Sleepless In Silicon Valley

It rarely happened since I was fired (read graduated) two
and a half years ago, but Monday night, I let my day job get
to me, I am ashamed to say, and wasn't able to sleep. I had
a hearty meal (Regato cheese, kimchi fried rice, and six
corn tortilla wraps of mayo, scallion, and pork heart meat.)
but didn't over-eat. I picked up where I left off a novel and
read past 11:00pm.  Afterwards I laid in bed pondering over
technical details of my bug and my career in the long run.
It was surprising that they still rattled me and had the
power of taking away sleep. My friend L's advice on the
night before a big race came to mind: "Don't try to sleep
when you can't. Just think of it as a rest." In the morning,
I gained back the 1.6 lbs lost over the weekend.

At the afternoon bug scrub meeting, the team lead Sandeep
didn't buy my story of memory fragmentation and insisted on
my showing evidence. I was only able to find the exact
evidence afterward but at the time, I told him I didn't need
to show the kind of facts he was asking as I saw similar
issues a few times before. Anant, a senior member, tried as
usual to suggest things for me to do, which I rejected
outright. According to experience, Sandeep was 80% on the
ball when it came to bugs; Anant, however, hit the mark only
about 20% of the time although he had something to say at 
every meeting. Most importantly, memory management was
my backyard and I knew where the problem was. 

In this group, the ability to give out ideas seemed to mark
a capable person. The more one can talk in a semi-coherent
way to lead discussions, the more credits he gets. To me,
however, ideas are cheap and the giver keeps the upside of
such a tranaction and the person who spends time and energy
trying to implement these guesswork gets the downside. For
one thing, the latter could lose his independent thinking. To
most, the concept of iatrogenics must be more alien than
a xenomorph.

The element of pecking order, who can tell whom what to do,
sometimes bothers me. The nature of computer software is
such that the one who creates the code usually has a much
better understanding of its behavior. It encodes his thoughts,
after all. One may be smart, but it takes effort to fully grasp
the meaning and side effects of others' code. That is why writing a programm from scratch is often easier than working on existing code. Yes. The guys 
trying to "help" me have higher titles, but their freely-dispensed
ideas can lead to wild goose chases if one's not careful. They
are not leaders precisely because they are not punished if 
things go wrong. Including the director, R, they seem
motivated by the good old pair of fear (job security) and 
greed (for higher positions and pay) just the same as, if not
more than, everyone else.

To me, it's also an ethical issue, i.e., as Taleb said,
"skin in the game." You build a bridge? Sleep under it; You
want war? First in battle. I raised my voice to Anant: "If
you have an idea, go ahead and try it. Don't bother helping
me!" and, miraculously, I was able to explain myself: "I need
to focus and cannot afford the costly distractions."

It was a tense moment and the room went quiet. Afterward, R,
with Anant's eager support, insisted that I was yelling. "This
is not helping anybody" he said. Solemnly "recommending"
(read threatening) that I fix my behavior, he got up and delivered
a righteous albeit canned speech about team-building before
exiting the room.

V, who sits next to me, came after the meeting. She
thought I should talk more with R, an idea I dismissed as
useless. I didn't regret losing temper as I felt I needed to
show these guys they couldn't threaten me with job security.
I admitted that self-control was not my strong point,
though. "But from what I have observed over the years
working with you, you are not the violent type." "Thank you.
I appreciate it."

This was a great experience. I was able to articulate my main 
point, which was rare in the heat of the moment. I could have
improved it by simply relaxing when everyone else tensed up
and throwing in some humor. Losing one night of sleep was 
painful, however. I was alert on Tue (and closed the bug, BTW) 
but tired on Wed. Thursday morning's 6-mile run felt more 
taxing but my weight went up even more. Friday's 6-mile was tiring.

[7grizzly]

回复 '暖冬cool夏' 的评论 : That's part of it. Sure. This group is interesting. The managers don't have the expertise to control the details. They leave the micro-managing to a few engineers they trust and come to their aid with authority when needed. Yes. I guess as long as I work as a programmer, there are battles I have to fight.

[暖冬cool夏]

回复 '7grizzly' 的评论 : "To me, it's also an ethical issue, i.e., as Taleb said,"skin in the game." You build a bridge? Sleep under it; You
want war? First in battle. "
This part you quoted prompted you to speak out your mind that talking won't solve the problem, right?
My manager likes to micro-manage a lot too, and has a very strong ego. I gave up fighting long time ago. As far as I get paid by the time, I did the way she wanted. Your case is different as you said here, as coding itself asks for more independent judgement, accuracy and such and such:)

[7grizzly]

> I read it twice to try to understand what happened.
Thank you, 暖冬, for trying to read. Please let me know where do you think it's hard to understand, if you'd like. That'll help improving my writing.

> Nothing is so serious in the end.
Indeed! But meanwhile we don't have to give up having fun.
I'm considering pulling pranks from now on ;-)

[暖冬cool夏]

I read it twice to try to understand what happened. I personally never like team work, but in America, people are trained to do team work from elementary school. In work place, talkers talk and get the credit, while the doer who gets the job done may not. People like to point fingers when something is wrong. Senior managers sometimes only know how to talk BS. I don't have much advice on what happened to you the other day (as you are in the situation), as I might have done the same, under the stress and on an impulse. We are all learning our ways to keep it cool and to protect ourselves better. Let'a all try not to take stress home and into your sleeping hours. Nothing is so serious in the end. I know it is easier said than done.
Good luck and keep your cool, my friend!