It is, for the vast majority of employed people.
> it's a relationship where both parties gain something.
For the vast majority of employed people, what they gain is the ability to continue to afford food and shelter.
Most jobs do not afford the economic reality necessary to allow the employee a position of being able to afford to bargain as anything approaching an equal.
It is not a strange way to look at the world for anyone who has lived for any significant amount of time as a worker in any average job. It is helpless, yes.
If you have problems/complaints and you never say anything about them, then don't be surprised if they never change.
If there is a 1-on-1 meeting happening, then a communication channel is open. I suppose you can choose to cynically shut it again, but if you make that choice, then don't be surprised to find that you don't have a voice.
A person could try hard to avoid being the squeaky wheel. They could take no curiosity about themselves, or their surroundings, or their organization's goals, or how their boss sees them, or how others see them, or how their habits affect their work, and basically stay the same for years on end, doing the same job, at basically the minimum quality and execution to stay employed.
And then "at the next round of layoffs" that person will find themselves surprisingly replaceable. Probably by a cheaper, more junior person who can do the exact same work at the exact same minimum quality. No reason to keep the guy who hasn't improved for years, and basically tells you to F-off any time you ask him how you can help him.
Guess what: Being invested in your work can make you more valuable. The cynical route often doesn't pay, and frequently fulfills itself.
It's also often true that 1-on-1's are people doing something they are required to do, targeted at quota fulfillment, where there's not actually an opportunity for either side to influence a situation at all because it's just a big chain of fulfilling requests from higher up a chain.
I had mandatory 1-on-1s at a call center doing outbound cold calls for things like FoP fundraisers, a job that couldn't actually be done cheaper legally, where the organization didn't have goals other than maximizing profit, where no one I interacted with were anything but cynical about the job and where there wasn't value to be found in getting more invested in it. My managers were explicit about them being bullshit mandatory 1-on-1s mostly geared at pressuring employees to close more.
Guess what: lots of places are like that.
important to know your contexts.
There ars a lot of things in life that are like this, IME. There's a cynical or pessimistic way to look at something (often an interpersonal thing), and if you assume that it's true, then whether or not it was true, it becomes true for you. In those cases, the only rational thing to do is act as if it weren't true.
Example: incels. Lots of people have rough lives and have a hard time developing socially in all kinds of different ways. It sucks. Sometimes that leads to guys who have a fundamentally hard time interacting with women they are attracted to, which can lead to downward spirals of rejection and misery. Some guys cope with this by becoming incels or redpillers or whatever. "Girls don't like me, I'm so sad" is transformed into "Girls don't like me because girls suck and society sucks and it makes me awesome". It's really depressing, but there's a rationality to it in that it trades pain for anger without changing the situation. But even if someone isn't an actual incel type, once they assume that identity and start to believe it, they'll become one, which is why it never does anyone any good to start thinking of themselves as incels or redpillers. But this isn't just about incels. There are innumerable self-fulfilling, self-destructive viewpoints out there, in which even if they're rooted in elements of truth, it doesn't do anyone any good to accept the viewpoint.
Other examples include the Golden Rule, taking the high road, etc. EDIT: meaning, the notion that the Golden Rule or taking the high road all the time is for suckers, therefore you shouldn't do it. It assumes the worst in people, and if you live your life that way it ensures that you have bad interactions with people that reaffirm your already-cynical viewpoint.
But, uh, I may have gone off on some tangents there. Sorry HN. TL;DR even if your 1:1's with your boss suck, don't give up on trying to make them more constructive.
They have both the authority and hopefully the management / people skills to be the one to stick their neck out and say "Hey, let's make this team be one that's honest and tries to actually create value for the company, not just keep our heads down and try to look good".
Being the young optimist who insists that everyone in the company tries to do the right thing is not smart unless management is making it clear that this is what they want.
Naw, there's an opportunity for your boss to divide & conquer, and for you to screw over your coworkers for short-term gain. You might not _think_ you're doing that — the way it's designed it's very easy for both sides to not think that — but that's the actual dynamic of the situation.
This is why the much-maligned "do not negotiate individually" rule many unions have exists. And 1-on-1s are pretty much just that, only wrapped up in some friendly-sounding woo.
> And then "at the next round of layoffs" that person will find themselves surprisingly replaceable.
> Guess what: Being invested in your work can make you more valuable.
Experience having survived lay-offs: lol, no. Nobody puts a rating on your rants.
True. But with that sort of job you probably won't have regular 1-on-1's. You just get told to flip more hamburgers.
And it also depends on your own attitude what kind of relationship your establish with your manager.
And that is a big problem. This means it's not a free market. Power is unevenly divided, and you only operate on the job market at the mercy of the other party. This is bad.
Something is needed to even the playing field and make employers and employees equals in these negotiations, whether that's unionisation, Basic Income, worker protections of some sort, or something else.
The issue is that employees, in general, are much, much worse at the employment game than their respective employer. This makes a lot of sense: Your employers job, after reaching some level, is to employ the right people (and even beyond that to hire the right people to hire the right people). That's it. That is all they do, all day.
Which leads to them getting good at everything involving the dance, including job negotiations and manipulating the employee/candidate in a way that serves their needs.
As a worker, your entire job is to do your job. No matter how many perks your company offers, getting better at your next salary negotiation will not be one of them. Of course, as a worker participates in this game more often, they gets better at it themselves – but there is no magic involved: It's a skill that you have to learn, in a very unfair and rigged setup.
I guess I should clarify that all of the anti-worker propaganda I've been fed at college has been in the comp/sci and botany departments. Havent tried other tracks, but those are the ones where they really try to tell us that our education isnt valuable.
Getting good at managing your career isn’t very hard as things go. You can get substantial results by focusing on it for 1 hour per week over a year. And it’s not mainly that you’ll make more money — work will get more interesting and fun, and you’ll have more impact in thr world.
For example, there aren't plenty of companies with quiet offices searching for developers. When I tell my manager "The noise in this new open floorplan office is killing my productivity", they say "OK, well, that's not going to change", and then we spend the rest of the hour rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. (Or they remind me of how they're spending money on me, in other ways I don't care about at all.) If I said "Hey fix your shit" they'd say "Every other software company in town has open floorplans too now -- good luck with that".
I use a mix of brain.fm (or similar white noise) and apple AirPods pro. As a combination, they work surprisingly well at blocking out enough noise to let me remain focused on whatever problem.
They are indispensable to me now.
It's from an ad for a privacy screen filter, but unlike that, it works the other way around too, blocking out the world.
Yes, and with that attitude you are absolutely welcome to.
Difficulty of replacing developers depends very much on where you are (I suspect, and amongst a welter of other factors), and where I live it doesn't take 6 months nor anything like it.
It also doesn't take 6 months for people to become "somewhat productive". I've been nigh-on shocked to see all of our devs making useful contributions to our systems and services (many of which are not straightforward to work with) within a couple of weeks, and finding their way around pretty handily after 2 - 3 months.
I agree that you shouldn't go into every 1:1 begging and scraping for your job - that sounds awful - but, at the other end of the spectrum, neither do I think it's wise to go in with a massively inflated sense of entitlement.
Both you and your manager would be best served by acting like reasonable human beings with well-developed social skills.
But I definitely agree that you should approach your manager from a constructive point of view. That makes you even more valuable.
No, the company pays for that. A manager's job is to help ICs be effective and to help the company make the most of ICs' work.
My first manager told me something really good: don't look at it as a boss telling people what to do. ICs manage code, the manager manages people.
Maybe in other parts of the world. But at that point you need to convince them you're a "senior architect with loads of experience"
Rule #3: While working, make every effort to learn new things and improve yourself.
Second, why aren't you already at a different job that pays you more instead of hanging that over your manager's head?
Third, don't underestimate how many other good developers that are out there, looking for the next job. It might not require 6 months of training for the next person, who could be as competent, or even more than the person that's being replaced.
I'm not sure what kind of company you work for, but 6 months of training is ridiculously long, unless there is a lot of institutional knowledge that's siloed amongst a small subset of employees - which should never happen in the first place, if your manager was any good.
There's also value in being able to work on the same project over time and see it evolve, feel like you own features, etc.
There's value in staying at the same company because you don't have to move, change your commute, switch healthcare providers / doctors, etc.
I think the attitude of "well, just quit, don't make any attempt to see if you can improve the current place" is toxic. Yes, there are some places you really should quit. No, the fact that you could quit and make another $10k, but having to switch doctors and find a new daycare along the new commute, and potentially work on things less aligned with your interests... Those things have value too.
Most developers aren't mercenaries trying to find the most money. We're looking for a balance of a lot of money and a good work environment and work/projects we like.
Depends on the company. Some still want to grow at a faster pace than they can hire.
> instead of hanging that over your manager's head
You are correct that this in not actually something you say to your manager. This is the thought that should be in your head. The real conversation needs to be constructive.
> 6 months of training is ridiculously long
I didn't mean training, I meant "to become as productive as you". My point is that the employee has the advantage on new hires: you instantly get full pay, but still need to ramp up your productivity.
Agreed on that. If your manager isn't doing his/her job, or just wants quick outs of 1:1s, that conversation needs to be had instead of the status quo
On training, I have seen companies where it just takes a few months for a new hire to get anything done. Silo-ed institutional knowledge, spaghetti codebases, too much emphasis on processes and meetings, no proper new-hire onboarding, etc. Those are usually red flags. But yes, I wouldn't expect a new hire to be completely as productive as a seasoned employee even after a few months, but should be enough to get going.
At Google there's an expectation that you won't be 'productive' for 6 months after joining, though that's not surprising considering how different everything is.
And your comment about silo’d orgs was spot on in this case
That's why you/we can afford to view the world that way. For many positions, especially those that don't require specific technical skills or other aspects where demand outstrips supply, servility is the only important trait.
For example plumbers here in Belgium make a lot of money because of the high demand.
But the point about “know where you work before you open your mouth” is wise I think.
What a strange, toxic way to look at the world.
We’re just people! People who are hopefully working at a company that has a mission they believe in, who are trying to do the best work they can.
Sometimes a manager sucks, sometimes the employee sucks, but there’s never a single person to blame, nor is it up to a single person to “figure shit out.”
The more people realize that we’re all in this together, the better.
And if you’re jaded about thinking in that way, you’re just not at the right company.
Employment is not a boss->servant relationship, it's a relationship where both parties gain something. You offer a service, and they pay for that. End of story. They act out? Then you find someone else who needs your services.
As a programmer myself, I'm in this great position where there is a shortage of good developers, and plenty of companies searching for good developers.
When I go to my manager, I'm not going in there with "please don't fire me sir, please.", I'm going in there with "Hey, fix your shit or I'll have a new job next week that pays more from day 1, and you will search the next 6 months for my replacement and train that person another 6 months before (s)he's somewhat productive."