I probably will never truly understand the sufferings and misery of the author. However, the author perhaps was expecting the environment to be challenging in a positive way, with interesting work and motivated colleagues. Unfortunately for the author, the team was complete opposite of it.
Recognizing such environments is also a valuable office skill, because then you can decide for yourself if you would like to basically do nothing alongside the team or leave for greener pastures. Being new to the team and trying to make a positive change immediately will only create resistance from the peers and may lead to abuse described in the article.
Paradoxically, doing nothing and being conformant with the team nature would have led to positive reviews and much, much less overall misery.
There is Jira of course, and somehow tickets do get resolved eventually, perhaps my 3-4 hours per week is enough for that.
Daily stand ups are the funniest. I get to work on my bullshiting and improvisation skills. Sometimes I say stuff that I could have done but just could not be bothered enough. Interestingly, I found out that nobody really cares or follows up on that.
Occasionally other people reach out to me for help. Sometimes I do help them, sometimes I pretend to be too busy for that.
I think this happens because higher management are so full of themselves and genuinely believe in what they are supposedly doing that they cannot comprehend a simple idea of being useless and just not having much for others to do. There is a quote about exactly this situation, has been quite popular recently.
Since WFH started I don't have to pretend to be working anymore. I get maybe 1 hour at most per day and even that is not always. The rest of time I read books, walk outside, play games, do my own stuff.
I honestly believe my position and my team entirely could be fired and nothing would change for company's bottom line, perhaps it would even improve. It does hurt a bit because a number of employees were laid off recently, while they were actually useful.
I am "working" as a developer in one of bigger tech companies here in EU.
I probably will never truly understand the sufferings and misery of the author. However, the author perhaps was expecting the environment to be challenging in a positive way, with interesting work and motivated colleagues. Unfortunately for the author, the team was complete opposite of it. Recognizing such environments is also a valuable office skill, because then you can decide for yourself if you would like to basically do nothing alongside the team or leave for greener pastures. Being new to the team and trying to make a positive change immediately will only create resistance from the peers and may lead to abuse described in the article.
Paradoxically, doing nothing and being conformant with the team nature would have led to positive reviews and much, much less overall misery.