←back to thread

Ask HN: Advice for tolerating the "corporate" aspect of software jobs?

30 points superarch | 1 comments | 11 Mar 25 17:38 UTC | HN request time: 0.246s | source

Looking for some advice from more experienced engineers on here:

I’ll preface this by saying I’m relatively new to the industry (couple years of experience) as an engineer. I’ve loved coding and working with cool tech since I was younger but I’ve only recently started working in a professional setting at a mid-size startup.

I’m grateful that I have the opportunity to work on software full-time but I’m getting increasingly tired of the other aspects of the job (endless meetings, agile “ceremonies”, back-and-forth on Jira processes, etc.)

I know that I need to work on getting better at the other non-tech related aspects of the job in order to grow as an engineer but I’m having a hard time forcing myself to care about the things that seem to only slow everyone down without providing a lot (if any) value most of the time.

How can I change my mindset to get more out of the “corporate” aspects of software careers?

1. toast0 ◴[11 Mar 25 18:20 UTC] No.43335472[source]▶
One thing to keep in mind. When you're interviewing for jobs, you're also interviewing them. You've discovered some of your preferences on what I generally lump into the 'process' bucket --- when you're considering changing jobs, or selecting from multiple available jobs, you need to know about how they handle all of this, so you can guess which job will make you happier.

There's a spectrum of process from cowboy to multi-decade space mission, and as an experienced engineer, I know where I want to be, and I can grudgingly accept that other places on the spectrum can be appropriate if there's a real business justification.

Since it sounds like you're more on the cowboy side of the spectrum, one thing to be aware of while you're interviewing is that 'best practices' seems to be more process, so when you ask, most people aren't going to just come out and say they YOLO editing PHP on prod... you've got to ask and refine your probing questions so that you get to something close to accurate, while sometimes not revealing your preferences.

The other thing is that generally, the more experience and tenure you have, the more clout you have to skip process. Skipping meetings has consequences, of course, but sometimes it's better for you to have an hour of sanity and accept that decisions will be made without your input. IMHO, when you intentionally skip meetings, you should not re-litigate the decisions of the meetings, unless they're really infeasible or damaging to the business.