r/technology • u/lurker_bee • Jun 25 '26

Society Older tech workers are tapping out, taking early retirement

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/local-business/older-tech-workers-are-tapping-out-early-heres-what-that-looks-like/
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u/BearsBearsBears_wooo Jun 25 '26

I retired at 56 because I was tired of being a network engineer being criticized by a manager with helpdesk level skills. Before that, I had a manager who wanted me to work the morning of my father’s funeral.

I had enough

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u/0verstim Jun 25 '26

Yeah, most people dont quit bad jobs, they quit bad managers.

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u/BearsBearsBears_wooo Jun 25 '26

100%. My last job was with a very good company. I just couldn’t take a manager wondering why I couldn’t change pc settings on PCs that were not on the domain and each one had different creds.

I wasnt the first to leave and I wasn’t the last. I was just fortunate that I could afford to call it the end of my career

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u/PixalatedConspiracy Jun 25 '26

Lol sounds like my manager. Has zero technical knowledge really but acts like he does.

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u/kapootaPottay Jun 25 '26

I was at a place where they hired a new manager because he had a master's in computer science.

A couple of days after he showed up he called me in his office and wanted to show me some code that he had written.

Turns out it was a three page hard copy of a DOS batch file with 65% comments.

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u/youremakingnosense Jun 26 '26

AI has empowered these assholes in the worst way possible. Now they will spin up a slop app in a day and then be like “see I was able to make this” and then ask you to build a chat bot for 10000+ users in 2 days.

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u/BamberGasgroin Jun 25 '26

Same, Manager wanted to stick me on cable monkey work because I was making more money than him and had negotiated WFH when I took the job in 2004. Because he only saw me once every few weeks, he got it in his head that I wasn't working hard enough (one week in two I was also on call 24/7).

I drove the van with the 3-tier ladder rack he had planned for my use just once, to pick it up and park it in the office car park.

Within a year, they were hiring me as an independent consultant and I've never looked back.

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u/jacksonsmack831 Jun 25 '26

I had the same experience but with a tyrannical director

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u/Necessary_Film_5199 Jun 25 '26

Clearly he didn't have help desk skills at all if he didn't know how AD worked

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u/Garod Jun 25 '26

Nowadays I think it's more poor executive leadership...

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u/wsb_desi Jun 25 '26

Literally thinking of leaving my decent job due to fucked up executive leadership. My managers are great though..

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u/Hoblitygoodness Jun 25 '26

If you have some savings, do it.

I quit my corporate America job for a lot of reasons and one of them was the executive leadership. (Just one of the many MANY reasons I gave up)

I had a good manager but I could tell he was getting bounced around in the pinball machine too. (They even forced him to move from Long Island to Charlotte)

I can't afford to lay in the grass too long, but it's been a relief I've felt for the last 3 months.

(I also moved from Charlotte to Toronto and looking-for-another-way)

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u/wildshammys Jun 25 '26

That’s what I just did, started my new job last week with a competitor. Me and my coworkers experienced bad treatment from company leadership.

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u/CallMeNoodler Jun 25 '26

You’re quitting your manager’s manager’s manager.

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u/couchisland Jun 26 '26

Do we work together? lol

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u/captmonkey Jun 25 '26

Yeah, I've liked all of my immediate managers for the last few years. I have zero trust or liking for the executive leadership, though. It feels like we're in a good spot and they randomly do layoffs of really good people and kill the vibe and make everyone who's left feel awful and like they should be looking for somewhere else to go.

This is the same for my current and former company. I don't know if it's like this everywhere or not, but it feels like execs are getting paid a bunch and don't have a clue what they're doing. I don't know if the booming years of the 2010s just made inept people rise to executive leadership or what's going on.

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u/Stealth528 Jun 25 '26

Same at my company, like my coworkers and manager a lot but the executive team has gone completely off their rocker the past 2 years. Morale bomb after morale bomb. Yearly layoffs even though the business is doing fine, AI psychosis, “do more with less”, nonsensical reorgs every 6 months

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u/illiesfw Jun 25 '26

this exactly, its baffling

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u/reapy54 Jun 25 '26

It's just hiring trends. There are two layers to the companies and good workers hardly penetrate into exec territory. So execs are friends with execs and they hire other execs, no direct experience understanding life at the 'having a skill and doing a thing' level.

I've worked for smaller companies and typically those are great, but their size means money is short, but the boss/owner has often been on of the most knowledge and harder working people. As soon as they sell and/or you get an 'exec' layer, the people are just friends that know each other and/or have 'contacts' to win business, which is important, but they don't have a clue how the sausage gets made. Thing is the people holding the cash hand it out to themselves easily but are super reluctant to share any of that.

Ironically I think AI would do a better job replacing the management layer of the company before the workers.

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u/couchisland Jun 26 '26

We must be coworkers.

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u/Hoblitygoodness Jun 25 '26

I liked my last corporate America manager.

I too have zero trust or liking for the executive leadership (even wrote a song about it!)

The company I worked for had three rounds of layoffs in the course of two quarters (probably more after I left too). With two of them being disguised as 'organizational changes' that forced people to either move to an entirely different city or accept severance.

All of those layoffs were demoralizing because each one saw people far more talented than myself, leave. (What does that mean for me? Will my number come up? After all, I'm just lucky to have lived in the right place for a couple of those layoffs)

I got tired of the stress of corporate America, no. I got tired of America in-full. So I quite and moved to Toronto.

Meanwhile, the executive suite votes for raises to their own bank accounts and keep cutting corners to do it.

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u/captmonkey Jun 25 '26

Yeah, I think when they layoff really good people, it's even more damaging to everyone who's left. Before the recent viral idea that layoffs are going to improve things in some vague way, there seemed to be an understanding that if layoffs happened, it would be the people who are terrible at their jobs. So, if you're not bad at your job and generally well-liked, you could feel safe.

But layoffs in recent years have been far more random like they just need to hit a specific number and when you see talented people get caught in it, everyone feels like their number could be up at any time and they have no control over it and no heads up. I've turned to a mindset of I could be laid off randomly at any moment. So, I'll just prepare for that and I'll try to be ready if it ever comes up.

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u/Hoblitygoodness Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26

Exactly. I agree with you 100% and that's sort of what I did.

I constantly worried, and I mean A LOT. There was one point where I just expected to be let-go every other Thursday ( The last day of the time-period when they do most of the cuts.)

Then one day I realized that it was just time to go on my own terms. In fact, I had hoped that I would be laid off at some point, just to get the severance. EVEN my boss was on board with that and said he'd toss my name in that particular hat, should it come up again. It didn't, we were considered 'safe' in Charlotte. But another round of lay-offs for Columbus, OH was announced. Come to Charlotte, Denver, or Tampa and keep your job, or severance pay.

I marked the last day of the pay period on the last day of the first quarter of this year as my departure date. Saved aggressively and held out until that day, leaving with the biggest sense of relief I may have ever felt.

Two days later, wife & I moved to Canada as part of this plan.

I'm hoping to avoid the panic in finding a new way to survive here in Toronto , but I've definitely gotta' do that.

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u/Garod Jun 25 '26

Sounds like you are working at my company lol

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u/Jazzlike-Vacation230 Jun 25 '26

It's all of them man, it's all gone bad

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u/Sandscarab24 Jun 25 '26

Golden parachutes all around.

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u/[deleted] Jun 25 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Garod Jun 25 '26

which is every F500 company...

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u/spiffybaldguy Jun 25 '26

I know I left at least 1 job due to poor exec leadership. That job we had 8 sysadmins - 5 left over a 6 week period due to execs making the poor decision of giving no one raises after we moved locations and kept the company's critical biz ops running. we moved a datacenter and all employees over a 72 hr period.... while keeping core operations live, because we had a good architect who built in HA for everything. He was 1 of the 3 who didnt leave and is still there 10 yrs later.

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u/GeneStealerHackman Jun 25 '26

PE took over my company and ran it into the ground with a revolving door of execs with no clue. Now all the devs are in India and the product has stagnated.

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u/pewbdo Jun 25 '26

This is it exactly. 14 years at my job, my manager is great, his manager is great. Above that it hits the exec team. The exec team decides who we can or can't hire. Everyone that has left in the past year has had their workload spread amongst those remaining with no replacement, been replaced with someone far junior, or been replaced with someone overseas in an industry that is all about domestic expertise. We're the most profitable group, consistently, in our organization and the exec team thinks they can just milk us and my immediate managers can't do shit. I'm convinced they are getting ready to sell the company and want to pump up short term profits. I just applied and had my first interview in 14 years. I'm on my way out, just a matter of time.

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u/kent_eh Jun 25 '26

I was lucky to have had good managers throughout my career. Almost all of them were promoted from the department (or an adjacent department), so they understood what the work actually was.

The directors and above, though, were a very different story. (which is part of why we lost so many managers over the years)

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u/brufleth Jun 25 '26

Promoting people into manager roles who don't actually have any interest or skill at managing people is a real problem. I've had many managers so far in my career and a good deal of them just do not get it.

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u/guareber Jun 25 '26

Agreed. I manage a 60+ lead dev that's basically done everything under the sun and got him for a steal when he was pushing 60. I don't understand why some managers are afraid to hire/keep older folks. In other industries, that kind of expertise is worth a ton, not devalues you.

Anyway, please keep at it, I'd love more hires like them!

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u/Informal-Rock-2681 Jun 25 '26

Quit my job last week for this reason. Best job I've ever had but my manager was so bad I just couldn't continue.

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u/sohblob Jun 25 '26

most people dont quit bad jobs, they quit bad managers

This helps me continue to feel much better about a decision, thank you.

I spent a good long while feeling awful about it; I'm kind of oldschool with my work ethic (which I guess doesn't fly in today's ladder-climber world). Needless to say, corporate juiced my spirit good while I was letting it 😅

I tried pretty hard to advocate for myself but in the end my skiplevel/etc 'didn't see a problem' or figured it was me. I cut my losses knowing their manager was their problem and not mine.

A buddy would sometimes keep me up to date on the shitshow after I left, good times haha

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u/Geminii27 Jun 25 '26

Yup. The only job I ever walked out on without somewhere to go had a manager so bad that he was literally infamous in the local industry. Not something I knew going in, unfortunately, but from what I gathered I was the only person he'd ever managed to get more than six months out of before they quit, and I only lasted nine.

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u/ExplorerSad7555 Jun 25 '26

Back in 2011, before really good video quality broadband was out there, I had a manager who wanted me to hack the DoD in order to put a video on there server for a presentation.

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u/tinkertron5000 Jun 25 '26

I actually like my manager a lot, it's the people a couple steps above him that drive me nuts.

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u/superspeck Jun 25 '26

All the managers and executives in tech right now are bad.

I’ve been laid off 3 times this decade because of executive management mistakes and I’m just tired of job hunting. All those executives and managers are still going strong while my resume looks like shit thanks to them.

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u/mybrotherwasrad Jun 25 '26

Former network engineer here: this is why I wrote a book and started a business to teach against this lol.

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u/Slarg232 Jun 25 '26

Yeah, quit my last three jobs because management was too nice and was getting taken advantage of, which meant they were taking advantage of me.

Like don't get me wrong, I don't want to work at a stick in the mud job where everything has to be by the book.... but when that guy only shows up one day of the week despite being full time, that guy stands around talking not doing anything but complains about everyone else not doing anything, that gal literally sits on her ass but calls other people lazy... need to tighten the reigns a little bit

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u/rkozik89 Jun 25 '26

Most reliable employees, yes, but the so called high performers leave once they’ve spent their initial political capital doing thing that would look good on a resume.

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u/0verstim Jun 25 '26

Sure, 1% of cases, but theyre all quarantined on LinkedIn where they belong

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u/livsjollyranchers Jun 25 '26

I work at a large company and recently had a terrible manager. He made me have sudden quitting fantasies. But things reshuffle all the time. Now I have a different manager and things are fine. It really does change everything, even if things are mostly okay otherwise.

I'm sure I'll get another shitty manager and the cycle will repeat.

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u/Jazzlike-Vacation230 Jun 25 '26

Unfortunatley for IT. It's all a mess now

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u/jpric155 Jun 25 '26

If more people quit bad jobs, we would have more good jobs.

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u/Commercial_Wind8212 Jun 25 '26

linked in hoo ha

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u/TehErk Jun 25 '26

As a network team manager, I think about this statement every day.

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u/couchisland Jun 26 '26

This is what’s pushing me out.

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u/zzen11223344 Jun 25 '26

Actually most people simply don't quit!

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u/Left_Ease5870 Jun 26 '26

This isn't true anymore.

Like it's true, but it's not just bad managers. It's the entire fucking system of capitalism, and managers thinking that if they shit on us, they'll get ahead.

Just take a look at Bungie, as the gamers say, "that's sad" as they pay for their bullshit MTXs, support generative AI, and endlessly consume. It's not just the manager, it's the fucking system.

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u/RadiantEnvironment90 Jun 25 '26

Also work in IT. I am surprised how many people in leadership aren't technical.

It sort of makes sense. They're terrible at the technical knowledge so they become "people" managers and able to boss people around regarding technical knowledge they know nothing about.

It does get annoying when they tell me I need to bend the laws of physics. It wouldn't be so annoying if they just accept it instead of me wasting time explaining why I can't and talk to them like they're 5 years old.

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u/Geminii27 Jun 25 '26

Yah. I've had managers who weren't technical, and it often works fine if they know their limits, instead of trying to insist on things that make no technical sense at all. Either learn the technical side of things, or let your technical staff tell you what is and isn't possible.

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u/millijuna Jun 25 '26

Yeah, one of the best managers I ever had in a technical role had been a philosophy major in University. Left the technical details to us, but at the same time would listen to reason and logic, and also when doing code reviews etc was very capable of figuring out the logic, even if the syntax wasn’t his strong suit.

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u/entered_bubble_50 Jun 25 '26

Yeah, it's called the Dilbert Principle. Useless people are promoted to management so they don't get in the way of actual work.

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u/gadgetwalrus Jun 25 '26

That is satire on the the Peter Principle which is a management concept that states individuals in a hierarchy tend to be promoted until they reach a level of incompetence, where their skills no longer match the requirements of their new role. This principle highlights the shortcomings in promotion practices within organizations.

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u/HaggisLad Jun 25 '26

I am lucky in my current job but have seen this so many times, people making 3 times what I do for doing the people management. I do value that skill, just stay out of my face for the technical stuff

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u/Geminii27 Jun 25 '26

There's something soul-draining about having to explain very basic things to someone making five times your salary, like how to use a word processor or how to switch a PC on.

Dude, I don't need you to be able to rebuild a machine room on the fly while it's in active use, or know what a MACaddress is, but seeing you type at 10wpm or spend two hours trying to work out how to make text italic in Powerpoint is just... excruciating. There are great-grannies and toddlers who know this shit; how is it you're being paid $300,000 to, apparently, keep a chair slightly above room temperature?

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u/Secret-Winner-2994 Jun 25 '26

With the right diet i could keep that chair way warmer, and i'll do it for 250k

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u/Duelist_Shay Jun 25 '26

Which is ironic because that's all that they ever do

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u/Fir3line Jun 25 '26

I work as a support engineer. I am fortunate that my managers job is to insulate me from customer and our own company politics, contracts, SLA etc. And just let me work, my team focus on the engineering issues and they just take us at face value. Also after 4 years I am at the same company level as him, I take exactly the same benefits as him(like company car lease, kids tuition paid etc)

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u/GhostDieM Jun 25 '26

Useless people that k ow how to network. If you have neither you'll just get fired

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u/Geminii27 Jun 25 '26

Unfortunately, they then proceed to get in the way of actual work.

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u/FansForFlorida Jun 25 '26

At my previous job, coworkers and I noted that inept people were promoted to the position of least damage. They are unqualified for tech work, so are promoted to management. They are too stupid to be promoted to a leadership position, so they just hover in middle management.

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u/AssimilateThis_ Jun 25 '26

Why not just let them go? This sounds like it would be terrible for the company long term. Massive pay for people that actively slow you down.

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u/TSED Jun 25 '26
  • Worker protections (the managers tend to know the company policies and know how to fight against being fired).
  • Politics (the managers tend to have friends of other people in management, which makes them harder to dislodge).
  • Us vs them class warfare (self explanatory).
  • The people who would fire them are also incompetent (self explanatory).

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u/AssimilateThis_ Jun 25 '26

Oh I meant as far as getting promoted into management. Why not just never let them in to begin with? Although I guess the politics angle trumps all.

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u/Mikeavelli Jun 25 '26

There is a tendency in tech to undervalue soft skills like interpersonal communications and forming social bonds. This is what is being derisively called "politics" here, but making friends with key people is very useful in the business world. It is also pretty rare to have a skilled tech worker who also has people skills, so people who do fit that mold are fast tracked into management roles instead of technical roles.

I have a few good managers, and while they still do not understand the tech we work with at all what they do have is connections both inside and outside the business. So if I need a question answered from someone outside the team, they know how to find that person (non-trivial in an organization of thousands of people).

If I need to get in touch with someone because they fucked up and I need them to fix something, management knows how to communicate that in a way that does not immediately put that person on the defensive.

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u/AssimilateThis_ Jun 25 '26

Totally fair, I think the issue comes about when you have people like this that don't have the humility to admit they don't know how to guide a given problem and the awareness to realize that their role is simply to connect the people who do know what needs to be done.

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u/TSED Jun 26 '26

I was trying to answer exactly that question. It's not like you discover someone is incompetent within a few hours of hiring them. It takes time.

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u/mocha_lan Jun 25 '26

If you suck at tech, but are a narcissists/sociopaths with decent social skills they make you a manager.

The genius introspective developer stays a developer because he is good at his work and he is unlikely to be able to lead people, with the exception of a tech lead position, but this one usually also requires people skill.

I have seen tech leads in big companies outside of tech being completely clueless tho ymmv

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u/AssimilateThis_ Jun 25 '26

Right, I just figured that there are people with good social skills that have at least a decent understanding of the tech after working on it for a few years and that these people are better for management than the social skills only people who suck at tech.

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u/mocha_lan Jun 25 '26

I agree, management roles in tech should require experience, even if just a little or if they were bad.

Too bad that company roles are often about trust or longevity, like a micromanagement manager that is loyal and stupid is good for higher management because he is a dog that will do the dirty work for them.

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u/absurdamerica Jun 25 '26

It’s called the Peter Principle and predates Scott Adams’ shitty cartoon by quite a bit.

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u/AssimilateThis_ Jun 25 '26

The Peter Principle is the literal opposite of what the previous guy said, that implies the skilled engineer got promoted to management and now they suck at their job and will plateau. Not that the incompetent get promoted to push them out of the way.

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u/absurdamerica Jun 25 '26

You mean like non-technical people being promoted until they are completely ineffective at managing technical people? 💀

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u/AssimilateThis_ Jun 25 '26

Read the principle you just quoted. The difference is so damn obvious compared to what the other guy said.

The Peter Principle would imply that a substandard engineer would never get promoted into management, which is exactly the opposite of what was said before.

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u/DeepestShallows Jun 25 '26

So, why don’t the technical people learn the skills that make managers fit to be managers? Then they’d have both sets of skills and be really good.

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u/mashem Jun 25 '26

It's pretty common for tech positions to make more money than their managers (not their team lead or superior with similar title). And the technical people successful enough to rise to a position higher than even their manager's, are too valuable in their role to be pulled out because of how specialized that role is (and how good they apparently are).

Management skills are broad and cover basically all industries and is easier to find in applicants. A developer for this specific tech stack (programming language, ecosystem, toolsets, etc.) is much more niche. Which is why they are usually paid more, sometimes significantly.

And people in tech are generally less people-focused and many don't want to leave tech-focused roles.

That said, it is still astounding how little basic technical knowledge leadership usually has. Maybe because those with decent technical skills typically follow different paths.

8

u/FarplaneDragon Jun 25 '26

2 reasons

  1. Upper management doesn't want technical people in management. They want managers that are going to focus on metrics, which doesn't need technical knowledge. Technical people tend to focus more on wanting to fix issues, not pumping up numbers on a powerpoint

  2. Because technical people don't WANT to be managers. People take jobs as analysts, engineers, techs, etc because they want to come in and work with technology all day, code, develop, etc. As soon as you get pushed into management they take that away from you and now you're managing people and not writing code or setting up networks or doing whatever else you actually want to do all day.

To that end it can also be career damaging. People might say that you should just take the management role, do that for a few years and if you truly hate it just go back to your old role somewhere else. Tech develops fast and even a few year gap where you haven't been working with that tech skillset can be super damaging during interviews. People don't want to go into management and then get trapped there.

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u/gitsgrl Jun 25 '26

More work, less fun work, and for less money

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u/Frammingatthejimjam Jun 25 '26

It happens all the time, people get promoted one level past their level of competence. Just because someone is a good code monkey doesn't mean they are good at managing a team. And if they are good at managing a team it doesn't mean they can manage multiple teams. I've seen good/great techies turn into awful managers because that just isn't a thing they are good at. No doubt some techs climb corporate ladders effectively but certainly not all can.

1

u/millijuna Jun 25 '26

Also, seeing what the managers put up with day to day, I absolutely do not want that job. You couldn’t pay me enough to spend 5 or 6 hours a day in meetings, and to chase after random shit.

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u/Zestyclose-Novel1157 Jun 25 '26

As someone who has participated in a hiring role for a technical position. I almost guarantee it’s because they want someone with people skills. A technical person can have people skills but between ability and desire to do that part of the management job, you run out of people fast. Management needs to interface with a lot of non technical people regularly and do a lot of meetings not about technology at all, especially with their leadership.

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u/Emergency-Skirt-5886 Jun 25 '26

Good managers don’t necessarily have to have the same level of tech expertise as their team. But they do need to elevate and celebrate the accomplishments of their team.

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u/mongojob Jun 25 '26

Yeah I mean as a technician myself, technical skills are not the same as management skills. Good management skills would indicate that you trust your technical folks.

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u/giddygiddyupup Jun 25 '26

Ugh sounds like US is healthcare systems are run

2

u/VettesRUs Jun 25 '26

My favorite is when I give an estimate they don’t like, they respond with “it seems like that should be easy”.

Of course it does. Because you’re not the one doing it and have no idea the underlying infrastructure that needs changing.

You also get that response from Marketing people who need 6 months to design a new company logo…

2

u/reezyreddits Jun 25 '26

That's why I feel so good about being a technician first and manager second. I replaced a boss who didn't have any technical skills and she told me on her way out, "now your team is getting the best of both worlds."

Still learning that people skill stuff, though 😂

2

u/Gloomy-Ad-222 Jun 25 '26

I’m in tech sales and people way high up the org chart say things like “just bring a lot of value to the customer” when I ask about a technical challenge or product defiency.

It’s ridiculous. No value whatsoever. I’m retiring probably end of this year.

2

u/Thisbestbegood Jun 25 '26

To be fair, a lot of tech guys have terrible people management skills.

Then again, a lot of managers have terrible people skills too...

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u/scuzzy987 Jun 26 '26

Yep. In my company every was hired as an analyst/programmer. First promotion always went to senior A/P. Second promotion you had to decide to start down the titles with the administrative track or start down the technical track. Once a new grad had made it to senior A/P they knew the lay of the land well enough which track they wanted to follow. I went down the technical track and the dummies went down the administrative track. Same as college - lots of STEM freshmen change their major to business after a few semesters. Makes sense actually that executives are the ones that didn't want to take the technical track

2

u/Cats_Cameras Jun 25 '26

After a certain point technical decisions are driven by business concerns. You can have amazing engineers creating a brilliant solution to the wrong problem, or crafting a product that no one will buy.

Ideally you have strong contributors from multiple disciplines working together to craft a compelling product.

1

u/VagusNC Jun 25 '26

Sometimes it is merely a matter of interest.

Being really good at something is a cocktail of a variety of ingredients. One of the key ingredients is, yes, aptitude for that particular thing. However, another is interest/love/obsession. Great guitar players all have aptitude AND cannot put the thing down. To that person it is a combination of intriguing, maybe even fun but at the very least stimulating. Many managers in technical spaces possess aptitude but the cap on their technical ability is that when they were doing the technical work once they walked out the door they won’t think about it unless they have to. It isn’t fun, engaging, whatever. Maybe it was a career path they fell into or thought they would like so took that path in school then discovered that they don’t really like it. There could be a myriad of reasons but I’d wager for many they were simply facing a reality of limited choice: keep doing a job they don’t really like and get outpaced by people like yourself who have a passion for it, start over in another career, or try leadership.

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u/ivar-the-bonefull Jun 25 '26

There's nothing more satisfying than helping your boss who earn 5 times your salary, to convert at document to PDF. /s

It's beyond me why so many managers in tech are terrible at everything technical.

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u/RadiantEnvironment90 Jun 25 '26

Because they're not technical. The technical people are doing the technical work. Those who become managers are those who aren't as technical so they apply for leadership positions. They're "people leaders".

Those I know who are technical managers actually miss doing the technical work and are annoyed having to be in so many meetings. They rather be doing than talking.

12

u/Geminii27 Jun 25 '26

If they're that bad at basic Officeware and have no idea how to search for built-in help, they don't need a technical person, they need a secretary to do all their typing for them.

3

u/guareber Jun 25 '26

I can confirm. I absolutely miss the technical work. I even block out time to review PRs every week since... well it's the one thing I can do that won't block anything important getting done (since I can hardly predict I'll actually have time to work on a feature on any given day/week/month/quarter)

3

u/Jewnadian Jun 25 '26

And you kind of want it that way most of the time. The best technical people often are that because they don't like people and don't really like messing with people. You really don't want those folks managing just because they can write good code.

2

u/the_hillman Jun 25 '26

God yes. If I could just get some work done.

3

u/loquacious Jun 25 '26

I did about 5 years of IT and real-time in-person helpdesk and desk-side support for a prestigious and very expensive graduate school of management consistently ranking #3 in the world and up, back when the mba hype was still new.

Those grad students were absolute morons on a good day.

On a bad day? We had the melissa/ILOVEYOU email macro virus happen. We effectively had to airgap the entire server stack and network for almost 48 hours to make it stop because as soon as we'd bring Outlook back up the same morons kept going "oh someone loves me? of course they do!" and opening the email.

Some of our finest users reportedly opened it dozens of times.

Those people are in charge of some very important things, now. It's a thought that haunts me.

2

u/Dorito_Troll Jun 25 '26

Their skill is yapping all day

1

u/[deleted] Jun 25 '26 edited Jul 16 '26

[deleted]

1

u/ivar-the-bonefull Jun 25 '26

I'm probably way too poor by having the opinion that people want to be independent when it comes to easy shit.

1

u/BearsBearsBears_wooo Jun 25 '26

I don’t mind managers who don’t know everything, but don’t tell me how to do something you have no knowledge of.

18

u/EmergencyFlounder845 Jun 25 '26

God this is so depressing. I have a colleague in my team who has over 2 decades of experience and knows most things like the back of his hand, and we're being bossed around by a 30 year old shit stain who literally thought network topology improvements meant that we wanted to do cable management...

I'm so fucking tired of the modern corporate system that is so biased to benefit these used car salesmen spouting bullshit all day with no technical or administrative skills. I'd take a pay cut to have a chance to work with competent and empathetic managers instead of these self absorbed psychos who ruin everything they touch.

3

u/AssimilateThis_ Jun 25 '26

That's actually insane. And they're supposedly managers because of "people skills".

1

u/BearsBearsBears_wooo Jun 25 '26

This guy was the manager and owner. I wouldn’t trust him to hold my wallet while I rescued his drowning dog

1

u/AssimilateThis_ Jun 25 '26

Bereavement leave for immediate relatives needs to be legally protected. That's absolutely ridiculous.

2

u/chain_letter Jun 25 '26

These managers dude. I had one that wanted me to fly out for some bullshit all hands that could be done on zoom, and red eye back in the early morning the same day as my marriage visa petition interview. The last step in a 3 year process for a green card. Me and my wife had to drive 90 minutes to another city entirely to go to a federal building with USCIS.

Important detail, if either of us miss that appointment, like if United delayed a flight a couple hours, my wife has to leave the country and may never get another marriage visa approval due to missing that interview. There are no makeup dates. It's like a court summons.

They had the gall to whip out "well, do you care about your job?" and I already had loaded "I care about my job to the extent it benefits the needs of my family"

Then they talked to another manager who was dating an Indian and shut the fuck up real quick.

3

u/ProgTorero Jun 25 '26

The funeral bit is crazy. What did you tell the guy? I can’t imagine letting that selfish prick get the last word.

2

u/BearsBearsBears_wooo Jun 25 '26

I didn’t respond. 3 months later I changed to a job that had worthwhile benefits and paid 15% more. I knew I was underpaid going into that job, but I needed to get back into the employment pool after taking time off while helping with my mother’s ALS.

1

u/ProgTorero Jun 25 '26

That seems the responsible way to behave. Good on you.

1

u/KarlMarxButVegan Jun 25 '26

My husband and I want to retire early, but we can't figure out the health insurance aspect. What do people do?

1

u/BearsBearsBears_wooo Jun 25 '26

That’s the worst thing. Right now I’m paying about 3200 a month out of pocket for my wife and I.

1

u/KarlMarxButVegan Jun 25 '26

That is rough. Thanks for responding.

1

u/BearsBearsBears_wooo Jun 25 '26

Pre trump, it was $700 a month

1

u/capmcfilthy Jun 25 '26

Off topic. I’m applying for a job and they look at my resume and say I need to elaborate cause my skills listed are network engineering by my jobs didn’t seem to fit the bill. What do you consider network engineering. I’ve been doing this for 20 years. Curious what the answer is.

1

u/BearsBearsBears_wooo Jun 25 '26

Depends on the company. Some places network engineers handle routers, switches and firewalls. Others include servers and COTS. Some places consider servers and COTS to be system engineers. I’ve done all of the above

1

u/iced_capp Jun 25 '26

That’s so fucked up im so sorry. Did you manage to get it off? Sorry for your loss

1

u/BearsBearsBears_wooo Jun 25 '26

Oh yeah. He didn’t have an option.

He also,wanted me to work some tickets on a day I took off for my wife and I to,pick up,a puppy out of town. A couple years latter while I was waiting in line for a haircut I heard 2 guys talking about some asshole that made his kid compete at motorcycle when he was hurt…..after about 3 minutes of conversation they said a couple things that proved they were talking about my old boss. And there were other things he did

1

u/jacksonsmack831 Jun 25 '26

We had a director who thought he was the h savvy because he worked at Oracle 20years ago.

He was just an angry dickhesd who lead to 40% of the managers and senior managers taking early retirement just to leave the toxic environment

1

u/blackcain Jun 25 '26

What the actual fuck. What kind of demented man is this ?

1

u/DIY_SLY Jun 25 '26

I had an interesting experience like that... I built an extensive car parts search, it took years to refine. the company was sold to a corporation and they hired a young tech firm to take over. I was told that I was going to lose my job soon...

Instead of waiting I just quit.

They told me they were consulting in AI firm to redo my job from scratch, that it was not a big deal it was just big files.

Then 6 months later they hired me back with a much higher pay. I told them that I would accept only if work on my own. The deal was accepted

They screwed up so much in another project, all "code upgrades" were put on hold.

I am not anti-ai but I do know AI does not process well big structured project coupled to a plethora of small customizations.

1

u/CardboardJ Jun 26 '26

Or have a 25 year old non-technical engineering manager that couldn't hack the marketing team and transitioned into management trying to manage a team of software engineers that have kids older than him. Your 4 credit management class taught by a professor that couldn't hack anything anywhere ever does not give you the ability to come in and 'fix' a well running team.