April 19th, 2023 9:48AM PDT
As of the above date and time about 15 months ago, I along with many others at F5 received an email saying that we were being RIFd – we were no longer of value to F5.
Within two weeks after my last official day of May 2nd, I had been contacted by recruiters from Amazon, Microsoft and Meta. Given my time, responsibilities, innovations and performance while at F5, it wasn’t at all surprising.
I decided not to pursue any of the opportunities offered. I wasn’t feeling it. Yes – there was the income and benefits (especially health). But I wasn’t feeling it. It’s taken over a year to figure out why.
The last 6 years of my time with F5 I realized I had just become a number to F5 to be plugged into an Excel spreadsheet. There was no “human first”. The worst of these were the SAFe/Scrum spreadsheets when doing BRPs - 2 day Big Room Planning each 6 weeks for the program increments – each divided into 3 two week iterations. Story points were meticulously crafted for Load computations/compliance. And then there was the Confidence Vote – those who voted low confidence to make the plan were chastised.
Each program increment had multiple 1 hour meeting types plus the daily 15 minute Scrum meeting that became daily 30+ minute meetings.
And every 6 weeks the cycle repeated. It wasn’t about engineering anymore. It was all about spreadsheets.
SREs, RTEs, managers, senior managers and directors refused to listen.
Software Engineering that I so loved and passionate about was gone. That is that I was feeling when I decided not to go forward with the recruiters.
A few years ago a software colleague of mine working for a different company all of the sudden quit and left the Software Industry. When I asked why, he said he wasn’t feeling it. I didn’t understand at the time. I do now.
I have no idea what the future has in store for me.