Ask HN: How did you like your job in 2017?
"Awful" would be the first word that comes to mind.
I've spent three years at my current position at one of the "big 5", and after the first 9 months there were reorgs and I haven't been doing the things I was hired to do since. Instead I work on things that I have zero interest towards, and can feel my soul being sucked out of me daily.
It has gotten to the point where I cannot even imagine heading in to work each morning. My entire body and mind rejects the notion. Somehow I manage to make it in on autopilot, and pretty much autopilot throughout the day. Any acts of sentience on my part while at the office are immediately doused with reminders of how much I hate all of this, and I quickly retreat back.
Unfortunately, this has done nothing but cause an ever-amplifying depression spiral. At this stage I can't even imagine trying to get another job as I don't think I'm capable of passing the whiteboard-hazing at any tech company given my current state of mind.
I'm just going to wither away here until the end I imagine.
To be fair: it's not "awful" by any traditional metric - I'm not being overworked, yelled at, treated like shit, etc. But acknowledging that doesn't help my thoughts, any.
Is it really disappointing to get hired at one of these places so many people admire and desire, only to find it's nothing special at all? Or is the problem something else?
I've wondered about that. My job isn't spectacular, it's pretty good. I used to want to strive for a spot in a bigger/high impact/significant company like Amazon or Apple for example, but eventually came to realize I'd probably never do anything interesting there, even if I was capable of it. I don't know. I used to feel like I missed the boat and my career would never be as rewarding because of it. These days... Starting to feel like I'm actually doing alright, making the most with what I've got.
I stopped pursuing that career direction because I'm geo-locked, so to speak. I can't leave this city.
Anyway, sorry you're having a terrible time. I've been there. I hope the situation improves soon. Maybe you should bank everything you can, take time off, then get back to finding work with a fresh mind. Good luck.
For me, at least, the problem is something else. I never expected it to be "special" at any of these places...I'd likely be exactly this unhappy doing the same meaningless work I'm doing here, elsewhere. I just took the jobs because they paid well and, at least at the beginning, I was going to be doing things that were of reasonable interest.
I tried the "take time off route" once, and while it was alright, I was consumed with thoughts of whether or not I'd ever be able to get a job again, to the point where I couldn't enjoy it simply because I worried about the future (and it wasn't because I only had a few months of runway - living frugally I could have likely stretched my savings to two years or so, but the panic got to me after half a year).
I, quite frankly and totally honestly, don't see any way out at this point. I live life in an aimless fog, with no drive towards anything any more (which also makes it very difficult to do things like study for whiteboard-hazing).
I would talk to someone directly. You sound very unhappy.
I wasn't quite clear if the problem was the work or the company? It's something that needs to be dived into and had a good look at because there could be imbalance in your life leading to depression. So you need to look at things like diet, sleep, exercise, relationship etc. It's possible you need to rebalance - it's possible you need a new career. A career break should never be a hindrance to a new job, and should often be a selling point, as long as you've used that time sensibly.
So in short, talk to a career coach or counsellor. Try and get some more face to face help. You say you work for a big company - they often have help lines for employees run by third parties - use it!
> I wasn't quite clear if the problem was the work or the company?
I honestly don't have a complete answer for this. I mean, I know the work is a major problem, but it's not the only factor by far. It's definitely the one front and center, however.
As for other "life" things, I believe I do well there. I get 8 hours of sleep, I exercise 4 days a week, eat healthy, etc. No relationships but I'm antisocial to a tremendous degree so there's not much helping me there.
I appreciate the comments. Thank you!
> No relationships but I'm antisocial to a tremendous degree so there's not much helping me there.
That may be partly the issue. Studies into "happiness at work" often show it's not the work itself that necessarily determines happiness, but the quality of the relationships you have at work. For example, some work that may seem tedious and dull can become quite interesting if you are working on it together with someone you like and respect - and it's even better if you can have a blast with them. On my last gig for example I was doing dreadfully tedious work, but it was made better because several people I worked with were just awesomely nice people and we tried to have some fun too. Perhaps there's someone at work that you can buddy up with, and your manager might be able to help you there.
Having a relationship can be an important factor too - apart from anything it helps you get out of your own head and relax. Do you do any social activities on the weekend? It might be worth joining a cycling club, a running club or even a Crossfit box - you say you like exercise, something where there are other people to talk to. Just being around other people and talking to them will help - I know this is like hell on Earth if you are basically shy, so this is something you are going to have to ease into gently and get support if you need it - it will get easier.
Having said all that this is a difficult thing to diagnose and remedy via HN! As mentioned before you might find it worth talking to a career coach or perhaps even a counsellor. Feel free to email me if you want.
You are describing fairly text book depression symptoms that may have no relation to work.
Think about talking to a professional about this.
Thank you - I have thought about this on and off but the thought of speaking to someone about this in-person (or even over the phone) terrifies me to the point of almost breaking down just thinking about it.
I know it's irrational, and I know I need to do it, but that doesn't make it any easier :(
Have you never done it before? It's intimidating walking through the door, but you'll rapidly discover that there's nothing terrifying about it. Professionals are really good at talking to you about your concerns. You might get lucky and find that your problems stem from the kind of anxiety that dissipates if you can just have someone guide you through venting it fully and clearly in a venue where nobody is judging you.
I am really sorry to hear that. I can't say I have been there, but I was going down that line and so I took a career break. I didn't even feel I need it, but once I was on the break and stepped back from everything, I realised how bad the situation was before.
Since career break didn't work out for you, I really strongly suggest talking to a professional. I would start with company's HR and counsellor (they often have them in "big 5") and ask for some time off for medical reasons. Personal well-being is the most important thing. Being on autopilot and feeling miserable might lead to even worse things, so please step back and talk to someone in person.
I would recommend trying to find an internal transfer. That way you don't have to do another round of whiteboard interviews, but you might find a better / more interesting project to work on. Any change of scenery might help.
Everything I've read has led me to believe that whiteboard interviews for internal hires/transfers are still a thing at this particular company, so I've avoided even that...
Don't give up friend. After 10 months of waiting I got an offer to move. I hope circumstances change for you going forward.
What city?
I bet it's Amazon or Google
I was at Amazon in the past but I am not currently there. That's as much as I'll narrow things down :)
-Edit- I used this acct as a throwaway in the past to respond to an Amazon-related topic and then just kept using it!
6/10
It's not the job's fault. Good atmosphere, coworkers, and immediate management. I just want to be doing my own thing.
We have had a lot of turnover, though. Perhaps it's not as good for others.
Edit: I think the job deserves 8 or 9/10, it's my own attitude affecting how I answer the question as-posed.
Yeah, I know that feeling. I've concluded that I'm simply not a very good employee.
Don't get me wrong, I perform! And they've let me make a lot of changes that fix many of the problems they've had.
But my mind's always on my side jobs and how fast I can grow them into a business that can support us full-time. The inefficiencies at a mature business just bug me so much.
You may find those technical inefficiencies are what enabled the business to mature and sustain itself...I know several people whose “business” has extremely “efficient” tech but zero revenue. I.e. customers don’t care how efficient the tech is so long as they can pay you money to solve their problem...and putting too much energy into the tech prevents you from other revenue-generating activities such as lead generation, sales, etc.
I said absolutely nothing about technical inefficiencies.
Keep up the side work and hope something works! Best of luck.
1/10. Constant mass layoffs, most subject matter experts have quit, the code is a legacy pile of bugs and where changing one line of code is incredibly painful. Also new college grads are making 20k+ higher than my current salary despite having 2 years of experience in the bay area. I've been trying to find a new job but I'm so exhausted and stressed out at the end of the day that I don't have the energy to grind leetcode/algorithms problems to prepare for technical interviews, and those whiteboarding/system design interviews are brutal.
Sorry to hear that! Couldn't agree more tech interviews are long and difficult and require lots of preparations. I had some that lasted 4 -6 hours, man that is long! I also find that you get to speak about the company and the role only at the very end, when you already spent a fair bit of yours and theirs time. Wish you best of luck in job hunt this year!
I went from a huge bank with excellent engineering that never shipped anything to a small startup that is constantly on fire and a product that needs a lot of work.
I love it. I'm excited about the company, there's a lot of room for me to grow, and it's small enough that I can have a lasting impact as we solidify our engineering culture. I report directly to the CTO, though I believe we'll be getting a director soon that will sit between us. It's still better than the 7+ layers of management at Giant Bank.
I just did the opposite and love it. I was burnt out, now I have time to play with some new ideas and technology. Meetings where you can sit there, be sociable and think of other stuff. I can take a few days off, turn the phone off and know the place isn't going to burn down without me. Luxury. In a few years I might move back but I feel like I've done my time.
Cool! What do you find is the best advantage and what is the biggest downside working in a small startup as opposed to a big corporate?
Biggest downside: a lack of established process. Big corporate had too much process at times, but there was normally decent enough tooling around everything. And there were teams to do everything, which really allowed you to focus.
Advantage: More control over what tools I use. Always something interesting happening, and knowing that the growth of the company is directly influenced by your work.
I am also terrified that being able to impact the company/culture means that I will lead us down the wrong path.
That's an interesting worry to have! Sounds like fun, you definitely won't be bored at work.
I've 34 years of experience in software engineering. Since about 1986, I have been either hired as the team lead or eventually been appointed the team lead at each of the six employers that I have worked for. Due to circumstances beyond my control, I am once again starting over as a team member in a new group. I wasn't given much choice in the matter as my attempt to apply to an open position that I thought had potential, was squashed by my management. At least, knowing my desire, they offered up two choices of becoming a team member of a couple of projects with funding, openings, and years of internal customer base. However, it was a choice for me between the least of evils. Something that I could not convey to my management since I was already apparently "in the dog house" for having applied to the position of my choosing earlier. So now I have the psychological dilemma of trying to act like I am joining the team by my own choosing because I do not think any existing team member has any idea of the way I was collared. Whats more, the technology stack and engineering practices of my new team are poorly thought out if not completely random (and this is the better of the two choices). There was no mention of me being added as some sort of white knight to fix it. As far as I can tell, management has no idea of the cruft that is this system. So my spouse urges me to have patience, that I will eventually take over, as I have done in the past. But I struggle to keep my head up day to day, being assigned feature and bug tickets and instructed on kluged up solutions that match the overall product. Meanwhile, I fantasize how I could rearchitect and rewrite this system into a much better product. It isn't healthy. It isn't fun. I hate it.
Might be the time to move on? Sometimes waiting pays off, but not if it takes long time and makes you so unhappy.
Went from a start up with a garbage fire app chasing VC money to sell the last of their dignity to the world of big business working on real software; so 50-50 on terrible soul crushing experience and fantastic year.
That is something now, hard to beat that.
I love it! which is actually bad for me, because otherwise I would retire early and travel the world... maybe next year :-)
12 years and counting at this position...
Wow, must be a great job:) I always get surprised when I see someone at the same company for 10+ years in IT.
I have a small company and have found that in general 5 years is the shortest stints for our technical employees. Our dept managers have been with us for over 15 years. Our college interns also report hands down that their internships were the best of their peers.
I’ve taken this as a compliment to the environment and culture I’ve fostered. My “secret”: treat everyone the way I’d like to be treated and work the way I’d like others to work.
I’m always surprised when others are surprised at our retention. To me this seems like an easy accomplishment. Maybe this is only possible at a smaller company who’s doing interesting work?
Great stuff, it is also possible in big corporations, you just have to work on interesting projects with like minded people, be flexible as a manager and lead by example...
Essentially you can turn your team into small company with it's own culture within the corporation, threat the rest as customers, etc...
Yep, leading a good team in sysadmin/security space for a large corporation and love every minute of it, also working from home is a great benefit, maybe too great...
Ah, working from home is a great thing, it is a shame more companies are not open to it. Keep up the good work!
3/10, of the 10 months working here I did maybe 2 months of actual work. And then about 2 months ago the company brought in a developer from the company we get part of our software from to basically do my job, so I don't know why I'm here anymore besides some sort of political puppet. Did I mention I'm a temp still by the way?
You are in a strong position just keep doing what you are doing.
7.5/10
It was very interesting, and I shipped another game. I was in a fairly new position and fought a bit with impostor syndrome at first, but got to learn a lot and contributed quite a bit back to the engine. Just as I was feeling pretty competent and settled into the role I was moved to a position with more responsibilities, so now I have to adjust all over again. I guess it is good not to be entirely comfortable and keep pushing yourself, it just means a little more stress to deal with. I think it'll be fine though; I am used to working on things that feel challenging and push me to learn and develop more.
I hear you, getting comfortable at job sometimes means you might get bored too quickly :) Depends on the person really, wish you best of luck!
In the beginning, it was nice.
In the middle, it came with some interesting career changes and challenges. It was a good personal experience, but ultimately it didnt work for the company.
In the end, we changed management and it -might- be good for the company depending on what the new owner wants with it. But people are fired en masse, and people are quitting en masse. Project management sucks, we didnt have things to do for months and around both christmas AND new years, we got 2 supposedly CRITICAL issues that HAVE to be done. Except not really.
Looking forward to 2018. Mostly because I'll be looking at new opportunities.
You had the whole spectrum throughout the year. It is interesting how a company can change from great to complete opposite in a year time. It reminds me a bit on my 2016, I left eventually after one more merger happened, it was hard to follow which companies joined ours, which systems are going to be ditched and so on.
8/10
Improved my code quality by becoming more aware of code style and becoming more nuanced in the approaches I take when solving problems. Enjoyed getting back into Python work, but async programming in python is still somewhat awkward.
I'm alarmingly bittersweet about living in the Bay Area and not living closer to home. On one hand, I miss seeing my large and wonderfully close family and friends at home; on the other, the Bay Area weather is wonderfully mild and always sunny, and of course, salaries are better here. So I've wrestled with re-calculating the costs of where to live.
Improving coding skills is a lifetime work :) Does Bay Area work out for you? I heard salaries are high, but so are life expenses.
Salaries are high, but taxes and living expenses really take a bite out of it. Nonetheless, I feel I've saved more money than I would have living in my home-city.
The perpetually mild weather has done wonders for my mental health, I hate the cold, dark winters in Vancouver BC. I keep telling myself it's only a 2 hour flight away, but I never seem to go back enough.
Not too much; The job was oversold to me during interviews (or I did not ask the right questions) and that means, I've gone from working on massive scale distributed systems infrastructure to network automation configuring a handful of devices every now and then. I think my skills may have atrophied even though I have been keeping up on the side - not sure how I can sell this in my next interviews. What's keeping me here? An awesome manager (learned how to lead from him, just by observation), and my green card application is in the final stages.
I'm really happy in 2017. I'm at the same job for a year (big accomplishment for me). I got a large hourly raise; they sent me to react and rails training. I took 6 weeks to go to europe and I can work from home a few days per week. I'm working the dream.
7/10, defense contractor doing projects no one cares about until I get my security clearance. Tired of "rudimentary python scripts", want to work on a real code base and with other people (I'm the only one on my project). First job out of college.
I really enjoyed it. My first year fully remote. It's been quite the change and while I will leave this job at the end of the month I think it's been a great experience.
Congrats on your first year fully remote! I was thinking of switching remote as well. Did you encounter any challenges that you normally wouldn't have? If I may ask, why are you leaving it?
Many years of remote work under my belt.
There are two big advantages:
1) You don't have to commute (unless you want to - you can work at a co-working space)
2) You can travel around and still have a salary. I've worked from places like an apartment in Bangkok, a beach hut on an island in Malaysia, as well as a cottage in the heart of the English countryside.
But that's about it. It's still work. You still put in your eight hours plus a day. You still have to put up with shit. You still have to work on those things you'd rather not.
If you don't really enjoy the work, then remote working won't make up for that.
I would say give it a go though - it's the sort of thing that you need to try to see how it works out for you.
I crave a bit more of freedom of travelling and I will try and focus on some personal projects. At least for a while and if I see it's not working I'll go back to a "proper" job.
I haven't found many challenges other than taxes and stuff like that. Many countries I find are not ready to welcome people that move around a lot.
As for the job itself I keep a pretty strict regime on myself so I still try to do all office hours and keep in touch as much as I can. It is true tho that you do get "cut out" a bit and it's probably not the best for people that want to climb the ladder. For me it really helped the fact that I worked for a full year in the office with the same people so I knew them pretty well.
That sounds very cool, thanks for the answer. Enjoy your adventures in 2018!
7/10.. Changed end of 2016 and got a good raise. Got to learn a lot of new things and adapt to the new culture. Its nice to shake up things once in a while I guess.
7/10 One job sucked and found a new one. New gig is okay. I think my expectations for work has decreased.
It was great! A dream come true! Then it all ended pretty quickly. Ah well.
7/10
Work as a contractor for one of the largest govt defense contractors in the aerospace and land vehicle field. Lots of opportunity here to work on pretty much whatever you'd like. You can jump on any project ranging from low level embedded devices to application code to virtual reality. Coworkers are pleasant, albeit their skills can be a bit atrophied due to them being in maintenance/bug fixing mode for the past 10+ years of being here working on their own little section of code. Managers are great and leave you alone. My actual team lead only holds meetings once every few weeks, as we mostly use SMS for any instant or urgent information (nothing I work on is classified, and my core team consists of about three other people who do actual coding). I got a cube, and if I need more alone time, I can head to six or more different silo areas where specific hardware is kept for testing, and I can ssh to any machine and just pick up where I left off. They're usually not busy until a release is coming up, which is only a couple times a year.
Downsides include the location of the company (lower income state compared to others), weather, and an aversion to change - which I guess kinda comes with a fortune 100 govt contracting company. Computer hardware given to us is atrocious, getting competent new people in is almost impossible due to what we work on and location, and devs don't even need to show they can code. Nepotism is very real, as is having to "know people" in order to advance here. If you are a direct employee, promotions are rare and usually only occur once every 5 to 10 years. IT infrastructure is some of the absolute worst I have ever seen, and it prevents you from getting real work done (imagine having to wait four months to get your favorite free IDE installed or six months to update Cygwin packages, for example. In fact, our IT group still can't figure out how to upgrade a Cygwin install on a shared folder).
Pay is decent. As a contractor, you get straight time for every 40 hours worked, and you get 1.5x pay for every six minutes after that. Overtime is basically never mandated or requested, but you are free to work as much OT as you'd like without anyone saying anything. I have personally worked 70+ hour work weeks just for the extra cash, assisting everything from a new GUI, adding new objects to a VR demo, and implementing new functionality to Linux kernel drivers. Even got a pay raise (13% increase!) for all the extra hard work I did on top of all that extra pay, so that was cool.
All in all, it's a decent place (especially if you like living in the Midwest) with long term stability. However, you won't really be challenged with truly hard problems if you work here, and growth is stagnant. You'll really need to make the most out of it yourself by pushing management to allow you to implement new stuff, which isn't terribly hard, thankfully. They're willing to listen and implement new stuff, especially if it is a newer product. Harder if it's a legacy project, obviously, but it is still possible.
How can I get a job there?
The company isn't really hiring for software devs right now, so unless you already know Ada/vxWorks or current architecture, it might be hard to get into.
I spent 3/4 of 2017 trying to land a job. I've been at the company for a quarter. Its a big corporate monstrosity and they literally made me "train" for a month on how to do sales, customer service, and technician roles... Yeah I sat on a phone for 2 straight days taking phone calls with an engineering degree from the best school in the SE USA. Just trying to put that in perspective. I overlooked it because the opportunity brought me into a place with a lot of job opportunities.
Its hard to describe without spilling the beans on who I work for. I was hired to do embedded programming work but I do nothing of the sort and just fix/cleanup code in C. My team is being broken up and I have a chance to work with someone who has a project that actually needs embedded work.
He is abrasive as hell and corrects me all the time. I have tried to engage with him as much as possible over the last week. I am afraid even though his behavior is exactly what I envisioned as my best fit (I have worked with such a man before and I grew alot). I am also afraid because the CEO is moving to our building and the project is directly linked to whether or not the business is viable after the next 3 years. I know I can do the work as I have literally done the same kind of project before with a different standard (Project is a proof of concept), and I want to do this work as opposed to playing Barney's cleanup game with half assed projects. I liked doing Barneys cleanup song with that at my old job, but that was new frontier for me (CUDA).
I have done all I can to make sure this man understands exactly what I am capable of doing on my own, what I will need to bug him about, and things I have no experience in. Trying to cover all my bases to make sure I am a good fit for him. Yet I cannot shake this feeling of whether it is a good fit for me. Its like trying to sleep before the first round of engineering exams but constant.
In the end I decided to join his team because he used to subscribe to "embedded system design" magazine which is a resource I used to prepare for interviews. (Can someone point me to a company that will actually test me on embedded principles in a interview for an embedded position? Literally every interview asks things I learned in first year or a thought puzzle.)
Maybe I feel to paranoid about all this because I went from producing 50x more at a startup to here where a simple change can get deadlocked for a week. Believe me I work frantically. I spend 80% of my time researching and taking notes since all the domain experts have quit (terrible benefits) and nobody seems to want and be able to assist me in a proper training rampup period (y'know instead of having me work a fucking call center).
Everyone seems to barely know the part of the code they live in and honestly as I walk around productivity/attention is literally the lowest I have ever seen in my life. To this I try and convince myself its just the change of employer type and that other people are literally watching movies at work so I should not fret so much.
Sorry for the wall of text, but the first thing I learned is that at corporate you have to cover your own ass. So it is cathartic to be able to express myself here. Any input would be greatly appreciated. I have no idea what I am doing.
If you don't mind me asking, were you actively looking for a new job for 3/4 of 2017, without being employed anywhere? Finding a job in tech shouldn't be that hard, I would think.
Your situation sounds quite like any other big corporate. Lots of people not doing anything or working very little and manages that can be really picky and hard to get along. I am not sure what I would do, getting into that team seams like a way to go, but working with that manager sounds very difficult. Maybe give it a go for few months to see if you get along with him? If not, start looking for a new job, while you are still at your present one maybe.
It really depends on your character, I might not give the best advice cos I am tired of working for ineffective managers.
I appreciate your time to give me your advice. You may not think it matters much but I benefit greatly from hearing it from another human. If you have anything else to add I will check back
The man is not a manager, he is just the most tenured of the team by a decade. We mesh very well.
I made wrong moves applying for part of the year most likely a full quarter, but by middle of the summer I was applying to around a dozen a day with researched applications and taking phone screens every other day. I was taught as a EE so for entry level jobs I think I was being beat out by objectively better investments. I also spent half the year trying to land a hardware design job and then moved to embedded software since all the offers I had for the former would have literally made me homeless or foodless in California.
It pains me not to use much of what I was taught. Honestly I just want to be in a job where I actually work in the embedded space. Every place I went it seemed like it was going to be a job of fighting legacy code, reserved and silent experts, and high turnover of said experts.
I hate interviews but I was planning on taking at least one every 6 months to keep ready.
10/10