sorry to vent, wondering if others feel the same. so here i am with a few grad degrees to my name, working a comfortable job in solid Tier 2 tech. im usually promoted ahead of schedule and compensated really well for the work that comes easy and yet... i feel that i could do better running a company or at least in a CTO role. not better financially for me, but for society. i feel like our industry is broken in so many ways and i can’t begin to amass the power i need to make Adobe’s codebase what it should be or change our hiring practices, etc. Adobe is a great company and im greatful to work here but software needs to start in a different place. - Everyone working in cubicles — bad idea - untested/untestable codebases == bug to be fixed asap - teams need to be cross functional and empowered - majority of hires need to be low level (id rather promote known quanitities to senior) and then follow aprenticeship model. i see so many Masters and PhDs who take a year or more to fully onboard - open source > inner source > private repo. there are reasons for latter but one should always strive to keep code as open as possible - there are no architects. if you have that title, what does it mean? that you dont code? the. how the crap do you know what others should code? every swe is an architect - while we are on a subject, i am an MLE. why do we have MLEs? MLE is an SWE. Do we have sort algorithm specialists? then we can talk about about how tech should start from a place of humanity a-la Tristan Harris there is just so much experimentation one can do in a small company setting and so much good in the community and for your customers and employees. i just feel like with my technical abilities and business education im wasting my time in a big company but most startups are less ethical and too focused on making money fast with s**t software
Why don't you check chan Zuckerberg institute
Disingenuous at best. These guys have the ability to influence change and instead contribute to the problem and set this up on the side
Interesting.. I didn't know too much of their efficacy
Reading this I'm thinking how you would avoid some of the things you're seeing if you started from scratch? For instance startups need to make money fast to survive. How do you push that environment to do software right above all? Plus you need to do a lot of business up front and will be heavily relying on the team. It might be fun to start a company though if you have an idea and can afford the risk. Sometimes management in companies need to learn about ways they can improve (plus it'll make them look better by doing it). I wonder if you could bring up issues internally. I'm saying this without knowing the culture there. For example, we have a "busting bureaucracy" internal site to make our voices heard and it gets immediate feedback (not always a good response though). Of course it needs to be described in a way on how it'll benefit the company.
Thanks, completely agree that it would be hard to avoid those pitfalls. This is the business equivalent of the grand software redesign and we all know how well those usually work. I am trying internally and making some impact... but it is so slow. I spent the last year pushing an idea so obvious it should have been a no brainer. It is fully implemented and people four levels up management chain are happy with it (by the time they see it my name is not associated with it, but whatever) but it was one year of effectively having a part time job to get one thing
Shut up and start a company. Your privilege and sense of entitlement will leak out of your backside in a couple of years. Then you will be back at Adobe, working the same job, but without the whining.
I miss my cubicle. Open floor kind of sucks.
Open floor plan offices hamper innovation, creativity, and productivity. https://youtu.be/9-UkcGT2Eak
I worked at adobe and left to start my own company. It was extremely gratifying but it’s not an easy path at all. Make sure you have a large nest egg if you decide to go that route.
TC ? Yoe ?
300k (not in the Bay) , almost 10YOE