Protecting your time from predators in large tech companies

https://www.seangoedecke.com/predators/

by alexmolas • 1 year ago

51 38 1 year ago

The fact that engineers now think that helping others and working with others is negative value, just shows how terrible tech culture has become.

This all comes from management wanting to assign and claim credit. It is this credit system that ensures that people will not cooperate but instead let "others" fail.

grues-dinner2• 1 year ago

I don't think it's universal, there are definitely teams and management structures where it's a group effort and people aren't hoarding story points or metrics or whatever.

I could go off on one about how is when the leadership becomes so detached from the with that they need layers of managers to deal with it, leading to horsetrading, artificial metrics and political chicanery. But fundamentally, if an organisation allows such cancer to develop within it, it chose to. Whether by carelessness or on MBA infection, the result is the same.

scarface_7412• 1 year ago

Can you tell me one BigTech or adjacent well paying company where they don’t optimize for this behavior?

akprasad• 1 year ago

The author agrees with you:

Not all requests for help are predatory. It’s part of your job to help out engineers on your team, and cross-org impact really does involve helping others sometimes, even if you get nothing in return. Predatory behavior is a consistent pattern of drawing on your time for nothing in return.

qzum2• 1 year ago

I can't say that these behaviors are predatory, but author appears like toxic person with some god syndrome.

Overtime can be predatory, but please don't call kindness, teamwork, or simple help as prey trait

scarface_7412• 1 year ago

It’s not a God syndrome or toxic. If you are interested in a promotion at large tech companies, you optimize your behaviors to do that.

If you aren’t interested in promotion and you are less than a senior or whatever the terminal position is considered, you’ll be pushed out.

I couldn’t deal with the politics of BigTech when I was there between the ages of 46-49. I didn’t care about the money enough and I didn’t have the shit tolerance or the will power to act like I did.

You literally couldn’t pay me enough to work at any large company at this point in my life and I’ve ignored opportunities that were basically handed to me to make six figures more than I make now.

MichaelZuo5• 1 year ago

What qualifies them as ‘predators’, just by having differing motivations and goals?

potato3732842• 1 year ago

There are two articles from this author on HN right now. You are in both comment sections attacking any criticism of this sort of selfish and bad for team morale work style. What's your angle?

qzum2• 1 year ago

I believe you are projecting your emotions onto others and trying to find justification for certain behaviors you don’t agree with. However, not every workplace has the same dynamics. I work in a large corporation, and I don’t see the kind of issues you’re experiencing. Moreover, behavior like yours is considered negative in my environment.

mv43• 1 year ago

Most of these behaviors seem perfectly normal to me. When I worked at FAANG, I often had to ask people (not my direct reports) to do something for me. And that was often the only way to get things done, "influencing without authority". Of course, I've always helped them with something else in return, publicly gave them credit etc.

scarface_7412• 1 year ago

And how did it affect them getting their own deliverables done? Did it help when it came time to fill out thier promo doc?

On the other hand, the author said don’t let people waste your time by helping them when they go through back channels who can’t help you in return.

mv43• 1 year ago

I was fortunate to work on high-profile initiatives (some with board-level visibility) so I could sometimes help with that, directly or indirectly. Sometimes I was better at things they were having trouble with.

hinkley• 1 year ago

There’s more than one kind of authority. There’s “I can fire you” authority, and “everyone trusts Steve more than they trust Tom”.

mv43• 1 year ago

absolutely right.

tetromino_• 1 year ago

Not all Big Tech is the same. At Google, for example, the social norm is that if someone not on your team helps you out in a notable way, you thank them with a peer bonus. The peer bonus, in addition to being a bonus, will notify the helper's manager and is a publicly visible artifact that the helper can put in the community contributions category of their next performance assessment.

scarface_7412• 1 year ago

It is the norm though isn’t it? When it comes time for your review you still have to show “impact” on your promo document. At least at AWS when I was there, it might help since part of your promo document was getting feedback from someone one level up.

throwawaymobule• 1 year ago

Cool solution to the Claud Shannon problem.

alphan0n• 1 year ago

Soo.. gold stars?

andrewstuart• 1 year ago

This is a really weird attitude to work.

To see everyone around you as a predator.

You’re there to do work and be helpful to people. Do it if you can. If you can’t, explain why and don’t do it.

I can’t imagine someone who sees their colleagues as predators is much fun to work with. There’s going to lots of attitude and angst. Steer clear of employing this type of developer.

scarface_7412• 1 year ago

So I personally am out of the rat race, I’m already the highest level of IC at my current company (IC5) and no longer playing the game.

But, the cynical take and the one I would advise anyone to take who wanted to maximize their compensation and was early career is that you work to exchange the maximum compensation for your labor to exchange for goods and services. “This type of developer” is the only one that gets ahead in BigTech or adjacent companies.

Hercuros• 1 year ago

Does that make it any better even if it is true? (And I don’t think that it is as true as you make it out to be, e.g. it’s not true for my medium-sized organization)

Just because it’s good for “career optimization” does not make it less of a strange mindset to view your colleagues as predators. The article also puts all of the blame on the so-called “predators”, when it should be blaming the organization’s culture and leadership if helping others is viewed in this way.

gunian• 1 year ago

the politics of the companies my idols created really makes me wonder if AI getting good enough in 50 years to take most dev jobs is a good thing

easypeasycccc• 1 year ago

I always say, if it takes longer than 15/30min. Go get it approved. If it's not approved by my manager and it's not on the roadmap. I'm not touching it. They get the message and move on to the next sucker. :)

throwaway290• 1 year ago

I disagree with the take. You do whatever you do and then you go home. If you help someone at the expense of real priorities that's your fault. If you have spare time and do something for someone then why not. You get paid a fixed amount. Everything else is politics.

minipci1321• 1 year ago

Ooooh, that hit the nerve )).

The author, rather unfortunately, focuses primarily on the predation from the "generalized colleague", and that wasn't welcomed by many commenters, possibly because people in big-tech tend to be young and do need help, so have to ask for it.

But the way I see it, the predation is institutionalized in big companies.

-- The Intellectual Property department blocking the entire R&D of the entire product division for the whole day, to give a presentation on how to file a patent. Knowing full well that only a dozen of these people will every do, at best.

-- IT dept locking down everything, because, you know, there are risks and we don't want to take it. Doesn't matter if it slows down everyone else everywhere.

-- "Security" disabling access to slightest technical information, because, you know, someone could steal it. Just ask and you'll have access. (How does one asks for something one doesn't know exists?)

-- Purchasing that shortlists only some contracting shops and not accepting any others. Doesn't matter if the shortlisted one don't "carry" the competence (e.g., try EMC specialists).

All these people consider that as their achievements and are not shy about it when yearly appraisal comes. We all work as one team aren't we? And then comes the day of layoffs. One reason of it being that the R&D hasn't been performant enough. Guess what, we aren't so much of one team anymore.

Protecting your time from predators in large tech companies

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