Corporate Banshee
I'm going to make use of this post for the rant of the rantest, if not ranter.
I got my performance review last week. My manager argued that all the senior developers of my team, myself included, and most of the developers on other teams, were being "demoted" one grade from their current titles to one level below, because almost nobody was meeting the "expectations" of the level they were supposed to be in. This means a title cut, but at least not a salary cut.
In my case, it means I went from a "Senior Software Engineer" position to a "Mid L3 Software Developer", and I'm sure they'll be quick to change that in the HR software.
Now, I've never cared much about titles as long as they pay me properly. After all, anyone can put "CTO" on their linkedin resume and go with the flow.
What itches me is the broad reach of the demotion, which I am interpreting as a clue for this move being some sort of previous step before some pivotal change on the company. Meaning, I first demote everyone, and then.. something happens next. What I am trying to decypher is what shape the "something happens next" is going to take.
The last 6 months I had tried to become more of an engineering manager/tech lead role, but I was struggling with the role due to a combination of well-pointed faults of my own, and some structural ones.
I will openly admit that due to my personality, and some personal circumstances, I did struggle to change context quickly between projects and tasks, it hasn't been easy for me to be able to remember things as quickly as before, especially because my personal situation is one of constant anxiety lately.
Another important point is that we are around 4 developers that work in a pure remote setup on a startup that primarily revolves around in-office culture. Not matter how much I try to involve myself, working from home makes me miss a lot of implicit knowledge, I can't be in improvised meetings, discuss things in the office kitchen, and I miss that bit of human contact that often times translates into progress. This is the synergies agile coaches talk about.
On top of that, I do feel partly burnt out and increasingly missing motivation because I've been stuck in quite a micro-managed role for the last year with little to no room for improvisation or research. I am still working out the exact details that could improve the kind of work I enjoy doing, but Ben Thompson describes this feeling perfectly on this article:
I took away two lessons from this list. First, when I’ve felt unfocused or unable to get good work done, it was because something was fundamentally wrong and not because I needed to push harder. You can’t push through a fundamentally flawed mathematical method or a flawed business plan. When things went from going great to going badly in the situations above, I probably should’ve made changes instead of just languishing or pushing against a brick wall.
With long walks, sauna an introspection I am slowly but steadily hoping to unveil the details about what is fundamentally wrong and change it.
Still, this Ozan is not two-years-ago Ozan. Therapy, reading and reflection have helped me dearly in relativizing the nature and purpose of work, and realizing corporate culture, startup culture, tech culture, is just a theatre. Work that is not done for yourself, or a good cause, and only has the purpose of providing you with a salary is inherently meaningless. The whole dance of performance reviews, after work beers, all-hands meetings, kudos time, secret santa, fruit baskets, casual fridays and offsites are simply tools. Tools sharpened to entice you with motivation without increasing your salary, lowering your working hours, or giving you equity in the company.
If you live in a country with strong labor laws and one that has left feudalism behind, the hammer cannot be as loud as the carrot, so all these are ways to embed it into the carrot, so we don't realize it is just an orange hammer with a green top.
What I've mainly done this past year has been:
- Refactor existing systems into a different shape.
- Rewrite endpoints to use a different format.
- Write a new tool that they will start selling.
Now, the last one was definitely an interesting challenge but my boss hand-held me the entire way, not because the thing didn't work, it did, tests, qa and everything, but because it had to be done the exact way he wanted. Unfortunately he took all joy away from doing the small bit that was interesting.
A company by default will always look not to encourage you in a performance review unless you're an absolute machine and they know well they're paying you well below market rate, in that case you'll get a small increase and a pat in the back. If you don't fall into that bucket and like me you're just a solid, hard-working developer with strong technical and analytical skills expected for a senior dev, they'll find something lacking to justify not giving you a raise. That's fine, its the dance, its the theatre.
In return, you can just don't give a fuck. I normally don't like taglines, mottos and "baked-sentences", that's why I abstain from saying Quiet Quitting.
But, that's pretty much it. Hey, they can fire you whether or not you're a good performer, especially in today's market, so honestly, fend for yourself. Save, work on something on your own, invest, or enjoy life. Do your best and give your honest, focused energy during your work ours becuase that's what you've agreed upon signing up a contract, but don't give any loyalty. Fend for yourself.
The disconnect
These are some real-world examples of the disconnect I've found between salary and being competent. I know there are plenty only, but these are my own observations of my own life path, they bear more weight to me than an online review. You can believe them or not.
- Initially we were a team of 2 developers, myself and another guy. This guy was sort of strong technically, but he had this urge of overcomplicating the code, and due to that it often shipped with bugs because it was hard even for him to follow the flow of data. Think of nested list comprehensions, unnecessary abstractions, intermediate objects for useless caches, that stuff.
He was a nice guy but I was constantly overseeing him, orienting him, correcting his approaches, and coaching him on how to work on a team, communication style, code hygiene, and several other things.
So, this guy eventually got really burnt out because he didn't have the temper to stomach the constant micromanagement from my boss, who, despite being a well-meaning guy, I think, also has quite a bad temperament and they didn't get along. He left without a fallback plan, soon after he found a job at another startup for +5K/year more than I make 😁.
Shortly after I joined my current company, the newly hired HR manager misconfigured the HR software so all salaries were public. They were making my exact salary and was incompetent in almost all tasks they'd been assigned too. They didn't even speak proper english despite the fact that we are an international company. It's not their fault, and people get better over time, what struck me was that they hired several other people to take over complex HR tasks and this person stayed with what I can only imagine a very light work load. Turns out, they were already either friends or acquaintances with the CEO so they could coast on the money machine without much effort exerted.
Lastly, a good friend of mine, a good person, earns exactly 20K/year more than me administering some Microsoft AD/Sharepoint servers for their company. This person knows absolutely nothing about tech, and is unable to program. He constantly asks me for feedback on technical knowledge, for me to explain concepts, how things work, and I even corrected one of his powershell scripts from his job.
As you can see, the disconnect is real, meritocracy is definitely a thing, and the better you get at something, the more possibilities you have for career growth. But, the mix is incomplete, the whole thing is a salad with that base, nepotism, political ability, market health and an extreme dose of luck.
I started writing this post mentioning it was a rant, but as the words have been flowing out, I am left with a feeling of content, not anger. I understand the game, and I don't hate it. This has been this way since we humans are humans. It's about doing your best, working for yourself, don't take shit from anybody, and down swallow the fucking narrative.
Be free, be kind, enjoy yourself.