Agile could also be code for we can’t figure out how to control project scope and team capacity
Been doing the job search and it’s frustrating how bad most of the job postings are. There’s so much filler nonsense.
I pretty much just want to know like
- tech stack
- team size
- big picture what the company does
- if they’re assholes about in-office mandates
- salary range
Some postings are like “must know Java, go, JavaScript, Ruby, Python, or rust” and I’m like do you use all of those?
I like the ones where the tech stack is literally every language/framework in use by anybody anywhere. Maybe you guys should try picking the stuff that’s best suited for whatever it is you’re doing.
Had an old boss that wouldn’t put our stack in JDs because he felt any truly good programmer could pick it up. I mean, true, but it’s not efficient hiring, or effecient business practice.
I would actually like to work at a place like that. I’ve worked with a very wide variety of languages and platforms and I don’t much care which one I use now. I’m much more interested in what the project is than in what tools are being used to produce it.
Just kidding - nobody has interesting projects any more.
I keep getting recruiters sending me in-office jobs on the other side of the country and not even telling me the salary range. You’re asking me to break my lease, uproot my family, and leave behind all my local friends. If your salary is low enough that you don’t want to advertise it up front, why would I ever even consider doing all that?
must know Java, go, JavaScript, Ruby, Python, or rust
Depending on the division you ended up in at the company I work you might need one or more of MSSQL, MySQL, PostgreSQL, C#, TypeScript, JavaScript, PHP, Ruby, VB.NET, Terraform, Groovyscript, or PowerBuilder.
salary range
Sorry, you have to pass multiple rounds of interviews and get approved for the job before we tell you, which is not wasting anyone’s time when you find out it’s substantially less than you’ll accept. Why can’t we find people to fill this position? No one wants to work anymore.
Doesn’t it cost them money to interview people? What a way to waste time
I think at least New York now requires jobs to post a range. I haven’t even seen bullshit like “$50k - $500k” - maybe the law was written strongly enough that they can’t loophole it that way.
We got an opening, are you looking?
When, where, what, how, … Aaaaagh
I just started skipping the first 1-2 pages of all ads, they usually just talk about what a fantastic company they are, etc. Just noise that no one is interested in, not even the ones lying about it.
At the end after all the fluff there is usually a description of what you are supposed to know and do. And if there isn’t, well I am not wasting my time with them.
Also, describing salary range seems very different in different countries
I just want to know what I will be doing and they say Java, go, JavaScript, Ruby, Python, or rust and I am like. I don’t do compilers.
I don’t do compilers
? What do you mean
They mean they’d rather debug at runtime, preferably in production, with minimal instrumentation.
Writing that programming languages is the thing you will be working on. Not what application you will be doing because you’re just a tool, not human being.
It should be
We have daily “stand-ups”
Because it usually morphs into an hour long status meeting instead of an actual agile stand up meeting.
I’ve been a part of a few companies that did it right.
Before COVID, the stand up room had no chairs, only stand up tables. One TV and you had 20 minutes. Stand ups were back to back.
The most efficient use of my time as both an engineer and a people leader because you were forced to stay on task.
No bull shit. Just “I did x. I’m stuck on y. I’m waiting on z.”
The most efficient use of my time as both an engineer and a people leader
My last company had the most efficient standup meetings possible. We always did them by phone since 4/5 of the team was in India, so I was able to shower at home during them and then catch the bus in to work.
We do it like that too. Most meetings are not useful at all (no blockers), but at least we don’t waste more than 15-20 minutes
The dream.
“you’ll wear multiple hats” => “you’ll wear all the hats”
Also: we don’t have the budget for anything so you have to do it (IT, conf, programming, …).
“The only job you won’t have to do is QA, because we haven’t heard of it yet. Is that a new thing? We’re going to wait and see if it catches on.”
but when something goes wrong it’s on you, so you can wear that hat too
I mean, depends on the size of the company. When you’re like 1-2 devs you basically do what you can to help everyone out. But yeah as the company gets bigger you’ll need to separate the responsibilities.
As someone who’s done this for 20yrs and has been a manager or lead for 5 of that, these are pretty spot on… though I’ll say “must be a team player” for me is less don’t question authority and more “your manager is too busy for your constant questions… talk to your peers and figure it out amongst yourselves, I got shit to do.”
I once made a big fuss about a very critical security vulnerability because they didn’t want to deal with it and there were very serious ramifications to the business depending on how it was dealt with. Like the company was exposed to multi million dollar lawsuits over it, maybe more, possibly worse than lawsuits
It was the only time I’ve ever been classified as not a team player, and they used that incident as the reason in the report.
Edit: they did eventually deal with it properly, but not before trying to hide it and lie about it to our customers first.
For what it’s worth, I’ve got similar experience, and I’ve seen what OP is talking about. CEO rolling in twice a year to make arbitrary decisions that overrides Product. Product fighing amongst themselves as to what the CEO actually meant. Anyone questioning any of the above is let go for not being a team player.
For any newbies reading along, as a veteran, who writes job descriptions, I can confirm this is 100% accurate.
I can say without a shadow of a doubt that there is no sweeter pleasure than watching utter panic and chaos unfold when the rockstar quits. I love quitting shitty jobs…
You got the rockstar one wrong, it’s an actual programming language.
A few I can laugh about (just started to make a profit), but most of them just make me uncomfortable.
