There is something very wrong now with how companies operate in general.
You get beaten down eventually. Late last year. I spent like an hour going through why a PR (and this developer's work) in general wasn't acceptable to my superior. He said to me that he was perfectly fine with someone not understanding basic language features (after 6 months using the langauge). He then merged it.
It didn't work (as I had warned) and created a situation where I had to turn off tests in some projects as it totally broke them. I've spent months fixing his crap and still haven't recovered from one bad PR. Now add two other employees that are like this and my manager does nothing about it. I bought a AI package from Jetbrains and now have it do almost all the work. I normally spend some time cleaning it up. Management have made it clear to me that they don't care about quality, they won't hold anyone accountable and won't even fire people that clearly cannot program.
I am 43 years old this year. I just can't be bothered trying to be a hero anymore.
Similarly, my father who retired last week was a joiner/carpenter and would be considered a master boat builder. When my sister was little my dad made her new bed with hearts and flowers carved in the headboard.
He described how adversarial he was too his employer before he retired. He was engaging in Malicious compliance (he is a layman and didn't know it was called that) because management was making his life miserable by employing the same sort of the stand-up meeting ceremony nonsense in carpentry.
They managed to make someone with that level of skill hate their job because of process.
> There is something very wrong now with how companies operate in general.
Some companies. A lot of companies, maybe. But far from all of them.
I've done a lot of consulting work, which means I've done short stints at a lot of different places over the years. Some were absolute stinkers - like you describe. But I've also worked with some wonderful people and on some great, high performance teams. I understand that its not so easy when you're 43 (and maybe, with kids). But you don't need to stay in a job like this. Its not worth getting ground down like this. Its bad for your health. And its horrible for your career in the long run.
Move to a smaller company. Or sniff around and find a better team within your existing org. In the words of my favorite poet: The world is made to be free in. Give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong.
> Some companies. A lot of companies, maybe. But far from all of them.
I honestly think it is most of them.
> Some were absolute stinkers - like you describe. But I've also worked with some wonderful people and on some great, high performance teams.
I've totally given up on it. People don't value your work. I did a piece for a particular company. It worked perfectly. It was thrown away after a year and half because management decided everything should be rewritten in <new framework> ignoring the fact that what I had written was well documented and worked absolutely fine.
Now I shouldn't really care right? I was paid and all. But it pissed me off. What the point in doing a good job if people just throw your work in the bin?
I am looking at what my options are going forward. I am honestly considering being a car mechanic (I fix my own vehicles) or work outside for the canal trust. Realistically I suspect I might pivot to QA or doing something security related.
> I understand that its not so easy when you're 43 (and maybe, with kids). But you don't need to stay in a job like this. Its not worth getting ground down like this. Its bad for your health. And its horrible for your career in the long run.
I've been looking for over 2 years. I want to move to be closer to my family which are 300 miles away (the other side of the UK). So remote is a must. A large number of positions are hybrid, so not an option.
Outside of that many of the position in the UK are working Defence, Intelligence or Law Enforcement. All of those I have ethical reasons why I won't work for them. Outside of that there is Gambling, Pay day loans, and spooky stuff like tracking people via facial recognition.
> In the words of my favorite poet: The world is made to be free in. Give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong.
>I might pivot to QA or doing something security related.
I would not advise. If you're feeling what you are feeling now, the entire job in QA within the software field is to be essentially "controlled opposition". Unless you bust into Food Safety, Aeronautics, manufacturing, or medical devices/boomed, you will not be anything but someone the CTO is gonna go "fuck it, override" anyway. Over 14+ years experience.
The problem is management. The only solution is to make them responsible for cleaning up the consequences of their own actions, and not allowing them to delegate the task
It is the only way. We have made it far to easy for assholes not responsible for doing the work to get positions managing it. We have to fix that if we're ever going to get back on the right track.
>Outside of that many of the position in the UK are working Defence, Intelligence or Law Enforcement. All of those I have ethical reasons why I won't work for them. Outside of that there is Gambling, Pay day loans, and spooky stuff like tracking people via facial recognition.
Ah, someone else feeling the sting of actually having Ethics. I feel your pain. I truly do. Our societies are dying because we forgot capitalism wasn't it's own end, but was supposed to be a means to manage solving societal ills. Once you go finance for finance sake, you end up creating more ills than you solve just because there is profit to be made.
All I can say is keep pushing. The system is on the verge of breakdown, and if the only way to get people paying attention to it is to let it happen... Then that's just what we're going to have to do I guess.
Dear god how do I get these jobs? I'm 35 yo and would work with you and accept your work, not jam crap code into things. I'm open minded and realize when someone's idea or code is better than mine.
You get beaten down eventually. Late last year. I spent like an hour going through why a PR (and this developer's work) in general wasn't acceptable to my superior. He said to me that he was perfectly fine with someone not understanding basic language features (after 6 months using the langauge). He then merged it.
It didn't work (as I had warned) and created a situation where I had to turn off tests in some projects as it totally broke them. I've spent months fixing his crap and still haven't recovered from one bad PR. Now add two other employees that are like this and my manager does nothing about it. I bought a AI package from Jetbrains and now have it do almost all the work. I normally spend some time cleaning it up. Management have made it clear to me that they don't care about quality, they won't hold anyone accountable and won't even fire people that clearly cannot program.
I am 43 years old this year. I just can't be bothered trying to be a hero anymore.
Similarly, my father who retired last week was a joiner/carpenter and would be considered a master boat builder. When my sister was little my dad made her new bed with hearts and flowers carved in the headboard.
He described how adversarial he was too his employer before he retired. He was engaging in Malicious compliance (he is a layman and didn't know it was called that) because management was making his life miserable by employing the same sort of the stand-up meeting ceremony nonsense in carpentry.
They managed to make someone with that level of skill hate their job because of process.