The feature that ruined my life

If there are any engineering teams out there who need like a PR person for their work, consider hiring Jasmine because she will absolutely get people excited about the Z-index and other boring and mundane technical details.

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You're listening to Off the VPN, the show where two work besties get real about working in tech.

Hey everyone. Hello. Hello.

Hello.

Hello.

Welcome to 2025. We're back.

We're back.

If that's bad news, I'm so sorry.

Bad news?

I mean, to all of our haters out there, I'm sorry.

I have no hate for the haters. Allison and I are getting back into the groove of this podcast thing. Allison's cleaning her camera right before we start. Yeah.

I mean, listen, we haven't recorded in probably a month. The camera got dusty. What do you want me to say? I'm just being I haven't even used my desk all year.

I've been coding from my couch, uh, just super locked in for the past month. So I, I literally, when I went to just sit here to record, I was not mentally, I feel like I didn't even know how to set up. So this, this was, it was a lengthy setup today.

All right. So ringing in 2025, I have a fresh story for you, Jasmine. It's a long one today. I'm going to need you to lock in. There's going to be names, details. Details. Yeah. Seatbelt on and fasten. Hands and legs inside of the vehicle, please. So for the purpose of the story, we're going to call this company Vizzy. Do you like that name? I came up with it.

I like it. Vizzy. Vizzy. Okay.

Our story today centers around a fellow developer who we're going to call Aaron. Aaron is a super senior engineer. Who's been around the block, multiple companies over the span of like 2 decades. But over this time, Aaron has struggled a bit to find a job that feels like the right fit, like the right environment. Aaron's been job hopping and is like, I don't know if this is my vibe, onto the next. I don't know if this is my vibe, onto the next. But eventually Aaron lands like his absolute dream job working at a large tech company. And he's like super jazzed.

Okay.

This is a large but very successful company. His hiring manager was so excited to bring him on board. The hiring manager wrote in like all caps on Aaron's resume, "HIRE THIS GUY," when the manager sent it off to HR. So everyone is stoked about Aaron joining, including Aaron. And it's the first time that he really feels like his experience and his skills are being recognized. The company really sees the skills and value that he brings as opposed to just being another engineer for hire. So. Aaron's vibes are immaculate. Everything is pointing to this is going to be a really good match. One of the first projects that Aaron works on is a search functionality within a map interface.

Like the map?

Yes.

The map is the actual UX, or are we talking about GraphQL or something else? What are you talking about, map?

I'm talking about a map, like with roads and like destinations and locations. Yeah.

I see you dwindling down the possible companies. Got it.

Listen, that's still—

there's quite a few that have quite a few.

Yeah, let's not jump to any conclusions here.

I won't, I won't, I won't, I won't. But am I thinking about it? Yes. Okay, so they're doing some map stuff. All right, like geodata.

Yeah, they're doing some fancy search stuff within the map, right? So it's like you can search for things, there's some auto-completion, some suggestions, all that jazz. So when the project is like halfway through its development, it gets demoed at this company Vizzy's major annual conference with like thousands of people in the audience.

Okay.

Okay. So be Erin.

It's half baked.

It's half baked. Yeah. So put yourself on air for a second. How are you, how are you feeling about this?

I mean, wait, are they internal people or is this also like external? Is it just all within this company?

I think it's like internal plus some friends, some partners, that type of thing. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, demoing when something isn't near completion is always a little scary, even if it's just a small group, but especially if you're in something, you know, where the stakes are a lot higher. If you don't know who is talking up the new thing you're doing, you don't know, maybe there's someone riding on this that's like excited to share it and Oh, if something goes wrong, like the demo could just like really blow things— or what if it's not as good as, you know, you were— it's a lot of pressure. You put a lot of work into something, but there's a lot of things that could either go wrong with it, you know, the demo happening, or maybe someone looks at it as like, this is dumb, what— we should be working on something else. Like, you have no idea. You're open to a lot of criticism from a lot of people, and a lot of people who might have a lot more power than you, which is even, uh, scarier. So, um, That's what I'd be thinking. But it's also exciting because it could be a really good opportunity if you did good work to be recognized for that thing. And again, a lot of people probably have a lot more power than you. It could be— could open some doors either way. Terrifying, especially— I don't know what other companies they were at, other big companies. This might be a big— this might be a really new experience for them.

Yeah, I would probably be like vomiting in the bathroom, right? Like, you know me, I would be like hyperventilating in the hallway. I could not— I could not do this. Um, but in Erin's case, everyone loves the demo.

Oh, that's good. Okay.

It works. There's no issues. There's no bugs. And like literally the crowd at this conference goes wild. People are like loudly applauding. There's probably some people standing. And again, there's like—

Did someone else take credit?

No.

Oh no. Okay. Okay. Okay. No, no, no.

We're good.

I forgot about that part. All right. Good, good, good, good. Yeah. Wow. This is like a dream. Is this a dreamscape? Like, it feels like this isn't real.

It doesn't feel real. Especially like, it feels like a movie. Yeah. And Aaron is like, okay, like, this is amazing. Like, this is everything I wanted. Like, he, you know, he was describing his career up until joining this company as like, he never really found like he like fit in anywhere. Like his work wasn't recognized. And he is like, there are like 1,000 people applauding. This, this project that I've been working on so closely since I started. Like, I think he just like felt on top of the world, right?

Yeah. That's amazing.

And like this kind of thing lasts for a few years that Aaron is at Vizzy. Like he's developing, he's shipping, he's working with a team. His work is making an impact. It's being recognized. People are constantly excited about the work he's doing. There's like cheering and applauding even on like incremental progress status updates. This is so positive. Like people are just like really like encouraging one another. Meetings are going over the allotted time because people are just like so excited to talk about the stuff that Aaron happens to be working on. So he's just like, he's loving it. A few years in, Aaron decides to move out of being an individual contributor and start taking on more leadership roles. So I think it's been like maybe a couple years now. So in particular, he starts acting as a Scrum Master and he's, you know, specifically also working with a single team, enabling them to ship more and more features, right? So along this time, Vizzy as a company is growing. So they're hiring a lot of engineers, a lot of managers. And so like reorgs are happening, hierarchy changes are happening, people are being promoted, demoted, that type of thing. New processes are being instituted. So It, you know, all those growth pains are happening and it, it's a lot. And this is, this is where things take a turn for Erin. Yeah.

And you're in a leadership role too. Those are often the early ones to go, especially like a scrum master, middle management. Like this isn't looking good for Erin.

Um, that big annual conference that like a lot of people were doing the collabs at, like whatever, 2 years Prior happens again, and this time the leadership team who's presenting does something that really pisses Aaron off.

What?

So I want you to think if you have any theories about like what would piss somebody off at, like given the context that it's happening at this big—

I would say they give a fake deadline they didn't know about. Like, hey, we're gonna release this next week or something.

They introduce that to everybody. Yeah. Yeah. They introduce a deadline they don't know.

I don't know what else could piss you off. Like they could announce, yeah, just announcing something to do with your work that you are not aware of. Like that would be frustrating. Maybe they highlight someone's work and it, they didn't get highlighted even though, you know, they didn't get credit for something could be another.

So at the conference, the leadership team does a live demo again, but this time it's extremely in progress. Unfinished, very scrappy code. The code in question and like the feature in question isn't actually part of the team that Aaron works on, but it's part of a team at Vizzy who's been working on this thing for a while. So it has this reputation already for being really sticky, really difficult, lots of layers, and just like generally it's a large undertaking. So this thing is demoed. It's basically a project to add like data visualizations into tooltips. If you imagine you're looking at a graph, cuz Vizzy does data viz, that's their value prop. On that graph, right, there might be a tooltip that pops up with some information about that data point and then possibly like another data visualization inside of that tooltip. It sounds like one of those things that'd be like, yeah, great, like just do it. But at Vizzy, it's like apparently super complicated, super messy. Vizzy has both like a web application and desktop application. The code is like not at all organized and structured. There's like different languages at play. There's like teams who own different pieces of the puzzles. It's like hilariously difficult given how simple it sounds as a feature.

No, it does sound very simple. I'm like, a tooltip? This is what The white whale is, that's crazy.

Yeah. The white whale is data viz inside of data viz. Who would've thought? But okay, so this thing, very much a work in progress, gets demoed at the conference. And here we are again, the crowd is super excited. Like people love going to this conference. I think everyone's just happy. But some people in particular like really love this demo. And it's the people like all the way at the top. The higher-ups are like, "Hey yo, we need this to ship now. Like what is happening?" Like this is so important.

These people love tooltips at Viz. They're like, "I need these tooltips now. We need tooltips stat." Like I'm just imagining, just before we continue, I'm thinking of like, this is an excellent example of like, The complexities of how like, just, just, just how complex code can get, that something so simple can be so challenging. And trying to explain this to like leaders who are either non-technical or even just like very far abstracted from the code, they're probably looking like, look at these, look at these dummies, can't put a tooltip together. It should be easy. It should take 5 minutes, right? It should take an hour to build. And you're like, Well, no, actually, because we have like layers on layers and the z-index is like this and blah, blah, blah, blah. Actually, if we tried to layer— yeah, don't get me started on z-index. Like, you know what I mean? Like, there's probably— I don't know what their constraints are, right? Like, but I just think this is a funny example of like trying to explain to somebody, like something so silly. And what sucks about this is whatever demo— those are the worst, the fake demos. Like, I have a love-hate relationship because a fake demo can do a lot to inspire, to allocate resources in a way that you need to generate demand. There's a lot of good stuff to it, but it's all like, like that Homer Simpson meme of like, he looks great, but there's like all this stuff in the back. Like, it's like there's a lot going on. Or like, like the Wizard of Oz curtain type of situation, right? Like, look at this beautiful thing, but that you take the risk of, can you actually deliver, right? So you have to be very careful in what you show. I don't know what the complexities are. Maybe they got some of it solved. But if it was fake and they know for sure they can't pull it off, that is like horrible, horrible choice.

I don't think that's the boat that we're in, which is good. They wrote some code, it's just like really scrappy thrown together. Like there's some confidence they'll be able to really fully get it working, but like not now, not when the higher-ups are asking for it. They're like, we need this ASAP. They're like name dropping who they need it for. Like Yes.

Is, is Aaron mad because now he has to do the white whale thing? Is that because it got tied to his project?

Great prediction.

Follow through.

Look at you. Great prediction. Yeah. So as I mentioned, this is another team's work up to this point who has their half-baked feature prototype shown at the demo. But due to all of the reorging and reshuffling, basically this now very hot, very messy, very time-sensitive, high-pressure project lands on Aaron's lap. Up as Scrum Master, as Scrum Master/Lead Dev with an entirely new team. Aaron gets to work with his team. They have an initial planning meeting. They're trying to figure out like, okay, what needs to get done? Because again, they have a web app and they have a desktop app, so they're like thinking about how to support this tooltip on both, like what's— what code is shared, like all this stuff, right? The product manager on the team goes, We can do this in 6 weeks.

Shout out to my PMs. What?

PM says we can do this in 6 weeks. And Aaron is like, respectfully, I'm a senior dev. I've seen some stuff. Even like very simple features can take longer than 6 weeks at this company to deliver. So like, where, where are you getting this from? And Aaron is so pissed that he goes to his boss and is like, my PM is telling people we're going to get this done in 6 weeks. Like, this is not getting done in 6 weeks. Like, I've, I've run through it. Like, I've, I've looked at the architecture. Like, it's, it's not happening. What do you think an appropriate response from Aaron's boss is at this point?

Like an appropriate response? I mean, I feel like you gotta like I don't know how they're structured, but your job here is to figure out where the miscommunication is and like kind of take like a neutral stance, like unhear your report, be like, okay, and kind of create a dialogue here to figure out what is, uh, achievable timeline. Because it's not ideal. Like, uh, maybe, maybe you need to like— maybe Aaron's timeline is a little like too You know, like, we need to get this out. Like, maybe we need to talk through some, like, scoping of some of the things. Maybe we don't have to, like, you know, dot all of the i's. Maybe it's okay if some of the i's are undotted and, like, try to figure this out to reach a timeline. And then you also need to talk to this PM who is giving an aggressive timeline and communicating something that if your team doesn't think they're going to be successful, that's not okay either. So I think the right thing is to figure out, like, understand the concerns, break down how they're coming up with their timeline, and make sure that this is being communicated. Maybe even facilitate that conversation if it's that— if they're not communicating appropriately, you might have to facilitate it yourself. Say, okay, here, let's, let's talk through why you think we can get in 6 weeks. Let's talk through why you did— okay, let's find out, like, what is the thing. Although I would— I'm saying this, I don't know what the PM— if they're not technical or something, they're just like pulling this number out of the hat, that's a complete— I got— that's a whole different set of things you need to discuss and figure out. At that point, there's no— you have no basis. You can't just throw out days and decide for your developers when something's going to be done. It doesn't work like that. If it worked like that, can you imagine? I wish I could be like, "Yeah, you guys could do that in 6 weeks." kind of what you're experiencing right now.

Aaron is like spiraling. He's like, this is awful. Like, this is going to be an insane amount of pressure, not only on me, but also on like all of the devs on my team to try and deliver this in 6 weeks. And like, we're just setting ourselves up for failure. This whole architecture design, a whole like basically project management plan of like what the 6 weeks are going to look like. He runs the plan by a bunch of other devs. Like, you know, architects, staff-level engineers, and get some feedback. And everyone's like, go get it. You can do it. So he gets to work with his team, but he ends up somehow writing like most of the code, writes like a shit ton of tests. And all the while he's also running all of the ceremonies and trying to like make sure everybody knows what they're doing. So Aaron is just like kind of being a low-key powerhouse right now, doing it all. Part of the way through this, he's like, I don't, I'm not doing this for nothing. Like I deserve something. So he has a one-on-one with his manager and he's like, hey, I'm doing a pretty good job, don't you think? And basically says, I'd like to be considered for a promotion. So Aaron at this point is like a senior level engineer and basically he's asking to be promoted to staff.

That seems reasonable. I think for the first meeting, especially if it comes out of nowhere, you don't make a decision in that meeting, whether you say, yeah, I'll give it to you or I won't. Because most like you don't just have a ma— if, uh, how great would that be as a manager that I can single-handedly do this, right? There's like budget things to consider. There's also timing. Sometimes these things happen on like a certain basis and you might've just missed your window. Your promotion could take it outta somebody else's because of budget thing. This stuff can get complex, especially at a big company. I don't know what their situation is, so I probably would listen to them. Make sure you don't leave that meeting with either a yes or no. What I would do most likely is hear them, understand where they're coming from. I'd want to know, like, are they on fire? Like, are they going to quit tomorrow if they don't get this? Like, get like an urgency level. And then I would say, hey, the next time we talk, we're going to talk about this more in depth. We're going to talk about what a staff level looks like and what those are. We're going to talk about what the cycle is. I would basically not do anything in that meeting. I would listen and then schedule for another time so I sit and think about it and see what my options are because you don't want to be like, ah, never, and you don't want to say yes. You gotta need to, like, you need to sit and like articulate this stuff. It's not that simple.

It's not a decision you make on the spot, especially because there's multiple things and factors involved, like other people, budget, as you mentioned. So Aaron's manager does some of what you said, basically gives him a printout and is like, okay, so here are the expectations of a staff-level engineer. Here's where you're at. Why don't you review this? Aaron takes a look at it and is like, I, I'm literally doing all of these things. Checklists and is like, check, check, check. Yup. Been doing that for a while. Aaron emails his boss after this conversation does not get picked back up for like a few months. Aaron emails his manager a few months later around the time of annual reviews and is like, hey, I'd like to talk about the possibility of me being promoted to staff level engineer again. I reviewed the document you gave me. Here's everything that I've been doing and here's how it aligns to that, you know, set of expectations for this level. Aaron's manager does not answer this email.

Oh, that's one way to do it. Just pretend it didn't happen.

I guess. That is, that, that's exactly what he did. That is a choice. It is a choice, but our, but our boy Aaron, you think he's just gonna take that? But Aaron finds his boss in a conference room while a meeting is happening and decides to like sit and park himself outside the meeting room and waits for his manager to get out of this meeting so that he can approach him face to face. Manager comes outta the conference room. Aaron approaches and is like, hey, did you see my email? Annual reviews are coming up. Like, what's the story? His manager just gives him a super wishy-washy answer. Meanwhile, right, like it's been months since Aaron and his new team acquired this white whale of a project with the data viz inside of the data viz. And at this point it's like, it's wrapping up. Has it been 6 weeks? No, it's actually been like many, many, many months. So the PM that said this is gonna be done in 6 weeks, Sorry, very, very wrong. So now Aaron gets his big moment to personally demo this project to the leadership team, not at the conference. This is maybe like a smaller conference room at the office, not at that big annual conference. But, and he's like, of course he's so excited. Like people were like, we need this thing now, whatever. He finally got people together, made the plan, they delivered it. It's done. When the moment comes to do the demo. He does it and like no one cares. Everyone in the room is literally just like, cool, cool, dude. What's next? Like, next person? Like, when's lunch? Like, no, like there was just nothing.

I'm more curious, like, how did— like what the hype, where it came from, where it went. I don't know.

It could just be like that was a bad day. Bad day for business for all, you know, I don't know, wrong time to demo.

Or they just already thought it was done, like that other demo took the shine out of the fact it got done. Or maybe the presentation should have brought up that many teams have tried and failed. Yeah, but we succeeded. Like, I probably would have started with a preamble of like, no one could do this, no one could do this. Yeah, like maybe the storytelling wasn't strong enough in that moment. Like, just again, this is a tooltip. I think, I think like, let's remember this is a—

we have lost sight.

Yeah, we've lost sight of like the— that like, I'm sure that the users love it, maybe, hopefully, but it's a, it's a tooltip.

That's what the room was saying. They were like, cool, cool story, Erin.

Again, that's why you gotta put like, this might just be a tooltip, but do you know about the z-index? Um, yeah, we had to invent a new z-index.

If there are any engineering teams out there who need like a PR person for their work, consider hiring Jasmine because she will absolutely get people excited about the z-index and other boring and mundane, uh, technical details.

1000%.

Here's what I do know. Aaron does not get the promotion, and Aaron goes on to two more teams at this company, Vizzy, and continues to do more and more strategic leadership work, never gets recognized, and is just like, I'm done, and leaves, but takes a nice ass vacation, like an extended vacation after 20 years of working in tech and just not feeling, not feeling anything good in his heart and soul. But this story, I think, has a lot of like really key themes like developer experience, things like working well with product, like between product and engineering and actually like being good at like delivering work, right? Like that was a huge theme here of like How long it took them to even figure out a plan and then like mismanaging expectations around timelines and all that stuff. Like, while it is hard and really messy and in Aaron's case ended up in him being like, I'm done. I think it's really good that we're like, we're popping these topics open and we're talking about these things now more than at least previously. So like, I, I'm left feeling hopeful. But maybe that's just my nature of putting like a positive spin on this truly sad—

This is like very common, right? Like, I think this is just the industry, and there's also so many spots, there's so many things. I also think like the way that companies are built like just need to evolve. I think that we have so many people and there's so many complexities to like the— just to get code down and like ship a thing. It's just so complicated. I would love to see like the different, you know, I think something interesting about this is like if there's still like this singular project, I would love to see the how long it took for this thing to start, this initiative, uh, how many people touched it, how many people tried, how much money, what was the lifetime cost of this project. It would be so interesting and like retrospect on that and like, what happened? Was it because there were so many things? Should we have even done it ever? Was it worth it? I don't know. Was there— I don't know. I just think that there's so much interesting stuff there that we could have— we could uncover.

I agree that we could learn from. Yeah, I do feel a little sad. It's a sad ending.

This is a sad ending, a familiar ending. But Aaron, in the end, went off into the sunset. There is always a point in someone in tech's time where they go through something like this, where things just were not going their way no matter how hard they tried, and they take a low-key sabbatical or like these long things. They find something and they either exit the industry or they create their own thing. Or they find something new. And I think that not every job is going to have like extreme longevity. Not every job's gonna be exactly what you want, and you need to either adjust your expectations or you need to go out and chase the thing that you want. Right? Uh, I think you also need to recognize when things aren't working out earlier and make— all of these are decisions that this person is making. I think it'd be sad about. What happened to Aaron, but I think we should think more about what is it that, like, putting more of the power in ourselves. What is it that Aaron can do to go seek the thing that is really gonna make them happy? We get really focused on the things we're building and it's, it does encapsulate a lot of stuff. It requires a lot of energy and thought just to hone your craft, to work with others. It's connections and, and time spent. Ultimately, these things are ephemeral. They come and they go just like everything else in life. When you put it in the grand scheme of things, you know, he did have a ton of awesome stuff that happened. And sometimes these things don't turn out the way they do and the opportunities don't show up like they would and things change. You just gotta go seek out the next thing. As much as it sucks to start over, it is what it is. That's, that's life.

I do, I do like to think though that Aaron is one of those people who has like, you know, big company, big company after big company on their LinkedIn, like 20 years of experience. And then it just says like goose farmer. Or like, you know, like beach bum or something. I'm like, I want that for Aaron after, after this many years and all of his service. Because as you said, he clearly like cares deeply and did a lot of good stuff. Aaron deserves horseback riding on the beach and hanging out with some geese.

Or a sauna.

Did you get your sauna? If, if anyone remembers, Jasmine was manifesting getting an apartment sauna. Yes. So did— has this happened for you?

I have one in my car. Well, I removed it from my cart, but I am thinking about it.

You said in your car, and I was like—

In my car is crazy. Wait, write that down. Sauna in your car. This could be a thing.

And we'll call it Vizzy, even though that has nothing to do with Vizzy Heat, Vizzy Steam. We'll riff. We'll riff.

I mean, it's kind of like Pimp Your Car when they put like a jacuzzi in your trunk. Like that, but a sauna. It's not impossible.

It's not.

That'll be after I get burned out and want to leave the tech industry. I'll go on beaches and then go invent Vizzy Steam. Vizzy Steam.

All right, on that note, I hope you have a lovely day. See you next time. If anybody has any stories for us, please visit jellyfish.co/offthevpn.

We have a little box there. You can send us your anonymous stories, or if you want to say it with your chest, you can give us your name if you really want to. Like, you want to say something with your chest, we're all for it.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, we'll, we'll accept it. All submissions are anonymous, so All right. Bye, Jasmine.

Bye. Thanks for listening to Off the VPN.

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