> To be an excellent developer you need to score extremely high in both agreeability and conscientious so that you are really good with the details and willing to go above and beyond to build a more durable product. To be a good leader you need to push that agreeability way down so that you build a lust for confrontation with high empathy. Good leaders really tear into people to discover why they are failing to perform and how to redeem or remove them. Most developers are exceptionally bad at this.
Wow, this articulates exactly the issue I've had trying to move into leadership positions. Thank you for putting it into words
I've not necessarily had issues impacting my life but can be very forgetful (top of the stack always takes priority) which drives my wife crazy, and I often describe my work as "loading up for a few days to do a weeks worth of work in a 3-hour flow session" (which has worked well for me).
I'm upper-20's and been at it professionally for about 10 years if you count college co-ops; longer if you count craigslist websites to get myself a gaming computer as a teen.
My first co-op was gotten through my University's internal job board, and my first "real job" after graduating came from a part-time internship I took one semester.
I still love the actual development part of my job -- being pointed at a problem, mapping out a solution, and then actually getting into flow to solve it (and I'm damn good at it too).
It's all the other stuff that has started to wear on me (currently a tech lead at a small startup). The planning, the estimates, the never ending negotiations for trying to get more in without adjusting timelines. The recruiting, the dealing with unmotivated reports... and did I mention estimates / planning?
Going to stick it out a little longer, but at this point I think I was meant to stay at the senior engineer level at a laid back company.
I'm in almost the exact same situation -- stepping from mostly IC into a CTO / Tech Lead role at a small startup, trying to create the type of culture that I'd want to work in, etc.
I unfortunately don't have a solution, other than I've noticed the exact same pattern -- most of my reports are awesome and work hard... there are a couple that I wonder if they are legitimately working, and my attempts to establish more transparency into what their day looks like have so far not gone over super well.
Worked for a mobile game company in 2020 and 2021. Can confirm that 2020 was a very good year revenue wise, if not dying off a little bit towards the end of 2021
Thank you for the reply, I think that this hit the nail on the head for what I've observed in myself and the other devs on the team, and what I've been struggling with with this particular dev.
I understand that a 1-2 day task can end up taking weeks or months (and is really the culture I'm trying to create were we don't burn people out on the realities of software development), but I need more transparency and collaboration in the process (which the other developers have been doing without explicitly being told to do so).
I think that, along with making my expectations of speed explicit and giving him time to adjust is what I need to do to move forward.
I'd optimize for whatever will make you not dread going into work every Monday.
I've tried to optimize for money at various points in my career (admittedly not FAANG money which may be enough to make a difference, though I'm skeptical of that), but inevitably I'm starting to look for an exit after 6 months.
A high level of autonomy and ownership is what I've discovered I need in my work (something I've so far only really been able to find at small 5-15 person start ups), which is easily worth $20-30k for me.
Agree with the other comments that 300 employees is more "Mid-sized" with potentially a lot of process and overhead though, so may not be as free as they are making it sound (though still maybe be a better environment to work at than being squeezed at Amazon).
No, I'll be putting in my notice for a new job tomorrow after closing on a house today.
This past summer they brought in some "Agile" consultants which ramped up the process and micromanagement to 10.
So far we've tried to bring on two people these past 3 months, both quitting 2 months after joining.
I've tried to be candid with my boss, but things don't seem to changing so on to [perceived] greener pastures (it's also a 40% pay bump but money was not why I started looking).
I've noticed myself really shrinking into a negative attitude lately -- not sure how to prevent myself from becoming the stereotypical jaded senior engineer (I do certainly feel like I have quite a bit management-wise to be jaded about though, which is part of the problem).
Wow, this articulates exactly the issue I've had trying to move into leadership positions. Thank you for putting it into words