Work Situation

blackbird9 said:
Quote: "I work as a software engineer. Regardless of the specifics, I am wondering what to make of ... having no interaction with my manager at all, not being assigned a team, nor having any work."

My number 1 concern would be "not having any work". I take it they are paying you for your time. In the companies I worked at, both large and small, the only times I ever felt nervous about a job were the very few times when they didn't have any immediate work and we were sitting there twiddling our thumbs.. "oh now I'll catch up on that bit of learning I've been meaning to do for 6 months"... you know the kind of thing. As long as I was head down working against the clock, against pressure, usually in a team but even occasionally by myself, I never felt worried, regardless of whether I saw a manager each week or not.

But having no work assigned to me would definitely concern me, if it goes on for more than a week or so I would start thinking about brushing up the CV and looking around, after all what else are you there for if not to work for them? Even if they are just keeping a headcount open without having any actual work for you to do currently, it's not doing you any good. Of course they might be in a position of waiting till they win a new contract and then suddenly you will be inundated with work...
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Yes, very strange indeed.
 
Well, a common complaint from managers of programming teams is that trying to manage programmers is like herding cats.

You can't exactly 'innovate on a schedule', or 'show productivity in debugging'. Just look at any bugzilla instance - some bugs are left unresolved for years, you gonna fire everyone on the programming team over that? or keep 'em? Especially when one line of C code can solve a bug that's been stumping people for years, and was sometimes a showstopper? How do you quantify THAT to the management?

Oh, and what about the old joke of taking a whole year to write the next Great American Compiler, and then using that GAC to write the program the customer requested, especially when commercial off-the-shelf component would do the job just as well? why are we paying someone to write code, then? Especially when copying is so easy, you lose money on using lawyers for license enforcement?
 
There is a YouTube channel called "Programmer from San Francisco". The channel is run by Russian programmer Roman Pushkin.
He showed how programmers who lost their jobs...
Or who are not competitive... live in parked vans and trailers in the San Francisco and Silicon Valley agglomeration.
This is some kind of selection nightmare. ONLY the "best of the best" are needed.
True, in one video the author said that some programmer woman, working in a large and well-known (I forgot the name), works like a beast,
her vision has dropped to "minus 10", her brain is melting from coding, but she pays about $7,000 a month for a house, and lives on another $3,000, which means she earns about $12,000 gross... Is this true?
Or is it just a load of crap?
I'm not saying this. This information comes from real programmers.

That's why I asked the author, if you are RELATIVELY free, you don't need much, then quit your job. Also, how much money do they pay.
But due to the unwillingness to disclose confidential information, I can't wish anything more to the author of the thread.
It's clear that if they pay "ten", then it's somehow possible to bust your ass for the British flag and tolerate freaks.
But for 4000 dollars I would hardly tolerate such jokes at work.
The rest - I don't understand. I'm in a different situation, in a country where in the morning I may not go to this forum, because at night I may end up buried alive under concrete slabs from a ballistic missile strike.
I'm 51 and I understand that the average age of a man in my country is 61-63, so I don't want to bust my ass and achieve "successful success". If the job becomes unbearable, I quit the job. My health is more important to me than an employer who will squeeze all the juices and soul out of me.
I pass interviews a thousand times easier than you in the US.
If an employer offers me a small salary, but asks serious questions, I say that for such questions you should pay 3-4 times more.
If he is showing off, I just leave.

But recently one of your CEOs said that in a year programmers will become even less needed because of AI.
What then?
The profession of "programmer" will disappear in a year, said the CEO of the neural network Claude, which is considered one of the best in writing code.
Dario Amodei believes that in 3-6 months 90% of the program code will be generated by AI.
He made the statement at the forum "Council on Foreign Relations".

All countries are concentration camps, but for you guys, living with a credit history is a nightmare. Balancing on a knife edge and living in fear that the insurance company, medicine, etc. will turn away from you is brutal. Yes, MODERATE competition is very necessary, I don't argue. But in the US, there's already some kind of overkill with these "competitions". Why so many repetitive programs, why so much plagiarized and redundant code, all this nonsense called "smart homes", "Internet things", hundreds of smartphone models, etc.?

And then you gobble up pills by the pack because your brain is overheated. You come home at 10:00 PM, fall dead on the bed with your shoes on and pass out in a minute, and at 5 AM, right after a dose of caffeine, get behind the wheel and go to work... To pay off a loan for a wooden house, a lawn mower, car insurance...

The example of "die yourself, but achieve success" is well illustrated by the example of how recently in LA "Judas Priest" with the whole lineup (with KK Downing) entered the "Hall of Fame". It took so many long years to achieve success to enter the "Rock and Roll Hall of Fame"! The old guys can barely stand on stage, Halford's health has deteriorated due to cancer. But then there is success, fame, status.
Although, in my opinion, they deserved this title back in 1984.
 
Yes ... I can respond to the underlying message and hopefully avoid getting too deep into politics (politics are everywhere, but when I mean "politics" I mean saying something inflammatory).

Yes, the US is expensive (health care, housing, food, etc. and it is only getting worse). And, I've heard similar things that health care quality, expected lifespan, student rankings, etc. are lower in the US, but we have a higher GDP. Then, would it be fair to publicly assert that in the US, the average person is more livestock than elsewhere such that the companies can generate more profit off of us (we are the product)? Other countries with a lower GDP are "freer". What is free, who is free? Would I be someone more if I drove a Mercedes (I borrowed that bit from a song).

Back to the situation since that is the main point of focus for me.

1. I live a modest lifestyle and could probably survive without working; however, given the current climate, who knows how expensive health care will be.

2. I have the freedom to explore interesting things in the programming realm keeping my mind active - I don't plan to retire in the near future. Those things allow me to solve problems in a different way as well as automate the mundane at work.

3. I am curious to stick with the job, 1. to see or experience the manipulation (be more tolerant or resilient of it and expectant of such behavior in the future, recognize it better, etc.), and 2. see if I can't transfer to another team, I still have about 4 months, but perhaps my manager is aware of that and at that time, poof, I disappear. The only negative part with this is that my manager ultimately holds the cards, whenever I'm terminated, they can put whatever they want in my employee file and I wouldn't be the wiser. If I leave early, perhaps they put something negative, if my manager decides to up and fire me whenever, he puts something negative. My performance review thus far has been good such that I could apply for another position within the company, but there is a strict policy of 1 year regardless of reason. Yes, it has been tough on me, everyday, I wonder if I will be fired or laid off or whatever.

That said, people are people, as bad as it is here, can it be substantially different elsewhere?
 
You have to be careful reading about $7000 house payments and living in tents cause they can't find a programming job in San Francisco. It's like actors moving to Los Angeles cause that's where movies are made. Yes, movies and TV commercials are made in other cities, just like programs are written in other cities by other programmers but in most other cities you can't walk down the street and see big names you recognize that have to offer top dollar to attract anyone.

Just yesterday I read that the average house costs $900,000 in SF or LA (don't recall). The average house in my area is $300,000.
 
Yes, I reckon that is accurate and that average in San Francisco is probably below average elsewhere. I don't live there, but yeah, I completely get that.
 
No one can blame you for moving to a better job if they aren't giving you any work to do, especially if the next job pays better. I wouldn't worry at all about the manager making negative comments, job hopping is completely standard practice nowadays, employers expect it. I am quite sure your boss knows perfectly well that he doesn't have any work for you at the moment, he's probably more worried that you might get bored and jump ship ;-). Sometimes it's good to take a chance and look round, you might be pleasantly surprised by what you find. And it doesn't sound very great where you are right now. Wish you good luck!
 
Of course having said that it's worth putting some feelers out to try to find out why this situation has arisen... I'm sure you're doing that anyway. If it's really a case of they are waiting for project approval and are keeping you there in readiness, that might be a positive reason to stay. But if you think it's some kind of constructive dismissal then I would start looking around. It never hurts to look around anyway :)
 
tOsYZYny said:
That said, people are people, as bad as it is here, can it be substantially different elsewhere?
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I kind of doubt it. You'll probably be making more than a few deals with the devil no matter where you go. In the United States, being homeless is not a sin (but it is a sin in China, for example, where they do prioritize making sure that people are housed and fed, even if that means some waste within the system). US has expensive health care and a kafkaesque morass of insurance bureaucracy. Yeah, there's this so-called 'Freedom of speech' - yeah, if anyone listens. And if they do listen, what do they listen to? you talking shit about the system?

Is grass really greener on the other side of the fence? Sometimes you gotta get informed, and then decide what you can live with.
 
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