crustacean

But why talk shop on a date at all though?

- A shared niche interest is not sufficient basis for a good relationship.

- I’m a woman in tech and I don’t necessarily wanna talk code on a first or second date, I’ve got professional development figured out on my own time.

That has presumably worked _for Elon_...

If my meetings happened as described with no one rescheduling or derailing them then actually my meeting life would be fine.

I want to go to the meetings described on my calendar.

But nearly every time “It’s a trap!”

This is such a good point. Take SQL. It has survived because it is well designed, and changes so little and so slowly, and it’s obvious what SQL is and isn’t meant for. Amateur programmers can port SQL queries between database systems semi-painlessly. In the right environment a query can survive with small edits for YEARS.

Who wants to break old SQL? Nobody.

Edit: *Inmon

Better to have “nothing but prod” than something bad, imo/tbh.

Sorry to be that one avoids-the-question comment, but:

Without design sessions to figure out your data store design (look up Kimball, Immon), and then monitoring/testing to make sure everything is running smoothly, any data stack will be hell.

Badly designed data brings fatigue and rancor and unnecessary work and is a huge hard-to-quantify money suck.

At some companies you can get a negative performance review for not being on Slack during working hours. “Needs to be more responsive / better team player.” In other places you might be expected to be online beyond 9-5 too.

I think you’re right to connect “co-location” with “cruft”, though. “Co-location for the sake of the flourishing of cruft” is a management philosophy.

I’m just as curious about how the managers were trained to be process-driven. Manager behavior seems to me just as if not more important than IC behavior here.

Since managers have power, and engineers usually don’t personally know their skip levels, managers can easily replace async documented process with lovely hours-long face-to-face 20-person meetings. And they can silence dissent! They can wreak havoc in a way no IC could ever do.

I totally agree with you. I like all-remote teams. I’m wary of teams that are part remote and part collocated, especially when the leaders are part of Team Collocated and I’m not.

It’s only going to stop when being on Facebook is seen as shameful.

Unless you were a contractor, your company should have bought you a computer, full stop.

Sadly it sounds like your options are to leave or to stop caring so hard about your job. I wish I had better advice, I am also familiar with micromanagers who make bad macro decisions. They are too into how work makes them feel. Some people actually enjoy sitting in meetings and watching people carry out their arbitrary commands, because it makes them feel powerful. On the other hand they don’t enjoy asking whether the way they are spending their time is useful, probably because it would make their entire self-worth collapse.

Yep. Everyone is gonna start to see tech the way tech sees finance and military contractors

I avoid any company that has forced arbitration as a condition of employment

Can anyone give advice about how you built your personal website(s?) while having strong professional interests in multiple areas? I’d be really grateful to see an example.

I have a career in tech and also a career in music. My professional networks in these areas don’t overlap. I don’t think everyone responds positively to the dual career thing, although some definitely do.

Just make two sites and don’t link them? Get a stage name vs a tech name? Create a unified portfolio as a creative technologist?

Colleges themselves are not the only institutions keeping records about students. For instance, you can send people your transcripts and proofs of graduation through https://studentclearinghouse.org/, a nonprofit