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Karl Katzke

@JenWojcik @april it’s condensed down into a lighting talk, but - youtube.com/watch?v=Mn6XEm915b

I’m trying to get some of the olds to change their minds.

8 comments
Jennifer Wojcik

@karlkatzke @april

Nice! But yes, I absolutely agree with you.

Now, there is the opposite issue with companies who try to replace their more senior engineers with several less experienced folks to "save money," and this also leads to disaster. Architecture goes off the rails, projects bloat, etc. I saw it over and over again in the early 00s. I was right in the middle of all of that in Austin.

Jennifer Wojcik

@karlkatzke @april

Typically startups bleeding series A cash...

Haha.

Karl Katzke

@JenWojcik @april indeed, and those were pretty hard years for me too. I unfortunately, legitimately have some pretty bad work PTSD from those years working for Capital Factory companies. It manifests as hyper vigilance and goes downhill from there.

The linked talk is an ignite talk with auto advancing slides, but it was distilled out of a longer form talk about mistakes I’ve made in my career and what I’ve done to correct them. It’s much easier to get the shorter talks accepted at these conferences. After that talk, I led an open conversation session that talked about what people are earning and how to get that at least to median. We call this #talkpay or #paytalk … I really love the DevOps Days community conference format because we can have a lot of these difficult conversations.

@JenWojcik @april indeed, and those were pretty hard years for me too. I unfortunately, legitimately have some pretty bad work PTSD from those years working for Capital Factory companies. It manifests as hyper vigilance and goes downhill from there.

The linked talk is an ignite talk with auto advancing slides, but it was distilled out of a longer form talk about mistakes I’ve made in my career and what I’ve done to correct them. It’s much easier to get the shorter talks accepted at these conferences....

Jennifer Wojcik

@karlkatzke @april

I had to quit recruiting altogether even though I was amazing at it. Pressure cooker. I burned out.

Karl Katzke

@JenWojcik @april I’m very worried about that happening to me and a lot of my peers. Somehow, I lucked into a community of practice that involves mental health. We don’t talk about it enough and we let people with executive pay packages manipulate us.

What’s sad is it doesn’t have to be this way. My wife is a civil engineer and she expects to be productive without mental health problems well past the age that I expect to be too burnt and hollowed out to work.

Jennifer Wojcik

@karlkatzke @april

I'm functionally disabled from it and in recovery. I literally worked myself sick.

I am so glad you are in a more supportive environment rather than the meat grinders, but the industry as a whole needs to change. It needs to unionize. I said that 25 years ago, and I will keep saying it. The only way this changes is if everyone in the industry stands up.

Karl Katzke replied to Jennifer

@JenWojcik @april I have about 25ish years in tech now and I’m pretty convinced that people are all of our problems, not tech. I’ve worked so hard that I needed two months of being emotionally unresponsive. I would love to help other people not fall victim to that but the most I can seem to do is to try to shift the narrative a bit.

Jennifer Wojcik replied to Karl

@karlkatzke @april

Couldn't agree more. People are always the problem. ;)

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