Love my company, burnt out on my team. Can't switch because I'm currently sole SME. What should I do
Posted by Sneet1@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 30 comments
Will keep it short, looking for advice how to move.
I'm working at a great company on an awful team. The tl;dr is it's an internal tools team that's been neglected but also widely adopted. I have a lot of gripes with this team;
- most of it is on-call/debugging support
- there's no opportunity to advance (about 6 YOE, 2 at this company - not even a whiff of a promotion) because it's hard to fit the experience into the promotion system (and yes, I have become increasingly annoying about this w management who are oblivious)
- try to fix things has too much institutional pushback because of the surface area
- somewhat less seriously, it's very demoralizing are you become associated with all of the problems your team has caused and the problems you have to fix you have no autonomy to actually do so
- I am pretty much the only SME left while new folks (everyone else left) get up to speed and it's annoying
I can confidently say the experience of the team has only gotten better since I've started. Most of it is because the founding engineers of the team did a shit job and left and there was an entire political show somewhat hiding this. But fixing the team requires a very, very top level initiative from leadership to pause feature development and move to new tool adoption (ie, something that will never happen).
A lot of people on my team have quit over the years and it has a reputation for churning lower levels especially who have to do most of the impl as opposed to design/discussion work.
Here's the thing - I love working for the company. In my whole career it's the best company I've ever worked at. I do not want to go back to the types of companies I used to work at and my former coworkers are now at. And I do not want to go through recruiting in this market.
Does anyone have any tips on improving my situation? I have tried to switch teams but 1. don't want to reset any promo progress, if any and 2. I did not get super receptive feedback about it. I am a bit inexperienced on being pushy with management to get what I want.
noonemustknowmysecre@reddit
Bro, you have them BY THE BALLS.
"Hey boss, I'm about 2 seconds from burning out and putting in my two weeks. I want a promotion. One that comes with the authority to fix this thing so it works better."
noonemustknowmysecre@reddit
Actually, up the ante: "Hey boss, I'm about 2 seconds form burning out. I am taking a 3 week vacation. Problems will come up and I will fix them when I get back once I get a promotion that comes with the authority to make long-term and large-scale fixes."
If they can't survive 3 weeks without you, the vice around their balls should be apparent. If you were bullshitting us, and they find it's not a big deal, well you weren't that important. You can sort yourself out in 3 weeks and should come in with a plan about how you're going to maintian the system while building something better and some sort of transition plan.
redditthrowaway0315@reddit
Take a 2-week break and let fire burn. Make sure they know that you will go to a place without internet and stick to it even if it's a life threatening fire. Let them know your value.
BTW if you hire from Canada and it's a low level C/C++ job, please let me know. Really interested in this kind of things but couldn't get a job because I don't have such work exp.
Alpheus2@reddit
Management will help you with anything that makes good business sense that is also a positive morale boost for yourself (so you don’t quite).
Right now it’s 100% about you and 0% understanding of what the business needs. Time to get out of the silo and build relationships through your manager and skip to get a better feel for what the wider org is dealing with.
poipoipoi_2016@reddit
The current economic data suggests that it's September 2008. Layoffs, net hires, etc.
But if we get to August 2025 and haven't had October 2008 yet, start looking.
db_peligro@reddit
More like, start looking NOW. Hopefully you will have offers in August and can assess at that time.
It takes a while to get the hang of interviewing again. Start now.
doob10163@reddit
What does this mean
poipoipoi_2016@reddit
Next month, the cracks in the American economy break it and we get an emergency Fed meeting.
Or we don't. Always hard to predict October 2008.
doob10163@reddit
Sorry, I still dont understand, are you saying that there are warning sings similar to sept 2008, and things were bad in oct, requiring an emergency fed intervention? And that you think that things are looking bad and will require this. If we are in august and things are turned around by then then start looking, otherwise stay at the job?
thashepherd@reddit
At 6 YoE it is time for you to start understanding how politics works in order to to truly become a senior.
jkingsbery@reddit
Yes, it's annoying, but this is part of the job of being a senior+ engineer. You'll want people to get up to speed faster, but it takes time. However, there are things you can do to accelerate this. If you are doing any more hiring in your team, influence the hiring process so that your next hire already has some knowledge in this area. Run a reading group with people on the team where you read through books/papers in the topic. Give people constrained-but-stretching challenges so they can validate how much they know.
One of the things that helps us advance our careers is opportunities for true inventiveness. It looks like you have such an opportunity.
Don't approach it as what you want. Approach it as what management wants. Work with your manager/director/VP/CTO/CEO (I don't know how big your company is...), understand what their goals, and see if what you're trying to achieve genuinely aligns with what they want to achieve. If it does, great! If you can say "our team's goal makes up 25% of the CTO's goal for the year in improving," then you now have a way of helping drive prioritization.
If what you're trying to accomplish does not align with what your leadership chain is trying to achieve, then your options are (1) convince them why their priorities should be different, or (2) if you now agree with their priorities, re-prioritize your own work to better align to your team/org/company goals.
Sneet1@reddit (OP)
I appreciate the post but this is more from the perspective on a "well run company" where people give a shit. This is not the case for me and the company is also aggressively top down. This problem will not be solved by me, nor do I particularly care to solve it.
Frankly I don't care very much on the leadership health of this company; I want to be paid as much as possible hedging advancement to be able to move roles easily while working as little as possible. Im looking for advice on negotiating a better work quality of life for me.
jkingsbery@reddit
Cool, that's a different, easier question. If I worked for a poorly run company where no one gave a shit, I would go find a new job. In the long run, working for well-run companies where people give a shit will advance your career faster, and likely result in you getting paid more too.
AccountExciting961@reddit
>> Can't switch because I'm currently sole SME.
You being the sole SME is managerial problem (just like everything else than makes you hate the team). Stop making it yours, and start doing what everyone else did. The market is not that bad.
Sneet1@reddit (OP)
Hmm yeah. I should say - this is why I get pushback on moving.
DrFloyd5@reddit
They can either keep you, a known good employee, around on a new position, while still retaining access to your knowledge to train the new guy. OR loose you at some random time and be without your knowledge. OR pay you more to keep you where you are.
Sneet1@reddit (OP)
Theoretically this is what I think, I agree. What I am looking for advice on is how to negotiate this/pressure them to make it happen.
DrFloyd5@reddit
Hi. I am ready to move to new challenges. I enjoy working here, but am willing to leave. Fortunately for both of us I want this new position: XYZ, which happens to be at our company now. I am cooperative and aware that while I am employed here, I will be quite willing to provide training and guidance to anyone who fills my old position. I cannot make this same arrangement if I became employed elsewhere.
Let me be clear, I will stop doing my current position. Your choices are keep me on at a new position, loose me, or pay me more to stay where I am to offset the loss of career growth.
Designer_Holiday3284@reddit
Try to change teams. If it doesn't happen, apply to other companies asap. This surely isn't the only good company out there. I used to also think my last company was the best it could get but now I clearly see how much it negatively affected me, even if it was better than the previous shitty jobs I had.
Don't let your soul be destroyed and respect yourself.
Sneet1@reddit (OP)
Hmm, I should be clear.
When I say I love my company, it is the best example of "do as little as possible for as much money as possible," which Im not naive to know cause some of the problems Im facing right now
My end goal here is that I would be happy coasting in my current role forever. However I think there's a realistic chance the company either does mass layoffs or even closes our us offices at some point, so I don't want to have coasted for 6 years without a promo. Strictly because it will be harder to find the next place to coast.
kaisean@reddit
You can change team whenever you want regardless of what you know. If your promo is close, there's a reason to stay, but if they're just yanking your chain, then it's best to just leave.
Sneet1@reddit (OP)
I am supposedly being considered for promo every year, but it hasn't happened yet. I think if I don't get mid year I need to figure out how to apply pressure and leverage, which feels tough in this market
kaisean@reddit
Sorry to tell you this, but you'll never have enough pressure to leverage a promotion. Even if you get a counter offer after an offer, it's best to not take it since it's really just buying the company time to backfill your position so they can PIP you out later.
Also, "being considered for promo" isn't real. If you haven't been actively pushing your manager in basically every single 1:1, it's not happening.
mattgrave@reddit
Just leave dude, grow up.
scanguy25@reddit
If you are the only SME then you have leverage.
Imagine the hell they would be in if you also left.
Time to start to ask for promotion and reorganization.
inputwtf@reddit
So you're the sole SME for this, but they won't promote you?
Sounds like their problem, not yours. Keep interviewing, and don't look back if you get something better. Their mismanagement is not your responsibility.
EnderMB@reddit
Is promo actually close? If your manager isn't in the process or starting to write whatever docs get promo triggered, it's probably not as close as you'd think, regardless of your standing in your team.
If you really wanted to move teams, how feasible is it to do so in the next 2-3 months? If it's straightforward, leave without a second thought. The problems you've described are non-trivial problems for IC's to solve without full buy-in, and it sounds like that won't happen any time soon.
lppedd@reddit
The real issue is you're the only SME.
It's great, until it isn't and everything weight on your shoulders. You need a manager to organize bringing others up to speed, or to hire proper senior devs, and I emphasize proper (yes, senior devs can be juniors), to delegate to.
Careful-Combination7@reddit
Train your replacement so you have a mechanism to pivot out from
ninseicowboy@reddit
Welcome to working on internal tools. It’s type 2 fun. In other words it fucking sucks