Ask HN: Advice? Can't tell if me or bad job

3 points by temp246810 8 years ago | 5 comments

Currently, I am employed by a "top" tech company in the bay area. Not the very top, but a company that tends to land in the top ~15 range in the various best places to work publications.

Title is product manager, but this is in title only as I am in the Enterprise Applications space. The real product manager seems to be the business stakeholder, and the delivery manager is the engineering lead.

I really don't see the value I'm adding but they insist on keeping me around - bear in mind I have no salary complaints as I am not cheap and they pay more than what is fair. This is part of the reason why I feel like a spoiled brat complaining.

The problem is that the work just seems so damn trivial. The "business" gives the requirements, usually a document outlining exactly what they need, down to the solution, despite our attempts to tell them to stop. Then I take these "requirements", regurgitate them into "user stories" and the dev team works on them.

Then I play middle man to get questions answered, but usually the DM can do this on their own.

On top of all this our team feels super bloated. I get constantly dinged for not "delegating" work, but truth is there is not much to do beyond what I said above other than responding to about 6 tickets submitted by the biz peeps. There are 3 other analysts on this team.

During stand up, people report what they did yesterday and they are tasks that take about 10 minutes to complete. Sometimes I rub my eyes and shake my head because it feels unreal. It seems like a bad joke that everyone is in on except me.

What should I do? I come from the product side and is this just what IT is like in general? I'm thinking it's time to jump ship, but I just switched out of a job after only a year and I've only been here a year.

danielvf 8 years ago |

Yes, this sounds like like typical Enterprise software development. Actually it a sounds surprisingly competent compared to the average.

The biggest thing that's making your job boring is probably that your customer is doing most of what you would be expected to do. But this is a fantastic thing for the project - if someone who deeply understands and is embedded in the needs can write almost programmer ready specs then 50% of the project risk, confusion, and delays goes out the window.

Most enterprise software development is horribly slow, builds buggy, unusable products, and may never deliver.

The fact that your project many be over staffed, but still delivers repeatedly, actually makes makes management really happy.

Let me tell you about the best network engineer I've ever worked with. The guy did no apparent work. If you ever had any needs, he didn't even have to stop working on anything to give whatever you needed his full attention then and there. The reason he could do this was because had built everything to be scripted, monitored, and documented to the point that his stuff never broke. This have him time to script and monitor and plan for the future even more.

But the main takeaway was that even though he didn't do "work" everyday, he was worth a huge salary. His value to the company was the fact that the networks never went down, not that he ran around in a panic every day.

You worth to the company isn't that you are working hard - it's the output of your team. The fact that you aren't overloaded allows you to be responsive both inside the team and to the customer. This is way more valuable than you may think.

It sounds like you lucked into an unusually functioning project. If you want to stay in the Enterpise world, you aren't in a bad place.

(And yes, entprise programmers have an amazing ability to do only tiny amounts of work per day. It's incredible. I don't understand how many are employed)

temp246810 8 years ago | |

Thanks for the detailed response. You certainly have an optimistic way of looking at the situation.

My problem is that I'm 32- the way I see it is I have 3-4 more years of going balls to the wall before my wife starts popping out kids and I'd really hate to waste this time doing low level unchallenging work.

The funny thing is I can see myself 10 years down the line WISHING I had a job just like this.

danielvf 8 years ago | | |

Haha. I know the feeling.

I've been offered these kinds of jobs at BigCo's and turned them all down. I just do solo coding from the house. I get to define my own projects, use my own tools, and set my own hours. Most importantly, if I don't like a customer, I can just never work for them again after that project. This keeps my life full of working with people I enjoy working with.

vkuruthers 8 years ago |

Sounds quite boring. Go somewhere where your mind is fully engaged the you will be much more satisfied.

mesuckwhat 8 years ago |

WOW, BEST OF LUCK