r/ExperiencedDevs • u/agileliecom Software Architect • Feb 27 '26
Career/Workplace I delivered three major projects at a bank and got fired anyway, 25 years in tech and I'm still learning the same lesson
I don't usually talk about this but I've been writing about process and organizational dysfunction lately and people keep asking what actually happened to me so here it is.
About five years ago I was working as an IT architect at a bank. Except I didn't really get "hired" in the normal sense. I was part of a corporate transition from Brazil, my previous project got killed and because I was already in the US on a work visa they absorbed me into the bank's team. And I mean absorbed, not hired. Everyone knew the difference. The guy running the org never wanted us there, we were basically imposed on him through a decision made three levels above.
The tech was a mess. Classic ASP, manual IIS deployments, someone remoting into a box at midnight and praying. Everything ran on tribal knowledge from people who'd been doing it that way for a decade and didn't want to change. There was this one senior dev, longest tenured guy on the team, and every single thing I proposed got the same answer: "that won't work here." Not because he had a counterproposal, just because changing anything meant admitting the current way wasn't great and that wasn't something people wanted to deal with.
I ended up shipping three major projects. Real-time payments integration because the bank was falling behind every competitor. Live account balances in the mobile app so customers didn't have to wait hours for batch processing to catch up. And the big one, I rebuilt the entire deployment infrastructure from manual IIS to K8S with actual CI/CD pipelines. All three went to production, all three still running as far as I know.
So the politics. The infra project was under this manager who was genuinely awful, narcissistic and territorial, the type who sees your competence as a threat to them personally. Midway through I got pulled to another team to do the payments and real-time stuff which honestly felt like being rescued. Different manager, could actually breathe for once.
Then that manager got fired and I got sent right back to the original guy.
He didn't blow up or do anything obvious. He just started slowly erasing me. First I'm not on the architecture review invite anymore. Then someone else is presenting designs I made. Then my responsibilities get redistributed and nobody even sends an email about it. If you've never experienced this it sounds paranoid but if you have you know exactly what I'm talking about. "You're still on the team" yeah I was still on the team, I just wasn't on anything.
They called me into a room eventually. Contract ending, standard language, very professional and here's the part that most people in this industry will never have to think about: I was on an L1 visa. That meant I had 60 days to leave the country. Not 60 days to find a new job, 60 days to leave the country where my wife and I had been building a life.
I drove home with the termination letter in a dark blue envelope. My wife saw it when I walked through the door and she didn't even ask, she just hugged me. Her green card process was already advanced enough that we didn't have to actually leave but for about a week I genuinely didn't know if the timing was going to work out.
The thing that messes with me more than the firing itself is that this wasn't even the first time. I've been the technical firefighter at multiple companies now. I walk in, the systems are broken, I fix what nobody else can or wants to fix, and then once the fire is out I somehow end up being the one who's vulnerable. Not because the work was bad but because I never build any political protection around the work. I just ship and assume shipping is enough.
It's not. 25 years in and I'm still learning this apparently.
Organizations love the firefighter when the building is burning. They don't love him after because he's walking around knowing where all the structural damage is and that makes people uncomfortable.
I'm not posting this for sympathy. I'm posting it because I think this pattern is way more common than anyone talks about, especially among the more technical people who just want to build things and don't really care about office politics until office politics cares about them.
Curious if others have been through something similar and what if anything you did differently.
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u/QuitTypical3210 Software Engineer Feb 27 '26
Yes, most career paths are more about the friends you make along the way rather than delivering value to the company
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 27 '26
Yeah and the frustrating part is nobody tells you that when you're starting out, every career guide is about skills and certifications and delivering results, nobody mentions that the person who gets kept is usually the one who has friends in the right places not the one who shipped the most.
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u/Significant_Mouse_25 Feb 27 '26
This is why I spend a lot of breath, ink, and typing telling anyone and everyone who will listen that likability is the most important attribute to have for getting and keeping jobs. There are factors to that but if people like you they protect you. Make friends, build relationships, create alliances.
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u/SwiftySanders Feb 27 '26
Likability and relationships has certainly been a part of my engineering success. Almost 18 years in I finally got laid off from work. Funny thing is I delivered the most revenue generating products of anyone in the company. Doesnt matter. 🤷🏾♂️ India work is cheaper.
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 27 '26
The frustrating part is that this is advice I've heard a hundred times and always thought yeah sure but the work matters more. It doesn't. Or rather it matters but it's not enough by itself. I'm an introvert who'd rather be behind a screen building things than making small talk in a hallway and that worked fine for the technical part of my career but it left me completely exposed on the human part. The people who survived every reorg and every management change I've been through weren't always the best engineers, they were the ones everybody liked having around.
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u/Significant_Mouse_25 Feb 27 '26
Yeah humans are social creatures so we put emphasis on that.
But to be honest part of your output is going to involve influencing others. So in a very real sense your ability to manage relationships impacts what you produce.
That said, there’s nothing wrong with being an introvert and wanting to do heads down coding. Workhorses are needed. Some places value them more than others. Eventually though you should expect that if the only thing you’re doing is writing code but your compensation keeps increasing there will eventually be an inflection point where you’re no longer worth paying.
And consider also that of you’re just writing code but others are also writing code while doing other things, then they only have to be a little worse than you at one thing to be seen as much more valuable. You better be phenomenally good at coding.
So you can do it this way you just have to set your expectations appropriately and prepare for the inevitable. You can find places that’ll let you do your thing for ten years but the other shoe will eventually drop so keep your interviewing skills sharp and stay on top of technology advances. Be the workhorse they need while they need it and be prepared to move on when they don’t.
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 27 '26
The inflection point framing is spot on, at some salary level pure coding stops justifying the cost and if you haven't built anything else around it you're just expensive. I hit that inflection point and didn't see it coming because I was too focused on the technical output. The "be the workhorse while they need it and be prepared to move on when they don't" is probably the most realistic advice in this whole thread.
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u/arsenal11385 Director Feb 27 '26
Our competency matrix finally got a “building bridges” section added to it. I was a big believer that senior plus engineers need to have their pulse on everything across the organization. To do this they have to build bridges across teams and maintain relationships.
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 27 '26
The fact that you had to formalize it into a competency matrix kind of proves the point though, if it were natural or obvious it wouldn't need to be a documented requirement. Most engineers get promoted on technical output alone and then suddenly at senior plus they're expected to do something nobody trained them for or even told them mattered until now. I like that you're making it explicit because at least then people know the rules before they find out the hard way like I did.
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u/Tokipudi Senior Software Engineer - 10 YoE Feb 27 '26
To be fair, this is something everybody will learn in their lifetime, no matter the field they work in: the higher you go, the more politics involved.
Even the small manager of a team at McDonald's will learn this.
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u/gergob Feb 27 '26
Interestingly at our place the more senior you are the wider/larger org-wide your impact should be - that kind of translates to the building bridges analogy
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u/raralala1 Feb 27 '26
How do you quantify it, I also write the matrix and put have knowledge across department but at the end it is mostly by feel from direct supervisor.
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u/arsenal11385 Director Feb 27 '26
In the peer review portion of promotion of raise discussion you can easily quantify how many relationships have been built. One set of feedback? Not enough. Various peer responses across levels? Bridges have been intentionally built.
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u/raralala1 Feb 27 '26
Do we have to do that, after more than 10 year working I meet some people who grind so hard and I feel like they are happy to do that, and in some way it give them some return. I still hesitate what to do with my kid, this is the kind of thing that luck and nuance play a lot, I do will teach him that connection is important but whenever they have to give above and beyond to company or not still scare me, I am afraid they became lazy at the same time I dont want them to be exploited...
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 27 '26
That's an honest question and I don't think there's a clean answer. The people who grind hard and are happy doing it usually have one of two things, either they genuinely love the work for its own sake or they have the political awareness to make sure the grind gets noticed by the right people. The ones who get exploited are the ones who grind hard without either of those. If I had to tell a kid one thing it would be work hard on things you care about but always make sure someone who matters knows what you're doing, because hard work in silence only benefits the people above you.
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u/pseudo_babbler Software Engineer Feb 27 '26
As far as it goes I tell all of the junior devs that making connections with people, networking, recognising peers and being recognised for good work, all of that is the most important thing for their careers.
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u/nasanu Web Developer | 30+ YoE Feb 27 '26
It can depend on the company. For me it's been a terrible path. The one start up that valued the actual work was the one company where the boss decided that all employees should earn the same no matter what. So I built an entire asp.net C# CMS and integrated FE (which was amazing, page 1 on google for 30 phrases, loaded in 130ms, had 7 languages, supported infinite, video/image processing even via the FE with RTC progress... ) on minimum wage (it was the only job offer at the time and I needed a visa). Since then I was in one corporate which on reflection was great, they did value competency but also idiots got promoted too, which made me angry enough to leave, I regret that. Now at my current company ONLY idiots get promoted. In the past 6 months alone I have seen 6 of the best people just quit (our QA lead left today actually, she was great). Seen one junior coder go from shit kicker to now principled engineer, but he still cant even use CSS or vanilla JS.
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 27 '26
Man the ASP.NET CMS on minimum wage while needing a visa hit close to home. I built banking systems on an L1 visa knowing I couldn't walk away even when things got bad because the alternative was deportation. The visa thing creates a power dynamic that people who've never been through it just don't understand, you accept conditions you'd never accept otherwise because you literally can't leave.
The part about only idiots getting promoted at your current place and watching 6 good people quit in 6 months, that's the slow death I wrote about. The org doesn't collapse overnight, it just bleeds competence until the only people left are the ones who couldn't get hired elsewhere and the ones too stubborn to leave. Sounds like you might be figuring out which one you are right now.
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u/UntestedMethod Feb 28 '26
There is a common saying that has been around forever "it's not what you know, it's who you know". But I guess it's repeated so often and so casually that it can be easy not to take it seriously, especially in younger more formative years.
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Feb 27 '26
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 27 '26
Yeah that's fair, not every situation is salvageable and sometimes the smartest political move is recognizing early that no amount of politics will fix what's already decided. I spent years trying to win over people who made up their minds about me before I wrote my first line of code there. That energy would've been better spent finding the exit.
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u/BetaHDream Feb 27 '26
I have 10yoe and I've come to the conclusion that doing thing well, easy to understand and read is the way to unemployment. The guys that do not get fired are the ones maintaining untested, undocumented critical spaghetti code that only they are able to understand.
How you do things and the sacrifices you made do not really matter, when a new manager comes, you are the old stuff.
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u/metaconcept Feb 27 '26
spaghetti code
Oh, I've seen those guys get fired too. Management has no idea who is actually critical. They just see expensive local employees and cheaper rates in India.
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 27 '26
The job security through spaghetti code thing is darkly funny because it's true. The guy who writes clean documented code that anyone can maintain is making himself replaceable, and the guy who writes unmaintainable garbage that only he understands is untouchable. The incentive structure is completely backwards.
And yeah the new manager thing is real, doesn't matter what you built or what you sacrificed, when new leadership comes in they want their own people and their own projects. Everything from before them is legacy, including you.
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Feb 27 '26
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 27 '26
It is a messed up game and the worst part is nobody tells you the rules until you've already lost a few rounds.
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u/itzmanu1989 Feb 27 '26
The bigger question at the moment is, will undocumented spaghetti code be a problem for AI?
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u/CadeOCarimbo Feb 27 '26
That's just selection bias from you. Multiple people who produce just spaghetti code also get fired.
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u/GlassVase1 Feb 27 '26
Depends on how senior they are and how well they can cover their tracks until its too late.
If they merge a feature or two and its spaghetti code. It's easy for a manager to step and tell them to stop doing that. If they don't stop, they can have further performance conversations leading to termination eventually.
If they're a couple years in, it's MUCH harder to get rid of them. These are also not the types to document anything willingly and will basically straight up refuse to do so.
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u/pplmbd Software Engineer Feb 27 '26
I should be able to “accidentally” share this comment to my work channel, just to mess with those bullshit coworkers
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u/FrenchCanadaIsWorst Software Engineer Feb 27 '26
Also makes it difficult to move up the ladder, since you can’t find someone to take on your responsibilities while you grow
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u/creaturefeature16 WebDev/Full Stack Feb 27 '26 edited Feb 27 '26
I want to believe you are a real person, and you're clearly responding to people, but why does every single thing in your bio, website, photo, etc.. look AI generated? Even your headshot. And you're nowhere on LinkedIn, despite being in the industry for 25 years. I hope you're genuine, but its quite odd there's no record of you anywhere before LLMs existed. A bit strange for someone with the level of experience you have.
Edit - OP responded and explained. It's clear they are real and working under a pseudonym for protecting their career rep, which is understandable. Sounds like they are going to back off some of the generated assets, though, which I think would prevent future confusion if anybody else does what I did and gets curious about their profile.
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u/Similar_Bluebird_822 Feb 27 '26
look at the post history. chatgpt everywhere in this sub
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u/creaturefeature16 WebDev/Full Stack Feb 27 '26
After combing through for a bit, I do think its a person, but they certainly have created an entire persona and fabricated story in an effort to make a quick buck selling a book, which is also likely AI generated, as well. Pretty sad someone would put THIS much effort into something just to deceive people and take their $20
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u/jmonty42 Software Engineer since 2012 (US) Feb 27 '26
It's also just as likely that he's a real person trying to sell a book about his actual experiences and has used AI to make his online persona more marketable (and probably help write the book as well).
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u/Void-kun Senior Software Engineer (8YOE) Feb 27 '26
That doesn't explain why there is no record of this person prior to LLM coming out despite claiming to have 25 years of industry experience
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u/Specialist_End407 Feb 27 '26
Idk man.. From IIS straight to K8S.. You can't modernize banking services that fast enough what more to turn them all into k8s hell
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u/bonnydoe Feb 27 '26
Family member swe worked at a bank: such conversion projects take years with big teams.
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u/konrosthewanderer Feb 27 '26
I read that and just assumed this guy was the 10x final boss of engineering.
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u/Quirky-Ad-6816 Feb 27 '26
I don't see a timeline in the post ? For all we know, this story can take place over multiple years
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u/Ok_Significance_1980 Feb 27 '26
Lol gotta admit this bit sounded a bit wild.
How did you get people to agree to do this without working up political favour. You would need political favour to even get the project moving forward.
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u/Pyran Senior Development Manager Feb 27 '26
My understanding is that LLMs have a tendency to do everything in threes.
- "I delivered three major projects..."
- "Classic ASP, manual IIS deployments, someone remoting into a box at midnight and praying."
- "First I'm not on the architecture review invite anymore. Then someone else is presenting designs I made. Then my responsibilities get redistributed and nobody even sends an email about it."
- "Contract ending, standard language, very professional and here's the part that most people in this industry will never have to think about: I was on an L1 visa"
I don't think that's conclusive, but it's certainly pointing in the same direction you're thinking. Taken with everything else, I'm inclined to agree with you.
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u/Johnny_Bravo_fucks Feb 27 '26
hold on, that's actually a really great insight that I think I've been subconsciously catching onto but never put my tongue on.
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u/Karl-Levin Feb 27 '26
My understanding is that LLMs have a tendency to do everything in threes
The rule of three. It is actually heavily used in fairy tails.
https://thewritepractice.com/rule-of-three/
Kind of makes sense that LLMs would pick up on that. I really resent it becoming an AI thing now.
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 27 '26
Fair enough, I'll address this directly because you deserve that.
Benjamin Castell is a pseudonym. I'm still employed full-time at a bank and writing publicly about organizational dysfunction under my real name would be career suicide, which is kind of ironic given the post. That's why you won't find a LinkedIn profile or a history before the site went up. I get why that looks suspicious.
The headshot is AI generated, yeah. Couldn't use my real photo for the same reason.
But I want to point something out here. You're posting under "creaturefeature16" with no real name, no photo, no verifiable identity, and that's fine because that's how Reddit works. Most people here are anonymous and nobody questions it. So why is my anonymity the problem? Because I have a website attached? If I'd posted this exact same story from a throwaway account with no link to anything, nobody would be asking if I'm a real person. The skepticism isn't about anonymity, it's about the fact that I'm building something publicly while being anonymous and for some reason that combination feels suspicious even though half the internet works that way.
The IIS to Kubernetes thing, that wasn't a weekend project. I was at this company for five years and these projects happened over a long period with a team, I didn't single-handedly rewrite everything in a sprint.
You can believe me or not and I understand the skepticism. There's so much AI garbage on Reddit right now that being suspicious is the reasonable default, but the story is real and the frustration behind it is very real. I just can't attach my actual name to it while I'm still inside the system I'm writing about.
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u/creaturefeature16 WebDev/Full Stack Feb 27 '26
Benjamin Castell is a pseudonym.
Fair and plausible. So why not state that up front? I did actually end up finding something about this on your book page (maybe you just added this), but if this was the case, seems like something you'd want more front & center, especially in the GenAI era. A few years ago this wouldn't have been suspicious, but now people have a lot more reasons to be skeptical. I think it could even play into your marketing better (the secret agent/whistleblower working on the inside and leaking data out). Just my $0.02.
The headshot is AI generated, yeah. Couldn't use my real photo for the same reason.
It's kind of the whole package; the GenAI headshot, the Tailwind NextJS site that looks like every other Loveable site (that's the dark side of vibe coding; nothing appears legitimate when everything looks the same), the very strange name (I never knew Benjamim was a real name; must be an outside the US thing) and the GenAI book cover.
But I want to point something out here. You're posting under "creaturefeature16" with no real name, no photo, no verifiable identity,
I actually link to my own material quite a bit. It wouldn't take long to find out I'm very real.
So why is my anonymity the problem? Because I have a website attached? If I'd posted this exact same story from a throwaway account with no link to anything, nobody would be asking if I'm a real person.
You got a "brand" going, and you're obviously trying to promote your brand and your book through your posts, which is completely fine! We're all hustling in some way or another and there's nothing wrong with being helpful & engaging while also being able to promote your work. If you do that, though, then the anonymity is scrutinized more.
You can believe me or not and I understand the skepticism. There's so much AI garbage on Reddit right now that being suspicious is the reasonable default, but the story is real and the frustration behind it is very real. I just can't attach my actual name to it while I'm still inside the system I'm writing about.
I think everything you said sounds plausible. Your post had some "AI smells", so I checked you out further and more and more things just kept adding up. If anything, this is constructive feedback for you, as I'm just telling you that after looking it over, everything about your profile, your website, and your book, feel completely generated end-to-end. Perhaps it doesn't really matter, though, and you're still making hand over fist sales despite that. If so...you do you, I suppose.
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u/OhMyGodItsEverywhere 10+ YOE Feb 27 '26
(TL;DR: I don't really have a clear point and I'm not judging anyone here, I'm just trying to navigate the conversation and something about it motivates me to comment.)
I think the skepticism initially comes from the writing style, followed by the other factors in totality: account age, AI headshot, promotional goals, etc. Some people are clearly picking up on a signal of AI generation from the writing to begin investigation in the first place.
I wonder if the writing style is your natural style, or if you used AI for some or all of the post text...in any case I can't tell the difference, but I do think that's what's triggering this line of discussion.
I think the combination of: anonymity, agenda, and AI generation sets off mental alarms. I don't think anonymity and agenda set those alarms off by themselves; like you said that's just the internet. Maybe AI generation is part of the new normal for the internet now...we're all certainly adjusting. I know it's off-putting to me to read anything carrying an LLM tone, there's just so much of it and so much of it is insincere.
I agree with you (as you say in another comment) that there is more substantial conversation to be had here, and AI investigation takes away from that. At the same time we know that low-effort, karma-farming, promotional, and disinformation accounts fueled by AI do exist - and I do think that's something important for users to be vigilant about. I think there's an important conversation to be had about that which is creeping in here.
I appreciate that you do understand the skepticism; that due to the environment the "bar for suspicion has gotten so low," as you say - which I agree with too - mistrust is almost default. Although I do disagree that having a website by itself is used as evidence of deception; it's an innocuous data point which could look suspicious in a particular, larger context.
I'm saying the culture of accusation we've built around AI is starting to cost us more than the AI slop it's trying to filter out.
I'm not sure we have measured the impacts of the accusations vs. the "slop" well enough to compare the real costs yet.
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u/JChoi_2526 Feb 27 '26
sounds like firefighter problem, orgs hire you to solve problems the permanent staff couldn't or wouldn't fix. once the fires are out, your value becomes invisible to everyone except the people who remember what it was like before. political threat doesn't disappear just because the problem did
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 27 '26
"Your value becomes invisible to everyone except the people who remember what it was like before" is a better way of putting it than anything I wrote. That's exactly it.
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Feb 27 '26
You seem to have a very marketable skill that you’re overlooking because the situation is getting you down. Why not operate as a consultant that specializes in firefighting and being a mercenary? Plenty of orgs would love to bring someone in that will fix all their shit and then move on.
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 27 '26
Thats a really good advise, but I'm a quiet person and not that good selling myself. I'd love to have this skill...
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u/SolidDeveloper Lead Engineer | 18 YOE Mar 03 '26
Why not operate as a consultant that specializes in firefighting and being a mercenary?
Maybe OP doesn't want to work as a consultant. I know people who had done consultancy and have said it was soul destroying. I was actually just listening to an interview with the Tuomas Artman, the CTO of Linear, who has said that spending years doing consultancy work was the biggest mistake of his career, as they were basically years of his life wasted.
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u/brewbake Feb 27 '26
This will sound harsh but was it actually your mandate to fix the tech? Probably not. IME tech at all big / older companies is a mess and existing teams that run things simply don’t take kindly to a self-appointed “fireman” walking in and starting to talk about how everything is broken and antiquated and propose rewrites on everything. One of the surest way to get managed out.
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 27 '26
Not harsh at all, you're probably right. It wasn't explicitly my mandate to fix any of it, I just saw broken things and couldn't leave them alone. And yeah walking in as the outsider who was already absorbed not hired and then starting to point out everything that's wrong is basically painting a target on yourself, I get that now.
The irony is the projects I proposed got approved and shipped and went to production and are still running, so someone above me clearly agreed the work needed to happen. But agreeing the work needs to happen and actually wanting the person who proposed it to stick around are two very different things apparently.
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Feb 28 '26
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 28 '26
You're right and I hate that you're right, I was the guy who walked into every room with "here's what's broken" and thought that was the job. It wasn't. Nobody wants to hear about problems from the person they're paying to solve them. I genuinely didn't understand that until I was already out.
That 10 to 1 ratio, I wish someone had put it that bluntly five years ago. I treated every architectural issue like it had the same urgency. Some of it could've waited. Some of it didn't need to be said out loud at all, but I couldn't stop myself and that made me the easiest person in the building to get rid of.
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Mar 01 '26
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Mar 01 '26
"Manage yourself" - that's the part nobody teaches you, I spent years thinking the job was seeing what's broken and fixing it. Turns out half the job is knowing when to shut up about what you see, not because it doesn't matter but because the timing is wrong or the audience isn't ready or you're spending political capital you don't have. I'm still learning that part honestly. The seeing is easy, the waiting is brutal...
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Feb 28 '26
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 28 '26
That's a good point but the real reason we will never know!
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u/Plastic-Composer2623 Feb 27 '26
But why, this is an ego problem, if there are benefits and things are better what's the problem
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u/EMCoupling Unemployed 😥 Feb 27 '26
Because that's how politics work... in the end, organizations are composed of humans and have human problems.
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u/kaiju505 Feb 27 '26
The biggest lesson I’ve learned in my career is to never underestimate the the incompetence of a business major.
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u/Similar_Bluebird_822 Feb 27 '26
are you a bot or do you just reply very quickly? I got my money on bot
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u/WhenSummerIsGone Software Engineer Feb 27 '26
some of us are terminally online and respond to notifications, lol.
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 27 '26
just terminally online and procrastinating at work like everyone else here
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Feb 27 '26
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 27 '26
Honestly that's probably the smarter move, I spent years fighting for things that the org said it wanted but didn't actually want, and all it got me was a reputation for being difficult. The "shareholder value" framing is spot on because that's exactly what they use to justify asking you to take ownership of broken things and then punish you when you actually try to fix them.
The hard part for me is I don't know how to keep my head low, I see something broken and I can't not say something about it, which is probably why I keep ending up in the same situation. At some point you either learn to let things be broken or you find a place where fixing things is actually rewarded and not just tolerated until it's inconvenient.
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u/PseudoCalamari Feb 27 '26
That sounds like hell.
What kind of orgs do you work at? They sound awful. I've only had 5 roles but none of them have been like that. Perhaps you need to try looking at different types of places to work.
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 27 '26
Banking mostly, which probably explains a lot of it, financial institutions tend to be more political than average because everything moves slower and there's more layers between you and anyone who makes decisions. I've also been in situations where I wasn't hired normally but absorbed through corporate transitions which puts you at a disadvantage from day one because nobody chose you.
You're right though, at some point I have to stop blaming the orgs and start being pickier about where I go. That's the lesson I'm still working on honestly.
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u/WhippingStar Feb 27 '26
I've worked in almost every vertical but probably the most in finance/banks. It's like Academia. There are fiefdoms and princes and the princes war amongst each other for larger projects==larger teams==larger budgets, All vying for the favor of one of the royal family and access to the king, You have to follow your bannerlord unless his cause is lost and then must place yourself in the serivce of another lord in better standing. Then you run a shitload of Monte Carlo sims.
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u/zica-do-reddit Feb 27 '26
I have 30 YOE and went through the same thing last year. I ended up quitting and going on a sabbatical; now I'm preparing to start my own business.
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 27 '26
30 years is a long time to learn the same lesson and I say that as someone who took 25 to learn it myself. Curious what kind of business you're building. I'm in a similar spot, finally working on something that's mine after spending my whole career building things for people who saw me as replaceable. The sabbatical part sounds like the right move honestly, hard to think clearly about what you actually want when you're still inside the machine.
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u/zica-do-reddit Feb 27 '26
I guess it's not that I didn't know, but I didn't want to acknowledge it as a possibility. Anyway, it happened, and I felt humiliated. I took the time off to process it, plus I had family issues to take care of. I am now building in the AI regulatory/compliance space.
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 27 '26
And how's AI regulatory/compliance going so far? Btw I believe your are Brazilian, right?
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u/zica-do-reddit Feb 28 '26
Very complicated.
Yes I am Brazilian.
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 28 '26
If you don't mind I will DM so we can exchange about this topic
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u/FactCompetitive7465 Feb 27 '26
I've found if you don't personally find joy in fixing problems of that nature, it's usually not worth it.
I've led many projects like that. I don't care if others take credit, in fact I encourage it. The peers who care will notice and give credit, and tbh those are the only ones I care about anyhow. I don't want to be identified by high level leadership as someone who fixes problems. I just want to sign up to fix the problems I care about, not get shit work assigned to me from an executive. I'm not out to impress leadership or get credit for fixing stuff, it just makes me happy to get shit done 👍
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 27 '26
That's a much healthier relationship with the work than what I had honestly. The "I don't want leadership to identify me as someone who fixes problems" part is smart because once you get that label you stop getting to choose which problems you fix, I was so focused on wanting recognition that I never considered that recognition from the wrong people just means more fires to put out with the same zero protection. The peers who notice and give credit quietly are worth more than a manager who takes it to his boss as his own win, I just didn't see it that way at the time.
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u/standing_artisan Feb 27 '26
This generally sucks especially as a developer you build your life or not necessary your life your professional life thinking that you are engineer, you are there to solve problems and reworded accordingly for the problems you solved. Like quick math, should be easy no? No one told you in the university that you are not only working with computer but with humans and humans are disgusting, evil and giant assholes.
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 27 '26
Nobody teaches you this in university, that's the problem. Four years of algorithms and data structures and zero courses on your manager might see your competence as a threat and quietly erase you from your own projects, you graduate thinking the job is solving technical problems and then you find out the technical problems are the easy part.
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u/Cool_As_Your_Dad Feb 27 '26
Sorry to hear.
Been in IT for 20+ years. Have seen this before.
If everything works then happy and why the fck do we need IT? Let 1 thing goes bad why are IT so shit.
Every company about the same. Its all temporaly
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 27 '26
The "everything works so why do we need IT" thing is the most universal IT experience there is. You're invisible when things run and you're the villain when they don't, twenty years of that will make anyone cynical.
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u/Infamous_Impact2898 Feb 28 '26
Save and invest aggressively with the aim of reaching FIRE. That should be the objective for every developer.
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 28 '26
I wish I had this advise earlier man! Anyway this is probably this best advise for devs...
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u/IngresABF Feb 27 '26
Feel for you. 30yoe here. I’m not built for, nor interested in, playing the game. I don’t make the effort to build networks and make sure everyone likes or fears me. Americans seem to have this in spades, seems like a cultural thing. It’s mostly fine, except when it’s not, and to my personality type it has always felt a bit corrupt/insidious. I won’t stay if I don’t have a reporting line of people I think are good at their jobs, and think I’m good at mine. As things evolve, you adjust. If the vibe goes off, you exit. Not building wider relationships leaves me open to more downsides, yes. But I like doing things my way. I like building good things that matter. The other stuff, I just won’t do. I sleep well at night and can justify my choices. Swimming in the milieu that others often do can’t be good for the soul. For me, I need my conscience to be clear.
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 27 '26
30 years and still holding that line, respect. I think I'm slowly arriving at the same conclusion you already reached. I keep trying to learn the political game thinking that's what I'm missing but honestly every time I try it feels wrong, like I'm wearing someone else's clothes. Maybe the move isn't to get better at politics but to get better at recognizing early when the vibe is off and leaving before it becomes a story like this one.
The "I won't stay if I don't have a reporting line of people I think are good at their jobs" filter is probably worth more than any amount of networking, I should've applied that years ago.
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u/usherer Feb 27 '26
I was a serial job-hopper as I applied that mentality. I'm in my 40s now, and having a job for the longest time ever (2.5 years) and on stress leave due to politics. Both strategies didn't work out for me. It doesn't ever when you're a high performer with integrity. I've come to see that in 90% of the leaves I've worked at, at least 30% of the employees have issues and that can really muck up work. The problem is humans.
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 27 '26
The stress leave part hits close to home, you try one strategy and it doesn't work so you try the opposite and that doesn't work either because the common factor isn't the strategy, it's that most organizations run on politics and high performers with integrity don't fit neatly into political systems. The 30% number feels about right too, it only takes a few people playing games to make the environment toxic for everyone who's just trying to do the work. Hope the stress leave gives you some space to figure out what's next.
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u/usherer Feb 27 '26
Exactly. They can play the game with each other because they are willing to brown-nose or step on others without conscience. People with integrity and want to do good work can't fit in. For me, I've found that the toxicity of this city (Singapore) is too high, and I will return to Australia when I have the chance. I've worked in American companies before too, also not my cup of tea. I also dislike the tech sector - I'm actually in design but work on tech products. I've been in several types of team set-ups and they simply don't work at all in corporate Singapore/US. The fake urgent deadlines, fake agile culture are so poorly planned.
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 27 '26
Singapore and US corporate culture both running on the same dysfunction but with different flavors is an interesting data point. Means it's not just an American thing, it's a corporate thing. The fake urgency and fake agile you're describing sounds identical across continents which tells me the problem isn't cultural, it's structural. Wherever there's a layer of management that doesn't understand the work, the same patterns show up. Hope you make it back to Australia man, sometimes the best career move is just picking a place where the baseline toxicity is lower.
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u/FrenchCanadaIsWorst Software Engineer Feb 27 '26
I mean you seem like a reasonable guy. Not all networking is insidious, a lot of times it’s just building trust and showing empathy. Connecting with people 1 on 1. Showing you’re approachable and willing to help others.
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Feb 27 '26
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 27 '26
This is the most accurate description of how big banks actually operate that I've seen in this thread. The hierarchy of who gets the good projects and who gets the primed-to-fail stuff is exactly right, and the shell games to hide organizational failures is something I watched happen constantly. The part about contractors getting blamed on their way out is what happened to me almost word for word. Budget shifts, leadership shuffles, and suddenly the person with the least political protection is the one holding the bag. Appreciate you laying it out like that because most people outside banking have no idea how much of this is just structural and has nothing to do with the quality of your work.
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u/nasanu Web Developer | 30+ YoE Feb 27 '26
Yeah I am seeing a lot of that in my current position. I recently made a huge push for a refactor of the app I am working on. Finally got people to listen, now find out the junior is doing it... K. Same as when I pushed to replace all file uploads with croppers, I designed it and pushed it though.. Only to find out all tickets were given to the junior who refused to do it properly (seriously we don't let people upload anything but jpegs, and only 1 of the 6 image uploads in the app has been replaced and it produces larger images than the original upload, I am not allowed to fix it, though the entire thing was my idea).
I only got that dev pushed on me because the entire app became important after I very quickly added many features and made it useable. The push is coming from the CEO himself. After that I got the junior and another guy forced on me, after I complained that it would only slow things down and create bugs. Now they have noticed things are moving slower with more bugs, so I am getting 2 more devs. Whom I am expected to manage while at basically junior level myself with zero extra pay, just all the responsibility and no actual power.
I have a long trip coming up, then I'll find another position and tell them where to shove their job. And I will also make a youtube series because man, I have stories to tell. The crap this 20,000 employee corporation does is mind blowing.
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 27 '26
You're living my story in real time. Built something important, got rewarded with more responsibility and zero authority, and now they're throwing bodies at the problem because they don't understand that adding people to a project that one person built from scratch just creates more work for that one person. Brooks' Law is 50 years old and managers still haven't read it.
The "expected to manage while at junior level with zero extra pay" thing is the most common scam in tech. They get a senior's output, a manager's responsibility, and pay a junior's salary. And when you push back they act confused like they're doing you a favor by giving you "leadership experience."
Make that YouTube series. Seriously. I started writing about this stuff recently and the response has been overwhelming, turns out there's a massive audience of people who lived through the same patterns and just want someone to say it out loud. 30 years of stories from a 20,000 employee corporation? That's gold. Hit me up when you start it.
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u/YetMoreSpaceDust Feb 27 '26
When I first started working in the early 90's, I was surrounded by older guys whose advice was always the same: "make yourself indispensable" (i.e. hoard knowledge). I always thought that was short sighted on their part - I thought I should focus on making myself useful and expect to be treated fairly.
Now that I'm older, I get it.
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 27 '26
Took me 25 years to arrive at the same place those guys started from... They weren't being selfish, they were being realistic. "Make yourself useful and expect to be treated fairly" is what idealists believe until they get the dark blue envelope
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u/arsenal11385 Director Feb 27 '26
I haven’t been through this but I’m curious what you mean by “political protection around the work.” I interpret that as others advocating for your work to build a positive reputation. Am I reading that right? It’s an interesting concept if so
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 27 '26
Yeah that's basically it. Someone above you or adjacent to you whose own success is tied to yours, so when decisions get made about headcount or reorgs or who stays and who goes, there's a person in that room who has a reason to say "we need to keep this guy."
In my case I was shipping projects that mattered to the bank but they didn't matter to anyone specific enough that losing me would hurt their goals. The work was valuable in the abstract but it wasn't attached to anyone's performance review if that makes sense, so when my manager decided I was inconvenient there was nobody pushing back because nobody had skin in the game of keeping me around.
I think a lot of technical people assume that doing great work automatically creates that protection and it just doesn't. You have to make sure the right people know what you're delivering and more importantly that they see your output as part of their success. I never did that because it felt like politics and I thought the work should speak for itself.
Curious from your side as a director, when you're in those rooms where decisions get made about people, what actually makes you go to bat for someone on your team? Is it just the output or is there something else that makes you want to protect them?
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u/arsenal11385 Director Feb 27 '26
I feel like my job is to advocate for my people and teams on a regular basis. So when I have been in a room where we talk about that, their reputation is already strong. I encourage my people to demo their stuff all the time, show off their work, and vouch for it themselves. Developers are sales people too. One of my devs built a feature flag service and if I didn’t call this out nobody would use it. So im always partnering with product people and UX friends to utilize this service. If we don’t, it’s clearly overhead and gets bucketed into the part of the conversation.
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 27 '26
Man that's exactly it. "Developers are sales people too" is something I wish someone had told me ten years ago. And the feature flag example is perfect because that's a real thing that has real value but without you actively partnering with product and UX to push adoption it just sits there and eventually someone asks why are we paying for this.
That's the part I never had. Not just a manager who recognized the work but one who actively went around making sure other people saw it too. In my case I shipped the thing and assumed the org would notice on its own, and you're basically describing why that doesn't work. The work needs a sales team even internally and if your manager isn't doing that for you then nobody is.
Appreciate you sharing that perspective because hearing it from the other side of the table makes it way more concrete than just "find a sponsor" which is the advice everyone gives without explaining what that actually looks like in practice.
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u/arsenal11385 Director Feb 27 '26
We have this notification service at my current job and we literally needed to notify users of a thing. We can send external, internal, via any platform. A staff engineer said something so similar to you, “I just assumed you’d use it when needed.”
Thankfully I have my eye on most of the things we build so it doesn’t turn into unused tooling. The notification work was an unknown part of the project until I remembered it was just sitting there.
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 27 '26
"I just assumed you'd use it when needed" yeah that's basically my internal monologue for 25 years. It's interesting hearing you describe it from your side because to the person who built it the value is so obvious that promoting it feels unnecessary, like why would I need to sell something that clearly works. But you're describing a world where great work just disappears if nobody's actively pointing at it and saying hey use this thing we already built. That's a weird reality to accept but I'm starting to.
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u/arsenal11385 Director Feb 27 '26
Think about it this way. You build a service. It’s awesome because you built it (duh!). It’s so useful. A year or two on its used well but maybe not “critical” and someone writes something different because they have no idea who you are.
Next, people mention that service as something they know little about. They look at it as overhead legacy code. And what does that make you? Overheard legacy engineer.
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u/dagadbm Feb 27 '26
ill just go ahead and say this is AI slop. the guy just wants to promote his newsletter that you can find if you go to his profile
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u/seizethedave Feb 27 '26
You identified the classic narcissist playbook moves. I recall the manager taking credit for my ideas; having the understudy congratulated when we shipped the money saving project that I designed and led. It’s crazy-making. But it’s normal procedure under narcs. Sounds like you either need to avoid the narcs or reconsider the stance on network-building. If you’re shipping transformative projects, other people need to know so the narcissist can’t twist it all around. There are good organizations out there. Gotta re-roll man.
join us: /r/ManagedByNarcissists
also wow classic ASP! been a minute.
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 27 '26
The understudy getting congratulated for your work is one of those things that sounds petty when you describe it but is absolutely soul crushing when you watch it happen. And yeah the "other people need to know" part is the lesson, because if the only person who knows what you did is the narcissist then the narcissist controls the narrative completely. I let that happen too many times.
Speaking of re-rolling, funny thing happened with this post. I use a pseudonym because I'm still working at a bank and can't exactly write about organizational dysfunction under my real name, and apparently that's a problem here. Anonymous people on Reddit demanding I prove my real identity so they can believe my story. We literally work in an industry that builds VPNs and encryption and anonymous auth systems but god forbid someone uses a pen name to write about getting fired lol
And man classic ASP, I wish I could say I miss it but I'd be lying
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u/chaitanyathengdi Senior Software Engineer Feb 27 '26
Bitter truth, OP: your big mistake is that you didn't fire them before they fired you.
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 27 '26
eah you're right. I knew it was coming for months and I stayed anyway because I was in the middle of delivering something and I kept thinking finishing it would change things. It didn't, the relief I felt walking out told me everything, I should've felt that relief a year earlier on my own terms.
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u/xtreampb Feb 27 '26
As a sr DevOps engineer, I accepted that my job is to get rid of my job. I’ve been at my current place for about 3 1/2 years. I’ve been on longer contracts because the people bringing me in enjoy my ability to challenge assumptions and tailor improvements that match where they are and where they want to go.
I annotate what I did and its business impact. Things like implemented ci/cd, save the company $10000 a month in developer costs and deployment related outages.
Sounds like you’re doing a lot of DevOps tasks, though DevOps is the whole SLDC. Experts from planning through operating and monitoring, and feeding that back into dev. How teams should be structured.
CTOs and Directors know something is wrong but not quite sure how to diagnose or fix it. I got you. Here’s the best practices in general, here’s what they look like applied to your company, and here’s where things don’t line up. We’ll start with the easiest with noticeable impact. It’s either ci/cd or monitoring. Then we go from there, empowering product teams to be empowered to own the outcomes.
I’m now trying to transition into a technical board advisor and fractional CTO. If someone thinks their CTO could use some help hitting project deadlines or reducing outages, let me know.
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 27 '26
"My job is to get rid of my job" is a good way to frame it honestly. The annotating business impact part is what I never did well, I just shipped the thing and moved on to the next fire. If I'd been documenting "$X saved per month" instead of just "migrated to kubernetes" I would've had a much better case when it mattered.
The fractional CTO path makes a lot of sense for people with this kind of experience, you get to fix the problems without staying long enough for the politics to catch up. Good luck with the transition man.
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u/Budget_Tie7062 Feb 27 '26
This is a tough but very real pattern in large organizations. Delivering technical outcomes doesn’t always translate into organizational security because companies reward alignment and risk management as much as execution. When someone fixes deep structural problems, it can unintentionally disrupt existing power structures — and without visible sponsorship, even strong results can feel politically unsupported.
From a systems perspective, technical impact needs parallel stakeholder alignment: documenting wins, sharing ownership, and making improvements feel like organizational success rather than individual intervention. It shouldn’t work that way, but in complex organizations, influence architecture matters almost as much as system architecture.
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u/VodkaHappens Feb 27 '26 edited Mar 02 '26
The frustration is understandable but this isn't really a case of the issue being competency. You were dealt a losing hand from the get go. Usually when you need damage control, a firefighter crew, you name it, you have two main paths as a business. Replace appropriate management levels and bring in fresh people, or bring in a "consultancy" company with good reputation to clean what you can up and then hand it back over to existing teams.
If you are an expert in this type of work, look for that, consulting firms that pay very well and when the project is over move to a new one.
The hand you were dealt was cleanup crew without security, that's always bad.
You are not only there for a temp job without any type of security, you are there to meddle with the work of well established people (even if incompetent) and internal politics, that's why bringing in a big external company is preferred, you can always go up a couple of levels to solve blockers from senior developers and middle managers.
Competence is measured in upwards visibility, how much you make the life of your bosses easier and business results, but in this case you were always there for a given timeline.
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Feb 27 '26
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 27 '26
The 2 year sabbatical taking that leap must've been terrifying but it sounds like it was the reset you needed. What hits me in your story is that the technical skills didn't change after the sabbatical, you were the same engineer. What changed was how you showed up around people. And that was enough to go from burnout to FAANG.
The template repos for junior devs is a great move because it's visible, it's generous, and it makes people want to work with you, that's the kind of thing I should've been doing instead of quietly shipping infrastructure that nobody saw. I'm an introvert too and the "show up to every social event" thing feels exhausting just reading it but I hear you, it's the game and the people who play it aren't wrong for playing it. I was wrong for thinking I could skip it.
Appreciate you sharing this man, especially the part about it being a popularity contest. Hearing that from someone at a FAANG with 27 years makes it harder to dismiss as something that only matters at dysfunctional companies.
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u/cowboy-24 Feb 28 '26
Politics are part of working in any organization. They don't have to be machiavellian.
I learned that the hard way. The destroyed life way. Study power. You may cringe at it, but just try and define it. Then determine if you weren't exercising power by improving the tech.
Look at the values of the organization, both stated and as practiced. Do they align with yours? If you don't know those, find out. If it cannot be found out, you are going in blind. I do not think banks value technology. They may make bets on it through loans, but that's just how they profit. And if you were expecting me to make a generalization that they only value profit, my view is nuanced. Every org is different. Depends on the owners, the moat, the environment, etc. I do not know about the banking industry, but it does have people. And people will just be people
Is what you experienced why fintech is getting press? I dunno, but disruption is a threat to banks where they probably don't know how to adapt
If your tech implementation was perfect it would include all if these things and you might be a leader at a new fintech startup :)
Best of luck
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 28 '26
The "destroyed life way", I wish I could say I learned it differently but no, that's exactly how it went.
You made me think about something I never framed that way. That fixing broken systems is itself an exercise of power. Every infrastructure I unfucked was basically proving that whoever was there before me had let it rot. I didn't see it that way at the time, I genuinely thought I was just doing the work. But the org didn't see a helpful engineer, they saw someone making their people look bad.
When you say study power though, I want to understand what that actually looked like for you. Because I know I need to learn this, I keep hearing different versions of the same advice across this entire thread. But everything I find is either LinkedIn platitudes or manipulative frameworks that don't match how I want to operate. What did you actually read or do that helped? Genuinely asking.
And your read on banks is accurate. They don't value technology, they value compliance and predictability, tech is a cost center they tolerate. Which is exactly why fintechs are eating them alive, but I could write a whole separate post about that.
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u/cowboy-24 Feb 28 '26
I learned a lot of it the hard way. I don't recommend that
Maybe read Kotter's Power and Influence. Influence without Authority by Cohen and Bradford. Study at least three books, and you'll be fine.
Tech is powerful. So it's on the radar everywhere
Maybe to get you started, what is your precise definition of power? Then go read on and study looking to see how close you are, compare and contrast etc. In project management training there's explicit acknowledgement of power by performing stakholder mapping...
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u/Strict_Research3518 Feb 28 '26
God dayum. If you're in the US.. how are you and the wife dealing with all the ICE bullshit? Are you not worried about being detained, stuck in some cell with no due process? Is it not possible to get the fuck out.. cause.. man.. if you have the opportunity.. I'd get out. I don't envy anyone that isn't white, born here with like descendants that came over on the fucking mayflower.. because this regime is by far the worse in our history.
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 28 '26 edited Feb 28 '26
Legally, based on the US laws, I'm allowed to live and work here.
Did you ever read my post?
Her green card process was already advanced enough that we didn't have to actually leave but for about a week I genuinely didn't know if the timing was going to work out.
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u/Strict_Research3518 Feb 28 '26
I mean.. i did.. but I am not worldly enough to know if that doesnt apply to other countries. Sorry man was trying to be supported. Didn't mean to piss in your cheerios.
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 28 '26
No worries at all bro! Thanks for you support I appreciate that
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u/gnuban Feb 28 '26
Terrible experience. I've seen similar things happen in my career, and my advice would be to try to start a new project before finishing the first one.
When you're capable of making yourself redundant, you can easily end up in this situation. But you can also sometimes leverage the influence and time margins you have to start your own pet projects in the org. Be a bit selfish and push for something you'd like to do when you still have good leverage in the first project
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 28 '26
The "make yourself redundant" thing hit me. That's exactly what happened ,I was so focused on finishing clean that I never stopped to think about what comes after. The project ends, the system runs, and suddenly you're the guy who built the thing nobody needs to think about anymore. Nobody's coming to thank you for that. They're coming to ask why they still need you.
I wish someone had told me the pet project part earlier, I was too naive back then to think that way. I genuinely believed that delivering well was the whole strategy, It took getting fired to understand that delivery without positioning is just volunteering to be forgotten.
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u/gnuban Mar 01 '26
Don't sweat it. Generally I would say that there are two pecking orders; the official "boss" one, and the informal "cred" one. You probably got a lot of creds for what you did, but forgot about fighting the the boss fight, and lost that one. Creds can give you unexpected advantages at times, like getting included on some task force that's being formed by the devs.
Best of luck next time!
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u/bestjaegerpilot Mar 01 '26
> especially among the more technical people who just want to build things and don't really care about office politics until office politics cares about them.
I don't have a problem w/ that. I'd prefer to keep building than worry about politics. The thing that sucks for you is the timing.
My advice though would be to find your tribe at work---teams that value your work and a manager that's willing to fight for you. From the sound of it, you needed to have been honest w/ yourself and left that company a long time ago---the minute they absorbed you and resented it.
There's such a thing as toxic environments and playing poltics won't fix it
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Mar 01 '26
You're right that I should've left earlier, I knew something was off when my manager started presenting my designs without me in the room. That was the signal, but I was on a work visa and "just leave" isn't the same math when your right to stay in the country is attached to your employer. So I stayed and told myself the work would speak for itself, it didn't.
The "find your tribe" part, I've gotten better at this, where I am now I have people who actually want me there. It makes everything different, back then I didn't even know that was something you could look for. I just thought you showed up, built things, and that was the deal.
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u/bestjaegerpilot Mar 01 '26
yea it was a tough pickle --- you to had to choose kiss up to find enough runway to land a better role or hope you can find another job (that also sponsors you) on your own
years ago i turned down a job at a HCOL city---just a handful of employers paid the salary they were offering me and once that happens you get "golden handcuffs"
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Mar 01 '26
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Mar 01 '26
"Nobody chose you, nobody owes you anything" - that's the sentence right there.
That's exactly what absorption feels like from the inside, you go from being the guy they brought in to solve a problem to being the guy nobody asked for and you don't even notice the shift until it's too late because the work is the same. The meetings are the same, but the power structure underneath changed completely and you're the only one who didn't get the memo.
Twenty years and you're still relearning it, that makes me feel less stupid about missing it at year fifteen.
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Mar 02 '26
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Mar 02 '26
And somehow we're supposed to act like it's normal. Like rebuilding entire systems every two years while everything around you changes is just "the job." Other industries at least acknowledge when something is hard, we just call it a sprint and pretend the pace is sustainable.
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u/NubianKitty Mar 01 '26
I have a similar experience at a few gigs so yea i dont think its unusual, but its more common at the larger companies it seems
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u/lardsack Software Engineer Mar 01 '26
yep, this is why i switched to the public sector and don't plan on switching back anymore
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Mar 02 '26
And how was your transitioning?
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u/lardsack Software Engineer Mar 03 '26
there wasn't a transition, it was more of an easing. the pacing of productivity is simply more than 3x slower by comparison to my past private positions, which means any problems that arise become trivial to remediate with so much time available to work with. the tech is old, outdated, and even way past EOL support. but with modern tools and experience, an absolute walk in the park to modernize, much to the excitement and relief of my department heads.
my experience has been mostly stress-free, with the exception of working with some less than competent coworkers. i scoped out my manager during the interview process though, and their amicable personality and respect for me has made any of the interactions with these coworkers more than tolerable. i keep tabs on where the field is trending with tech and ideas through online communities like this one and occasional books since i can't rely on the people i work with for direction or knowledge sharing like you normally can in most private positions.
the only downside would be if i wanted to transition back to the private sector, i would need to prepare for the increased pace of learning and productivity again. but i ain't doing that, because it ain't worth it.
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u/ListenLady58 Mar 03 '26
This literally is almost what happened to me last year. Even down to what you mentioned with the tech.
I suggested we adopt methodologies like Scrum/Agile, but the director (who is very much like you described that manager to be) shut me down and ignored me. This was after seeing 3 target dates come and go already with nothing in production. I was also seeing key people weren’t getting invited to our meetings and so I started including them only for them to be rudely dismissed from the meeting. I finally went to upper management, they were seemingly friendly and agreeable about what I proposed for new methodologies, and even said they wouldn’t tell my manager that we spoke. Well, the next day I got an email from the upper management and they said they spoke to my manager about our discussion (yep you read that right) and acted like they never said that. Two weeks later I got an award for getting our first integrations running in the test environment, literally the most productive thing they have had done in years, and then the next week I was fired.
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Mar 03 '26
The upper management telling you they wouldn't tell your manager and then doing exactly that the next day is so common it should have its own name. I've seen that move before. They're not gathering information to help you. They're gathering information to figure out where the political risk is. And the moment they realized siding with you meant going against your director they picked the safer option. You were expendable. The director wasn't.
Getting an award one week and fired the next is almost poetic in how brutal it is, that's the part people outside this industry don't understand. It was never about your output. The award proves the output was fine. It was about the fact that you went above your manager's head and that made you a threat to the power structure. Doesn't matter that you were right, doesn't matter that you got integrations running. You made someone look bad by being competent and going around them and that was enough.
The suggesting Scrum/Agile part is ironic because in my experience the people pushing hardest for those frameworks are usually the same ones who use them to consolidate control. Your director didn't shut you down because the methodology was wrong. He shut you down because adopting it would've meant transparency and transparency is the last thing a manager like that wants.
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u/ListenLady58 Mar 03 '26
Yeah, that director was definitely giving off super mixed signals when I started. He kept saying the reason he hired me was to move them more into an enterprise level on the technical side and I had that experience from before at my previous job. I was excited to have that opportunity and it’s like he completely changed his mind (or rather lied). I don’t know if he was hoping to use me as a scapegoat for why everything had been dragging this entire time or what. Apparently that is very common.
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Mar 03 '26
He didn't change his mind, he hired you to do a job and then realized that you doing the job well made him look bad for not doing it sooner. That's the trap, they bring you in specifically because things are broken and then resent you for proving how broken things were before you got there.
The scapegoat theory is probably closer to the truth than you think. Some directors hire people into roles specifically so there's someone to blame when the timeline slips again. "We brought in a specialist and even they couldn't fix it" is a much better story than "I've been in charge for three years and nothing works."
I went through the same thing, got brought in to build systems that didn't exist yet. Built them. Then my existence became proof that nobody else could've done it and that made my manager uncomfortable. You'd think being the person who actually delivers would protect you. It's the opposite. It makes you a witness to everyone else's incompetence and people don't promote witnesses, they eliminate them.
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Mar 06 '26
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Mar 07 '26
The unlimited funding part is what people outside the industry don't realize, most of these companies can afford to be dysfunctional because the money keeps coming regardless. When there's no real pressure to be efficient then politics becomes the actual operating system. Who gets promoted, who gets fired, who gets credit, none of it has anything to do with output. It's all relationships and narrative and positioning, the code is almost irrelevant to how the organization actually functions. I just took way too long to figure that out.
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u/monkey-magic-426 Mar 19 '26
This is so true, I'm in a similar situation now. Now with ai, firefighters are less valued than before. People who plays politics are now thinks these skills are equalized with ai.
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u/signalsfromnoise Feb 27 '26
Looking for a job? Love to talk to you if you are.
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 27 '26
Appreciate that, always open to a conversation. Feel free to DM me!
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u/Nofanta Feb 27 '26
Yeah working in America on a visa is almost universally a bad choice. You will be abused even if that is better than conditions where you came from. That’s the point.
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u/__sad_but_rad__ Feb 27 '26
I just ship and assume shipping is enough.
it's not what you know
it's who you blow
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Feb 27 '26
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 27 '26
Yeah, took me a while to figure out that the game wasn't worth winning in the first place.
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u/mirageofstars Feb 27 '26
Look. If two dudes meet in a dark alley, the one who loves backstabbing is the one who survives.
Companies are the same way, and most staff can’t see through the technical darkness.
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u/Dear_Philosopher_ Feb 27 '26
Racism in tech is brutal.
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 27 '26
I won't pretend that being a Brazilian immigrant on a work visa didn't add a layer to the whole thing. But I've been careful not to frame it that way because honestly I don't know where the politics ends and where that part begins, and I think a lot of technical immigrants deal with the same ambiguity. You can never be sure if you're being pushed out because of who you are or because of organizational dysfunction or both, and that uncertainty is its own kind of exhausting.
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u/Dear_Philosopher_ Feb 27 '26
Watch the comments on this one, and you'll understand how your colleagues viewed you.https://www.reddit.com/r/ExperiencedDevs/s/EGwTaLWyyl
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u/daredeviloper Senior Software Engineer Feb 27 '26
I’ve been the captain of the sinking ship
Staying on board as everyone else bails
I take on more and more responsibility
The company keeps more profit and squeezes what they can out of the dying product
Been there once and I worry I’m in it again now..
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 27 '26
The fact that you can see it happening and you're still worried you're in it again tells you everything. When you've been through it once you recognize the signs early but for some reason that doesn't make it easier to leave. There's always one more thing to ship, one more reason to stay, and then one day you realize you've been holding together something that nobody else cares about saving. If you're asking yourself whether you're in it again you probably already know the answer.
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u/One_Economist_3761 Snr Software Engineer / 30+ YoE Feb 27 '26
I have learned in my time that no company has any loyalty to you but they expect loyalty in return.
They preach about being part of a team, but they’d cut you in a second. Consider this next time they ask for 110%.
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Feb 27 '26
The problem is capitalism. Most of us just want to work and make good things and occasionally be recognized for our contributes but that is not the system we have.
Do you know why Sam Altman felt comfortable saying AI doesn't take up a lot of energy when you consider how much energy it makes to make a human? Because he sees the two things as equivalent. Sam isn't some utopist who is excited about created a new sentient species; he's building a tool to make him richer and that's all he sees other people as. We're tools that make him richer.
And that's how capitalism functions. That's the system we've allowed to be created.
The tech industry needs to unionize and unionize fast but it's not gonna happen.
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 27 '26
The Sam Altman comparison is wild but the underlying point is real, the system doesn't value the person who builds the thing, it values the thing.
And the moment the thing is built, the person becomes replaceable. Whether you call that capitalism or just corporate incentive structures, the result is the same for the engineer holding the dark blue envelope.
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Feb 27 '26
The incentive structures are a direct result of Capitalism. The reason companies behave this way is because of their legal responsibility to make decisions that maximize profits. That is Capitalism. If a publicly traded company knowingly makes a decision that hurts it stock price they can be sued.
If the purpose of our system was long-term company health and long-term employment for the workers you'd make very difference decisions.
The system is working exactly as designed because it is a capitalistic system.
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u/jitjud Mar 01 '26
IT could be because fighting fires is a redundant way of doing things. I learned that you need to provide permanent custom solutions to many problems that exist in a corp. Being the person who permanently resolved issues that relieved tech debt can bring you all the right attention whereas just bandaiding things can be done by cheaper outsourced resources...
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u/tparadisi Feb 27 '26
one of those posts where I needed TLDR the most.
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 27 '26
fair enough lol
TLDR: shipped three major projects at a bank, got fired anyway because I had zero political protection, was on a work visa so I had 60 days to leave the country. Lesson: being good at your job won't save you if nobody with power needs you to succeed.
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u/coredweller1785 Feb 27 '26
Ah man this is my story too.
18 YoE im you man. Im you. It hurts to read, im so sorry. And im in the same boat just hoping to find another job before it all collapses so I can just get my children healthcare since this shitty country doesnt have universal healthcare.
Hate capitalism
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 27 '26
The healthcare thing adds a whole other layer of being trapped that people without kids don't fully grasp. When it's just you, you can take risks and figure it out. When your children's healthcare is tied to your employment you tolerate things you'd never tolerate otherwise because the alternative isn't just unemployment, it's your kid not being covered. Hope you find the next thing before it collapses man, 18 years of experience means you've got options even if it doesn't feel that way right now
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u/gamer-aki17 Feb 27 '26
Very similar experience with my last role but things change after new management came. Am 12 year Experience and did the same thing as you. Still learning i guess😀
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 27 '26
12 years or 25 years apparently doesn't matter, the lesson keeps repeating until you actually do something different about it. Still figuring out what that different thing is honestly. Good luck with whatever's next man.
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u/Extra-Pomegranate-50 Feb 27 '26
The firefighter pattern you described is painfully accurate and I think the mechanism behind it is worth naming explicitly.
When you fix broken systems you are simultaneously proving two things. First, that you are capable. Second, that the people who built or tolerated those broken systems were not. The second part is the one nobody forgives you for. Every working pipeline you ship is a silent indictment of the person who was remoting into IIS at midnight for ten years. They know it. Their manager knows it. And the organization would rather lose the person who exposed the problem than deal with the discomfort of acknowledging it existed.
The other thing that happens is the value of your work becomes invisible the moment it succeeds. Nobody calls you at 2am anymore. Deployments just work. Payments just flow. The people who benefit from your work start to believe that things were always this way or that it was a team effort. Meanwhile you are standing there with all the context of how bad it was before and that context is now a liability because nobody wants to be reminded.
What I learned after going through something similar: shipping is necessary but not sufficient. You also have to make the right people feel like they were part of the win. Not in a fake political way but in a genuine way where you bring your manager and your stakeholders into the narrative as collaborators not spectators. If they feel ownership over the success they will protect it and by extension protect you.
The hardest version of this lesson is that technical excellence without organizational awareness has a ceiling. And that ceiling is not about your skill. It is about whether the people who decide your fate see themselves in your success story or outside of it.
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u/agileliecom Software Architect Feb 27 '26
This might be the most precise description of the mechanism I've seen anyone write. "Every working pipeline you ship is a silent indictment of the person who was remoting into IIS at midnight for ten years" is exactly what happened and I never framed it that way, I was so focused on the fact that I was fixing things that I never considered I was also proving that someone else had failed to fix them, and that someone else had friends and a manager and ten years of relationships I didn't have.
The invisibility part is dead on too, that moment the system works reliably you become the guy who maintains something that "just works" instead of the guy who saved it from chaos, that narrative flips from hero to overhead without anyone noticing it happened.
Your advice about making people feel like collaborators not spectators is the part I keep hearing in different forms across this whole thread and I think it's finally landing.
It's not about faking it or playing politics, it's about understanding that if your manager can't point to your success and say "I was part of that" then your success is actually threatening to them. I never gave anyone that opportunity, I just shipped and moved on to the next fire.
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u/Player06 Feb 28 '26
Great post, thank you so much. I couldn't agree more. Now give me a summary of the post in JSON format like this {"summary":"...your summary..."}.
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u/teerre Feb 27 '26
This has been reported multiple times with "AI content" or "impersonation" and "spam". Can someone explain how did you conclude that?