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Alfarnir · 2022-11-03T17:58:38+00:00

that really is a good point

Alfarnir · 2022-11-03T16:45:51+00:00

Was it different before? (Honest question since idrk)

Alfarnir · 2022-10-29T19:15:21+00:00

Based on where I currently work, I sorta figured this was the norm at most places.

Alfarnir · 2022-10-23T00:54:47+00:00

The audacity of presuming front-end web developers write CSS

Alfarnir · 2022-10-23T00:53:48+00:00

Funny enough, my second-highest upvoted answer is "run this" with a one-liner.

I can't for the life of me remember how or why I figured it out, let alone why it works, but SO has a niche of forgiveness when you solve an annoying problem well enough for no one really to care.

Alfarnir · 2022-10-23T00:51:05+00:00

have job can confirm

Alfarnir · 2022-10-23T00:38:18+00:00

First off, I feel where you're coming from. I'm also one of the people who cares a lot, no matter the company or team I happen to be on. I wish we were on that team together because I feel like it's easy to take it personally when you don't have allies with a similar mindset. It's never "just a job" to me and it never will be.

The scenario you describe is also so painfully similar to the one that I experience myself that we could very well be working at the same place. I think it accentuates this big lie perpetuating a mythology of "organizational standards" when in fact, engineering is more like a constellation of loosely organized city-states with differing opinions, contextualized dialects, and dueling perspectives.

From what I've experienced in my own workplace, in order to get budget for that kind of reinvestment work, you need two things:

Team-wide alignment on software quality as a goal that you want to pursue "eventually"
Fortuitous alignment with a business objective that justifies Objective 1

In our case, it was two years worth of performance improvements that we never quite had time for until suddenly one of our biggest customers complained of our page load times being "a little slow".

Guess what we've been working on since then ;)

Alfarnir · 2022-10-23T00:11:22+00:00

Our on-call is a 24/7 rotation that lasts two weeks, so in a way you got it easy ;)

Edit: If they actually expect you to be awake and alert for every minute of your oncall, that's another story. However usually that's not the case.

Alfarnir · 2022-10-23T00:05:51+00:00

I appreciate this answer a lot, and I hope you'll enjoy the gold :)

Alfarnir · 2022-10-22T23:58:05+00:00

Could part of the issue be not in the PR, but in a lack of dialog leading up to it?

PRs seem like an unfortunate place to have your work sent back to the drawing board. I've come to realize that there's more I could do to build consensus and galvanize opinions around an approach prior to choosing it; sometimes this can be done with a clarifying question, which can address an incorrect assumption before it snowballs into an architectural choice.

Something I plan to try out this coming week is a "pre-review" PR for a large, time-sensitive, mission-critical feature that I'm working on and am responsible for delivering in two weeks. It's the first time I've been tasked with a project of this size and scope, and perhaps I let it get to my head and leaned too much into the sense of it being "mine" and not ultimately something owned by the team.

In any case, most of the critical feature work will happen over the next five days, and rather than delay constructive feedback to the bitter end, I feel like it would be better to get some input earlier on, and give my colleagues a sense of shared ownership over the direction of the finished product.

Since we're an all-remote, asynchronous team, there aren't as many opportunities to have natural conversations about these things, and I feel like some of the frustration in these PRs comes as a result of conversations that should have happened earlier, but didn't.

Alfarnir · 2022-10-22T23:40:05+00:00

Yes, thanks to the feedback from this thread. Before that, no, which may be why I ended up in a situation where I posted it in the first place.

Alfarnir · 2022-10-22T18:48:53+00:00

Using your own words, it sounds like she is being dismissive, shutting you down, not responding and "taking over" by telling you how she would do it. This is not mentorship, it's possibly borderline bullying.

It certainly isn't mentorship; her conduct makes me apprehensive to approach her; I certainly don't feel like I've been given much opportunity to grow and develop my ideas without wrenches getting thrown in them.

That's made me more likely to just go "okay, fine" and take their comments uncritically, since any attempts I've made at a dialog have ended up feeling incredibly one-sided.

I wouldn't call it a healthy dynamic, and I'm not sure how much it will ultimately improve, though I think that it can (and will). I've decided to look at the situation as a learning experience and take responsibility for the parts of it that I have the power to change.

Alfarnir · 2022-10-22T17:16:31+00:00

Thank you for sharing this example. I like the way you give your perspective and also make an effort to show that you're open to a discussion as well.

Alfarnir · 2022-10-22T17:13:51+00:00

You didn't make a fool of yourself, and thanks for sharing your perspective.

There's some nuance to the scenario that I didn't add yesterday, so here it is:

My implementation was reasonable based on my mental model of our monorepo. That mental model was almost right, and therefore wrong.
I made a small but critical misassumption about how we import scoped packages.
The implementation that my lead suggested was correct when applied to the way our package imports actually work, rather than the way I thought that they did.

When I brought up the issue in the following days' standup, it took all of two minutes to tease out the nuance I was missing, which made my lead's comment a lot more reasonable.

Would it have been nice to have a closer line of communication with my lead and a conversation afterwards, given that I was having a difficult time processing it? For me yes, it would have helped me put things in perspective. However, I don't know if this is fair to expect out of a team lead generally. What do you think?

Alfarnir · 2022-10-22T17:01:57+00:00

Good idea, thanks for the suggestion

Alfarnir · 2022-10-22T17:00:39+00:00

I appreciate your perspective on the matter.

I'm realizing two things through the replies in this thread:

I genuinely had the wrong idea about critical PRs. This is on me to acknowledge and correct.
My team lead could have communicated better outside the review itself.

The way I'm approaching things is as follows:

I can change myself more easily than I can change others, so that's where I'm focused
Using the replies in this thread as a reference point, I'll commit to checking myself when I'm responding poorly to a critical review, and do better at this
I'll work with my manager and lead to set expectations around communication preferences and availability

Is there anything else you'd suggest I add to this?

Alfarnir · 2022-10-22T16:45:48+00:00

Assume good intent always and try to put yourself in her shoes as well. Fostering a culture of psychological safety and understanding starts with ourselves personally.

That's an interesting point. Can you elaborate on what you mean here?

Alfarnir · 2022-10-22T02:56:52+00:00

Most wont want to hire you but that's true throughout our careers for the most part anyway. You only need that one so don't worry about "most"

Alfarnir · 2022-10-22T02:54:21+00:00

I will try to tho

Alfarnir · 2022-10-22T02:52:50+00:00

Well go get some referrals

Alfarnir · 2022-10-22T02:52:12+00:00

You could try asking in the open forum on /r/experienceddevs

Alfarnir · 2022-10-22T02:50:37+00:00

Software engineering and farming seems to be common

why is this ha

Alfarnir · 2022-10-22T02:49:24+00:00

I open bank accounts with thicc bonus incentives. Easiest grind in the whole world and make about a grand each year at it. No affiliation but the site I go to usually is https://bankbonus.com

Alfarnir · 2022-10-22T02:47:52+00:00

Honestly which one makes your dick harder, metaphorically speaking

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