ec changed the topic of #elliottcable to: a 𝕯𝖊𝖓 𝖔𝖋 𝕯𝖊𝖙𝖊𝖗𝖒𝖎𝖓𝖊𝖉 𝕯𝖆𝖒𝖘𝖊𝖑𝖘 slash s͔̞u͕͙p͙͓e̜̺r̼̦i̼̜o̖̬r̙̙ c̝͉ụ̧͘ḷ̡͙ţ͓̀ || #ELLIOTTCABLE is not about ELLIOTTCABLE
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<bluebie>
beep boop
<ec>
ello
<ec>
i’m so slerpy
<ec>
zzzzdedzzzzz
<jfhbrook>
hah
<jfhbrook>
I'm at home trying to relax
<jfhbrook>
I, uh
<jfhbrook>
I had a nervous breakdown and had to surprise take a week off work
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<ljharb>
jfhbrook: that sucks, feel better
<ljharb>
jfhbrook: when/if it's cool, i'd be curious to know what that means
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<jfhbrook>
it's a really long story and I just got up but happy to share otherwise
<jfhbrook>
ljharb: to sort of set the stage for this story: I've had a long term goal of being a team lead since roughly 2015 - running a team of ~5 or so - but I've had a lot of challenges developing the skills necessary to fulfill that role
<jfhbrook>
early this year - february or so - I learned that I have ADHD, which makes mood regulation difficult, and it turns out this was a big part of my difficulties. I'm on medication now, which helps a *lot*. but still a senior SE, etc
<jfhbrook>
so when I started looking for a new role in the spring/summer, I saw a job posting by squarespace for "team lead, data platforms" and I was like, yeah that
<jfhbrook>
but the person who's now my boss wasn't impressed by my resume on this matter and said they'd only consider me as an IC. I have really bad confidence issues around this for aforementioned reasons, and
<ec>
jfhbrook: feels, fam
<ec>
this year has been possibly my worst ever, for depression and motivation. i know those feels.
<jfhbrook>
at fmg, I found that when I had the support I needed from my managers (they were both so good) that I was able to kick ass as a tech lead
<jfhbrook>
so it was like, maybe this is enough
<jfhbrook>
so beluch (my boss) sells me on working on the finance products team, says it's a bit of a fixer-upper and that everyone is reading Domain Driven Design, a book I had interest in already - saw this as a good sign
<jfhbrook>
so I join, and I'm optimistic, but then I walk into the building in early july and it's *really* clear that everyone is cleaning up after a *huge* mess
<jfhbrook>
and I'm like, I'm doing this onboarding differently this time, going to withhold my judgement, remain calm, not kick down the door
<jfhbrook>
I learn that we close the books monthly, I learn about how that data becomes immutable post-close, etc
<jfhbrook>
end of july rolls around and we try to close july and it's a sev0 outage
<jfhbrook>
ok, that's two for two, bad sign - but it was an upstream data issue, right? a fluke?
<jfhbrook>
we work through August, I start to get an idea of what we're up against
<jfhbrook>
then labor day rolls around
<jfhbrook>
and I'm just kinda watching in the background as everything is on fire over labor day weekend and the same three people are working a weekend, and my boss is diligently writing notes in an incident doc
<jfhbrook>
and things just kinda clicked in my head and I realized I knew how to fix this - or at least, how to approach the problem
<jfhbrook>
so I come in that tuesday and I say, "I'm going to fix RevRec. I don't know how - if it was easy it'd already be done - but I'm going to figure this out."
<ljharb>
rev rec is revenue reconciliation?
<jfhbrook>
sorta from that day forward I noticed a shift in how people treated me. it became really clear that I was now the de facto team lead
<jfhbrook>
revenue *recognition*
<ljharb>
ah k
<jfhbrook>
reconciliation is when you sum up numbers using two different methods and make sure they match
<jfhbrook>
revrec is like - so we're a subscription business. when someone pays us for a year of hosting, we don't make $114 on day one
<jfhbrook>
we bank that and then earn it over the year as we actually host the site
<jfhbrook>
so the process of putting that cash into a Deferred Revenue account and moving it to, uh, I think Accounts Receivable, over the course of a year - that's revenue recognition. there's a fancy standard for it called asc606
<ljharb>
got it
<jfhbrook>
anyway, so it's like alright, ok
<jfhbrook>
doing this, figuring this out, taking copious notes, developing a Theory
<jfhbrook>
then the following sunday night my boss schedules a surprise monday sprint planning, which is *weird* because we haven't actually been able to take on any of the work in the prior sprint due to the fires
<jfhbrook>
and he announces that our most senior dev is transferring almost immediately, and that they're gonna expedite hiring a team lead
<jfhbrook>
(my team doesn't have a lead right now)
<jfhbrook>
so I tell him I want the job, he tells me they want someone more senior, whatever
<jfhbrook>
so over the course of the last 3 months or so I fight as hard as I can and I'm able to drive real changes! but my investigation leads straight to management screwing the pooch repeatedly
<jfhbrook>
and it's clear that their plans going forward are going to make things even worse
<jfhbrook>
but I keep trying, and people - nobody who could actually do anything like promote me or anything, but people - tell me that I'm growing
<jfhbrook>
I continue to be obsessed. at work parties, fixing revrec is all I can talk about. I begin to flippantly refer to it as The Grand Unifying Theory of Why RevRec Sucks
<jfhbrook>
fast forward to the thanksgiving holiday. I'm not on-call but I'm "around"
<jfhbrook>
and they had just hired a new director for financial systems, and he was, like, making meetings in response to things I was telling him - extremely new, heartening - and I was like, ok I'm gonna write up everything I know over the weekend
<jfhbrook>
so I'm working on this doc and it's clear it's gonna be huge, meanwhile things catch on fire and two out of three people on-call are out of office and didn't bother to get coverage
<jfhbrook>
and the third guy has family over and keeps getting distracted, was absolutely not prepared to do more than review PRs on a casual basis
<jfhbrook>
(a bunch of things that absolutely should not require code changes in fact require code changes, and due to SOX we need two approvals for any code change - so three people total)
<jfhbrook>
so I'm light fighting the fuck out of this fire while writing this doc and slowly losing my mind
<jfhbrook>
sunday night, I think we're out of the woods, patting myself on the back kinda
<jfhbrook>
look at the doc, it's sixty pages and I'm an emotional mess throughout - really clear I've lost track of what my goals are. good content in there but my fucked up mental state bleeds through hard. can't show it to anyone
<jfhbrook>
and then at like 11 at night one of the guys that chipped in does a QA check and it turns out that a really really stupid business rule that FINANCE REQUESTED fucked up the entire run
<jfhbrook>
monday morning we're scrambling to try it all over again, new director doesn't know yet to take it easy on us, a mentor tells me that I absolutely can not share that doc and to take time off
<jfhbrook>
and I'm like
<jfhbrook>
yeah man
<jfhbrook>
I'm out starting tomorrow, getting my affairs in order
<jfhbrook>
and so here I am
<jfhbrook>
oh, and wrt promo - squarespace does reviews and promo in january and july, and I joined just a little too late to be up in january based on the standard schedule
<jfhbrook>
and they could make an exception but have made no effort to do so
<jfhbrook>
so it's like, ok I put in all this work
<jfhbrook>
then they hire someone and they're like, thank you for your service?
<jfhbrook>
idk, I have a lot of feels and I need to sort them out
<jfhbrook>
loosely related but not important to the narrative - bonus content I guess - I made some memes to decompress over the weekend and this sums up how I feel about management right now:
<jfhbrook>
the original is some really really deep homestuck lore
<jfhbrook>
which, ironically, I didn't read through far enough to get to the sweet bro and hella jef comics
<ljharb>
that sounds rough
<ljharb>
promotions in my experience are hard to come by
<ljharb>
typically i get the most raises and promotions by changing jobs
<ljharb>
ie, whatever i start with tends to dictate what i end with
<jfhbrook>
yeah but management is a bootstrapping problem
<ljharb>
right
<jfhbrook>
nobody wants to hire a manager that hasn't already had that title before
<jfhbrook>
so like, fuck off with that advice, basically
<jfhbrook>
super disinterested in anybody saying anything about this problem that isn't immediately useful
<jfhbrook>
no offense
<ljharb>
oh none at all, wasn’t advice
<ljharb>
just relating to your frustration
<jfhbrook>
the one piece that is actually vaguely heartening is: before my time there *was* a team lead. from what I hear, he was even saltier than I was and things were somehow worse than they are now under his tenure. he lasted 18 months somehow. he flipped that shit around to being head of data at hinge
<jfhbrook>
so if I can figure out how to tune my resume, figure out how to take unmandated management-y things and turn them into bullet points
<jfhbrook>
I might be able to convince someone that I was doing the job already
<jfhbrook>
just maybe
<jfhbrook>
but it's hard, a lot of the things managers do are nebulous and like
<jfhbrook>
I can't have 1:1s right now, I don't get invited to preplanning, I'm not able to interact with the other team leads as peers
<jfhbrook>
so I can't *actually* do the job
<jfhbrook>
oh, and when I try to do things like write design docs to propose work, I get chastised for not doing what's on our board
<jfhbrook>
like I said I have a 60 page doc that includes a full alternate roadmap
<jfhbrook>
but without a mandate I can't actually institute that roadmap. I can't even /try/
<ec>
I mean like, I don’t know anything, I can’t even get a job.
<ec>
but … isn’t it always gonna be somewhere between “hard” and “nigh impossible” if you keep trying to do a job you haven’t been hired to do?
<jfhbrook>
see, this is the argument for quitting
<jfhbrook>
or, at least, giving them an ultimatum
<jfhbrook>
but if I do drop that ultimatum I have to have my argument in order and I have to be ready to die on that hill
<ec>
yeah exactly. idk quitting specifically, but I *don’t* think you’re gonna magically get ‘management experience’ out of this position, somehow
<jfhbrook>
well I /am/ getting management experience, just like..... two thirds of it
<ec>
and it kinda sounds like trying to bend spacetime to make that happen, is having a really bad effect on your mental health
<jfhbrook>
because my boss is extremely afk
<jfhbrook>
someone has to fill the gaps
<ec>
sorry I mean like, “the stuff you need to get a management title next time”
<jfhbrook>
this is as close as that is going to get
<jfhbrook>
the alternative is that I get a management role
<jfhbrook>
at which point that framing is fundamentally broken
<ljharb>
you could have 1:1s right now
<jfhbrook>
the bend spacetime metaphor is good, I should put that in the doc
<ljharb>
there’s no rule stopping you from scheduling repeating meetings with one person
<jfhbrook>
sure but you know that's not what I mean
<ljharb>
no but if you did it you’d be able to claim you were having quasi 1:1s
<ljharb>
and it’d help get more people in your camp
<ljharb>
doesn’t sound like that’d make the difference ofc - but it’s something concrete you could do now at least
<ec>
that doesn’t seem like bad advice tbh
<ec>
“fake it ‘til you make it,” I guess?
<jfhbrook>
I do try to stay in communication with my team. it's hard for me to effectively protect them, but I'm able to get a bead on where their heads are at, help them advocate their ideas to management, teach them what I know about these things
<jfhbrook>
I've fundamentally changed the language that the devs use to describe what we do, which is pretty cool
<jfhbrook>
I hear my own phrases thrown back at me and I'm a little proud
<ljharb>
but i mean, the phrase 1:1 isn’t reserved for managers. Anyone can have them with anyone
<ljharb>
so if you have 1:1s with all the people you’re ostensibly leading, that more strongly suggests you’re already doing the job
<jfhbrook>
if my manager discovered I was having 5 1:1 meetings where I was pretending to be a manager he would probably tell me to stop
<ljharb>
not pretending
<ljharb>
just touching base
<ljharb>
you have a manager, not a micromanager, you decide how you spend your time day to day :-)
<jfhbrook>
I fundamentally believe that if we can give the developers the space that they already know how to fix the technical problems
<jfhbrook>
they just need a vision and they need protection from the business
<ljharb>
sure
<jfhbrook>
I'm doing my best to supply the former, I have limited ability to do the latter
<ljharb>
can you in any way help your peers to be protected from the business? by giving advice or listening to venting or anything?
<jfhbrook>
they have a lot of ideas but difficulty pitching them to management
<jfhbrook>
I've been able to help them with that. one engineer was talking about onboarding data onto the data vault and like, I took him into a room and made him explain what he wanted to do to me and put it into an internal RFC
<jfhbrook>
so now there's a 10 page doc that describes the work that /we/ want to do, and I've been hammering at it every chance I get - every time an idea comes up that ties to the data vault I'm pointing at it and saying, this is why the work tim b wants to do is urgent
<jfhbrook>
but my boss also refused to allow the work to go forward
<jfhbrook>
so like lmao
<jfhbrook>
or, hatim had an idea for a "hack day" that he put into a retro and it didn't get any votes; we talked about how we could reframe it into "fix it fridays" and got a group of us to agree to vote for it during the next retro
<jfhbrook>
that retro hasn't happened yet
<jfhbrook>
those are the things I'm empowered to do
<ljharb>
that’s not nothing
<jfhbrook>
it's not enough either
<ljharb>
true :-/
<jfhbrook>
I also had an experience where I tried to talk to finance to sort out an ask that an SRE from a different department got for financial reporting
<jfhbrook>
and my boss explicitly told me to stop
<jfhbrook>
even though the work i was doing was non-harmful
<jfhbrook>
and even though I had zero interest in owning it - I just wanted to help John T out
<jfhbrook>
like what the fuck is a SRE doing building financial reports? he's not a data engineer
<jfhbrook>
I fucking hate my boss
<jfhbrook>
he extremely sucks
<jfhbrook>
he's not a bad dude but he's a very shitty boss
<jfhbrook>
anyway: all I know is that I 100% refuse to sit down shut up and do the jira cards handed to me, when I know for a fact that the sprints are fucking stupid
<jfhbrook>
it's a miracle that I haven't told our TPM that "you're not sticking to sports when you stick to sports" to his face
<jfhbrook>
though, to be fair, that's part of his job description. it's not his fault my boss refuses to lead
<jfhbrook>
actually, that's one thing I did
<jfhbrook>
I called out my boss hard during his presentation of our Q4 non-roadmap
<jfhbrook>
had people thank me afterwards for standing up to him
<jfhbrook>
alright well I think it's time to visit coney island
<ljharb>
enjoy a hot dog
<jfhbrook>
hah!
<jfhbrook>
it’s extremely off season
<jfhbrook>
but i’m gonna try to visit a roast beef sandwich spot in sheepshead bay for a late lunch
<ec>
whata a TPM
<ljharb>
technical project manager
<jfhbrook>
ljharb: what do you know about estimating the cost of a software project?
<jfhbrook>
I want to put a dollar figure on how much money squarespace is wasting
<ljharb>
that everyone does it wrong no matter how you try to account for the first part of this sentence
<ljharb>
lol
<ljharb>
basically you look at the business and try to correlate costs, there's no easy answer
<ljharb>
but once you have a formula they'll accept, you can convince them using it
<jfhbrook>
I want a BOE number, order of magnitude
<ljharb>
boe?
<ljharb>
oh envelope
<jfhbrook>
back of the envel---yeah
<ljharb>
so like, you know how the drake equation works?
<jfhbrook>
what like the astronomy alien life equation?
<ljharb>
yes
<jfhbrook>
kinda
<ljharb>
basically he wrote a bunch of terms and then picked super arbitrary overly conservative numbers for each term, and then makes a theory based on that
<jfhbrook>
I see
<ljharb>
so, come up with some formula with terms, no numbers, that might represent a cot
<ljharb>
*clot
<ljharb>
cost bah
<ljharb>
and then plug in the most conservative "no brainer" numbers you can think of
<ljharb>
and if *that* adds up to a bunch of money, it'll be convincing
<ljharb>
(that's just one approach but it's the one i'd lean towards)
<jfhbrook>
yeah, I was going to say something like, total cost of employees times (1 - efficiency) + (cost of accountants scrambling to fix it in post) + (cost of delayed IPO)
<jfhbrook>
I'd say throw in a term for cost of a hypothetical legal audit times likelihood of said legal audit