rexstjohn

I used to work with a very senior engineer who is now retired who had a job which involved VERY LITTLE OR NO WORK.

This may or may not be your situation. He was one of the happiest people I have ever met.

I think you are feeling the default urge to look and feel productive all the time. I know exactly the feeling. It often looks bad and feels bad not to be hyper coding all the time.

The reality is that you may be, many many times, running some system which is mostly complete and your job is more of an insurance policy against the ultra bad things that happen if that system goes down.

And hyper coding is simply not required. And dealing with the psychological and social effects of knowing you are running at 10% capacity is overwhelming and hard to deal with.

It may be the case that this system may realistically involve very little work. Bug fixes and code enhancements. And that is actually fine as far as everyone around you is concerned, they may not even care. At all. As long as that system runs and you seem to be working.

So back to my friend who is now retired.

He had this down to a science. He focused on organizing discussions. So he would ask you to come to a meeting and ask you about some small detail of whatever he is doing. Then he would go: “wow, I hadn’t thought of that. That’s really something. Really great, let me think about that more.”

He would make everyone feel like a genius. Or host a group discussion with similar theme.

Then he would find some way to give you credit for your idea or suggestion. Everyone loved him.

After watching him operate for awhile it made me realize how much most engineers overvalue “genius intelligence” and being hyper industrious versus … seemingly very simple human to human interactions and the reality of how people think and work.

The reality is that the true performance criteria for you in the majority of environments is how much everyone around you likes you and thinks you are great. I realized that’s what this guy was doing after having +30 years of experience on me. And I assumed he knew something I didn’t about doing “deep career time.”

So if seeming more busy is your root problem, just realize that people:

1. Probably don’t care about what you are doing 2. Want to feel smart and consulted for their genius opinions 3. Given credit for something you are doing

If you do those three things, with the right people, your report is kind of irrelevant.

Does anyone care about this system? How does this system result in other people getting a promotion? If you figure that out, everyone will love you.

Your reports will read like; “had a discussion about best approach to unit tests with James and he suggested some important optimizations which I have made.”

You have scoped your problem as an “engineering” problem when it is realistically More of a “peer psychology management” problem.

As long as you are likeable, that’s what really matters imo. If I understand the situation correctly.

Elon musk would probably hate this answer. He probably realistically has a ton of people doing exactly this working for him. And they are his favorite people because they want to hear his genius ideas.

Probably because there is no worthwhile business model. Selling single chips doesn’t work. And they tried bundling with cloud services to get it and that probably didn’t work. And by “work” I mean: Generate the levels of business required for Google cloud to care.

You are correct.

If you lay them off there are lots of expenses. If you scare them off then they will leave for free.

He is attempting to shake the tree before taking over on purpose.

They probably have a layoff coming which is closer to 50% than to 10%. Does he want to be the one who does it? Probably not. Does Intuit need another CEO floating around? Probably not. He pretty clearly feels not much meaningful work is happening if everyone is focused on politics.

Does a mail platform need that many people? Look at the economy. It is related to this email sure, specifically it is related to his opinion on how engaged and productive staff are being.

I was working at a similar company the last two years. I was completely bored and not learning anything. Now I feel like I am learning more in a daily basis than I learned in an average month in Big Co. at a startup.

Working at the big companies is a bit like choosing a local maximum. Yeah you maxed out comp for whatever your role is in the industry. But now you flattened your growth and learning curve.

There are extreme greater heights you can reach…out there in the jungle. But that is unsafe and risky to do.

To go up, you end up having to go down, first. That means letting go of the false local Minimum you have achieved (which feels like a maximum).

That means less money in something more risky and nascent to get way more money and promotions and experience … later.

Startups are a completely different “skill tree.” I realized I would rather make less money and work harder if I was learning more and meeting a lot more people.

Easier to do when you are younger. Much, much harder to do when you are older.

You need to write a coherent plan if you are going to take a risk.

1. What is your plan A,B,C and D if A fails? Seriously. Write it down. If I quit and the startup fails or whatever, then what? Write it out.

2. You better be choosing something very high growth and exciting if you are walking away from big money. I left to join Web3 because I believe Web3 is a $100 trillion (all money on earth) market and don’t see any indication that the incentives for it to grow are going to slow down.

There are only a few markets right now that fit this bill. Climate Tech looks really good.

If you quit and join some low growth market, what’s the point. You should quit to get a very rare combination of hard to get skills.

FAANG sucks because it is a race to see who can sit there and tolerate FAANG the longest. If you are creative, you won’t last. Ideal FAANG employee is more patient.

So do you have something better to do with your time? If you are just bored, but don’t have a goal, that is insufficient.

I feel this article misses a lot of the historical context when RoboCop was created, it's themes and why it fit this time. I don't see how you can talk about RoboCop without mentioning the cultural climate at the time.

Rewinding to the 1980s.

Reagan was president for two terms, Giuliani was cleaning up the mob using RICO during these time periods. The War on Drugs was raging. Communism was still enemy #1 (See: Rocky IV). It was truly a very right-wing time. For whatever, themes around individuals taking power into their own hands to "Reform" corrupt systems (cities). Like Frank Miller's Sin City, these are absolutely right-wing themes. "Cleaning Corruption" is one of the most conservative motivations from a psychological standpoint.

Others here have mentioned the slate of 80's action movies but it felt like 100% of the culture was heading this direction. Frank Miller's Batman approaches at the time, for example, were strongly echoing similar themes: Vigilante justice in the backdrop of political deterioration. Rambo, Predator, Commando, Total Recall, Scarface.

I think it all started with movies like Dirty Harry and Serpico and then just got more and more extreme leading into the 1980s.

You also cannot leave out Judge Dredd comics. There are similarities between Judge Dredd and RoboCop, I have a hard time believing there was no influence. Judge Dredd also had this magic gun that could do different tricks like shoot through walls etc, lived in a corrupt mega city of the future.

I feel in some ways RoboCop was almost like "Serpico + Dirty Harry if you turn everything up to 1,000." Serpico also had this theme of the good cop who is nearly killed and sent to the hospital due to corrupt system etc.