I’m a software engineer, The conditions of my job are actually pretty sweet: I get to work remote from a medium CoL city, I get paid well, my schedule is flexible so I don’t have to be chained to my desk all day. The stuff I code is pretty boring but it’s not the worst thing in the world.
The thing I can’t stand is my coworkers: so many people I’ve met in this industry are money-obsessed ladder-climbing yuppies. Some of my coworkers are honest to god land lords. I dread having conversations with anyone in project management. These people are territorial and become upset whenever they’re not included in some meeting. If one product manager gets added to a call, I hear about it from the other PMs. A good day for me is when I have 8 straight hours of coding to do and I don’t speak to a single soul at work.
I am not anti-social. I have worked at other companies where my coworkers were really cool and I enjoyed talking with them. I like to take my laptop and work at the dog park and talk to other people. Maybe it’s a regional thing? My coworkers are mostly in New York and my other jobs have all been in the South.
No one quits a job. Everyone quits a boss.
This saying has held true for me for decades.
If you quit, can you recommend me to replace you? I’ll take any remote job, and I can put up with annoying coworkers.
I’m actually half serious. 7 YoE in web dev, mostly backend.
I worked for German startup tech bros who decided to become freight logistics influencers. Fuck, those absolute cretins were the worst humans I’ve met maybe ever. I ended up on 100mg anti anxiety meds and I still hated it enough to end up quitting one random Thursday.
Some people are just destined to be soul suckers, and it’s like a virus - those who don’t jump ship end up catching the disease.
Plenty. I live in a fairly conservative part of California so many places I’ve worked at, I have to listen to bigotry in all forms all fucking day long from all the other guys around me.
I’m a Product Owner, and my job literally is to participate in meetings, so that my engineers don’t have to. You want to talk to one of them? Sorry, you have to talk to me, and I’ll talk to them on their own time.
In the past, however, there was one time I almost quit. We had an engineering lead with a serious case of Dunning-Kruger syndrome. Good with Javascript, which made him think he was an expert in everything, from c# to aws, and especially in system architecture. He could sell himself and his work really well, though, so the management always took his word for gospel. Got two developers, who had the audacity to tell him how stupid his architecture was, fired. Tried to get me fired, and it turned into a competition of who can outlast whom. Eventually it became too much for me, so I started interviewing elsewhere, when suddenly he was reassigned elsewhere within the company. I decided to stay mainly due to career growth (and to pay my mortgage), and I hear that he’s been doing his usual mess in his new position, while my team is now far happier and more productive.
Good for you. Managers that protect their people and their people’s time are worth their weight in gold.
I have heard, and I think this came out of Google, that managers can be separated into two groups: shit funnels and shit umbrellas.
The shit funnel takes all the shit that is coming down from above comma and redirects it onto the people below.
The shit umbrella protects all the workers below from the shit that is falling from about. I was lucky enough to have an umbrella manager in one of my previous jobs.
My last job at a grocery/warehouse for restaurants.
Just about the bottom of the barrel scratching incompetent, stupid, unobservent, and lack of. Costumers too! You think owning your own business you would know? Oh, hahaha… no.
I heard one guy saying he’s going out of business because of us, I told him “no, because you’re to stupid to read a box or sign on what cups they are, ripping all th3 boxes and THEN come back because you get the wrong one.”
I can’t do costumer service unless it pays. I’m not smart, but HOLY SHIT. How am I struggling this hard and these morons live in a house or have a nice car. Like damn
I manage projects and cancel as many meetings as I can. 1hr meetings get shortened and I prevent workers from getting added to management calls where possible.
People that want to be in meetings aren’t working.
At one job, I changed the default settings in everyone’s calendar to 45 minute meetings instead of an hour and it increased productivity like ten fold. Designers and developers need to have longer meetings sometimes but they don’t need a marketing person or an executive there.
That’s not necessarily true. I’ve asked to join meetings that were only tangentially related to my department so I knew what was being worked on so I could do my job effectively if they needed me.
But I’m usually working during most meetings.
That’s usually why I quit jobs.
If one product manager gets added to a call, I hear about it from the other PMs. A good day for me is when I have 8 straight hours of coding to do and I don’t speak to a single soul at work.
Unless you’re coding for yourself, you’re not going to escape PMs in any other org you would go to. Your situation is where soft skills come into play. Identify a PM you like, and route all your communication through them. If others want updates, point them to your chosen PM. If others want invites to meetings tell them “no problem, reach out to [favorite PM] to get added”. If Favorite PM doesn’t invite them to the meeting then its an argument between Favorite and the other person and you’re out of the loop.
The best engineers aren’t just good at their technology, but also communicating with others effectively.
Sounds like a lot of middle managers who don’t actually do any work and are paranoid about being found out.
Maybe it’s a regional thing? My coworkers are mostly in New York and my other jobs have all been in the South.
Could also just be the company’s culture itself.
Yeah, it’s this.
Yes but it wasn’t my only job. I was fine at work, boss was nice, one nice coworker, one annoying one. Then he asked us to go to a convention. Well they were both horrible to me those couple days so I just stopped talking to my coworkers. The day I left I just walked out and didn’t say anything.
Boss ended up being rude too. I had asked for a raise after working there for many years as one of the earliest employees and the most underpaid and he ignored me twice.
Personally, no, though I recently quit a job due to burnout. I’ve had a lot of luck in enjoying or at least being able to easily tolerate the company of 98% of my coworkers. There’s definitely people I’ve worked with who are eager to climb the ladder, but at least manage to put on a good front/put it aside to some degree for the good of the company
Live your best life. We all have bills to pay but If it isn’t the right fit, send out resumes. You owe corporations nothing. And you probably won’t get promoted if you hate your coworkers. You’re better off trying to find a better fit than trying to thrive somewhere that doesn’t match.
That advice goes to wildlife too. I’m guessing they won’t read this but if you’re a raccoon eating out of restaurant dumpsters, find the best dumpster. They got plenty nowadays.
Shit yeah, or the manager(s).
This for sure. I really enjoy what I do (I’m the lead coffee roaster for a decently-sized company). My direct boss is a wonderful human and knows how to manage people properly. Most of his power was taken away by his boss who has no people skills whatsoever and thinks he’s the smartest person in the room when it comes to operations and “efficiency”. If my boss ever leaves I’ll have to work under this douche. This guy has dismantled a lot of the systems put in place to run our order fulfillment with speed and accuracy that my boss had created. It’s so infuriating to watch. His power and authority is unchecked, and the owner relies on him so much because the owner is just the face of the company. I keep on looking for something else but my job is not the most common one out there, and I don’t want to work for a company that sends out shitty-ass, low quality stuff.
