General > General Technical Chat
Losing the plot, losing "can do", losing motivation. Disillusioned engineer.
paulca:
Skipping a lot of history where by I haven't actually done any work in work since the start of December. Where they assigned me to a production support group, without telling me and then complaining I wasn't providing support. My response was, "I'm not a support engineer and I'm not even supporting until the support engineer arrives.", my company backed me on that. Not least, they are asking me to support a suite of applications that should have taken 6 months which were required in 1 month and ended up being hacked together on late nights in 4 months. I refuse to support that junk. It's the result of a management mind set that software is either done or not done. They don't understand that engineers borrow time from the "quality" bucket when pressured.
To highlight why I feel like I am quiet quitting, after complaining repeatedly about not having any development work, a manager threw me what he thinks is a bone. He asked me to ...
"Research an API which will allow generic Java engineers with no <internal platform name> experience to insert/modify/query data from that platform."
Ok. Sounds like fun, right? Well the platform in question is an open source platform from Apache that has been heavily modified, heavily restricted, heavily secured and heavily monitored by specific teams. Those teams whose name often contains "InfoSec" or "Security ops" ALWAYS win.
My first quick google and a question to ChatGPT revealed exactly what I expected. Each and every single component in the platform is an Apache foundation project. Each and every single one of them has APIs bristling all over it. There are SEVERAL APIs already baked into most of the components, some of them are amazingly easy to use and implement. I got one running in docker in 15 minutes.
The problem is, they have ALL been disabled, firewalled, crippled, locked down, locked out and basically forbidden from use.
So, I ask, "What is the fucking point?", why don't you just go and ask the "InfoSec" guys to do it? Or at least ask them first what they will allow or won't allow and we'll just do it that way.
They don't need an engineer, you need a politician and that's not me.
I really just want to log out and forget the whole contract. It's pointless. Every single thing you can do as an engineer in this contract is FORBIDDEN. You have to instead go and fill in a form and order some access to some heavily crippled badly implmented "self service" platform which provides you a canned set of configuration which you MUST accept.
It's getting intolerable. I have end users emailing me telling me there is data missing and honestly, I can't help them. It's not my data, I don't know where it comes from, I don't know what it means, I don't own the source, I didn't write the 15 steps in the process before the data gets to me, but it's in such bad shape there is no way to validate it's complete or partial. Beyond that, I have no authority in production to even access the files and can only see a view of the read only data.
Do you guys understand how this is driving me insane?
I've told my actual employer, "I'm out, get me out of here!", but they can't do that instantly. Right now I honestly feel like just quiting and I more or less am quiet quiting. I'm not being proactive and I'm no longer "Sure can do"
nvmR:
Hey OP
Sounds like a bunch of big corporate bs.
Don't loose it, and don't take it into mind. You sound very qualified, find a new place to appreciate that. Don't quit until you find a new place, and reward yourself with a couple of weeks off time.
tom66:
Agreed with @nvmR. At the end of the day it's a job. You do what you do because you get paid to do it, but you have to want to do that too. If it's not working out, go take some leave to find another job and hand in your notice once you've got it.
paulca:
I formulated a diplomatic response which suggests options, states the challenges and makes it look like I'm working on it.
To be honest, the fact the APIs are blocked is probably not because they don't want people using them, but rather that there are PARTS of those APIs they don't want arbitary users accessing and if they can't be separately authorized the whole API gets blocked. They even blocked "java --debug" on the dev servers. Any java process found running with the LWDP port enabled will be disabled and reported to senior management. That's completely insane. The reason. LWDP is an unauthenticated protocol and the dev servers.... are on the company wide flat production network. Doh!
shapirus:
Isn't it exactly the same inside any big company? That's just the way it works. If you don't like it, find a startup doing what you are interested in: startups are much more flexible and they are where the skills of an engineer can be used as efficiently as it possibly gets.
Big companies are good for those who like to get paid for imitation of work.
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