Nah, realizing I don't have to constantly be thinking about relationship was what made things a lot less stressful for me. It's still stressful. But at least I get to mind my own business. Not saying everyone is like me. Maybe no one is. But it was better for me to mind my own business and internally say fork you to all the superficial relationships.
You should prioritize your mental health, but what the article is saying is that you actually need to GET AWAY from that type of situation, and the most likely route is using a chain of other people's hands to pull you out of the situation.
If you just want to hunker down and do your own thing you might survive, but the best thing to do is probably move on from such places (or work with your team when it gets bad to get out of it ya rite lol it goes on forever)
This is fine, until it comes time for layoffs. Like it or not, software development is an intensly social enterprise. Of course there are lone geniuses out there doing their own thing, and if that's you great. But it isn't how enterprise teams work. Particularly as you reach L7, every single aspect of your job will become political in one way or another.
Except the layoffs come from someone's spreadsheet 3 levels up, so even if everyone likes you that may not be enough. It definitely helps, but not guaranteed.
The point isn’t about saving yourself from the layoff, it’s about having a network to help you find a new job, because yeah, the layoffs are disconnected, heartless, and clumsy. If you’re always building at least a couple relationships, some of those people inevitably quit on their own, branch out, and after years of this, you end up with a decently sized network to help you out (and you can help them too when the time comes)
This is true even outside of software development. Working at pretty much any company is an inherently social enterprise dictated by those same rules you correctly pointed out.
I would not know what is there, beyond relationships? Money does not buy happiness. Doing a good job and never getting credit for it... would make me feel miserable. Maybe I'm in such a lucky situation that I can say this, being able to put relationships above all else. Or maybe it is just my attachment grounded personality.
There is a difference between tolerating a few things here and there because it’s a high stress environment and being okay with psychopaths mistreating and abusing you with the excuse of “high stress environment”. You do not need to put up with the latter. Fork em and you do not need those relationships to find your next job. The article trivializes a high stress work environment by putting everyone at the same baseline of “everyone is good, it’s just that the situation sucks”. In reality a lot of people are not good and the workplace is only “high stress” because those people are part of the workplace.
Indeed, often the workplace is high stress because the direct manager is incompetent and passes down their stress instead of shielding you off and empowering you. Networking- wise not such an issue to say 'fork you' to such incompetent soul, though I always keep in mind everyone deserves some degree of respect.
You're not alone, though we are rare. I desperately want to go back to minding my own business. Except... everyone I work with now seems to believe I've either lied my way in or desperately need a friend.
We're doing contracting without the upside/autonomy, let's not delude ourselves
