bostonimproper's journal

[bostonimproper]

If I tell them I would rather leave than oversee the India group, then I don’t get promoted. I probably don’t get fired but day to day work probably becomes more unpleasant as I fall out of the good graces of management chain. There’s potential I get staffed onto even worse projects that I can’t really showcase as wins on my resume as I look for new role.

If I tell them I am open to overseeing the India group, I get promoted then I can take that higher level to make finding next job easier. The promotion means I become a people manager, which opens up a lot more opportunities for next job. In this scenario, I take the title increase and leave for greener pastures while the team is still getting hired and trained up and it’s too early for execution to go off the rails. That would selfish good-for-me plan but definitely bad for the company as a whole and would probably burn bridges.

My grand boss keeps telling me that overseeing India team is no big deal, just requires taking some calls earlier in the morning. I start becoming convinced but then I take like five minutes alone to really think about it and I’m like, “yeah that’s just bullshit to get me to say yes, isn’t it?”

[bostonimproper]

In terms of what life looks like if I quit, it depends on whether and how quickly I can find a job. I’m about 2-3 years to hitting my FI number (though I also thought that two years ago too, so…). I have enough runway to do nothing and just enjoy kiddo’s toddlerhood for a while. But then it might be hard to get back to work after. Or I could power through to FI. Or I could start a business. Lots of optionality, I guess, though in my ideal scenario I’d just find another job, hit FI in a couple years, and “get work over with” so to speak.

[Slevin]

If I tell them I am open to overseeing the India group, I get promoted then I can take that higher level to make finding next job easier. The promotion means I become a people manager, which opens up a lot more opportunities for next job. In this scenario, I take the title increase and leave for greener pastures while the team is still getting hired and trained up and it’s too early for execution to go off the rails. That would selfish good-for-me plan but definitely bad for the company as a whole and would probably burn bridges.

My grand boss keeps telling me that overseeing India team is no big deal, just requires taking some calls earlier in the morning. I start becoming convinced but then I take like five minutes alone to really think about it and I’m like, “yeah that’s just bullshit to get me to say yes, isn’t it?”

I don't see the problem with burning bridges here unless you think there is a road where you quit, then 2 years later you want to come back and not get put in the bad management chain and the sadness of your leaving is long forgotten? You also have a nice out on this path of "yeah this unfortunately isn't working out how grand boss told me it would, so I'm going to move somewhere it might. Sorry for all the inconvenience, but you lied to me and now this is the consequences of telling me it would be no big deal when it was in fact a big deal."

Also, yes, overseeing a whole team that you don't know the people and aren't able to be there most of the day to help them out is going to be complicated, frustrating, and difficult. And then any issues with their performance are now your problem, etc. I work with a team of great ops engineers from India (since they have basically the opposite hours of ours), and it is still difficult to hand things off properly, etc, just from a language barrier perspective and cultural perspective. Add in hiring, contracting, etc, and its a whole complicated mess.

[delay]

Apparently my employer wants me to oversee a team… in India. I don’t like the trajectory this role would put me on and in general trying to be the bridge between continents sounds hellish. I really don’t want to look for a new job right now, I’m too fucking tired. I have some FAANG calls the next couple weeks, but if those don’t go well I think I’m just going to quit anyway. Life is too short.

India is an interesting place to visit. Contrary to the West, it's a country that's growing. New highways are constructed, people earn more every year, the economy is growing. Interfacing with Indians is a challenge, but you're not the first, there are many resources for it.

You write it sounds hellish, why do you expect that?

[Crusader]

It is funny, one of the reasons why I like my job right now is BECAUSE it looks like I will be overseeing a new team in India. It sounds new and exciting, and a challenge that would allow me to learn new skills (I swear I am not secretly paid by your boss). I also acknowledge that we are at completely different life stages (or lead different lives). I definitely don't have a baby I need to take care of.

[Biscuits and Gravy]

I’m not in your industry, but in my industry it’s not at all hard to get rehired after taking a break for a few years to take care of a baby. It’s a convenient time and excuse for you. If I could do it over, I would’ve taken time away from work while the kids were under 4. Not because I think they necessarily benefit from mommy being at home, but because I woulda been a helluva lot less stressed (which I guess, in turn, benefits the babies, but this isn’t about those jerks).

[bostonimproper]

@delay I describe it as hellish because:
1. The team focuses on custom internal tools, products which I try to avoid for a number of reasons. The primary ones being: the users often complain a lot and bug you about every little thing (because they are your colleagues) and their work is often not nearly as important as they think it is.
2. The users are all company employees on the US West Coast which is a 12 hour time difference from the India team.
3. We’re talking about rewriting some core tools from scratch, which in my experience requires a lot of iteration between the users and development team, which becomes a huge headache with the time zone difference.
4. I have a young child who still doesn’t sleep well so anything that cuts into my free time or sleep is deeply unwelcome.
5. I’m not a people manager now and I don’t think I’d be a good one, honestly. I can’t imagine adding cultural-based differences in how to manage layered on top of that.

@Crusader I’m sure childless me would see this as more of an opportunity than current me does. Right now all I can think is, “goddammit I’m already drownnning.”

[7Wannabe5]

Maybe you could come up with some kind of radical win:win counter-offer? I mean, you're already in a space where you are on the verge of quitting, so you have little to lose by proposing something like "Hey Boss, I am very much intrigued by this India Group prospect, and we both know I would be excellent in the position, but part of what has allowed me to be such a superb performer is that I know what I need to make things work; and in this situation, what I will need is 35% raise and a full-time personal assistant who reports only to me and FITB with whatever extreme demand might actually make this tenable for you OR might allow for "good divorce" from the job, because you wanted to be there for the team, but the team just couldn't provide enough resources to be there for you.

[Der Leiermann]

5. I’m not a people manager now and I don’t think I’d be a good one, honestly. I can’t imagine adding cultural-based differences in how to manage layered on top of that.

You write above that not taking this opportunity would preclude you from a promotion and may not allow you to get to this higher level of hierarchy even in other businesses. But is this even a promotion you’d want if you don’t see yourself being a people manager? It seems to me the better outcome could be to ‘tread water’ from a career sense, citing baby stresses, rather than continuing to climb the ladder when the ladder is up against the wrong wall.

[Scott 2]

I spent a couple years on projects with a dev team in South Africa. The time difference is rough. Assuming your team is great - they're your peers. That means sharing the sleep disruption caused by opposite hours.The official contract might even state they're on US hours, but once you have a relationship, it's just not what happens. It's draining, especially over the long term.

Whether it's worth it? Dunno. But I think you are correct in having reservations over the time difference. Chronically losing sleep due to work is a very expensive trade off.

[bostonimproper]

@7W5 There’s honestly nothing that’d make this a tenable situation. My boss has already hinted that they can’t get design resources for me, who I consider 100% necessary for this sort of project/team, so it’s pretty obvious that since they can’t meet reasonable requests, there’s little chance with unreasonable ones.

@Scott 2 Agreed on leaning toward skepticism.

But is this even a promotion you’d want if you don’t see yourself being a people manager?

It’d allow me to more easily lateral into Lead/Staff level IC roles elsewhere. I don’t know why companies care about management experience for non-management roles, but I’ve been asked by enough recruiters that it seems like a factor for whatever reason.

[white belt]

Apparently my employer wants me to oversee a team… in India. I don’t like the trajectory this role would put me on and in general trying to be the bridge between continents sounds hellish.

If I had a nickel for every time I heard about tech companies outsourcing dev jobs to India...It feels like a cyclical thing at this point. Upper management: "Hey, these devs in India are way cheaper for a similar skillset, so if we just put one of our good US Project Managers over the team, we should still get the same output but at a fraction of the cost!" I hear a lot more horror stories than success stories for all the reasons that have already been discussed. Fast forward a few years and the output never seems to match expectations until eventually it's shutdown to move jobs elsewhere.

The real question is are you prepared to exit the tech rat race? Most people I know have a very hard job leaving the prestige and money behind, especially when it's so ingrained in their identity. I've heard from friends in the industry that Boston is very much the yuppie tech epicenter of the east coast, so I'm guessing that lifestyle is all around you.

I don’t know why companies care about management experience for non-management roles, but I’ve been asked by enough recruiters that it seems like a factor for whatever reason.

I'm guessing they are using it as a filter to determine if a candidate will be a good team player. The theory is that someone with management experience will know how a manager thinks, so they will be better at working with their peers and boss.

[delay]

Upper management: "Hey, these devs in India are way cheaper for a similar skillset, so if we just put one of our good US Project Managers over the team, we should still get the same output but at a fraction of the cost!"

After being outsourced a few times, I'm not sure it's about the money. The Indian developers who took over my job earn more than I do. And they replaced each of us with more than one developer. After outsourcing, less gets done, which also doesn't fit with money as a motive.

Perhaps managing suppliers (instead of development) frees up resources for other tasks. You can easily switch suppliers. Maybe they want to standardise, reduce local dependencies, use tenders? It's easier to replace an Indian developer, they don't stick to one job for long anyway. A curious aspect is that government outsources even more than corporations.

Or perhaps they just want to change focus and move their Western workers' attention elsewhere.

[macg]

After being outsourced a few times, I'm not sure it's about the money. The Indian developers who took over my job earn more than I do. And they replaced each of us with more than one developer. After outsourcing, less gets done, which also doesn't fit with money as a motive.

Perhaps managing suppliers (instead of development) frees up resources for other tasks. You can easily switch suppliers. Maybe they want to standardise, reduce local dependencies, use tenders? It's easier to replace an Indian developer, they don't stick to one job for long anyway. A curious aspect is that government outsources even more than corporations.

Or perhaps they just want to change focus and move their Western workers' attention elsewhere.

Every time I've run into outsourcing, it's been about the money - even if I didn't fully understand it. For example, while the Indian developer may make more than you, that doesn't mean that it's not cheaper for your company to have them instead of you. Could be not having to pay healthcare (US-centric maybe), or could be a larger corporate deal where the company that is outsourcing is paying a one-time reduced rate for a set contract. Something is making it so the corporation that is outsourcing is making their books look better.

[delay]

Something is making it so the corporation that is outsourcing is making their books look better.

That's certainly possible. Someone mentioned that stock value increases if you have more turnover per employee. Outsourcing is an obvious way to achieve that.

[shaz]

Sometimes the Board wants you to get your employee #s down but doesn't notice the $s you spend on outsourcing.

[zbigi]

Perhaps managing suppliers (instead of development) frees up resources for other tasks. You can easily switch suppliers. Maybe they want to standardise, reduce local dependencies, use tenders? It's easier to replace an Indian developer, they don't stick to one job for long anyway. A curious aspect is that government outsources even more than corporations.

From what I've seen, from the hiring manager's perspective, there's a large appeal in managing an outsourcing contract instead of an inhouse team. With the inhouse team, you have the entire headcount to manage, worry about hiring, retention, team morale and a dozen other things. With an external contract, you mostly only talk to a few managers at the outsourcing company, you can be an asshole to them (it's their job to suck it up) etc. It's basically living on easy street from the manager's perspective. The delivered results are usually pretty poor (again - in my experience), but if you don't want to move up in the company any more, perhaps you don't really care.

[bostonimproper]

I’m angry and unproductive at work right now and the job search is going poorly so I’m going to grade myself on my goals for 2023 because why not.

Parenting

• First 6-8 weeks, just survive.
• Take kiddo out for at least 1 hour a day, regardless of weather. Easy mode: sit and read on our back porch while kiddo naps.
• Stick with breastfeeding through the first year. After that, I’m pretty sure I’ll want to quit.
• No screen time through the first year.
• Set up toddler-accessible stations for sleep, food, hygiene, play/education, art, and indoor physical play, enabling independent activity as much as possible. More toward end of year once kiddo is mobile.

I give us a B on Parenting this year. I quit breastfeeding early, but my god it was so worth it. Everything else I’d say we sorta mostly passed? Like, we do hand the baby our phones to watch the Happy Song during diaper changes because otherwise they’d refuse to lay down and get poop everywhere, but I don’t even really feel bad about that (though if you guys have recommendations for 3-minute clips of things that are young child-friendly and not cloying, send them my way!). Also, I’m laughing at past-me being like “Oh wouldn’t it be nice to take baby outside every day” as if it weren’t a complete necessity for my sanity, especially with a mobile baby. Silly me.

Health

• Continue getting at least 150 minutes of moderate exercise (weight training, HIIT, pilates, etc) each week. Does not include walking.
• Get orthodontia to fix emerging bite issues.
• Address “I’ve f—‘d my core” stuff post-birth (diastesis recti, pelvic control, etc).
• Regain strength and mobility to the point I am ready to get back into parkour and indoor rock climbing.

Again, I give myself a B on Health stuff. I got Invisalign this year and am more or less back to my regular exercise routines. My body feels maybe 95% recovered from birth? Some things will probably never be back to how it was before, but I don’t worry about my abs ripping apart every time I do a sit up anymore, so, win?

Social

• See friends in person at least once a month. We’ve gotten lazy at this and mostly resorted to virtual hangouts with the pandemic and everyone having kids. Also, we personally have been spending a lot more time with my in-laws. Anyway, it’s silly given how close we all live to each other.
• Make one new friend — maybe through local parenting groups?

Um, I’ll give myself a C here. We definitely saw friends more often this year— I think that got easier as baby got older and we could all meet at playgrounds and whatnot. My husband and I also went to some community events trying to meet other parent-friends. We got a few folks’ numbers, but didn’t really follow up. So that one’s really on us.

Financial

• Increase net worth by 16% YoY.
• Purchase rental property near the Great Lakes. Right now I’m thinking either Detroit or Buffalo metro, but I really need to get out there on the ground. Expecting market may be in a good spot in Q3 based on rates/recession/etc, but will keep tabs based on macro to figure out the right timing.
• Find a new job — less a goal and more a “what I expect to happen that’ll be disruptive next year.”

Another C. Our net worth has increased just about 20% YoY, but failed at everything else. I’m actively looking for a new job now and I forgot just how much I hate the whole process. Honestly, every time I’m searching for a job it feels like months of pulling teeth. Like, why does nobody want to hire me? Do I suck that much? Ugh. Anyway, I didn’t buy the rental property either, but I’m rethinking the location for that anyway and leaning more toward Maine. Not sure yet.

Personal pursuits

• Read 20 books.
• Vet business idea. Includes A/B testing potential product lines, sales channels, procurement, pricing and bundling. Also some minimal branding, website, payments setup. Make at least 5 sales and document CX process end-to-end. Decide if worth growing/maintaining or folding.
• Give away compost that’s just been taking up space in my tumbler.
• Grow one edible thing.
• Get back into seasonal, local eating and meal planning.

F. I did none of this. Yes, my composter has been full for over a year. What’s it to ya?

[bostonimproper]

Thinking through what I want from 2024:

Parenting

Young toddler, here we come. Husband is still going to do the SAHP thing. We’ll probably do part time daycare when toddler is closer to 2.5 for the socialization and to get the year of endless sick days out of the way, so we’re looking at another year and change of them at home full time.

We’re already getting some talking so I’d like to start exposing toddler to foreign language content, mainly Spanish and Chinese. If I had to pick one, I think Chinese is probably more important because even after years of Chinese school as a kid I could never really grok tones so I’m hoping early exposure could help pave the neural pathways for toddler. Neither husband nor I are fluent so we’ll mostly be relying on bilingual media for now for exposure.

Otherwise, my big goal for this year is to continue to foster toddler’s independence as much as possible. Teach them how to do things for themselves, continue to make the house more accessible for a tiny person, give them agency in what they do, and respect their bodily autonomy where we can.

Health

I’d like to get back into doing parkour next summer. I was never anything but terrible at it, but I did find it enjoyable and I’d love to practice together with toddler when they get older.

Social

This is the year I want to invest some time in our familial relationships. Both my husband and I have some complicated feelings about our parents, but given the toddler and the fact that our parents are getting older, I think it’s important that we spend the time making some memories while we can. My family is coming out to visit for toddler’s first birthday, which will be the first time they’ll have met in person. So we want to throw maybe a little party for that.

And as to my in laws, I think we finally need to have an uncomfortable conversation on how and where they want to live if they start to need more help to get by day to day. My mother in law is showing early signs of dementia, so I worry if we don’t have that conversation soon, the window will start to close before we know it.

Financial

I’m definitely counting chickens before they hatch, but I could see us being within striking distance of our FI number by end of the year. I don’t think I’ll be quite ready to give up my corporate paycheck, mostly because we’d still need to fund toddler’s college fund and save up for a home renovation, but I think we’re maybe talking leaving tech by end of 2025? That’d be pretty neat.

For a long time I’ve talked about buying investment property in a climate change-friendly location. That’ll probably be on hold this year for a number of reasons, but is something I’d like to revisit down the line.

In terms of my job, my hope is to get promoted by spring. Then the question is whether I leave and try to find another job, which is going terribly right now, or just coast until I hit FI. I think the India team will probably come online around summertime, and it’d take a while for my boss to realize I’m phoning it in, so I feel like inertia is nudging me to stay? I don’t know, I wish the job market in tech was better right now. Even within the ML niche, unless you have specific LLM experience, I feel like it’s an uphill battle, at least on the product side. The constant rejection bruises the ego a bit.

Personal pursuits

In the past I’ve talked about starting a business. This is not the year for that. I would, however, like to take up a hobby. I’m thinking sketching as a focus next year. I have this vague notion that I’d like to get into industrial design and do little personal projects for fun once I’m retired, and I think investing time in sketching is probably wiser than leaning into a consumerist bent and buying a 3D printer or something.

Other

Depending on how some things out of our control shape up over the next year, my husband and I are considering living abroad for a while. Obviously, that’d change our plans a lot so this is more a wait and see thing. At the very least, we need to make sure that toddler gets their passport. It’d also behoove us to get a couple non-urgent repairs around the house done, in case we want to rent the place out while we’re gone.

If we did move, I’m not really sure how we’d make it work. My husband has an EU passport but toddler and I don’t. Also since I’m the primary breadwinner, I’d have to find a new job. I have no idea if the concept of product management exists in foreign tech companies the way they do in the US and whether any company would actually be willing to sponsor me. It’s all just kind of a big question mark right now.

[bostonimproper]

Muddling through

I’m not thriving right now. I’m not spiraling either. Just muddling through.

My daily schedule is split between parenting and work. Toddler wakes up at 6:00. I feed them, play with them, do a few chores together, and put them down for their morning nap around 9:00. Then I work until 16:00 or 17:00, whenever my last meeting of the day ends. Somewhere in there I grab myself something to eat and squeeze in some time to do some weightlifting if I can. Then it’s back to either parenting duty or cooking dinner until baby goes down around 19:00, at which point I have two hours to eat dinner, shower, do whatever life administrata there is to do (baby’s passport, taxes, laundry, fix our sink, etc), and maybe relax a bit before heading to overnight shift with baby, where I wake up three or four times a night to resettle them because, I don’t know, teething? illness? developmental leap? just waking up randomly needing a parent?

A couple nights a week my husband takes overnight duty so I’m able to run on more than fumes. But even so, I just feel like it’s hard to get ahead on anything. And hard for my husband and I to get a break— especially since our trusted babysitter is moving. We don’t really trust our in-laws with baby (too old) and our close friends aren’t interested in babysitting swaps for different reasons— one has an immunocompromised kiddo, the other is pregnant with a second kid and therefore isn’t interested in handling another toddler running around.

Anyways, I’m tired. Not like newborn level tired but this subtle exhaustion that never 100% goes away even just after I’ve woken up for the day. I have no idea how people do this with more than one child.

There are still good, sweet moments of course. Toddler is going through a language explosion. I stopped counting once they hit around 20 words. We’ve been mixing in Spanish language books with their others and so I think we’re roughly 70/30 English/Spanish with our reading time right now. And every once and a while I’ll speak to them in Spanish for little repetitive things. We occasionally do Mandarin “first word” books too, but I don’t really think we’re going to get anywhere near the level of immersion they’d need for anything to stick. Not really sure how or whether to pursue further on that front.

In terms of fostering autonomy, we’re starting to set up a tiny “self-care” station for them, which is a fancy way of saying we’re hacking them a toddler sized sink because even with a step stool, they’re not going to be able to reach the controls for our sinks for a while. They’re starting to “help” us with little chores, like unloading the dishwasher and cutting their fruit in the morning with an egg slicer. Also, they’ve mastered going up and down the stairs to our front door, so we’ve been having them do that as much as possible to tire them out and save our backs a little work. Little things, but fun.

On the job front, things are similarly blah. My boss agrees I’m performing at a level where I should be promoted, but is delaying for six months because #reasons. Also our company continues to do layoffs, offshoring jobs over to India. I’ve applied to positions elsewhere but it’s still crickets. This has honestly been the worst job search for me… probably ever?

Anyway, that’s life right now, a lot of repetition and drudgery. Also, did I mention how tired I am? So fucking tired.