Sucky Sweet Life

I often encounter naive people who talk about how everything will become disaster if the person leaves the team. That's only true for someone who's very specialized in something (researcher, professor etc). However, at a commercial company, most of us is doing non-creative, repeatable tasks. This means that everyone is easily replaceable.  I'm sorry if this has never occurred to you. Please recall what you do at work.  You compose an email You call a meeting You execute your core competency (project plan, product manage, coding etc) You communicate with stakeholders  You coordinate sh*tty work Your replacement might not be as efficient as you at day one but eventually, the person will get there - acquire same knowledge as you do. That's how a company works. Y our team / company will run totally fine without you. That's not an exception for me either and I 'm totally fine with that part because anyone can do my job just fine, seriously. Note that I wi...

It was my last day with my current team. I was with this team for one year.  ♪ ♪  Don't cry for me my old team. I will forget you quickly and you will forget me quickly. We are not meant to be each other. After coming back from maternity leave, I didn't have much luck finding a good team to join in my current company. I stayed with my previous team for 3 quarters and then I escaped to this team. Now, I'm escaping again. Let me quickly summarize what went wrong with each team. Team A (Duration: 3 Quarters) Too much planning, slow execution : Meeting after meeting after meeting for no execution. Meet for sake of meeting! Micro-manager (micro-manage design of slide / spreadsheet): This is not my first time to encounter a micro-manager. This one is yet another unique one. F* you, do it yourself. Gender discrimination : There is a silent agreement that female workers should take care of tasks like taking meeting minutes, organize team event.  Everyone has its own o...

I work in one of those typical high tech companies in Silicon Valley. I'm not an engineer nor a senior manager nor an executive. I describe myself as a sheet of Kleenex Ultra Soft Facial Tissues 130 Count (Pack of 8), Disposable Facial Tissues, Gentle and Durable, 3-Ply Thickness, Designs May Vary  at a tech company.  Manager blows his/her nose (dump sh*tty work)  until tissue paper (me) is no longer useful (burn out, irrecoverably unhappy). Yikes - disgusting.   What  I  want to complain about today is this nightmare " p erformance review " process. A lot of companies in this area conduct employee performance review around Spring season (now-ish).  What is performance review, for those of you have never heard of it? It basically tries to rate employee against some random motivational attributes such as leadership, growth mind set, presence, company value and so on and on (that gives me goose bumps).  By the way, these random motivationa...