Ya. It's a bigger problem when your manager gets offended if you make the most obvious choices without his/her consent.
3 weeks ago | 16
This is what causes burnout in no small part. Developers can't own enough of the product to make obvious correct decisions. They're, a skill we learn is just to do things they won't notice, because they'd not thought about that particular outcome at all, or to even check what was implemented, and we move on. Error states, API keys, freakin colours! If we're not diligent as developers, we reveal too much of the implementation and everyone wants a piece... Of our soul.
2 weeks ago | 1
I work as a developer at a big bank. To change a typo in the label of a single field on a form requires stakeholder approvals and a change control process with the change control group that meets only once a week. Literally 3-5 hours of work for a fix that takes 60 seconds.
3 weeks ago | 17
Again, depends on context. You don't want to be woken up in the middle of the night by PagerDuty, because somebody on some team changed the API your team was using, since they got a "three-way" handshake. Sure, I was taught that it is better to ask for forgiveness than for permission, but I was too often in these kinds of situations. I would also argue that in big codebases, or codebases dealing with big farms, there are not that many simple decisions. For example, we introduced some additional logging to find a tricky problem in production. A principal engineer asked us to quickly remove them, after the bill came, since these couple of lines were multiplied by hundreds of servers, which caused a spike in the log storage cost.
3 weeks ago | 3
In contrast, I started at a small company of only a couple dozen, and then went to a "bigger" company of a few hundred. At the smaller one it was much more simple. Have an idea? Pass it by your boss real quick and just do it. Very, very little red tape. If you need to meet, it happens either instantly or at some point that day. Got a quick fix for something? Just do it. We were able to respond to client requests within days, and have it out soon thereafter. There was a lot of autonomy and a lot of trust, even from someone new to the job. It was great. On the contrary, at my company now it's more like how you described Amazon. Long time lines, miles of red tape, and having to sell manager committees on things, it's ridiculous. Now we're starting to have to do this "CAB" committee crap. 🙄 I actually really miss the simplicity and quicker pace of the smaller job
3 weeks ago | 6
While some of these habits aren’t helpful in your new endeavor, many of the folks you teach will be looking to get into big tech, so it’s worth trying to keep them alive at least in your mind so that you can continue to be a great teacher for them
3 weeks ago | 3
Thank you for being honest 😅 you’re starting to see some of the cracks in the facade of institutionalised behaviour… I welcome it!
2 weeks ago | 1
It's always important to double check if something is a 2 way door or 1 way door
3 weeks ago | 9
Yeah, after almost 30 years in tech often managers just want to “piss on” something a little bit to mark it. I’ve almost never had a manager / stakeholder to agree to something as proposed. It’s like they have to prove their worth in the organization just by giving often semi meaningless feedback.
3 weeks ago | 1
There needs to be a quick call with the manager/lead when facing a small decision or task. I'm starting to doubt people in this field are smart.. or at least the ones I've worked with
2 weeks ago | 0
You bring up a very fair point. But as your channel atests to, thriving in such an environment requires skill and good decision making. I think a really interesting video to do would be how skills like these, that work in big tech, compare with the skills needed in start-ups and growing companies.
3 weeks ago (edited) | 2
I'll take all the time you need me to so long as you pay me for it.
3 weeks ago | 1
Btw, this is kind offtopic to the post but I have a doubt... I started my engineering journey 3 months ago and I would like to ask you if Cloud Dev /Engineering or DevOps is a good path of career for the future...? I'm currently pursuing Engineering in Electronics and Communication systems Will this aid me with Cloud? I'll be grateful if you would answer a novice's doubt, Thank you.
3 weeks ago (edited) | 0
Formula 1 You need the best drivers and the best team/“pit crew,” meaning speed and effectiveness. This is possible ONLY with (scientific) expert knowledge (including expert intuition; Prof. Kahneman proved that it can outperform algorithms and entire teams of analysts). Hence the “war for talent,” and the world has become a global village… Of course, no one can avoid mistakes, but the best drivers make up for their losses (when they go off track or make an error) and return to the race the fastest. And the greatest risk: even the very best driver can crash a Formula 1 car, because the brakes are used very little; meaning that right now we face a high risk of failure; but if we don’t drive at “top speed,” we’ve already lost… That’s why Amazon is right to want to operate like a startup; they just don’t know how to actually do it…
3 weeks ago | 1
A Life Engineered
Big tech taught me a lot of things that I'm struggling to unlearn.
I realize now how slow things were.
I thought "let's meet early next week" was being responsive.
The biggest shock is that I don't need to ask permission to make decisions.
It sounds dumb typing it out, but I'd internalized that big things required approval.
Want to change a process? Let’s have a meeting. New tool? Three stakeholder sign-offs to change the process.
Simple decisions? Let's schedule time to discuss.
I thought I had special skills that set me apart.
The reality is that many of these "big tech skills" when it comes to taking action aren't as transferable as I thought.
Navigating bureaucracy isn't the same as building solutions.
"Hi, my name is Steve and I'm a recovering big tech employee. I last worked there 18 months ago."
"Hi Steve."
I learned incredible things at Amazon, but I also learned some habits that don't serve me outside those walls.
The real world moves at a different speed entirely.
3 weeks ago | [YT] | 262