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Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?

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Re: Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?

#251

Post by Aurornis »

Esophagus4 wrote: post #248
Aurornis wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Search the net for questions / topics to manage up in 1-1s. This is why so many people find themselves in performative 1 on 1s: It's assumed that the time must be spent, so managers and reports alike start searching for things to fill up that time. The best 1 on 1 formats I've had were quick and to the point. We cancelled or ended early if there was nothing to discuss that hadn't already been discussed. The worst w…

It is totally acceptable to use a list of questions to give you ideas for what to talk about. You might learn something you didn’t know if you didn’t ask. For example, most managers aren’t having “career” convos with their people regularly. It’s fine to use a question bank if it helps you kick this convo off and get to the heart of the matter. If your 1-1s have been performative, I guess shame on either the manager,…

If you’re scheduling meetings without an idea of what to talk about, that’s a problem.

Looking up ideas to discuss with your manager is a good idea. If you are being scheduled for time slots and have to search for ideas to fill it every week, that’s a symptom of a broken meeting that should be reduced in time, frequency, or both.

> I guess shame on either the manager, you, or both.

This culture of shaming people who aren’t doing the performative thing of filling up the meeting time is why so many of us are so tired of this rigid 1:1 dogma. Business and communication practices should meet the team’s needs, not be a game of following steps you found on the Internet about what to talk about in meetings.

Schedule meetings when communication is needed. Stop wasting everyone’s time by searching the internet for conversation ideas for arbitrary meetings.

Re: Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?

#252

Post by whattheheckheck »

scottyah wrote: post #233
quotemstr wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's why command economies fail. They fail in the same way that firms do, except that because the whole economy is one giant firm, you can't get the you need to remove entrenched bureaucrats until the situation gets so bad that you have a revolution or lose a war.

Ray Dalio has been preaching this for awhile now. Mad respect for him spending an non-insignificant amount of time and money to educate the masses (and all the pushback that comes from it).

What does he say

Re: Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?

#253

Post by stirfish »

watwut wrote: post #201
tclancy wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's assuming an awful lot, mainly about how we no longer need human connection or context with other people to be able to succeed as a team. When I took over as an engineering manager, it took a couple of 1:1s per person but actually being interested in them as fellow humans made a huge difference. One of my reports, a former teammate who I really liked and got along well with, was carrying serious depression arou…

Nothing says human connection as much as scheduled meeting and necessity to have scheduled meeting to get or provide context. If the general mussings about a company, causual fun project and a little small talk about life require scheduled meething, you dont have those human connections with the team. Did you considered that people understand difference between human connection, relationship and being one of mandator…

>Nothing says human connection as much as scheduled meeting and necessity to have scheduled meeting to get or provide context.

I understand your point, but that also describes a date.

Re: Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?

#254

Post by whattheheckheck »

sumeno wrote: post #80
eudamoniac wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But 1 on 1 meetings are not crossing team boundaries, they are always within the team which is pretty much always smaller than 50. There's no reason the team cannot "talk to everyone all the time" just because other teams exist. But instead this communication is replaced by meetings even though the ability to talk hasn't changed.

Managers DO cross team boundaries though, their peers are other managers. I can't talk to the 100 people in my department every week, but my manager can talk to their 9 peers, who each talk to their 10 reports.

Yeah has anyone discovered sociocracy?

https://www.sociocracyforall.org/sociocracy/

Re: Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?

#255

Post by Aurornis »

garciasn wrote: post #189
Esophagus4 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s an anti pattern of management - the 1-1 shouldn’t be a status update. There are times you want to brief your boss on things that are important to them, but if you’re just going over your tickets, that’s a waste of time (unless you’re using that time to get technical guidance on your tickets). There are lots of lousy managers out there, and you can’t control that - but you can set the agenda of your 1-1 yoursel…

I lead teams of Data Engineers, Data Scientists, and Platform Engineers. My direct reports drive their 1:1s; from the need to have them in the first place to the agenda when we do. We have standups for our team as well as the larger team and we are in constant contact with one another throughout each day via IM. Why would we need to repeat the same shit in a 1:1? I consider their 1:1s THEIR meeting. If they want it,…

This is such good common sense that it’s foreign to so many people.

The 1:1 is great when needed. It’s a waste of time if everyone is already communicating everything. The most efficient teams communicate effectively without having to force it into recurring, pre-determined time slots. Topics like performance reviews and career progression are better discussed in quarterly meetings dedicated to that topic, not a weekly time slot with a fluid agenda.

Re: Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?

#257

Post by icedchai »

jldugger wrote: post #237
Aurornis wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean? Even at companies with strong 1:1 cultures it’s bad practice to save technical questions for 1:1s (shouldn’t be delaying them until the weekly slot) and performance reviews are scheduled separately from 1:1s because it shouldn’t take the place of normal communications. It’s an additional meeting with separate agendas.

> performance reviews are scheduled separately from 1:1s The performative annual review meetings can be separate, sure. But managers should be discussing with their directs in 1:1s sufficiently that no criticism or praise contained within is heard for the first time.

"Annual reviews" are another joke. They're, more often than not, a huge time waster for everyone involved. I've seen performance evaluation forms with such convoluted questions, they were obviously the result of insanely muddled group think.

Re: Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?

#258

Post by [deleted] »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #15

> Like the majority of the team is doing useless stuff that management thinks is impressive This is arrogant thinking typical of developers. Most developers I have talked to (including myself 10 years ago) thinks that they or their friends who agree with them about all sorts of random code quirks are the only one that does work and "carries" the team, and everyone else's work is largely useless. The reality is that a…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?

#259

Post by schmookeeg »

garciasn wrote: post #189
Esophagus4 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s an anti pattern of management - the 1-1 shouldn’t be a status update. There are times you want to brief your boss on things that are important to them, but if you’re just going over your tickets, that’s a waste of time (unless you’re using that time to get technical guidance on your tickets). There are lots of lousy managers out there, and you can’t control that - but you can set the agenda of your 1-1 yoursel…

I lead teams of Data Engineers, Data Scientists, and Platform Engineers. My direct reports drive their 1:1s; from the need to have them in the first place to the agenda when we do. We have standups for our team as well as the larger team and we are in constant contact with one another throughout each day via IM. Why would we need to repeat the same shit in a 1:1? I consider their 1:1s THEIR meeting. If they want it,…

I would love practical advice on how to say to a manager "I'm not deriving any value from this recurring 1x1 meeting, can we move it to on-demand?"

My 30+ year career has not revealed a way to achieve that yet without repurcussions. However much I'd prefer it.

Re: Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?

#260

Post by schmookeeg »

phil21 wrote: post #246
Aurornis wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The first ten minutes are usually kinda whatever, just catching up or chatting, but at around the halfway point, the REAL shit comes out. I worked at a range of startups before joining my first corporate style company. This 1:1 meeting ritual was hard for me to adapt to. At the startups, particularly the high performing ones, issues were addressed immediately. If a problem arose you talked to the people involved qu…

I've come to the conclusion that if I ever start my own thing again I will 100% ban all standing recurring meetings. Maybe an exception for projects-in-progress with a firm end date, but I'm on the fence on that one too. Zero high performing teams I've worked within - or led - has had such form of structure. Standing meetings tend to devolve into performative uselessness. And they add stress, interruptions, etc. And…

Please let me know where to send my CV. :) 10000% agree with this. Not all of us need a weekly reinforcement that everything's okay. And if we actually need something, we can speak up without consulting Google Calendar first and waiting for a scheduled safe space to speak up about it.
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