"Hey mate, how are you doing?"
*deep sigh* "It's tough, but I'm managing"

I don't think it's a coincidence that the word managing is often used as a synonym for "Technically alive, but not in a state where I can progress personally, or add any value to my environment".

Now imagine packaging that desolate self-perpetuating feeling of apathy into a farce, propped up with practiced smiles and meet-speak, and calling that daily routine a "career".

I guess I'm just salty about the beautiful company I started working for half a decade ago.... A company led by engineers, researchers, scientists, designers...

...now slowly being infested by people who serve no purpose other than filling calendar slots.

I MEAN FUCKING HELL THIS GUY

Him: "I think our number one priority for this quarter is to have more alignment in the company"

Me: "What do you mean?"

Him: "Well, I think we should have a meeting with all engineers together every afternoon, to create alignment"

Me: "All teams already have a standup meeting every morning, and inter-team issues are discussed by the scrum masters"

Him: "Yes, but if ALL the engineers join together every afternoon as well, we get more clarity on alignment"

Me: "I'm actually pretty clear on alignment. I'm chaotic neutral, Joanna is neutral good, Bob is lawful evil..."

Him: "I don't know what you are talking about, but if you can't take synergy and collaboration in the company seriously, I don't think there's a place for you at this company"

Me: "Dude, shut up. You started working here 3 weeks ago, you're barely out of school, you don't even know my name or role, and you might be a manager but you're not managing me or my team"

@bittersweet can't be profitable unless you're productive.

Can't be productive unless you're miserable.

@sariel

I just see miserable managers pretending really hard to be productive parts of the machine, while they desperately try to leech credit from productive people who are still crazy enough to hold on to passion.

Fucking parasites.

Engineers are solving problems here, managers are just delaying deployments long enough so they have time to figure out how they can describe the solution in terms of quarterly objectives and key results with their name attached to it.

I feel like I am sometimes a bit too much of a paycheck employee. I think it comes from being tired of politics in companies.

However, at the company I am with now my manager cares that I enjoy the work and challenges me to learn things. He gives me time to "figure things out" so that I can produce better quality code. He has real world input as to what customers need and want. So I learn from him in nearly every conversation. The fact that he knows he needs to replace himself with empowered people is refreshing. He wants us to "know how it works" and gives us time to understand the base technologies which includes electronics and other hardware. He doesn't want a developer. He wants a thinking developer.

So in turn I want to produce good code that continues to work well and is flexible to change. This has caused me to rework his older code in some cases. He is happy that I am doing this. I think the engagement is what makes me want to work harder.

@Demolishun

One more thing:

One thing my manager said stuck with me (paraphrased): "I have an idea about how I want to do this. But I want to see where you take it before I make suggestions."

@Demolishun

Yeah that sounds like a coach.

Which is awesome.

Companies need coaches, eager to motivate people on a personal level, resolving team problems where necessary.

We have a few scrum masters / agile coaches who fulfill this role, and I value them deeply.

But at the same time, upper management keeps deciding we need more layers of management to waste money and energy on.

Managers who just keep kicking problems from calendar timeslot to calendar timeslot, with zero stake in the end product, and zero reason to find actual answers -- They're automatons which just go through bureaucratic rituals, through 1:1-talks, synergy meetups and alignment sessions.

When I hear "Synergy" from a manager I would have instantly lost all respect for them.

@Ranchonyx I am feeling an anti-synergy from your post.

@Demolishun You have no idea how little that narrows it down compared to my other posts

@Demolishun I agree however