Remember that immediately after Mao's Hundred Flowers Campaign, in which the CCP solicited "honest feedback" about how well they were doing, came the Anti-Rightist Campaign, in which the complainers were identified and punished, sometimes executed.
If the decision makers are welcoming honest feedback, chances are pretty good it's to put you on a potential troublemaker list so they'll know just who to hand pink slips to at the next round of needed layoffs (if not before).
Unless you're prepared to lose your job TODAY, treat your employer like the Roman Empire, and the CEO like Caesar.
I’m amazed how many people leave on bad terms. Over any medium and long term time horizon it’s a terrible strategy. You never know who will do a quiet back channel reference, and many times we wind up working for the same people.
The other piece of advice about documentation is important beyond leaving for a new job. Many people lose promotions because “who could possibly backfill them?” Creating a high talent well documented organization is a great signal for promotion readiness, and takes a roadblock away from it too.
There's the founders podcast about Elon Musk. Apparently he stayed in good contact with the Paypal people, even though they fired him and later on that relationship saved Spacex.
The best time to document isn’t two weeks before leaving. It’s right now.
Clearly AI written or virtue-signaling post, because this doesn't make any sense.
If you are leaving it is that you are unhappy with the company, and you owe them nothing and they owe nothing to you, I don't see why you would stress yourself with documenting your work when you are leaving... Their loss if you go.
But even more, why a small employee in his right mind would make himself replaceable for the good of the company...
Yes, this is a best virtue signaling or an idealistic point of view, in fact it may be some form of humble brag: "I am so good, that I don't need to keep leverage to advance my career".
The hilarious part is that clearly his approach doesn't work very well, since he admitted not getting a promotion.
Unless you are getting paid for it and it's part of the job description, I don't see why one would want to document his own process to get stuff done. Like the secret sauce is basically the reason to keep you around, if you give it for free, they can just swap you for a junior that will just have to copy your process.
This is already what happens when you decide to leave and they give you someone to "train".
I know this type of person, because I used to be one. They have a very naive, idealistic view on the world and feel like they have to serve others before them even though basically everyone does the reverse (especially companies) and they feel shame or guilt if they would put themselves first.
The reality is that it is the only way that things work out for you in the long term, because nobody else than yourself is going to think about your interests first.
Having leverage to negotiate your position inside a company is basically a necessity, and it's not playing dirty, that's just how things works. If you give the good stuff for free, not only you undersell yourself, but you make everyone else look bad and have to work twice as hard.
The issues he had probably comes from his refusal to play the game with the same rules as everyone else, or even inability to see that there is a game in the first place.
Before AI people would still say things like this. "The best time to plant a tree is 10 years ago. The second best time is now". Among the set of such constructs, some are overused by LLM and have become a symbolic of it, but they will still show up in human writing with the same frequency as before.
yes, english is not my first language, so I use AI to helping me structure the article, but I've edited and fully reviewed and take responsibility for every word in it. (Anyway I will trust less AI next time, so thank you)
What I was trying to say is that if you do less because you don't like where you work, you are losing opportunity to learn skills, or worst: you are learning to do less in general. How can you find a new and better job if you are doing less?
First, you can do your job but not be overzealous.
Second, it is not because you are not "doing more" for your employer that you miss opportunities to learn skills. You can do that for yourself on your personal time to your own benefit.
In addition, with what you wrote, it didn't look that like that you were suggesting to learn skills: You said to document what you already know, "transfer" your knowledge, so that it is easier for others in the company to live without you (or get ride of you).
I started working toward a promotion to staff engineer at the beginning of 2023. By the end of the year, my manager said I was ready, but he had been asked to step back into an IC role, so he couldn't start my promotion paperwork.
My new manager felt I wasn't ready for promotion, but she claimed I wouldn't have to start over. It felt like starting over though, because it took another year to convince her. During that time I consulted regularly with her and my director of engineering—seeking and taking every possible opportunity to demonstrate that I could operate at the staff level.
My manager then spent six months writing an 18-page promotion packet, highlighting my accomplishments, and outlining why I deserved the promotion. The packet was approved by my director of engineering, so they both felt I was ready. It was then presented to an anonymous promotion committee, which ultimately makes the promotion decision.
Despite two and a half years of effort, the committee rejected my promotion. They even provided a list of 12 bullet points where they felt I was coming up short.
I gave up trying for the promotion, for my mental health. Sheesh.
Talk to an employment attorney. This sounds like potential "bait and switch" practices that have strung you along for less pay/accumulated earnings.
I'm sorry you got such a mixed signal from your engineering tree and the promotion committee. Need to do more research on that promotion committee. This sounds like the committee nightmare that many PhD candidates face.
Same type of BS happened to me at my last company, which ultimately let to me being extremely unhappy there and leaving. If I hadn’t gone for the promotion at all I’d probably still be there.
I’ll never understand why companies as an almost universal rule make it as difficult as possible to get promoted or get a raise but will hire less qualified outsiders for those positions at higher pay without blinking an eye.
Very wise; have been following this approach since years and I highly recommend it. This one (from the article) is a gem:
"I’ll work like I might stay forever, and like I might leave tomorrow"
Besides practical benefits of this approach mentioned in the article, it's the attitude that brings you closer to stoicism that just makes your whole life, not only professional one, better.
> I was expecting [...] like doing an interview every six months
Incidentally, I hear advice like that (especially a variation, of "practice" interviews) on HN, but I really wish people wouldn't do that.
Actually, please don't do this resource burning with startups or other SMBs, unless it's clear they want to burn resources.
But feel free to burn the resources of FAANGs, who mostly created the idea that interviews should be a series of performance rituals that you have to practice and refresh on.
(Though the related phenomenon, of techbro frequent job-hopping, wasn't the fault of FAANGs. It seemed to start during the dotcom boom, pre-Google, especially in the Bay Area, AFAICT, where a lot of people were chasing the most promising rapid IPO. At the time, the rumors/grumbling I was hearing from the Bay Area made me want to do a startup in Cambridge/Boston instead, just to avoid that culture. After the dotcom IPO gold rush ended, it seemed that job-hopping for big pay boosts and promotions became a thing, and that job-hopping culture never went away. But I don't think we'll find much team loyalty anywhere anymore, not from companies nor from colleagues, so that's no longer a reason I'd avoid the Bay Area specifically.)
There's probably some happy-ish medium of people toughing it out through a bad situation they don't feel they can change--and jumping at the first instance of itchy feet (which is admittedly harder at the moment).
Not sure when the job-hopping culture--especially on the west coast--really came in. I do associate it with post-dot com but I'd really have to look at the data. Certainly wasn't really true pre dot-com at large tech employers.
Honestly, if companies cared enough about the interviewees time as well, people wouldn’t do this. I was looking for a few months, and companies put you through the wringer of 6-9 interviews these days. Two should tell you whether a candidate is a good fit or not. Then there’s the case interviews where candidates put in dozens of hours prepping decks and what not, and then get rejected without any feedback at all.
And this was exclusively at SMBs and startups. At least, the FAANG companies have structure and you know what to expect.
I don’t think SWEs realize just how many companies out there will look at a resume of a job hopper (even if there is 10 years at FAANG, say 2 at each) and outright reject the candidate on those grounds.
Well written blog post, but its a bit too adjacent to LinkedIn slop-posting in actual message, for me.
I can't help but think the real take away is that you should trust your gut and quit a lot sooner and the poster basically wasted a year being jerked around.
If you are telling your employer you are unhappy for a whole year and they don't fix the conditions leading to your unhappiness, they are telling you they don't value you enough to make those changes (for the sake of simplicity, I'll just assume the employee's specific points of dissatisfaction were reasonable fixes and not ridiculous asks).
You don't owe them a year of soft landing when you quit, in the vast majority of cases they wouldn't have given you anywhere near that if they let you go.
Readit News
If the decision makers are welcoming honest feedback, chances are pretty good it's to put you on a potential troublemaker list so they'll know just who to hand pink slips to at the next round of needed layoffs (if not before).
Unless you're prepared to lose your job TODAY, treat your employer like the Roman Empire, and the CEO like Caesar.
The other piece of advice about documentation is important beyond leaving for a new job. Many people lose promotions because “who could possibly backfill them?” Creating a high talent well documented organization is a great signal for promotion readiness, and takes a roadblock away from it too.
There's the founders podcast about Elon Musk. Apparently he stayed in good contact with the Paypal people, even though they fired him and later on that relationship saved Spacex.
But even more, why a small employee in his right mind would make himself replaceable for the good of the company...
The hilarious part is that clearly his approach doesn't work very well, since he admitted not getting a promotion.
Unless you are getting paid for it and it's part of the job description, I don't see why one would want to document his own process to get stuff done. Like the secret sauce is basically the reason to keep you around, if you give it for free, they can just swap you for a junior that will just have to copy your process. This is already what happens when you decide to leave and they give you someone to "train".
I know this type of person, because I used to be one. They have a very naive, idealistic view on the world and feel like they have to serve others before them even though basically everyone does the reverse (especially companies) and they feel shame or guilt if they would put themselves first.
The reality is that it is the only way that things work out for you in the long term, because nobody else than yourself is going to think about your interests first.
Having leverage to negotiate your position inside a company is basically a necessity, and it's not playing dirty, that's just how things works. If you give the good stuff for free, not only you undersell yourself, but you make everyone else look bad and have to work twice as hard.
The issues he had probably comes from his refusal to play the game with the same rules as everyone else, or even inability to see that there is a game in the first place.
yes, english is not my first language, so I use AI to helping me structure the article, but I've edited and fully reviewed and take responsibility for every word in it. (Anyway I will trust less AI next time, so thank you)
What I was trying to say is that if you do less because you don't like where you work, you are losing opportunity to learn skills, or worst: you are learning to do less in general. How can you find a new and better job if you are doing less?
First, you can do your job but not be overzealous.
Second, it is not because you are not "doing more" for your employer that you miss opportunities to learn skills. You can do that for yourself on your personal time to your own benefit.
In addition, with what you wrote, it didn't look that like that you were suggesting to learn skills: You said to document what you already know, "transfer" your knowledge, so that it is easier for others in the company to live without you (or get ride of you).
I started working toward a promotion to staff engineer at the beginning of 2023. By the end of the year, my manager said I was ready, but he had been asked to step back into an IC role, so he couldn't start my promotion paperwork.
My new manager felt I wasn't ready for promotion, but she claimed I wouldn't have to start over. It felt like starting over though, because it took another year to convince her. During that time I consulted regularly with her and my director of engineering—seeking and taking every possible opportunity to demonstrate that I could operate at the staff level.
My manager then spent six months writing an 18-page promotion packet, highlighting my accomplishments, and outlining why I deserved the promotion. The packet was approved by my director of engineering, so they both felt I was ready. It was then presented to an anonymous promotion committee, which ultimately makes the promotion decision.
Despite two and a half years of effort, the committee rejected my promotion. They even provided a list of 12 bullet points where they felt I was coming up short.
I gave up trying for the promotion, for my mental health. Sheesh.
I'm sorry you got such a mixed signal from your engineering tree and the promotion committee. Need to do more research on that promotion committee. This sounds like the committee nightmare that many PhD candidates face.
I’ll never understand why companies as an almost universal rule make it as difficult as possible to get promoted or get a raise but will hire less qualified outsiders for those positions at higher pay without blinking an eye.
"I’ll work like I might stay forever, and like I might leave tomorrow"
Besides practical benefits of this approach mentioned in the article, it's the attitude that brings you closer to stoicism that just makes your whole life, not only professional one, better.
Dead Comment
I was expecting something more practical, like doing an interview every six months or something along those lines.
Supervisors and HR just smile and nod.
Maybe if he had a better relationship with his manager, he would’ve realised sooner that he was just wasting his time.
Documentation is like an untested disaster recovery plan.
When a major issue happens, you’ll be the one called.
You should delegate or automate the task and remove it from your workload, especially if it carries high risk.
I’d actually love to read the dark arts equivalent of this article.
Incidentally, I hear advice like that (especially a variation, of "practice" interviews) on HN, but I really wish people wouldn't do that.
Actually, please don't do this resource burning with startups or other SMBs, unless it's clear they want to burn resources.
But feel free to burn the resources of FAANGs, who mostly created the idea that interviews should be a series of performance rituals that you have to practice and refresh on.
(Though the related phenomenon, of techbro frequent job-hopping, wasn't the fault of FAANGs. It seemed to start during the dotcom boom, pre-Google, especially in the Bay Area, AFAICT, where a lot of people were chasing the most promising rapid IPO. At the time, the rumors/grumbling I was hearing from the Bay Area made me want to do a startup in Cambridge/Boston instead, just to avoid that culture. After the dotcom IPO gold rush ended, it seemed that job-hopping for big pay boosts and promotions became a thing, and that job-hopping culture never went away. But I don't think we'll find much team loyalty anywhere anymore, not from companies nor from colleagues, so that's no longer a reason I'd avoid the Bay Area specifically.)
Startups are fine scheduling candidates for 5-6 rounds of interviews, they should be fine with the occasional tire-kicker
Not sure when the job-hopping culture--especially on the west coast--really came in. I do associate it with post-dot com but I'd really have to look at the data. Certainly wasn't really true pre dot-com at large tech employers.
And this was exclusively at SMBs and startups. At least, the FAANG companies have structure and you know what to expect.
I can't help but think the real take away is that you should trust your gut and quit a lot sooner and the poster basically wasted a year being jerked around.
If you are telling your employer you are unhappy for a whole year and they don't fix the conditions leading to your unhappiness, they are telling you they don't value you enough to make those changes (for the sake of simplicity, I'll just assume the employee's specific points of dissatisfaction were reasonable fixes and not ridiculous asks).
You don't owe them a year of soft landing when you quit, in the vast majority of cases they wouldn't have given you anywhere near that if they let you go.