How does anyone get anything done?
Posted by lenswipe@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 56 comments
We were recently acquired by a larger company and have been moving from our tooling to theirs. Since then I've noticed a trend of having to ask 14 different people across 12 different slack channels and 9 different teams for approval to do anything. Getting ANYTHING done is a game of fucking telephone where you try to get approval to do something that they actually can't help you at all, but they refer you to someone who can...so you re-explain your problem to them only to find out several layers deep into the conversation that they also can't help you but point you to someone else who can. Eventually your manager switches you to another ticket, so you can make some amount of progress on something that isn't blocked by stupid approval chains only to find out that you're now blocked on those tickets too for the exact same reason. Eventually you find yourself just ping-ponging between tickets, making progress on none and reporting to your manager that you're blocked because of
I've talked to friends who have reported similar shit at their employers too. I'm tired boss.
Stubbby@reddit
This is a symptom of a technical leadership vacuum. Solving such problems is the job description of a CTO.
lenswipe@reddit (OP)
well they keep leaving and we keep getting shunted from hell to breakfast between systems orgs
CompassionateSkeptic@reddit
The point remains (note, I’m not the person you responded to, so I might misunderstand the point) — we often shit on middle management or the lack of autonomy of technical leaders near the leafs of the org chart, but the reality of a large organization is that if you don’t have technical folks doing some amount of steering in the domain, working with the product folks, you get a worthless chaos out in the periphery. If the org lacks the technical capacities at the executive level, the only hope for thst additional structure would come from folks managing upwards (and getting more than a little lucky). There’s only so much you can do about that from a single product team, but you can do your share by trying to manage upwards or help create some better-than-nothing structures out near the periphery.
Relatively small prioritization committees, cross team design meetings, the dreaded scrum of scrums. These want for organizers, but you can make some progress with just coalitions of interested parties, careful alignment in goals, and some facilitation. It won’t replace a CTO or division leadership in a very large organization, but it’s not nothing.
Curious for your thoughts. Curious for /u/Stubby ‘s thoughts, too.
Stubbby@reddit
When I was a junior, I used to think that a few great developers can accomplish anything even if they have average managers and that leadership is overrated. Now, I believe that a few great managers can accomplish anything even if they have average engineers :)
When I hear a description like from OP's post, I dont really look into middle management, I look straight at the CTO - is the CTO aware of the situation and whether they know how to resolve it. This isn't a technical issue and it does not require technical background to resolve. It is an organizational issue and a skilled manager could resolve it without domain expertise. CTO is required to organize the engineering for effective execution - that's the main part of the job.
Taking an extreme sample my personal experience, I was a part of a mid-size org (\~500 people) that sunk into the same pitfall where a web of dependencies between program, project and domain managers deadlocked the development. I was coding a solution, then there would be a change of scope as a project requirement overrode domain objective and the project was migrated to a different, incompatible platform resulting in my teams work landing in trash. Then the program management realigned to a different contract and the second implementation went to trash and at the end of the year with multiple hiccups involved when I counted it all up, 60-70% of my output was a waste.
The organization had a domain heavy part-time CTO (university researcher) and an absolute lack of upper technical management skill. The productivity of engineering was very poor, and leadership assumed its ICs laziness as their productivity was fine while they were <100 people org.
In this case, the engineering was incidental to the tides from above and I am very skeptical about the feasibility of managing upwards from the team level. At a team level you were a raft in a mountain stream - no control of the currents. However, up to a \~100 people org, managing upwards is tremendously effective.
lenswipe@reddit (OP)
middle managers are okay here. like my line manager and their manager are fine... they aren't the blockers - its stuff they can't approve either
CompassionateSkeptic@reddit
I hear that. What’s an example of a decision that’s gated at a level above the folks you’d say are pulling in the right direction? I know you might need to elide over some details. I’d any specific examples feel representative of a larger issue, focus on that.
lenswipe@reddit (OP)
username checks out
CompassionateSkeptic@reddit
Oh? Not a context I expected to hear that in
lenswipe@reddit (OP)
just seems like a measured and thoughtful reply rather than the usual "this is entirely your fault, OP" slop responses you usually get on Reddit
CompassionateSkeptic@reddit
Gotcha. Well, I’m glad it shined through and I appreciate you saying something.
The way I see it is straightforward enough. In the crudest terms I can use 3 kinds of people on my team, not mutually exclusive: - the folks who want to help and don’t care much about the what - the folks who are passionate that the how should get better over time, but are willing to compromise - the folks who have the knowhow and aren’t the antithesis of the other two
I read most of your frustration through the lens of the second bullet. I’m saddened and maybe I Ben a bit worried at how frustrated it’s making you, because that sucks and can metastasize, but I just assume set that aside as long as it’s aside-settable
lenswipe@reddit (OP)
yeah I mean it's kind of slowly strangling the life out of the satisfaction I used to have for this job
CompassionateSkeptic@reddit
Yeah, buhhh. They really sucks. Try to work the angles you can work, and maybe start budgeting some time each week to what a change of scenery might look like. Reddit is quick to go there like it’s as simple as changing coats. But the bottom line is that it’s harder to make coherent work out of a job hunt when you’re burnt out and seething. Gotta plan ahead.
Not that I’ve ever successfully done that.
supercoach@reddit
Congrats, you've been sucked into bureaucracy hell. There's no way to fix it and it's highly likely that the company you've been absorbed into will continue operation for quite some time as these sort of institutions tend to have deep pockets despite their penchant for pissing their cash reserves against the wall.
Don't try to fight the process, just embrace it. See if you can attach your work to existing projects if possible and then have the PM champion your cause. Try to leverage the fact that there are others who seemingly thrive in this ecosystem and let them shoulder the burden for you.
lenswipe@reddit (OP)
yeah I just like to hang up my hat at the end of the day having accomplished something beyond "filled out 15 approval forms, dug into 14 slack channels and read some emails"
supercoach@reddit
I think most people hate it. That's why I suggested leaning on PMs as it's their kind of jam.
metaphorm@reddit
now you know why I work at startups instead of big companies
lenswipe@reddit (OP)
I did work at a startup in an effort to get out of larger orgs.....and then we got bought by a larger org about a month after I started.
/deskflip
metaphorm@reddit
so it goes my dude. so it goes. coast and interview?
lenswipe@reddit (OP)
yeah. unfortunately very few people are hiring right now.
I mean everybody is hiring but nobody is hiring
metaphorm@reddit
in raw terms job posts are up. the hiring market is a bit of a basket case due to a lot of factors. shifting skills being prioritized. flood of spammers and bots on linkedin polluting the stream. opacity of hiring process at many companies. increased competition for the choicest job openings.
but still, you gotta do what you gotta do, and psyching yourself out of it because its frictional isn't gonna help you get there.
lenswipe@reddit (OP)
no... I'm still applying but not really getting anywhere much.
I can't even get an interview at a pace I really want to work because I don't have golang exp. I don't have golang exp because I don't have golang exp.
metaphorm@reddit
in my experience, good workplaces understand that specific stack is usually much less important than fundamentals, and that a good engineer learns a new language pretty quickly if their fundamentals are strong.
so i'd say stick with and apply where you want to work. some places will have flexibility around that others won't. only volume of applications outbound will get the results though.
and maybe broaden your criteria or at least change the nature of what you're filtering on. i've always looked for signal about company culture in the way the job post is written. a personal touch, evidence of good human beings behind the screen, attention and care evident in the way the post is written. those have mattered more to me than technologies used or role responsibilities listed out.
lenswipe@reddit (OP)
I fully agree and it's what I look for when hiring engineers but alas the ats(either computerized or human) sees the lack of golang on my resume and just sorts it straight into the garbage without so much as a conversion
I'm shooting for companies like Datadog(that's actually the one I'm trying but failing to get into), Sentry, LogRocket etc.
largeish orgs that make useful dev tooling that people actually use(rather than just blockchain juicers or yet another to-do app) but not so large as to be bogged down in red tape.
metaphorm@reddit
seems like a mistake given your present situation revealing the problems of working at large orgs. you might look into series A or series B startups (team size < 80) working in the dev tooling space. there's a lot being funded right now, particularly for agentic stuff.
lenswipe@reddit (OP)
maybe. I also feel like agentic stuff is part of the problem(at least at my org). We have an AI mandate now and frankly I'm tired of hearing about AI
As much as this may be an unpopular option AI stuff just doesn't interest me....I wish it did, but it doesn't.
Mahler911@reddit
I mean did you at least get some equity out of being there for a week? Like one share?
lenswipe@reddit (OP)
Yeah I mean I got shares but they just got covered to the shares of the acquiring org which I mean... 🤷♂️
ClideLennon@reddit
It's time to exit. Or not. But the company is never going to be the same after an acquisition.
I've been though two acquisitions now. It's everything I wanted to happen but I learned to take the money and run.
bigorangemachine@reddit
Ya this happened to me and I didn't go with the acquisition. My friends still there are grumpy and bitter don't like it at all. I've already had 3 jobs since then lol
lenswipe@reddit (OP)
yeah I'm trying to get out, but nobody is hiring right now
ugh_my_@reddit
Why do you presume things need to get done
lenswipe@reddit (OP)
because my pay depends on it
ugh_my_@reddit
It seems everyone else’s doesn’t, so why should yours
lenswipe@reddit (OP)
my deliverables are working software. everyone else's are apparently useless status update meetings, slack messages and emails.
phantomplan@reddit
You are 1000% right.
My buddy owned a small tech company in the K12 academic space, and brought me onboard full-time from the start, and we were for a long time just a four person in total company. We were super agile and efficient, rarely had meetings, only had to meet a couple times a month just to go "Let's knock out A and B, try to do C if you get time".
We got bought by a much larger K12 company a couple years ago and man, all of the useless meetings, red tape, and layers of management bullshit. It was a culture shock for everyone from our little team, but I think I felt it the most because of that stupid ticket ping pong. I couldn't do it, after about a year I told my buddy I had to move on.
I left and went to another smaller company where I could have more freedom again, but it will never compare to that super small tight knit team we originally had.
TLDR: I can't see how any of my fellow devs these days have it in them to deal with the red tape and politics at the bigger companies.
lenswipe@reddit (OP)
it's honestly slowly strangling the life out of the love and excitement I once had for this job. I used to really enjoy building things and now I can't wait to sign out at the end of the day and work on my house or bake.
SadSongsMakeMeGlad@reddit
This is why I ended up at smaller companies for most of my career. Fighting enterprise bureaucracy and politics is just not how I want to spend my days.
allllusernamestaken@reddit
Same. I went from massive corporation (90,000 people) to small tech company (500 people) and the difference was absolutely night and day. I eventually went back to a large company of 30k people and had similar issues as #1 so I left for a company with ~1500.
I think that 500-1500 people is the sweet spot. Big enough that there's processes in place, but not so big that the process is "call a 1-800 number to create a ticket that will get forwarded to 6 different teams in 3 different countries and require 4 different manager approvals before being completed 15 days after you submitted it."
lenswipe@reddit (OP)
what's really great is when you get assigned a bunch of those tickets so you have to keep track of several different statues and reasons why you're blocked across 8 different slack conversations
lenswipe@reddit (OP)
I swear to christ, it's like babysitting adults.
ExperiencedDevs-ModTeam@reddit
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effectivescarequotes@reddit
Oh yeah, been there. It's rough. One place I worked wasn't very big, but we had to get the director of the organization's approval for some really basic stuff, so projects would just die.
i_exaggerated@reddit
We took the malicious route. They want to give approval for everything? Ok. We’ll request approval a dozen times a day because we’re good little devops engineers and practice CI/CD. They quickly got annoyed with us and allowed us to automate their approval if it meets their acceptance criteria.
SquishTheProgrammer@reddit
Automatic approval alerts. This is the way.
lenswipe@reddit (OP)
I'm contemplating this
hibikir_40k@reddit
It seems crazy, but this is one of the things where LLMs help, as they search ridiculous amounts of conversations and random repos for possible ways forward. They might not be the smartest, but they are relentless.
geeeoooort@reddit
At my company the recent devsecops push means all repos are private only for the team that owns it, and because of data retention policies chats are only saved for 3 months
lenswipe@reddit (OP)
an LLM will not help you bypass a code freeze or a pending access approval.
Physical-Compote4594@reddit
This is the reason I quit drinking from the Google money fountain after an acquisition and went back to startups. NGL, the Google money was great but I couldn’t bear the bureaucracy.
No-Economics-8239@reddit
Across my career I've worked at tiny start ups to giant fortune 100 companies. The older and bigger the company, the more there tends to be odd traditions, cultures, and lots of bureaucracy. Sometimes the extra departments are nice, having specialized experts with the domain knowledge to solve that class of problem.
But eventually and maybe inevitably that division of labor is where the lazy and ignorant are fostered at pasture. Strict and narrow division of responsibility which requires submitting a ticket only to be told that some other team is responsible for that, which continues until a meeting is called and/or someone with sufficient clout or political capital steps in to temporarily herd cats enough to get the people needed to solve the problem at hand.
Soft skills are vital to navigate the social landscape and build the relationships and find the domain experts and decode the obnoxious list of acronyms and obfuscated team names and carve through the narrow division of responsibilities to find the people that actually know how things and and get things done and hopefully join their hidden cabal.
Smaller and newer companies can just take weeks or months to get up to speed so you can understand enough to start getting things done. The massive behemoths take years to learn and often come with the perspective you're not yet a 'real' employee until you have at least 5 or even 10 years there.
And then the culture clash from outsiders coming in with newer habits and traditions and technologies or ideas can either be a breath of fresh air or a bare knuckle brawl to try and change hearts and minds on 'how things are done' which can sometimes quickly change the company or more likely cause meetings and committees and oversight reviews and exploration teams and longing for the simplicity of a start up where you can add a new cog on a whim and be long gone before some engineer is left scratching their head and wondering what the hell its doing there.
DoingItForEli@reddit
You need to identify these hangups and write up proposals for resolving them. Your company does NOT want you spending hours on approval channels. Our business is heavily dependent on time, and getting things done quickly. If time is a critical resource, your company would appreciate during this transition that you helped manage that resource better.
lenswipe@reddit (OP)
the hangups are that I physically can't log into various tools because they belong to other teams who need to approve the request
or a 5 alarm fire URGENT URGENT URGENT URGENT sprint epic comes in that i work on, then get told by the PM to set that epic aside while the customer figures out some other details, so I go work on another super urgent ticket....and so it goes.
These aren't problems that can be solved by writing an RFC or developing just one more shell script.
Happy-Sleep-6512@reddit
Congratulations, this is enterprise! Can work okay of the powers that be are okay with all your tasks taking 10x what they should!
I've found you either embrace it and accept it, or get so frustrated that you end up working only at smaller companies!
lenswipe@reddit (OP)
I've worked in enterprise before that didn't have all this dumb shit. Maybe I just got lucky.
On the face of it, I should be thankful right? Technically I get paid to just fuck around all day. But no - it's actually incredibly frustrating to be assigned a ton of tasks that you have to essentially time slice between none of which can progress because of random org bullshit and everything needing 14 layers of approvals.
Not only that but I feel like I have about 7 different backlogs/work streams("that's right Bob, seven!"). At any given time would could come in from the support queue, any one of about 4 sprint boards, random slack messages etc.
I feel like I need to either quit or take vacation time or something because I'm mentally at my breaking point with this shit.
Happy-Sleep-6512@reddit
Yeah the mental overhead of having so many plates spinning is the bit that gets to you. Also most good devs generally want to be productive! Good news is it's always easier to look for a job when you have one, and it sounds like you have plenty of spare time lol!
As for before, maybe it's the acquisition, merging two companies, or maybe you did get lucky!
lenswipe@reddit (OP)
Edited my comment lol.