(meta) Let's talk about rule 3: No General Career Advice
It seems like many interesting and highly relevant to SWE folks posts seem to be deleted via Rule 3. The examples listed in the sidebar are:
No general career advice, including "should I take company/role X or Y", questions about hot markets, equity, salary, FAANG, job titles, interview questions, or negotiations.
and
Any career advice thread must contain questions and/or discussions that notably benefit from the participation of experienced developers. Career advice threads may be removed at the moderators discretion based on response to the thread."
General rule of thumb: If the advice you are giving (or seeking) could apply to a “Senior Chemical Engineer”, it’s not appropriate for this sub.
However it seems like this rule gets applied far too broadly in this sub. It feels like what it actually is interpreted to be is, "if answers might apply to other people in other industries, it's probably a Rule 3 violation."
For example: https://www.reddit.com/r/ExperiencedDevs/comments/1icxkmr/is_being_the_wildcard_developer_a_good_or_bad/ was deleted this way recently. It was one of the more interesting and applicable to SWE folks I've seen here but because it tangentially is relevant to other fields, it was deleted. Responses here absolutely benefit from the participation of experienced developers, as called out by the sidebar.
What I'd like to see is a lessening of how broadly Rule3 is applied. I struggle to understand why the above was deleted but of the top posts from the last year, so many of those are still present. Of the last year top 10:
- https://www.reddit.com/r/ExperiencedDevs/comments/1g0m8mb/be_aware_of_the_upcoming_amazon_management/ -- Amazon has many non-tech managers and this is far more than tech-specific
- https://www.reddit.com/r/ExperiencedDevs/comments/1b89gqf/the_cto_of_my_company_challenged_all_engineering/ -- this applies to all managers. As someone who was a different engineer type before being a dev, the same root problem applies to all managers - many managers exist who have NO idea what their team does and cannot do even the most basic of job tasks.
- https://www.reddit.com/r/ExperiencedDevs/comments/1gz9ksj/my_senior_engineer_interview_experiences/ -- this is just blatantly an interview question/experience Rule3 violation
- https://www.reddit.com/r/ExperiencedDevs/comments/1gtoe56/after_5_years_of_working_in_tech_ive_surmised/ -- this is the case in most engineering disciplines
- https://www.reddit.com/r/ExperiencedDevs/comments/1fic0db/amazon_moving_to_five_days_a_week_inoffice/ -- this applies to all amazon employees. FAANG is also explicitly called out as a Rule3 violation
- https://www.reddit.com/r/ExperiencedDevs/comments/1g6j7vi/overwhelmed_at_new_faang_job/ -- most of the comments/discussion apply to anyone joining a new job and overwhelmed. FAANG is also explicitly called out as a Rule3 violation
So of the top 10 posts in the last year, 6 of them seem to be Rule 3 violations as well (but not deleted). As someone who was a different engineer in my first career (though not a chemical engineer, as the sidebar lists), all those threads apply just as well to my prior engineering discipline. And by the definition of Rule3 seems they should have been deleted.
This is just an example of the inconsistency in how it's applied.
An additional and even more fundamental problem with how Rule 3 is applied is that the further you go in your career, the less specific to "tech" and the more intermingled tech/people/processes are for the types of questions/discussions you have. And these are the types of discussions which get deleted with some regularity here. The impact here is it feels like r/ExperiencedDevs is more like r/MidlevelDevs because essentially everything in the staff+ category and much of the senior+ category has a lot of overlap with other engineering disciplines and end up deleted.
The specific changes I want to see:
- lessen enforcement of Rule 3 when it's pretty clearly a discussion that is beneficial and related to SWEs. I would not be in favor of deleting any of the above, for example, even though I believe they are current Rule 3 violations. Because even though the advice is basically generic engineering advice, it's still beneficial for devs.
- Remove the "general rule of thumb" section from the sidebar.
- Clarify somewhere what this means: "notably benefit from the participation of experienced developers" because most of the Rule 3 violations I comment in seem to fully fit this. So either remove this text entirely or define more what this means.