Rachel had something about fixing corporate culture recently (hint: you can't), and sometimes really you can't leave. Some are shackled to their jobs through their visa, others because of healthcare needs (their health insurance has favourable terms, and they need to care for a family member), and others because of the nature of the industry (university faculty comes to mind, especially post-2008).

The fact that you are paid does nothing about the ennui. You clearly never held a no-show job before.

The concept of fixing corporate culture seems like a weird one, if you remove corporate and go for the generic term, can you "fix culture"?

I think what you can do is influence the culture of a company and reap the rewards, having done the devops transformation in two difference companies that were deemed unfixable (both more than 4 offices and 3k people) I feel it is very doable! It just takes time and it is not an algorithm you can learn and apply blindly.

The type of person who will write blogs about how terrible a company is is not the type of person who has enough empathy to understand why things are as fucked as they are and how to fix them.

That's a really unfair comment on the OP, especially as the blog literally details why things were fucked and all their efforts on different teams to try and improve things.

What’s your deal against someone blogging? It helps others learn about the company, and the public perception might cause management to things they thought they could put off

The key ingredient, which you certainly had and the author didn't, was buy-in from an authoritative level of management. Yes, put in the work and it's possible... as long as the VP doesn't shut it down.

You'd rather say GP was hired by management to right the ship, for that kind of task someone external is needed. Tone is set at the top, and getting buy-in from the head bum to throw the bums out, that's unheard of.

If you have the political capital to spend, you can, for example:

- Model the behaviors you want to see.

- Thanks and recognize others when they do the behaviors you want to see.

- Use your Comment and Reject buttons when formal processes ask you to sign off on behaviors you don't want to see.

- Propose initiatives to influential people you trust and identify as likely allies.

Of course if you're wrong about having the political capital, and especially if your own manager is not on board, swimming upstream can be dangerous.

Insider club here? Who is 'Rachel'?

Probably Rachel By the Bay: https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/03/04/annoyed/

Hi?

hiya rachel. you good?

Blogger commonly linked to on HN, domain name is rachelbythebay.com

I guessed that is who it was but I you know she is not exactly 'PG'. And her name isn't unique enough like 'Elon'.

I read comments on another blog whereby one commenter thinks he is a guy who can use his girlfriend's name as if everyone should know that is who he is talking about like he is on a first name basis with the crowd.

Well, if you figured it out then maybe Rachel is unique enough =)

For your enjoyment: https://rachelbythebay.com/w/

While all these are true, they don't sound relevant to this job, as portrayed by the person who wrote it anyway.

What happened in 2008?

The GFC.

>their health insurance has favourable terms, and they need to care for a family member

At 200k per year, you can buy Obamacare which is 6k per year and for an individual 6k max out of pocket.

So many people are fooled into thinking their companies health insurance is worth something beyond 12k/yr. And that 12k is firefighters union tier.

That math doesn’t look right. I think you are confusing out of pocket maximum with premium. Your premium depends on the people covered, their ages, tobacco use, the state you’re in, etc. It can definitely be more than 12k per year just for the premium.

That sounds crazy to me. I looked at federal "market-based" insurance in 2017, and it was just shy of $2k per month for my family. It covered basically nothing and had a deductible of several thousand dollars.

Interesting. How many family members?

Checking I'm on my throaway.

I followed exactly this practice - immediately left crappy places -> kept strong clients. Took myself from $40K/year to $500K/year (not tech BTW so this is I think a bit harder than in tech).

Here is the kicker - some of the terrible places I left later called and specifically requested me. I literally burnt NO bridges. I would just apologize and say I didn't think I could meet their standards / expectations at that time and wanted to be prompt about letting them know so they could find someone new. And the reality - they are pretty friendly departures if done early - no time for crap to build up.

Quick things I don't recommend off the top of my head

* Having multiple bosses on a project * Having responsibility but no authority * Being asked to deliver stuff with no data / dependent on too many others you don't have control over.

Things I didn't mind.

* Bosses with high standards. If they were willing to pay, I'd be willing to live up to those. Even if I thought they went way too far with it cost / benefit side. I learned a lot from these folks. Some examples.

Me: You could pay someone $20/hr to do this work. Them: We want you to do it. Me: I charge $200. Them: OK.

Me: I'm busy, I can't help. Them: What would it cost to help. Me: 150% my normal rate and I'd have to work weekends only - can you open the office on the weekends and have support staff in on the weekend to help me? Them: Yes.

At the time I thought these folks were nuts, but they both went on to do really really well (and in one case I turned out to be absolutely pivotal in that).

* Working onsite - remote work is hard to see

But the bottom line - some consulting clients are not worth having, just move on. I never ever complained. I would make a few suggestions, give it my best shot, then moved on quickly if needed. In all but one case the tough ones imploded later. One case (that called me back) actually took my suggestions on my way out (you might consider restructuring department X like follows) and got 10x bigger.

Funny thing - govt work is very interesting. You can see how a Shadow IT setup comes into play if you work for govt.

What was the time frame on your $40k -> $500k jump, if you don't mind my asking?

Not OP, but, guessing less than 2 years.

Unfortunately a fair bit longer - I'd say 6 years?

It took me a bit to catch on to the right approach and had to learn along the way (wasting time forever with a folks who were set on doing it their way into the ground and learning from clients doing a good job).

But what happened is once you focus on clients that work well with you (and you with them) then the reputation value just goes through the roof. It looks like everything you do "works" - but half of that is you are picking clients ready to make it work?

Now of course I have lots of different stress - you can grow too quickly - and even with staff can fall behind your clients now high standards - so a quick fall is possible. People paying premium $ expect a good result not unreasonably - especially if they themselves are delivering on a high level. No one minds if you screw up and are getting paid $25/hr. In some ways I miss those days. I def went out drinking a lot more back then.

If no one calls these companies out nothing will ever change, maybe he still has friends in the company he'd like to help out, nothing will light a fire under a companies ass more than appearing on the front page of HackerNews for the wrong reasons. If I was applying to this company I would like to have this insight to make my mind up, it's another data point, doesn't mean it's 100% correct but that's up for me to decide. For example on glassdoor this company has a 4.4/5 rating. I know for a fact my company posts fake reviews on glassdoor, where are we supposed to get real insights about companies from?

To me, the writings of a disgruntled ex-employee who is on a vendetta against the company, is just as worthless as those fake Glassdoor reviews. They have written at least 5 rambling articles with the sole purpose of tearing down Pivotal, which at some point starts to be more of a reflection of the author than the company.

You say disgruntled employee, I say it sounds like a problem company.

I just read this and I can say, I worked with a company that was roughly this but multiplied by 0.25. Main product that never worked but sold as if it did? Check. Weird investor schemes? Check. Sales people lying about the product, or the customers (as if the company had them, instead of a string of noncommittal POCs)? Check. Sales people having no clue what the product did, and just selling the bullshit they invented? Check. CEO rotations? Check. Someone getting entangled in what looked like a different version of Nigerian Prince scam? Check.

I can 100% believe everything the author said, because I've seen a lite version of it. And if all you know about a company comes from their website, press, conferences and their salesmen, you'll never realize how rotten things are on the inside.

> I just read this and I can say, I worked with a company that was roughly this but multiplied by 0.25.

Who hasn't? You will find the points of that bullshit bingo in any company with some degree on severity, even more so in a young startup.

A good portion of the article is the author realizing that stock options are shit when the company isn't doing as well as they claimed. (Welcome to the club!) Another portion is the author realizing that they don't like working on an open source project with a BDFL that they perceive to be resistant to input. And then they complain about the sales people doing a good job, because they are selling what makes the company money instead of support contracts for what they work on.

In the end, if I were to consider working at the company, nothing of that would tell me if it were a good idea or not.

I think this is just a more extreme example of a common psychological phenotype that I've encountered somewhat regularly over 25 years in industry.

Agreed, this is an extreme version, but you’ll find a decent number of developers at most companies with a toxic viewpoint along these lines.

I have a similar story, but it was my first programming job, and it wasn't a cake-walk to get it, so for myself I simply couldn't imagine doing much better. And to be honest, after quitting, I haven't. I'm at least healthy and happy again.

But you're right, honestly the only thing I really learned about that experience was I should have just quit sooner. That's really all there is to it.

I agree to some extent.. only the point being here from what I gather is that they deliver sub par software, defraud their customers and just straight out lie.

This is very toxic and can be very depressing and when I see posts like this I salute them because everyone who reads this will think twice before working for that company.

If people are not allowed to talk and read about what they found to be wrong, they will never figure out how to fix it. And they will never figure out what real problems are and what is fluff.

First step toward being able to participate in fixing anything is being able to reflect on what is going on and being able to learn from what others in similar situation did or did not do.

I get the impression that he views his declining of severance package as analogous to Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the national anthem, or some other righteous form of protest. But you're right it doesn't carry the same weight given his quarter-mil. per year salary