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In software, when an engineer exits the team

188 pointsby solidistover 3 years ago

20 comments

kodahover 3 years ago
I&#x27;m a lead software engineer on a polyglot team that requires broad knowledge and in-depth knowledge on distributed computing.<p>If I can give any advice to engineering managers when someone quits: If you don&#x27;t have anything nice to say, don&#x27;t say anything at all. The last three people that have left my team are people I know personally. Hearing an engineering manager berate and degrade someone who I have been through incidents, significant refactors, mentoring, debates, and late night delivery with is a new experience entirely. The first time it happened I had to talk the engineering manager down from making someone a non-rehire, the second time I didn&#x27;t even bother. My judgement of them was fully passed on to the company and the leaders above this engineering manager that gave them accolades and excuses.<p>Most of the time when I leave a team it&#x27;s because something either in the management chain like a process or a manager themselves failed me on such a deep level that the hope that gets me out of my bed that says, &quot;We&#x27;ll do something great today!&quot; has departed me. This post reads to me like that is inevitable, but it is not. If you listen, ask questions without assumptions or judgements, and act as an enabler instead of a Lord or Lady then you&#x27;ll strike long careers out of engineers. They may leave out of better bonuses or incentives, but they at least won&#x27;t leave because of <i>you</i>, and one takes a substantial more amount enticing than the other.
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SilverRedover 3 years ago
&gt;But this role wasn’t a fit, and the timing was off. The environment was not correct. The work didn’t have the impact they wanted, finding their dream job instead. Perhaps I was ineffective at communications, championing above, or slow at sponsoring elsewhere<p>This seems to miss the most obvious reason. That they found more money elsewhere. Of every developer I have seen leave, their primary motivation was a higher pay. Having a team you like is nice and all, but owning a house or being able to go on nicer holidays is better.<p>The company I worked at this year is falling apart because all of the actual talent has found higher paying jobs and all that is left is the juniors who will struggle to keep things running.
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yositoover 3 years ago
I&#x27;m a senior engineer with over a decade of experience. Most engineering jobs I&#x27;ve left, it was because the manager viewed themselves as an authority with power to force me to do things their way rather than as an enabler who would trust my expertise and help remove blockers to getting things done. In those roles, I&#x27;d spend more time chasing the managers&#x27; scattered thoughts through endless link trails deep in the bowels of Slack and Jira than actually doing engineering work. When I left, and the managers asked me for feedback, I always told them that everything had been great and I had just accepted a new opportunity. Leaving is not the time to burn bridges.
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democracyover 3 years ago
The default expectation is: people are not going to stay long in your company. It&#x27;s a given. What you can do to improve things it a bit:<p>1) pay a bit over market rate (5-10% is ok)<p>2) create a culture where approachability, kindness and responsibility are more important than anything else<p>3) offer (but don&#x27;t enforce) specific workplace settings<p>4) offer (but don&#x27;t enforce) work-from-home&#x2F;work-from-office balance<p>5) periodically encourage people - feedback is very important
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julianh95over 3 years ago
I enjoyed reading this. _As an engineer_, I have always had trouble with determining how to go about putting in my notice. I know that it’s “just business”, however I still get consumed by how my manager at the time will take it. Reading this gives me a sense of relief and I hope it helps when that time rolls around again.
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pannyover 3 years ago
&gt;No one is irreplaceable, and no one is an island.<p>I&#x27;ve watched a business fall apart slowly after the only developer on the legacy project left. Nobody knows the old framework, nobody wants to waste time learning something that won&#x27;t advance their career, and finding an existing person familiar with it is search for a needle in a haystack.<p>A developer can find a new position in a matter of weeks. A business takes months to fill a position, then months more to ramp up as the new hire has to learn the unfamiliar code base. In a market with lots of competition, it can be catastrophic, but management has the mindset that we&#x27;re all cogs until it&#x27;s too late.
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karaterobotover 3 years ago
A tangent: I think it would be a smoother transition we extended the professional expectation of giving two weeks notice to employees before they are let go. I&#x27;m more or less serious.<p>As it stands, employees give at least two weeks notice to employers before quitting, and employers give no notice whatsoever.<p>The benefit of the employee giving notice (from the company&#x27;s perspective) is that management has a little time to move people around and try to cover for the missing person. The benefit from the offboarding employee&#x27;s perspective is that they won&#x27;t get a bad reference for their next job.<p>But, if an employee is leaving because they&#x27;ve found a new job (the most common case, I think) then they probably don&#x27;t need a reference from this position, because they have their next job lined up already. Maybe it would be nice to have one later, but it&#x27;s not strictly needed. At most, it&#x27;s a weak enticement.<p>The obvious argument against giving notice to employees from a management perspective is that the employee will either sabotage the company, not do any work, or just take two weeks of vacation.<p>However, this is the case where the employee <i>would</i> actually need a good reference from their current company, because they do not already have a job lined up. If anything, you&#x27;d expect them to be less likely to behave badly than they would be in the typical case, where they find their next job and put in their two weeks notice afterward, because they need that reference.<p>When a company lays off an employee, they never give any notice, and the team with the missing team member is left to figure out what to do about it. Even though this can be a major disruption to the team, we don&#x27;t typically hold it against the company: it&#x27;s just how things are done. But, should it be?<p>Of course, the other reason to lay someone off without notice is that you can&#x27;t afford to pay their salary for even two more weeks, but that&#x27;s another situation. I&#x27;m talking about when someone is being laid off because of pro-active downsizing, or because they&#x27;re not living up to their potential, or whatever.
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virtuous_signalover 3 years ago
&gt; But rarely do I find something to keep the person on, their mind already made up. I respect that. When I close the video meeting, I settle. My mind is racing. “Can I try something to bring the person back?”<p>It&#x27;s interesting reading this, as I have always been too -- shy? underconfident? I don&#x27;t know -- to ever mention my job search to my manager, until I got an offer and accepted it. I worry about it being obvious that the time off I request is for interviewing and perhaps them placing obstacles in my way. I wonder if it&#x27;s ever a good idea to mention a job search when one doesn&#x27;t have any offers in hand yet.
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lmilcinover 3 years ago
&gt; Or the baffling outcome, their asks were all achieved as they exit.<p>It is not baffling.<p>It is self respect.<p>I don&#x27;t like important stuff that has not been completed. If I spent months on an important work it would feel like giving up. I would feel like a fraud abandoning it and letting it go to waste, because of my own decision. And so I try to focus one last time and push hard to have quality closure.<p>An interesting observation is how your focus suddenly improves when you have made your decision. You know all your long term plans no longer make any sense and so you stop worrying. You can finally have quality rest at home as various problems prevent you from achieving peace of mind. You know you can ignore bullshit. Or it suddenly stops being irritating anymore because you know you will not have to deal with it for long. You know you can finally say no to all distractions.
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andrespover 3 years ago
Another article where managers show how detached they are and just regurgitate empty manager speak about how emotional and empathetic they are. No single mention to promotions. For some reason companies prefer to waste money and time hiring and training replacements rather than having proper career progression internally. For most developers leaving is the new career progression.<p>Open your eyes. Reality is shouting in your face. The dozens of dubious management books by &quot;experts&quot; are just making you feel good about not tackling the problem.
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FpUserover 3 years ago
I gave notices (verbal) twice during my employment in the 90s (On my own since 2000). In neither case I was eager to leave but I&#x27;ve felt that my remuneration had fallen too much comparatively to a market rate. In both cases I first went and got an offer for much better money and then asked my CEO to match it (we both understood what will happen if he will not). In both cases the offer was matched and the case settled.
deathanatosover 3 years ago
So, author, you claim to see the breakup coming. Yet, at the moment the employee gives their notice:<p>&gt; <i>find levers to negotiate</i><p>The time during which you &quot;see it coming&quot;, when I the employee am asking more … pointed questions, usually about the company, how its run, the team&#x27;s responsibilities or work or pay etc. … <i>that</i>, that is when you have the levers to negotiate. That is when you are still the BATNA.<p>But by the time I&#x27;m giving you notice, those levers are <i>gone</i>.¹<p>I also am pretty sure the last manager I gave notice to did <i>not</i> see it coming. He had a very quizzical look when I asked for the 1-on-1 mentioned in the article. He too, tried to fight what was by then destiny.<p>¹just in case someone tries to argue &quot;everyone has a price&quot;: yeah, I&#x27;d agree. But I&#x27;ve not had anyone offer it, and by that time, it&#x27;s far too high because of what you&#x27;d be asking. (Me to renege on a deal, me to stick with something I&#x27;m dissatisfied with, and it&#x27;d be a &quot;pay replacing happiness&quot; sort of an offer, which is why it&#x27;d be costly. You&#x27;ve had the chance to change the &quot;happiness&quot; part, and usually, the demonstration has been &quot;we&#x27;re unwilling to address those grievances&quot;)<p>(Also, too often, I think, the &quot;problems&quot; run deeper than the authority of the direct manager has control over. My last manager was in that situation: there was very little I think he could actually <i>do</i>. And that, in itself, is a problem.)
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jongorerover 3 years ago
Whoever wrote this sounds like an awful manager: extremely self-centered and mixes poor rationalizations with pseudo empathy so as to seem as a decent person. In other words, I find that managers with that much... personality are the hardest to manage (harhar!); they can be extremely flippant in their behavior and unpredictable with demands. Maybe they take the job too seriously? You just need to keep push some boxes around on zenhub and send some emails my dude, this isn&#x27;t the crusade and you sure ain&#x27;t no knight (lmao).
geraldbauerover 3 years ago
Here&#x27;s a real-world story of getting &quot;exited&quot; of my humble self - more a programmer (or code monkey) than an &quot;engineer&quot; really - see The Strange Case of Mammad Kabiri @ Uniqa Software Service. [1]<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;bigkorupto&#x2F;mammad-kabiri-uniqa" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;bigkorupto&#x2F;mammad-kabiri-uniqa</a>
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daemonhunterover 3 years ago
When I first saw this I figured it was going to be about what it does to the team, that managers don&#x27;t seem to get. I was told once, after losing half the team, that they didn&#x27;t want to lose momentum.
craftydevilover 3 years ago
That&#x27;s not the only problem here, when we stay with same company our salary and revision are less when compare to later hire. So money matters. Also new tech and knowledge are also lacking.
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newshortsover 3 years ago
Work is work, folks get too involved. I don’t think it’s healthy to take it personally if someone chooses to leave the team. In fact I’ve never understood this.<p>My role as a manager is to ensure you grow enough to move on to something better. That’s the contract, you give your best to the team while you’re here and we try our damndest to find good opportunities for you regardless of what it means for us.<p>I just have no misconceptions about our relationship, you’re here to push it and I’m here to challenge you to do that.
ochronusover 3 years ago
Beautifully written - I don&#x27;t necessarily mean the content, but the quality of writing. Have you tried writing more serious things (I mean more than blog posts)?
pololeeover 3 years ago
&gt; I wasn’t expecting those intense feelings when walking away the first time. They don’t write that in any of the books I read.<p>I want to make a movie to capture the feelings :)
ctrlpover 3 years ago
Large hierarchical orgs are surely one of the circles of hell. The way the whole manager-culture setup warps peoples minds never fails to amaze me.