies.
My worst job was working for a government bureaucracy that had nothing to do with technology, it was soul destroying and horrible. As head of a technical department I found myself continually embroiled in matters that had nothing to do with what my department actually did, and trying to explain what my staff actually did in ways senior management could understand was a fruitless exercises—one may as well have tried to teach a dog calculus.
What was so frustrating was that I was in a secure position and that the only escape meant I would have to ditch tenure and security, which is eventually what I did.
> The worst case comes when the stated objectives of the company or organization (what it does to make money) are very different to those of the employee's skills. For instance, the employee is employed in some technical area of a company that has nothing to do with technology such as banking, finance, the arts and various government bureaucracies.
> My worst job was working for a government bureaucracy that had nothing to do with technology, it was soul destroying and horrible. As head of a technical department I found myself continually embroiled in matters that had nothing to do with what my department actually did, and trying to explain what my staff actually did in ways senior management could understand was a fruitless exercises—one may as well have tried to teach a dog calculus.
In my opinion, for such a situation it would make sense for the management to apply a more hands-off approach with respect to managing the technical employees. If you don't understand what they are doing, employ great people that you trust and let them do their technical things in a rather hands-off way.
Trouble is tech services are needed by such organizations, in my case it was IT and electronics.
It's when things go wrong as they sometimes do, and mainly when users screw up using the services—no matter how much has been plowed into training—that it comes unstuck.
Management wants assurances that services will be more reliable but they don't have the interest or understanding to be helpful, this lack of understanding manifests as insufficient budgets and etc.
So what does one do? Well aware of C.P. Snows' two cultures problem, I hire consultants who are at arm's length to (a) check my operation is working efficiently (and it passes AOK), and (b) to explain matters to management (it's more detailed than that but you get the gist).
Did that help? Well, essentially no it didn't, if management isn't really interested in resolving matters and or takes precious little interest in what its technical departments and staff do then one is essentially stymied. One either puts up with matters or gets out. I opted for the latter.
> In my opinion, for such a situation it would make sense for the management to apply a more hands-off approach with respect to managing the technical employees. If you don't understand what they are doing, employ great people that you trust and let them do their technical things in a rather hands-off way.
This never works. I work in a place with a bunch of very competent people (not perfect, but good), and there are still so many people trying to "dig the moat" -- own a project where they can do whatever stupid shit they want. They leave years later and senior managers are told about the mess they left behind. Can you imagine what happens where most people are average or less?
> None of their engineering staff have anything visible on their GitHub accounts - not even a project that they got two lines into and then threw away, which I honestly accept as a sign of baseline competence these days
As much as I want to contribute to FOSS I have kids to take care of, and want to parent. While I’m not star dev, I am certainly competent.
I've been a C++ dev for more than a decade and every single project I've ever worked on has been confidential and closed source, there is nothing for me to put on GitHub, other than personal stuff but then why would I ever do that? My hobby projects don't reflect my professional standards for coding, if they did they would no longer be hobby projects :P
Same with me, I have active projects on github but the repos are private and bespoke, very specific to my environment. It's not performative activity to make my profile look good, I actually use the stuff.
And are you sure your use cases don't match others', or are you not willing to share your work for free with them? Why would it be performative to make it public?
3. Lots of code is useless because it serves as some specific compatibly for an ad hoc process that someone a long time ago automated wrong.
4. Publishing code to GitHub requires effort in making it look readable to someone who isn't doing what you're doing.
5. If you don't do #4, you'll clutter up search results for others, which is literally a disservice to open source.
Also, public repos are for getting lots of people to work together for the good of the project's utility. Making them public for others' plaudits is literally the worst thing to happen to open source development.
Save the vanity for Facebook. We're trying to solve problems here.
> Please retire to do something that doesn't hurt my soul this badly and that you might actually have an aptitude for, like burning down orphanages or kicking puppies.
Yea, this guy sounds pleasant. Would love to work with him.
But seriously, I don't understand how people can appreciate this level of toxicity.
Work for a terrible engineering organization (public, private, doesn’t matter) and you’ll understand. Especially where technical leadership can’t rely on engineers to do anything but code with very strict guardrails.
One of my favorite people I ever worked with was like this. We could disagree on an approach, I’d call him a moron, he’d tell me to go fuck myself, then we’d laugh and go back to our work.
It’s a very different style of work where politeness, ego, and professionalism weren’t factors. The only focus was the tech and ensuring it was moving as efficiently as possible. You could really push things in whatever direction you needed as long as you had the metrics to show it was better.
Or you can judge how to approach each interaction individually instead of applying a global veneer of fake pleasantness that the US work culture labels as "being professional".
I think much like the author’s writing it’s a very polarizing thing, and it either clicks with people or doesn’t. For those that it doesn’t I can understand the viewpoint that it’s extremely negative.
I disagree that it’s inherently rude or aggressive. You can absolutely tell someone they’re a moron in a very polite and joking way, but it clearly won’t translate into writing very well.
I think it’s funny, and I see it more as a stylistic choice to vent the author‘s frustration with the process than an actual reflection of their character. It is just their personal blog overall.
I don't think it's about being honest. Organizations are difficult to manage. Join a shitty org and try to make it better. You're not entitled to some role doing something you love in a perfectly run organization. Such things don't exist and if you think you're smarter than everyone else, manifest this organization somewhere
I know you’re just joking, but clearly you’re never met a real-life narcissist. It’s incredible trying to explain to them that they’re wrong about something and seeing the expressions on their face as they literally struggle to understand how they could possibly have failed
Eh, if that’s the worst you’ve seen it probably wasn’t NPD (more garden variety or inexperienced narcissism).
The really ‘fun’ folks are when you never see any confusion, because they ‘know’ they couldn’t fail - they ‘know’ you’re conspiring to destroy them using whatever tricks they tend to use, and have no doubts about it. Regardless of how absurd or illogical that would be.
And then the sabotage, manipulation, gaslighting, triangulation, false accusations, outright attacks, etc. start. With no remorse, because in their eyes they’re the victim and are just being ‘fair’.
That’s when document, document, document, and better hope you’ve got real power and a way to back it up, or you’re going to have a hard time. Probably even then. Because yes, they’re exhausting.
On the one hand the idiocy and incompetence in these interviews is not unusual for corporate hiring of all kinds. So it's reasonable to be infuriated.
But there's more than a hint of narcissism in the writing. Which is incredibly toxic to work with, because every interaction becomes less about solving problems and more about aggressive assertions of dominance and superiority.
On the upside, if he's as smart as he wants to be, he'll be able to solve his problem.
A few narcissists I've met in tech have potential but never get past first base because they are incapable of admitting they're wrong, and therefore incapable of improving. They are perpetually junior devs that are good at self promotion.
I'm not saying the author is like that, but he might be.
They don’t really pump themselves. Their network is full of people they appreciate.
They would like to work in a better context with such people.
They are discouraged by the quagmire of the low quality cold interview swamp.
I don’t see narcissistic flags here, and I have had significant experiences with that category of person. Unfortunately.
The irreverent gallows humor seems to be throwing some people off. But that is often a creative person’s tactic for maintaining a light mood in casual (not professional) contexts, despite rough circumstances.
(Narcissism isn’t being off putting, difficult, unpleasant, objectionable, etc. It is as important to not overapply that concept as it is to recognize it. It is usually not immediately obvious, as they are often image conscious and exude charm. Unless they have a secure power imbalance, or you are socially irrelevant to what they care about.)
Letting off steam is good; doing it publicly is not good, unless it’s your job (writer, comedian, etc.)
It’s offputting that someone can’t control well what they say in public. It’s okay to talk shit in private, it’s natural —but making it public in such a voice is offputting.
There are many hilarious stories from the tech support trenches that are well written, captivating, without descending into the badmouthing trap.
One that I recall is a kid who worked like a house call Genius Bar in the Chicago loop neighborhood or thereabouts, it was funny, witty storytelling about the mias entires he suffered, but never shat on people.
No one even bothers reading a one-page resume past skimming for a few keywords. You really think potential employers are going to sit down and read a 5,000-word essay??
Fellow Melbourne (though originally from Asia) IT professional here. I too have struggled with AU IT industry a lot since arriving here 10 years ago. AU is a service-driven economy and IT market reflects it i.e. most companies don’t cares much about inventing, creating or innovating and there’s little incentive to think outside the box in this domain.
On the flip side, life is easy and as long as you’re not too aspirational or expect high level of technical aptitude from management or recruiters, adjusting is possible. I guess this may sound like a dream to some and a nightmare to others - it’s all about your perspective, objective and expectations and isn’t that different to the rest of the world (US and perhaps pockets of Asia excepted). I’ve been told it’s all about “playing the game” but have to admit that, just like the author, I find it to be a hard mental work. In addition, looking at my peers who seemingly don’t have these worries as they work in other industries, makes you question your career choices.
If you’re hungry, restless and the IT industry culture status quo shock is too great to stomach, migrating to US (managed to work across both continents for a bit of perspective) is pretty much the only option :(
I'd be curious to know what tea they think is better, and what kind of tea they're drinking. When it comes to English breakfast tea, it's normally a blend of black tea leaf fannings from India, Sri Lanka, and Africa. Imo there's not that much objective difference in quality between brands like Yorkshire Tea, PG Tips, Twinings, Red/Gold Label, Tetleys etc... . A lot of it comes down to subjective taste.
For example, there's a strain of British person whose pride and self-identity is somehow tied up in enjoying very long brews with just a dash of milk. These people are likely to prefer teas with very strong flavours in the blend, such as Assam. Then there are people who enjoy subtle flavours. They might prefer Twinings Everyday which includes leaves from Yunnan.
I've got some single-source tea in my fridge that's significantly better than the supermarket blend. It's different every season though. https://obubutea.com
I don't know much about the market in Australia, but I imagine that this person is running into something I ran into myself. That tech jobs agglomerate in a few specific locations and the farther away you are from them the more clueless people are about tech (ie more clueless business people in charge and more faceless megacorps with drone-like employees).
Usually any given country will have one big spot for tech and in some countries even there will be a bit crappy. My guess is that Melbourne is not a very good spot.
> Usually any given country will have one big spot for tech... ...My guess is that Melbourne is not a very good spot.
It's not an unreasonable assumption, but in this case it's incorrect. Sydney has more tech work, but only in proportion to its larger size.
That said, Melbourne tech work is very heavily (but not exclusively) orientated around finance, insurance, real estate and so on which is not everyone's cup of tea.
I've clocked ~40 years in Australian tech and managed to avoid all of those domains, web development, cubicle farms, and nearly (but not quite) office politics.
Could be why I still have all my hair and good health.
> Could be why I still have all my hair and good health.
If you just mean in regards to stress, then working tech at an insurance company is a pretty low-stress job from my experience.
Finance can be pretty low-stress too in certain sectors. Like I've been working for a wealth management and investment analysis company, and haven't worked more than a 40 hour work week in years, with lots of flexibility during work to go to appointments or run errands, and while we have sprints, they're very malleable, and the real deadlines are more on a quarterly level, and they try to be conservative with their quarterly goals to make sure they hit them.
Now if you meant as far as life fulfillment? Yeah I get that. But I at least have some other things outside of work I can pursue.
More that I've never been much of a fan of working in offices, I like the outdoor life and have done a great deal of coding "on the move" while transitioning old paper mapping systems to WGS84, building and field testing exploration geophysics instrumentation, aquisition and processing software, tagging and tracking trucks and animals in mining and agriculture, and building energy and mineral resource intelligence systems for use and then sale.
I've even managed to squeeze in some work on Cayley|Magma in Sydney (long ago) which is kind of fun as it still seems relevant today, being used to crack Quantum crypto candidates.
I've had burst of planes, trains, and automobiles with a lot of travel about the globe, which I've enjoyed, and long stretches of working from home since I started in the 1980s .. circles and arrows on the back of envelopes, coding and then working in sheds, building etc.
Doesn't work as a lifestyle for everyone but it has for me.
No that sounds awesome, and much more interesting than what I'm working on. Congrats!
I am working from an office, but at least it's a home office. I can crack a window for fresh air, and look out at the prairie beyond my backyard from my office window. When the weather is nicer I sometimes start the work day out on the patio.
I've spent most of my career in startups (bootstrapped and VC-backed) and I find that it's much easier to find a good fit with a team in a startup.
The interviews will generally be with the founding team for early stage startups, but even for a startup heading into series A, you'll still probably meet with the C-suite for culture fit. If you get into an interview, it's almost always high on engagement because the team is small and the mission doesn't lose fidelity through layers of management (why this role? why now? what problems are being solved for? what type of candidate is a best fit?)
His posts show up occasionally on HN. I find his cynical/humorous style great for seeing things from a different point of view - It's a breath of fresh air.
Clever, self-involved, no inner-editor. I find myself concurring with their view despite a writing style that does nothing for the credibility of the author.
For public job posts 9 months is reasonable to find the right (or closest to that) job. 5 interviews sounds like you're not really looking. I'm not sure if that's how many you had. But, 45 interviews sounds more reasonable for getting a good selection of jobs to choose from.
The largest fish in the lake isn't likely to be the first one you catch on your first visit. Though, sometimes luck hands you a short journey.
>None of their engineering staff have anything visible on their GitHub accounts
Maybe they aren't seeking attention? Do yourself a favor; if you have some GitHub profile photo that looks like a dating site, take it down. No one cares and most people find that annoying. That's especially true at smaller companies where leadership is easier to achieve, as is higher pay.
I hope you find the right gig. Wish you the best of luck.
If you are spending more than 45 interviews to find a job, you may need to take some courses and practice with friends. Interviewing is an acquired skill.
Yeah, it's a lot of work, I agree. You have to spend 2-3 hours a day filling out applications. More if you can muster the patience for it. But if you commit to 5 applications per day (admittedly that's a heavy workload) that's 150 applications a month. You should be able to get at least 5 offers to interview out of that. And of those 1/10 will offer you a job. Which means you will be picking from 4 job offers.
That's all a bunch of bullshit numbers but you get the idea. It's a lot more work to get a good job than most people think.
I'm trying to paint a clear picture. I have an enjoyable job. Enviable even. When I hear people bitch about 5 interviews with no good offers, I feel bad for them. The expectation needs to be that this is the case. The solution is to adjust expectations to match reality. If you're trying to say it's hard to get a job, I agree. I'm going further. It's way harder than you think. But it's not impossible. I did it. Most people did it.
That heavily depends on your situation: if you have an unusual setup (say non-US remote senior looking in the US), the numbers go down quite significantly. I currently just got 1 interview out of 600+ applications (counting Easy Applies and such on LinkedIn).
Okay. I understand the difficulty now. I'm very sorry, but that's a clear indication that your skill set (or value prop) is not in demand (i.e. the market is saturated).
Add skills to your offerings. Change career paths.
Start by looking at what people are hiring for and who is making money. You can find statistics from tax agencies, government labor departments, etc.
From the various feedback I got, it seems that while remote US is rather common nowadays, remote non-US (by a US company) it's really not. And having worked for a US company in the past few years, it's really hard to change after that.
This was some of the funniest shit I've read in a long time. 100% relate to the rampant cargo cult culture: "Oh, nice, I see you abstracted the clock but not using a mock in the tests, why did you abstract it?" ... "I read an article saying it should be..."
:sigh:
I recommend just walking into places that look interesting to work at and literally giving them your resume in person. Granted, I haven't done that since pre-covid, but it used to work well. I'd sometimes walk in and then just turn around (could tell immediately it wasn't a place I wanted to work). Sometimes, I'd get invited to lunch and get a job offer before the day was over. Granted, that was pre-covid, so in the days of hybrid/remote work, this probably doesn't work as well.
Anyway, finding a job is shit. This I totally agree with.
The tech industry in Australia is small and even smaller in Melbourne its very risky being so public about criticism and also posting that he hopes his side business will take off so that he can get out of the rat race.
Mediocre jobs are mediocre even when remote work is allowed. And Australia has their time zone problem, which is important if you plan to work for US companies.
It might be true to some extent. But there are quite a lot of projects, such as corejs, which gets tiny funding for the amount of significance it has on various large scale services
The mistake that all of the "genius" AI/ML/data wranglers make: Their skills are not worth 200K+ USD/year outside of very few companies with insanely high profit margins, namely top tier investment banks, FAANG, and some hedge funds. If this writer is so good, then go to one of those places and get a job. You will get what you think you are worth. Alternatively, consider Singapore or Hongkong to access some of the aforementioned companies, if there are not enough in Sydney.
And this line was too much for me: <<Leave the technology space>>
Oh yeah, and do what? Oh, something that pays much less, or doesn't come with a cushy office job. Since you have PR in Australia, how about driving heavy equipment in a remote mine in Western Aus? I hear that they make a minimum of 100K AUD per year, but your life is hell -- fly in and fly out weekly. Suddenly, your cushy office job working for the CEO's son making 100K AUD doesn't sound so bad.
In terms of pure prose, this line is a gem:
> For the inevitable person that gets upset that I haven't settled for less, I invite them to try painting themselves brown and working in Malaysia to simulate my early career.
I have seen it many times. It is grossly unfair in East and South East Asia.
Oh wow, this resonates so badly with me. This guy must be my Malay / Aussie doppelganger. My company has the same bullshit, but we have terrible coffee instead of terrible tea. I used to buy my own on the way to the office, but now I've become so cynical I just don't care anymore.
When I joined just after COVID we were working from the office 5 days a week. I'd been working remotely for nearly a decade so thought it would be a welcome change, but oh man, I completely forgot about all the office BS you need to deal with. Eventually they realised that policy made hiring people hard, as now everyone expects to WFH, so they now allow is to work from home 1 day a week. Over Christmas and New Year they were so grateful for all our hard work, that they allowed us to work from home for 2 days a week. That was literally all we got for Christmas.
For the past few months I've been looking for a more chilled out job. I have a family now, and have gone past the point of seeing any purpose or fulfilment in my work. I just want to clock in, do my 8 hours, then leave at the end of the day and switch to family mode. The biggest issue for me has been recruiters ghosting me. I have an interview that goes well then at the end I hear "I'll be in touch by the end of play tomorrow" and don't hear anything back. Or recruiters message me on LinkedIn, I reply saying "yes I'm willing to torture myself with your interview process. Can you call me tomorrow afternoon?" and then I don't hear anything back.
Like OP most of the jobs I've had are through my network, or from recruiters reaching out to me during times when anyone with a heartbeat could get a senior React position. Sometimes I wonder, am I just a bad engineer? Am I just terrible at selling myself?
The best job I ever had was also with a team that had funny shaped keyboards - it's how I learned Vim. We would stay after work to play video games, and go out for drinks as a team once or twice a week. We worked hard, but it didn't feel like work. I'd love to find that again, but nothing has even come close. I don't know if it's just that I was young or naive and "the grass is always greener" when looking back, or that I have now been infected with the cyninism that capitalism breeds.
(And for anyone wondering, I - and I assume OP is the same - do not talk like this to others, and especially not in an interview. My cynicism stays in my head)
And yet the author has not posted (I scrolled back to October I believe) in “Who wants to be hired” nor would I bet they’ve scanned through the “Who is hiring” thread. Maybe they post under a different name and I’m wrong but that seems like missed opportunity.
For my own part I greatly prefer smaller companies and startups. I honestly don’t believe they are really that much more volatile than bigger companies (see layoffs) and I abhor the “process over progress” mentality at larger companies. That along with layers and layers of bureaucracy to get anything done. At a smaller company I have a direct impact and there is simply no room for people who aren’t competent.
Side note: “Competent” is high praise in my book. Most people don’t meet that bar IMHO. I am not, nor am I looking for “10x” developers. I’m looking for people that care, can learn what they need to learn, can think critically, and can work well on a team with others.
I have numerous other complaints with the blog post, not least of which being annoyed that employees at companies the author looked at didn’t have GitHub activity. Not everyone programs in their free time. I mean, I do but I know many extremely competent people who don’t. Judging a company by that seems silly.
I got my current job through HN (in 2019) and I’m currently hiring others using HN and have managed to find a number people who are working their way through the interview process (side note: contact me if you are in the US and want to work with PHP/Quasar/Vue). It’s not easy work but it’s working and I’d bet it’s working better than using an incompetent conman, I’m sorry, I think the common term is “recruiter” or something like LinkedIn/Indeed.
Yes, trying to get a job without using your network is more difficult but it not impossible either. That said, I have no clue what it’s like in Melbourne, maybe it’s different there. I’ll end with this: it’s just silly to drink shitty tea just so you can complain about it.
> They don't even have the decency to be offended by my rudeness and reply with "Oh, we're just looking for someone to click buttons."
> The recruiter calls me the next day to inform me that my question prompted them to close the role, and re-open a new one at the junior level because they only needed a ClickOps monkey.
They actually learned? Thats not too bad. Sure, theyre ignorant about many other things, but learning is important.
That said, this guy sounds really full of himself. I suspect it must transpire.
> (though the work seemed like more of the "present yourself as a cog in some vast, soulless machinery" stuff I already get
So this guy is a cog and wants "leadership" roles. Cant get them, blames other peoples social skills. Cool story bro.
>Become an electrician like a friend that just quit engineering? Carpentry? Automobile repair? Write a fantasy novel? Start a cult? Back to privately tutoring statistics?
I think your coworkers or customers as an electrician, carpenter, or car mechanic wouldn't be as polite as your IT colleagues at taking your bullshit.
I'm in Sydney, and Lest We Forget.
"It has become exceedingly clear to me that the average company is not a suitable environment for someone that cares about the craft of programming."
I'm not in a position to do this topic justice as it's a too big a subject to cover in a post such as this. Nevertheless, l'd extend that statement to include essentially any craft or expertise. Companies have profit as their primary objective and this rarely fits well with the specifics of one's craft or expertise.
The worst case comes when the stated objectives of the company or organization (what it does to make money) are very different to those of the employee's skills. For instance, the employee is employed in some technical area of a company that has nothing to do with technology such as banking, finance, the arts and various government bureaucracies.
My worst job was working for a government bureaucracy that had nothing to do with technology, it was soul destroying and horrible. As head of a technical department I found myself continually embroiled in matters that had nothing to do with what my department actually did, and trying to explain what my staff actually did in ways senior management could understand was a fruitless exercises—one may as well have tried to teach a dog calculus.
What was so frustrating was that I was in a secure position and that the only escape meant I would have to ditch tenure and security, which is eventually what I did.