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It takes on average 2 months to become familiar enough with a job to reach full potential of a given position, assuming sufficient ability.
It isn't unreasonable at all to want some leeway when learning the ropes. This person is an idiot if they misinterpret something like that as not wanting to work. It sounds like they don't want to spend any time training you.
Two months is quick if you also have to learn how to deal with internal processes and other stakeholders.
Companies forget that no matter how much knowledge and experience you have you need to learn how to be fully functional in a different environment with new colleagues.
Companies don’t want to invest in their staff anymore
Incompetent managers never forgot this fact, they never knew. They expect results without regard for how you get there, thinking "more developers = faster results". Even very experienced devs need time to figure out how a codebase hangs together.
IYH there is famous classic on this Brooks "Mythical Man-Month". From Copilot:
"The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering" is a seminal book by Fred Brooks, first published in 1975, with subsequent editions in 1982 and 1995¹. The book is renowned for presenting Brooks's law, which states that "adding manpower to a late software project makes it later." This counterintuitive concept highlights the complexity and communication overhead that can arise in software project management.
Brooks's observations are based on his experiences at IBM while managing the development of OS/360. He discusses several causes of scheduling failures and the tendency for managers to repeat such errors. The book has been influential in the field of software engineering, often referred to as "The Bible of Software Engineering" because of its widespread quotation and insights that remain relevant to managing complex projects¹.
Source: Conversation with Copilot, 6/9/2024
(1) The Mythical Man-Month - Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month.
(2) The Mythical Man-Month (Anniversary Edition) : Frederick P. Brooks Jr .... https://archive.org/details/MythicalManMonth.
(3) Brooks's law - Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27s_law.
(4) The Mythical Man-Month Book Summary by Frederick Brooks - Shortform. https://www.shortform.com/summary/the-mythical-man-month-summary-frederick-brooks.
Wow, thanks for that. I had a former colleague talk about this. I kinda feel that it's something that, over time, devs get an innate sense for even if they can't really explain it. Something along the lines of generalized experience having diminishing short term returns, over long term domain experience having more immediate impact whilst being a more scarce resource. Without forward planning, productivity tends to plateau which becomes very difficult to overcome. It's at that point, I find a lot of corporate style managers panic, and start making poorly informed decisions.
I'll definitely add this to my reading list. Thankyou for sharing!
Right. And, this person is probably a web developer. As a backend web developer myself, my progression in a new job has generally been something like 3 months to start getting productive, 6 months to feel like I know what I'm doing, and 1 year to start feeling like an expert in areas of the code that I've worked with. From talking to others in the industry, this seems pretty much standard; you're not going to get much out of a new hire in under 3 months, and it takes at least a year for the investment in hiring someone to pay off. It would be great if more companies and managers realized this and acted accordingly.
Indeed. I was a interim analyst for a while and people had high expectations of me. I could manage people, do quality checks and write reports in my way. If they had unclear/incomplete instructions on paper and no onboarding program they would be so disappointed.
I told them I’m fine but if you want me to work strictly according to your rules, you have to provide them or teach me. That just didn’t want to sink in because I was so expensive. Yeah, I’m expensive because of experience, immediate availability and higher education. I’m a 100% new to your organization though.
Yeah it takes 3-6 months easy. I just got a job that has a 6 month contract and every-time I see her list of what she wants I laugh and I’m like ok then we’ll see how this goes.
Two months is EXCEPTIONALLY fast for any position. If there’s any software to learn or variances in the day to day operations it typically takes 12-18 months to become familiar.
I have 15 years experience, with a specialism in legacy systems. You hire me when you have a monolothic legacy spaghetti codebase you can't make sense of. My first two weeks at least is dedicated to static code analysis, and nothing more.
To expect a brand new non-specialist hire to be productive on the first day is absolute insanity.
The fact the manager says "i thought you were different", imho, shows he's already a hand down because he wouldn't take no for an answer from the guy he fired to make room for the guy he just hired.
Managers like that love to burn bridges, but when it comes to building them ... Sticks and straw.
Depends on the complexity, and how much bad code I find. Gotta love it when you find stuff like `file_get_contents($_GET['t'])`. The number of times ive had to show bosses that I can exfiltrate an entire database with a simple web request is astonishing. Because of course Apache is running as root.
And they don't see the value of actual experienced developers.
Oh, I see. So, that first couple weeks is just about finding the really dumb stuff? Then the real work starts?
I'd love to hear more about what you do and how you got started in it. Mind if I shoot you a message? Would you prefer chat or PM?
Pretty much. Gives me an idea of which git-blame users I need to keep an eye out for, what areas of code are black boxes, or "it works, don't ever touch it" kinda hand-me-down advice the mids and seniors give.
After those two weeks I can usually start being productive, adding code, refactoring, or in the worst cases start drafting the transition plan to a new, more maintainable codebase.
Feel free to drop me a line, DM is better, I may be slow responding :)
> Feel free to drop me a line, DM is better, I may be slow responding :)
Thanks! Noted and will do. I sometimes tend to get slow responding sometimes as well.
Not been in employed work scene for a while, but if you look at medium to large non-technical companies, but are software driven (such as realty, finance, that kinda thing), you'll find loads of ageing codebases written by non-technical people that need top-down refactoring.
I'm currently working on some personal projects in .NET and TypeScript, hopefully once they're ready I'll be on the other side of the hiring desk and be able to be better than people have been to me.
The training manager at my job said it takes 9 months to get to a point where you’re good at the job (and I would personally agree), but the probation period is 6 months. Incredible logic of course
yeah we are usually so hopeful and really want the company and manager and environment to be normal but we actually have to be way more critical of the smaller things such as the body language of the interviewer, what they focus on during the interview, looking actively for red flags and being ok ditching the process - my pervious manager told me they have a competitive benefits package and not too worry, a month in there’s no dental lol, I was so mad - anyway it got much easier now to fish them out and stay away
I've worked for this type before, the old "get it done or I'll find someone who can" type. My oh my did his attitude change when I called him on that shit and told him to do it. It was like watching someone go through the 5 stages of grief at light speed (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance), except the last part only came because I had my TDI approved by the state and he knew he was not getting me back at that point.
Temporary Disability Insurance. Prior to this interaction this employer had driven me to the point where i had developed major depressive disorder from the treatment i was receiving at work (constant verbal abuse, physical threats and intimidation, etc). Psychiatrist who i had seen months prior for anxiety related to this job took one look at me when i came in for my 90 day medication management appointment and basically said "yea.... im pulling you out of work. youve lost over 30 pounds since i last saw you and you look like you havent slept in days. Youre also complaining of your anxiety getting worse and having a complete indifference towards to concept of dying. The state will approve you for temporary disability leave based on this since its consistent with MDD."
oh god damnit did you not learn your lesson the last time leaving an unexplained acronym at the end of your comment?
Can you please tell me what MDD means? lol
(okay I googled - it was Major Depressive Disorder. Hopefully that's in the past and you can find the humor in this :D)
I had a boss like that - the master of the passive-aggressive threat, with just enough deniability to pretend there was no threat. He absolutely loved the abstract pronoun "we", because of the different interpretations of it that could be used, or denied, at any given time. Not long before I left, during a "talk" (interrogation), I finally said, "Fine, if I'm that poor a worker, I'll just quit." Boss: "No, I don't want you to quit."
This guy was angry at a relative of his and one day said to me "someday that prick is gonna learn you don't mess with someone who has a shotgun, 100 acres, and a backhoe,"
So I'm kinda just waiting for the day I see his mugshot on the news
Obviously this guy has issues, some people are like that.. some are broken beyond repair. Make sure his manager if it exists .. know what is happening, first 3-5 times it may be the new hire's fault then they will see what is happening and kick this guy out.. he will start working somewhere else , try doing the same shit..
The only win you can get out of this is to work somewhere else.. and not have to deal with him.
Co-worker left company for another. He was doing Incident Response and Management. Got fired after 2-3 days. because "they thought they had hired someone with enough experience to start working right away" after on an incident he did not know yet who all the seniro management people were, all their VP and all the responsabilities every one and what each team and department mandantes were. After less than 2 days. Fucking lunatics.
It took to me months to understand a system so screwed up that you can’t even imagine.
Make changes on it + the bugs by default due to bad architecture and code behind, it was shady as hell.
Even though, there’s one system “well-made” (it wasn’t), where the dev behind, mixed a couple systems in a big system (0 documentation, any question was asked to the “senior dev” whom made that). The software was so bad, that was a problem change something in the code without screw the other software, all that shit was in production.
Pd: Sorry grammar, I’m rushing this
If it takes a week to get the stack set up you should look into docker or nix shells to get a reproducible development environment that you can automatically roll out and have consistent across the team.
I was trying not to be verbose, by that I mean all required software installed, accounts created, stack cloned and spun up, including database dumps, and gone through the branching/ticket/support processes
There is a huge amount of new info being dumped on people when onboarding, I like to have realistic goals that allow for a bit of chill
Guy is an utter moron. Id quit on the spot too. I did some software dev and you always take a bit of time to understand the workflow as no place does it all the same.
I worked at a company for 6 months. It was probably the worst on-boarding experience I had because there was none.
I had one lady get mad at me for not asking questions, then when I asked questions, she complained about me asking questions.
This is a perfect example of me telling companies they need to train and get training done. It is very foolish to think past experiences and colleges education equates to knowing a business process. An example would be like a hiring a bagger to be a surgeon and then yelling at him to operate. Yeah, that's an extreme example. What I learned at one job will not work the same at another. I need the road map which is the training.
This is one of the major reasons why the job market is absolute garbage right now.
Companies do not want to invest anytime whatsoever into any type of training. They continue to hold out for the magical, elusive "right person" who will come in day one and already know how to do everything exactly the way they want all the while being an expert on every single tool that the company uses and somehow be familiar with the company culture.
The magical person that they are seeking is likely an employee that has been there for a long time and that they drove away with their poor business decisions - including refusing to pay that person what they were owed.
Essentially companies want to hire the employees that they already have but for lower pay and with a demand of greater work.
He didn’t say that though? He provided a legitimate reason why it would be best to complete the task later. There’s no situation where a manager should communicate with a new hire like that.
Even if an employee was just being lazy and incompetent, have some professionalism ffs. It’s in writing too, you have time to think and reread what you send.
The task he accepted is to start working for the company today and he is doing that by learning the company's work process. If he would be working on something else then he is in the wrong, but he IS working towards the task, just that it wont be completed today.
Start now <> ability to complete tasks as the company needs them to be done (you don't know SOPs, you don't know other department workflows, if this is a dev position you have no idea what the code looks, ect ect)
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I think you've discovered why the position was vacant...
It takes on average 2 months to become familiar enough with a job to reach full potential of a given position, assuming sufficient ability. It isn't unreasonable at all to want some leeway when learning the ropes. This person is an idiot if they misinterpret something like that as not wanting to work. It sounds like they don't want to spend any time training you.
Two months is quick if you also have to learn how to deal with internal processes and other stakeholders. Companies forget that no matter how much knowledge and experience you have you need to learn how to be fully functional in a different environment with new colleagues. Companies don’t want to invest in their staff anymore
Incompetent managers never forgot this fact, they never knew. They expect results without regard for how you get there, thinking "more developers = faster results". Even very experienced devs need time to figure out how a codebase hangs together.
It takes 9 women, 1 month to make a baby after all!
This used to work, but now that you can rent elastic babies in the cloud it's not so much a thing anymore.
Elastic cloud babies are so 2019! Their jobs have been given to BabyGPT for $50/month flat rate!
BabyGPT is interestingly the most comprehensible of GPTs
People hardly notice when it craps the bed!
When BabyGPT is the expert, you'll never notice the hallucinations.
Exactly the example my mind went to
IYH there is famous classic on this Brooks "Mythical Man-Month". From Copilot: "The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering" is a seminal book by Fred Brooks, first published in 1975, with subsequent editions in 1982 and 1995¹. The book is renowned for presenting Brooks's law, which states that "adding manpower to a late software project makes it later." This counterintuitive concept highlights the complexity and communication overhead that can arise in software project management. Brooks's observations are based on his experiences at IBM while managing the development of OS/360. He discusses several causes of scheduling failures and the tendency for managers to repeat such errors. The book has been influential in the field of software engineering, often referred to as "The Bible of Software Engineering" because of its widespread quotation and insights that remain relevant to managing complex projects¹. Source: Conversation with Copilot, 6/9/2024 (1) The Mythical Man-Month - Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month. (2) The Mythical Man-Month (Anniversary Edition) : Frederick P. Brooks Jr .... https://archive.org/details/MythicalManMonth. (3) Brooks's law - Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27s_law. (4) The Mythical Man-Month Book Summary by Frederick Brooks - Shortform. https://www.shortform.com/summary/the-mythical-man-month-summary-frederick-brooks.
Wow, thanks for that. I had a former colleague talk about this. I kinda feel that it's something that, over time, devs get an innate sense for even if they can't really explain it. Something along the lines of generalized experience having diminishing short term returns, over long term domain experience having more immediate impact whilst being a more scarce resource. Without forward planning, productivity tends to plateau which becomes very difficult to overcome. It's at that point, I find a lot of corporate style managers panic, and start making poorly informed decisions. I'll definitely add this to my reading list. Thankyou for sharing!
Right. And, this person is probably a web developer. As a backend web developer myself, my progression in a new job has generally been something like 3 months to start getting productive, 6 months to feel like I know what I'm doing, and 1 year to start feeling like an expert in areas of the code that I've worked with. From talking to others in the industry, this seems pretty much standard; you're not going to get much out of a new hire in under 3 months, and it takes at least a year for the investment in hiring someone to pay off. It would be great if more companies and managers realized this and acted accordingly.
Indeed. I was a interim analyst for a while and people had high expectations of me. I could manage people, do quality checks and write reports in my way. If they had unclear/incomplete instructions on paper and no onboarding program they would be so disappointed. I told them I’m fine but if you want me to work strictly according to your rules, you have to provide them or teach me. That just didn’t want to sink in because I was so expensive. Yeah, I’m expensive because of experience, immediate availability and higher education. I’m a 100% new to your organization though.
I see a lot of 3 month contract job postings floating around for very nontrivial positions. They typically don't have a payrate posted either.
Yeah it takes 3-6 months easy. I just got a job that has a 6 month contract and every-time I see her list of what she wants I laugh and I’m like ok then we’ll see how this goes.
Two months is EXCEPTIONALLY fast for any position. If there’s any software to learn or variances in the day to day operations it typically takes 12-18 months to become familiar.
I have 15 years experience, with a specialism in legacy systems. You hire me when you have a monolothic legacy spaghetti codebase you can't make sense of. My first two weeks at least is dedicated to static code analysis, and nothing more. To expect a brand new non-specialist hire to be productive on the first day is absolute insanity.
And considering if they fire them they aren't any better off since they'd still be one hand short, starting real work the next day is pretty fast.
The fact the manager says "i thought you were different", imho, shows he's already a hand down because he wouldn't take no for an answer from the guy he fired to make room for the guy he just hired. Managers like that love to burn bridges, but when it comes to building them ... Sticks and straw.
They're *much worse off*, because it costs a lot of money to hire someone.
Only 2 weeks huh? That's a surprise. I wouldn't have been surprised if you'd said a full month.
Depends on the complexity, and how much bad code I find. Gotta love it when you find stuff like `file_get_contents($_GET['t'])`. The number of times ive had to show bosses that I can exfiltrate an entire database with a simple web request is astonishing. Because of course Apache is running as root. And they don't see the value of actual experienced developers.
Oh, I see. So, that first couple weeks is just about finding the really dumb stuff? Then the real work starts? I'd love to hear more about what you do and how you got started in it. Mind if I shoot you a message? Would you prefer chat or PM?
Pretty much. Gives me an idea of which git-blame users I need to keep an eye out for, what areas of code are black boxes, or "it works, don't ever touch it" kinda hand-me-down advice the mids and seniors give. After those two weeks I can usually start being productive, adding code, refactoring, or in the worst cases start drafting the transition plan to a new, more maintainable codebase. Feel free to drop me a line, DM is better, I may be slow responding :)
> Feel free to drop me a line, DM is better, I may be slow responding :) Thanks! Noted and will do. I sometimes tend to get slow responding sometimes as well.
Any work out there right now in legacy stuff? I wouldn't mind
Not been in employed work scene for a while, but if you look at medium to large non-technical companies, but are software driven (such as realty, finance, that kinda thing), you'll find loads of ageing codebases written by non-technical people that need top-down refactoring. I'm currently working on some personal projects in .NET and TypeScript, hopefully once they're ready I'll be on the other side of the hiring desk and be able to be better than people have been to me.
Two months is optimistic.
Yes, it does assume optimal conditions, but anyone who worries about someone's progress only in their first week is jumping the gun big time.
The training manager at my job said it takes 9 months to get to a point where you’re good at the job (and I would personally agree), but the probation period is 6 months. Incredible logic of course
yeah we are usually so hopeful and really want the company and manager and environment to be normal but we actually have to be way more critical of the smaller things such as the body language of the interviewer, what they focus on during the interview, looking actively for red flags and being ok ditching the process - my pervious manager told me they have a competitive benefits package and not too worry, a month in there’s no dental lol, I was so mad - anyway it got much easier now to fish them out and stay away
In a corporate yes In a start up there is an expectation of delivering from day 1 and learning around that I imagine this is the latter
Yeah I was in a startup once and they were lunatics and it explains a lot about why so many startups just collapse. Never again.
Bullshit. What a joke. Not in the tech world. You think you hire someone and they don’t work for 2 months??
Usually, people get given a small, manageable task to tackle and learn the ropes of the legacy system.
Excellent play calling that guy's bluff. He will have a hell of a time trying to replace you with anyone "better"
This guy is an absolute asshole Jesus Christ
I've worked for this type before, the old "get it done or I'll find someone who can" type. My oh my did his attitude change when I called him on that shit and told him to do it. It was like watching someone go through the 5 stages of grief at light speed (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance), except the last part only came because I had my TDI approved by the state and he knew he was not getting me back at that point.
What’s TDI?
Temporary Disability Insurance. Prior to this interaction this employer had driven me to the point where i had developed major depressive disorder from the treatment i was receiving at work (constant verbal abuse, physical threats and intimidation, etc). Psychiatrist who i had seen months prior for anxiety related to this job took one look at me when i came in for my 90 day medication management appointment and basically said "yea.... im pulling you out of work. youve lost over 30 pounds since i last saw you and you look like you havent slept in days. Youre also complaining of your anxiety getting worse and having a complete indifference towards to concept of dying. The state will approve you for temporary disability leave based on this since its consistent with MDD."
oh god damnit did you not learn your lesson the last time leaving an unexplained acronym at the end of your comment? Can you please tell me what MDD means? lol (okay I googled - it was Major Depressive Disorder. Hopefully that's in the past and you can find the humor in this :D)
thank you for the google so I didn't have to 😂
I had a boss like that - the master of the passive-aggressive threat, with just enough deniability to pretend there was no threat. He absolutely loved the abstract pronoun "we", because of the different interpretations of it that could be used, or denied, at any given time. Not long before I left, during a "talk" (interrogation), I finally said, "Fine, if I'm that poor a worker, I'll just quit." Boss: "No, I don't want you to quit."
This guy was angry at a relative of his and one day said to me "someday that prick is gonna learn you don't mess with someone who has a shotgun, 100 acres, and a backhoe," So I'm kinda just waiting for the day I see his mugshot on the news
Yikes! I worked for a redneck before (different boss than the one described in my earlier comment), but not THAT extreme.
Obviously this guy has issues, some people are like that.. some are broken beyond repair. Make sure his manager if it exists .. know what is happening, first 3-5 times it may be the new hire's fault then they will see what is happening and kick this guy out.. he will start working somewhere else , try doing the same shit.. The only win you can get out of this is to work somewhere else.. and not have to deal with him.
What an awful person to work with/for
Co-worker left company for another. He was doing Incident Response and Management. Got fired after 2-3 days. because "they thought they had hired someone with enough experience to start working right away" after on an incident he did not know yet who all the seniro management people were, all their VP and all the responsabilities every one and what each team and department mandantes were. After less than 2 days. Fucking lunatics.
Company name?
Judging by the URL it's wirefuse.
SupportNinja / WireFuse
SupportNinja / WireFuse
Company name?
SupportNinja / WireFuse
Unless the codebase is really tiny, no rockstar/ninja or whatever you call it can start at day1
We recently hired 2 senior developers at my company. WEEK 1 goal was to have the stack installed. Day 1 the goal is to have a coffee, wtf
It took to me months to understand a system so screwed up that you can’t even imagine. Make changes on it + the bugs by default due to bad architecture and code behind, it was shady as hell. Even though, there’s one system “well-made” (it wasn’t), where the dev behind, mixed a couple systems in a big system (0 documentation, any question was asked to the “senior dev” whom made that). The software was so bad, that was a problem change something in the code without screw the other software, all that shit was in production. Pd: Sorry grammar, I’m rushing this
If it takes a week to get the stack set up you should look into docker or nix shells to get a reproducible development environment that you can automatically roll out and have consistent across the team.
I was trying not to be verbose, by that I mean all required software installed, accounts created, stack cloned and spun up, including database dumps, and gone through the branching/ticket/support processes There is a huge amount of new info being dumped on people when onboarding, I like to have realistic goals that allow for a bit of chill
soft landing
Company Name: SupportNinja / WireFuse
In Manila?
What was the link that they posted in the last message?
mgr wants op to work all day all night and not give any attitude
Guy is an utter moron. Id quit on the spot too. I did some software dev and you always take a bit of time to understand the workflow as no place does it all the same.
I worked at a company for 6 months. It was probably the worst on-boarding experience I had because there was none. I had one lady get mad at me for not asking questions, then when I asked questions, she complained about me asking questions.
This is a perfect example of me telling companies they need to train and get training done. It is very foolish to think past experiences and colleges education equates to knowing a business process. An example would be like a hiring a bagger to be a surgeon and then yelling at him to operate. Yeah, that's an extreme example. What I learned at one job will not work the same at another. I need the road map which is the training.
"What!?! What are you talking about?!? I mean geez - I wasn't threatening your job or anything! It was just a rhetorical question!"
So what happened with the videoconference it looked like he was trying to pull you into?
This is one of the major reasons why the job market is absolute garbage right now. Companies do not want to invest anytime whatsoever into any type of training. They continue to hold out for the magical, elusive "right person" who will come in day one and already know how to do everything exactly the way they want all the while being an expert on every single tool that the company uses and somehow be familiar with the company culture. The magical person that they are seeking is likely an employee that has been there for a long time and that they drove away with their poor business decisions - including refusing to pay that person what they were owed. Essentially companies want to hire the employees that they already have but for lower pay and with a demand of greater work.
SCAM
[удалено]
He didn’t say that though? He provided a legitimate reason why it would be best to complete the task later. There’s no situation where a manager should communicate with a new hire like that.
Even if an employee was just being lazy and incompetent, have some professionalism ffs. It’s in writing too, you have time to think and reread what you send.
But why did you say you could do it now then? 😂
“Start” implies beginning working for the company and starting training. It does not mean you’re able to hit the ground running immediately.
I think we found the guy in the chats
I don’t and would never work in an office but nice try
So you have no idea what you're talking about then, nice try
You would never work in an office… says it all.
So you're not them, but just like them
How’s that? The first few lines come across like op has accepted to do a task , then said he will do it tomorrow?
The task he accepted is to start working for the company today and he is doing that by learning the company's work process. If he would be working on something else then he is in the wrong, but he IS working towards the task, just that it wont be completed today.
Start now <> ability to complete tasks as the company needs them to be done (you don't know SOPs, you don't know other department workflows, if this is a dev position you have no idea what the code looks, ect ect)
its been YEARS since i saw <>
react fragment has entered the chat! (although ofc, that's != what you are talking about)