If my boss wants to pay me a SWE salary and then insists I clean out the break room fridge on Friday that is his perogrative not mine.

Cleaning break room fridges would not be an acceptable task. You sure could say yes and comply if you like cleaning fridges but usually people would probably just say no thanks.

If you just exaggerated to make a point I agree with you partially. But you always have to consider your personal growth and satisfaction with your work.

Sure nice of them to give you that chance rather than just laying you off though. Would be even nicer if they spent a little money to train you on the front-end web stuff. Employers used to do that sort of the thing all the time - retrain known good workers rather than just fire them and hire new (unknown) ones.

The responsibility for me to keep my skills sharp is upon me not my employer.

I’m not saying some personal time shouldn’t be dedicated to learning, but if the vast majority of your week is spent on a dead end, the time you have left to keep your skills sharp pales in comparison.

The problem is that I’m so irritated and demotivated by this job that I don’t want to look at a computer after I’m done. I don’t want to be in my office after I’m done. I only go in there if I forgot a drink or something on my desk. I need to figure out a way to upskill outside of work since it’s so clearly not going to happen at work, but the mental “anguish” (not quite anguish, really) makes me want to just shut down at the end of the day.

It’s much better when you get to spend a significant part of your work week building new skills, or at least improving existing skills.

That's something that comes through piecemeal. Many of the exercises are great but require work to really understand. It's not a series of books one reads cover to cover.

Sort of like how lifting weights won't train you to be a better line backer on an American football team.

You lift weights because it strengthens the body and you need a strong body if you want to have a long career as a reputable line backer.

(Maybe a bad example... head injuries and all)

Knowing how to implement combinatorial algorithms or SAT won't get you a promotion unless your job is implementing libraries of code that use those algorithms... but it's hard to see the forest for the trees if you can't recognize them... so to speak (Knuth loves trees). It can level up your mind so that you can solve more challenging problems or find innovative solutions.

I don't really read through AoCP with a job promotion in mind. I mainly do it because I find the subject matter enjoyable. And I only work on parts I find interesting or when I come across something I've heard about before but don't know well: chances are there's a data structure or algorithm explained in detail in AoCP.

It's important to guard your career.

If you started at a small company, you'll be used to doing all sorts of things "outside of your job description" (usually below) like restocking toilet paper, etc, simply because there is nobody else to do it.

If you started at a large company, you'll likely be used to "you cannot whatsoever move your computer to the other side of your cubicle without contacting building management" and other such things - stepping outside your job description could get you yelled at or even officially reprimanded.

Please go to this client, take these monitors upstairs, and deploy them. We expect this to be your next few months.

For $4 an hour more than I was making as MSP sysadmin? Sounds awesome!

I was disappointed when that contract ran out.

For instance, if you are hired as a software tester, and snag a task setting up the automated build system, you can turn that into a higher paid dev ops careeer.

Some people thrive in highly structured environments where they can optimize for metrics and get promotions - they do well in small companies. Others collect skills and achievements and use those to push their career forward - they do well in small companies and consulting. The world needs both.

With that said, knowing when to say no is very important as you say.

Be thoughtful in what you evaluate as a "bogus" task. What is hard or complex isn't always what is important or noticed.

> Be thoughtful in what you evaluate as a "bogus" task.

Well, no. a business is all about money and if the engineers can bill they shouldn't waste their time on anything else. Management in a firm basically exists to facilitate billable hours so the employee here is right, both personally and professionally, in realizing that this is not only silly but corporate suicide.

> What is hard or complex isn't always what is important or noticed.

This is true. If you have a chance to pick your boss's suit up before a meeting or drive them to the airport it is probably worth doing, little favors go a long way.

I do my best to communicate openly with my immediate superior about the reality on the ground, but if my advice is summarily dismissed, at certain point I just check out.

I mean... I can buy this to a point. But for me personally, there are lines. And there are things I'm just not going to do. Period.

I know it's un-trendy to talk about anything being "beneath you", and I'm not sure that's the wording I would use, but there are simply things that I don't consider being in my wheelhouse and that if you ask me to do, I'm going to say "no". Then you can decide if you want to fire me or not.

Case in point: I used to be a parts counter clerk at Advance Auto Parts. We got a new manager and one day he comes in and asks me to go outside and sweep the parking lot. I said "no" and he tells me to do it or I'm fired. So I rip off my Advance Auto Parts shirt, throw it in his face, say "fuck you" and walk out. 30+ years later I feel absolutely no regret about that. I didn't apologize then and I won't now.

There's more to my life than a job and I can find another way to pay the bills. I don't have to take their bullshit.

I'm glad you realized your hands were too important to be callused by a broom

But kudos on the manager. He realized that it had to be done, then went ahead and did it without ordering anyone else to do so.

If you can't take pride in a job well done as a store clerk, why the hell does anyone think you'll take pride in a job well done as a developer? That motivation is internal.

This is an absurd argument. They have nothing to do with each other. If you'd rather be a store clerk then why should expect you to have much motivation or competence to be a developer?

There's a word for people who throw tantrum's and walk off of a clerk job because they were asked to sweep a parking lot: privileged.

There's a reason job postings all say "And other duties as assigned"

Or do what everybody else does, and contract with one of those companies that comes through a couple of nights a week with one of those parking lot sweeping trucks?

The thing is, to a first approximation, nobody asks employees to go out and sweep the god-damn parking lot with a broom. This particular manager was just being a dick for the sake of being a dick. And I'm not somebody you can bully like that, because I will happily tell you to go fuck yourself and walk out. shrug

There's a reason job postings all say "And other duties as assigned"

And do you actually think that people take that to literally mean anything? Is there no task whatsoever that you would refuse to do? If so, I'd say you are a very strange person, as most people in my experience do have a line. That line is going to vary a lot from person to person, but I don't think I know a single person who would honestly say "Yes, I will do anything for my boss based on that clause in the job description."

I've been in a shitload of positions where I was assigned menial tasks for a variety of reasons. In some of those. positions I could say no without drama, in some I could quit, in some I could say "Yes sir/ma'am", in some I could delegate, in some I could outsource. In every case, I could respectfully and tactfully ask why.

"Is there any specific area that needs extra attention?"

"Will somebody else be covering my standard duties while I do this?"

"Is this going to be part of my regular duties or is this just to keep me busy?"

... and so on. Tone matters depending on the relationship you have with the manager. But a violent reactive act and profanity doesn't seem like the best way regardless of how righteous you feel years down the road.

I wouldn't hire you if this was your "tell me about a time you dealt with adversity in the workplace" interview answer, that's for sure.

What next, will he ask you to go grab shopping carts?!?!

Despite your rationalization, it's not uncommon to have the parking lot cleaned up and swept on a regular basis. I've done it for restaurants I worked at as a teenager, for example.

Your problem is being too sensitive.

Was a decent change of pace, didn’t mind it. Would have done it as long as mgr wasn’t a jerk about it.

That's for the business owner to figure out, why would OP even want to concern himself with stuff like this?

The thing is, I didn't then, nor do I now, care about what he thought hard about or not. That wasn't the point. I just wasn't going to be the one doing it. What happened beyond that is neither here nor there as far as I'm concerned.

You misunderstand. I have no problem sweeping. If he'd asked me to sweep in the store, that would have been fine. I did that pretty much every day anyway. It was more that the *fucking parking lot* doesn't need to be swept in the first place. It's a parking lot! This guy was just being a jackoff, which is why my response was as seemingly hyperbolic as it was.

Sorry, that's my fault for eliding some details in the story, because I was in a hurry earlier.

Think office kitchen. They are always gross. There are always people that just throw their stuff in the sink instead of putting it in the dish washer etc. I've been at places where they wanted to make everyone do kitchen duty meaning cleaning out the sink and stuff on the counter and all that in a round robin fashion because "everyone uses it and we can't figure out who is the culprit".

I don't put stuff into the sink or use the dish washer and I don't use the fridge for my food. I have my cup, which I keep at my desk and wash up from time to time and take back to my desk. In between it doesn't need cleaning and just stays on my desk.

Hire a cleaner if you can't get these gross people to clean up after themselves but do not make me clean up after other people in a "communal space" I don't even use.

Needless to say I refused. A lot of people caved. "not worth the fight" was something I heard a lot.

Sorry but I am very principled that way. Yes worth the fight every day. You want to fire one of your best developers over a kitchen sink because you can't do your job properly? Be my guest.

That said I was civil about it but very firm.

Needless to say nobody was fired and they solved the problem a different way.

That said, if I was your employer and everyone had taken your stance, even the ones who do use the kitchen, I would have simply taken the dishes and utensils away. At that point it's just people being unreasonable.

Which actually I learned not to ever do because not only do people slob with communal areas, they also don't respect personal cups.

I love to sweep. If I could get paid as a SWE to just speak and "garden" our office, to make it a more pleasent environment, conducive to peaceful thought and pleasent interactions, I'd take that job in a heartbeat.

Christopher Alexander is a bit of a god-father of object-oriented programming, and architecture: https://dorian.substack.com/p/at-any-given-moment-in-a-proce...

He believes that all work on something new starts with "repairing" the environment in which that new thing is being created. (The codebase, the room, the block).

The first step of repair is to tidy and clean.

Sooooo I can weave a compelling story to others about why cleaning and tidying is in fact _very_ reasonable to do, and some could argue it's some of the more important work someone could do.

if your job is your identity then be sure and put away some savings for therapy. The moment something happens to your job outside your control like getting laid off, company going under, workplace harassment, even nasty office politics then a mental crisis will soon follow.

My main concern, honestly, is not so much that the work is "beneath me" but more that I get pidgonholed doing that work. I know this isn't realistic, but I don't want come review time for people to say "it's great you do this stuff around the office/for the team/for the org" but it doesn't affect your metrics.

In some cases, I think the fear is being asked to do these things in a non-documented way means you have no evidence that you had these "extra-curricular" things you had to complete.

I'm fortunate I haven't had that happen to me, but it's a fear I always have at the back of my head whenever these sort of requests happen.

…within the predefined framework of “roles”

>If my boss wants to pay me a SWE salary and then insists I clean out the break room fridge on Friday that is his perogrative not mine.

Your wording here is kind of vague. Are you saying that you would acquiesce to anything a boss requests?

What if it’s not the breakroom but a public bathroom? What if instead of cleaning it’s foot rubs? Would you taste test exotic foods for your boss? Babysit their kids?

If the answer to any of these is even remotely close to “yes”, then to you there is no such thing as a software engineer or a software engineer’s salary. There would only be only servants and sovereigns, and servants’ wages.

> assuming over course it doesn't cross legal or moral boundaries.

If someone asks me to clean the bathroom, sure I do it at home, much more rewarding to make $50 an hour, and probably less gross than the bathroom where a toddler is potty training.

As for the rest of those items although they may not explicitly fall under legal violations by US federal law, given the relationship between myself and my boss they probably cross policy lines and could be excluded under illegal. Except for taste testing food I'd do that one for sure.

But your framing this as a ruler and subject relationship is off the mark because every thing you listed has people that get paid to do exactly those things, that doesn't make them all serfs to a lordly managerial class.

It seems you have concocted the most absurd extreme interpretation of my words and then used that to refute my argument.

Ultimately I am willing to do pretty much whatever I am asked to as long as it is legal and moral, included in moral is my dignity as a human being.

Ultimately I feel that trying to frame every interaction with an employer as adversarial and feeling that everything is workers vs managers is immature and reductionist. At the end of the day Initech or Introde or whatever as a company doesn't really exist it is a legal fiction we use in society. What does exist is my boss my coworkers my customers. I want to treat them well and with respect and make life easier for them not because they deserve it, or because I think I will get ahead. I do it because I want to be a good person and good people treat others well even regardless of who they are.

It doesn't mean I need to be a door mat or allow myself to be exploited, but it means as an employee I try to behave like I would want my employees to behave if I were a manager, and if sometimes that means they ask me to do something for them that isn't inside of my regular job description I'll try and do that because I dont bave to come in and see Mr. Introde every day, I come in and see Dan my boss, or Carl the director and those are people.

Most everyone you meet is another person just trying to get by in the world and most people can really use someone cutting them some slack once in a while.

I’m confused by this part. What if your company does not have a policy against foot rubs or babysitting? For example there are big wellness companies like, for example Goop, that might reasonably have foot rubs, babysitting and software engineering in the same building.

>every thing you listed has people that get paid to do exactly those things

I agree. There are people whose job it is to babysit and provide massages. If you heard your babysitter say that it’s reasonable to demand that they engineer software because you pay them so much, would that make sense to you?

edit: The job you describe yourself as doing seems akin to personal/executive assistant, which is a fine job! I worked as an EA for years. I wouldn’t call myself an SWE if I worked as an EA.

Nope. The dividing line between gross and just normal IME is public vs private. I've cleaned some bathrooms in my "career" (if you want to include high school part time jobs), and the worst ones were the womens bathrooms in public use; grocery stores etc.

If I were employed at a place that did not let me work on high-impact high-visibility roles, I'd move to somewhere that did as soon as possible.

(Unless I was already where I wanted to get in my career)

But I haven known plenty of devs who keep their heads down and bemoan their boss and wouldn't say anything to them anyway. Hard to know how a person feels in that case.

But seriously, it would be nice if managers would put a bit more thoughts and effort into ... communicating and people.

Sometimes I think the fact that some devs move into management / senior type roles, not always great for communication. Yeah they can talk about bits, but the rest gets lost at times.

Not a single person I had in mind was previous developer. Just to be clear. As much as it is popular to knee jerk assume that developers dont have social skills, this one is much LESS pronounced with developers.

Sure, but why? Why wouldn't you have a direct, honest conversation with your manager?

I'll tell you why.

Because it can be terrifying.

You don't know how they will react, whether you'll be forced off interesting projects, put at the top of the layoff list, or similar. You can watch how they handle other situations and get an inkling, but you don't know.

Good bosses won't react like that and there are many good bosses out there who want you to grow and will work with you to achieve your goals. But there are plenty of bad bosses too.

From this perspective, it's a lot easier to just pack it in, write off the boss and company, and find a new job. It's less satisfying, to be sure, but less terrifying.

It's taken me a long time to realize how important it is to have a boss you can have a direct conversation with. It's also a factor of my experience and knowledge of my self-worth too.

If I were a new developer in my first job, it'd be a lot harder to have a tough conversation with my boss, because my alternatives would be fewer.

Uncomfortable, scary, yup, but necessary.

This exactly. I've tried having 'difficult' conversations with my boss only to wind up on their bad list.

Thankfully I'm at a company with a strong culture now and I'm much more financially independent than when I was younger.

Yep, this has happened to me. So if I'm unhappy, I usually just start sending my resume out. I never ask for anything (big) from my boss unless I have an offer in-hand.

Maybe I haven’t lucked out and found a manager who not only listens but is actually empowered to change things.

Actions do count after that.

Communication is just the first step, after that it isn't always required if they've demonstrated they won't / can't do a thing(s).

How do you know it was better, in this circumstance, if you don't know what the outcome of packing up would have been? It's impossible to know all the consequences of our actions.

Good advice for almost any situation.

One developer actually found that he liked the business analyst work better and continued on that path.

Never got this kind of behavior. I'd have told him that what he was doing was very inappropriate (without buy-in from the team), and if he doesn't back off I'll quit. He can ask around for other opinions so it's not just coming from me but it's a hard line.

Of course this mostly works cause as a developer you don't need to be afraid of finding another job. But that's good. Workers having leverage over bosses is good.

The reason not to do this is that you're very likely to provoke a defensive response and have the other person dig in their heels. A gentler approach is more likely to get results, less likely to create tension in the relationship, and sets the tone of future decision making as adversarial.

If that doesn't work you can try firmer approaches, and you can of course always quit or use the threat of quitting, but 99 times out of 100 leading with that will lead to worse outcomes.

You don't give up any leverage by first trying to resolve conflicts without threats.

This is where I disagree. The magnitude of response should be determined by the likelihood of achieving the desired outcome. Sometimes that requires drawing a really firm line, but usually it does not. And I'd argue that it virtually never involves drawing that line as your first strategy.

Like I said, you should absolutely be willing to make that threat, and to walk away, but I don't think there's any benefit to yourself in leading with it. If your initial attempt fails, then try something more drastic until you either get your desired result or quit.

I don't think you can expect people to be rational all, or even most of the time. Just because something is a fact does not mean it is necessary or beneficial to say it.

This is literally the point of the OP by the way, most people aren’t out to get you, and can be convinced of things if you communicate respectfully. No one wants to work with someone who goes out of their way to tear them down.

The parent is treating it like a job.

No judgement from me on this, but that's the difference.

Why should anyone work for a person like this? If a boss decides to make huge changes like this unilaterally without at least talking to the team, why does he deserve a polite conversation from his team?

Seems like OP did all these things.