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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?

#281

Post by jjav »

asdff wrote: post #146
hermitShell wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be a believer in daily standup plus bi-weekly sprint planning, but lost faith with the (possibly cargo cult) methodology I was trying to follow. Adding 1:1 in with that would be far too frequent, and probably far too little real content in each meeting. Did productivity actually change dispensing with those meetings? Probably not by much, it's hard to say empirically because task estimation was always a wil…

The general academic lab model is still the best I've seen and experienced. People sign up to present at the weekly lab meeting if they have something to present, 1 person per meeting. There's maybe 10 mins of quick bringing things up at the beginning of lab meeting before the presenter starts, if you have something short to share or general announcements. Specific project groups will have their own direct meetings o…

> When you do daily standups or mandatory everyone says something type stuff, it does something damaging psychologically.

Yes, very much. The most stressful times I've had at jobs were when I felt necessary to have an update every day at a silly standup. I'd have a panic attack most late afternoons about having enough "content" for tomorrow morning standup. That is super toxic.

I'm ok with daily standups, as long as it is clear it's just a moment to mention anything you want the team to know or rant about something that's annoying you, but it's perfectly ok to say "nothing to update" most of the time.

Currently I manage a team and we do daily standups. I'd rather cancel them, but the team wants to do them so we do. I often say I have no updates partly because it's true but also to set the example so the team members don't feel any pressure to give updates unless there is a specific detail they want to share.

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

#282

Post by Npovview »

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).

I read this a decade back. Lot of good ideas. Explains lot of different fields and how they operate. I recommend people to read it or use AI to get the gist.

https://dn710707.ca.archive.org/0/items/BridgewaterRayDalioP...

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

#283

Post by jjav »

Aurornis wrote: post #220
jldugger wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because they have so many 1:1 recurring meetings scheduled each week that they don’t have time for anything else. Dude, a a weekly 1:1 should be 30 minutes long. And managers should have at most 10 directs, so 5 hours total out of a 40 hour work week. Something has gone haywire and it's not the 1:1 thats the problem. > I was requested to set up 1:1s not only with my team, but with each of the other teams we interfa…

> Dude, a a weekly 1:1 should be 30 minutes long. And managers should have at most 10 directs, so 5 hours total out of a 40 hour work week. Something has gone haywire and it's not the 1:1 thats the problem. I agree wholeheartedly, but this company culture had different ideas than you and I. Their idea of a 1:1 was that it was the formal and correct way to synchronize people. It wasn’t limited to managers and their re…

> Sounds insane? It was!

Well yes, it sounds insane.

It is good to connect at a personal level. Talk about your weekend, family, hobbies. This might happen naturally in an office setting, but with everyone remote on zoom, it's helpful to make it a habit. For most people these human connections are super supportive.

You can't force it though. Some people don't work that way. A manager must adapt to each style. I have employees who like to talk for hours about everything, so I'm happy to do it. I also have one employee who is very matter of fact, only brings up a specific issue if they need me to do something about it and that's it. I know nothing about their life outside work but that's their preference so that's ok too. They are one of the highest performers in the team, it's just their style.

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

#284

Post by jjav »

eudamoniac wrote: post #168
jldugger wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because they have so many 1:1 recurring meetings scheduled each week that they don’t have time for anything else. Dude, a a weekly 1:1 should be 30 minutes long. And managers should have at most 10 directs, so 5 hours total out of a 40 hour work week. Something has gone haywire and it's not the 1:1 thats the problem. > I was requested to set up 1:1s not only with my team, but with each of the other teams we interfa…

> the key thing is that the direct goes first and gets to talk about _what they want to talk about_. How about if the direct has absolutely no interest in talking about anything because they are just trying to do their job, which is going fine? Because that's 99%, maybe 100% of these meetings I've ever had.

> How about if the direct has absolutely no interest in talking about anything because they are just trying to do their job, which is going fine? Because that's 99%, maybe 100% of these meetings I've ever had.

Easy, send a message prior to the meeting "Hey, I have no topics to cover this week, so let's skip it and save the time".

Done.

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

#285

Post by jjav »

Aurornis wrote: post #79
DanHulton wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, honestly, as one of those managers with calendars full of 1:1s, I was kinda surprised at this. They’re frequently the most-useful meetings I have all week. The first ten minutes are usually kinda whatever, just catching up or chatting, but at around the halfway point, the REAL shit comes out. The things that were bothering them, or the task they were stuck on, or the team that’s been blocking them, or in better…

> 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…

> At the startups, particularly the high performing ones, issues were addressed immediately.

1:1s are not about addressing issues, most certainly not any issues that need addressing immediately.

If you have an immediate issue, open an incident or file a top priority bug, or whatever is the process at your company.

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

#286

Post by Npovview »

jamesfinlayson wrote: post #268
Obscurity4340 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think this pivot-middle idea is generalizable to other domains? What is the logic or context that allows them such latitude and autonomy or to even conceptually exist at all? Are they specialized in such a way that they are qualified and expected to focus on higher-quality problems or difficult to hire for or they maybe dont have to deal directly with people in some sense How does one become sufficiently shrew…

I saw someone like this just get made redundant - they talked a good game and did enough to cement themselves in the organisation, then ended up reporting into a manager who was already over capacity so didn't have the bandwidth to chase up a guy who wasn't causing him any trouble.

It was a good run then. Now that guy will run in another organization.

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

#287

Post by FinnLobsien »

osigurdson wrote: post #98
FinnLobsien wrote: post #36

I think this dynamic is not specific to SWE and as old as time. As organizations grow, so does the aspect of work that's more "seeing and being seen", and rightfully so. There's definitely a ton of cruft that accumulates, and a lot of "work" being done that accomplishes little, just to satisfy a corporate bureaucracy. But there is a reality where "good performance" is not just about the work you do, but also about yo…

It doesn't help shareholders or customers in any way however so we should not celebrate it or even simply accept that this is "the way things are". It is an error to be corrected.

Yes, agreed. But it's not a binary. It's not like you can either wrestle with hard engineering problems until an eventual breakthrough or exclusively pretend to be working.

Sure, on one extreme is the purely value-extractive person whose only work product is calling recurring meetings to talk about how great things are going (while having contributed little). In that case, it's an error to be corrected.

But there are different types of useful work. Let's use engineering as an example.

You could build a set of new filter options on in-product analytics that customers have been asking for. Assuming this doesn't require net-new data sources or whatnot, this is usually not a complex engineering challenge, but will be loved by customers.

Then you have types who refactor an obscure caching function to reduce its memory use 15% when performance wasn't an issue, but it was a fun engineering puzzle that made the code more elegant.

Clearly both create value, but one will be more useful to customers, although it's not as fun to solve.

My point isn't that we should treat corporate bureaucracy, performative work, and freeloading as "the way things are" (they're toxic to any work culture). I'm saying that "deeper engineering challenge" doesn't equal "more important work".

Also, I don't necessarily like this! Deep problem-solving and focused work on tricky challenges are the most fulfilling things to me and to most people I know. But this is the dynamic we're in.

(and yes you can argue that having the most efficient code possible prevents future performance issues and whatnot and is thus long-term more valuable than analytics options, but at least in the startup world, limited resources mean you tend to solve things when they become problems, not because they could one day become problems)

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

#288

Post by [deleted] »

mercutio2 wrote: post #35

The idea that 1:1s with devs adding very little value to the team is… pretty wild. If you think 1:1s don’t add value, your slice of the reality of what even modestly sized teams need to operate smoothly is so far from my experience I don’t think we’re likely to bridge the divide. But to make a good faith effort: what is the job you think line managers are supposed to be doing, if not listening to devs, going to meeti…

[deleted]

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

#289

Post by boxed »

Jeremy1026 wrote: post #103
boxed wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, it's up NOW.

It's obviously hard to say how accurate these numbers[1] are, but it looks like Twitter has doubled their workforce from its lowest following their mass layoffs. It might be stable again now because they hired the workforce required to actually keep it running. [1] https://www.demandsage.com/twitter-employees/

Ok? But it's still like 1/3.

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

#290

Post by Esophagus4 »

ponector wrote: post #279
Esophagus4 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if they don't and want to work, great. Interesting thought, I had never considered cancelling if they don’t have anything. Thanks for that. My thought was always, “I want to give everyone that time no matter what, and if they don’t have anything, then I go to a list of questions I have for every 1-1 if we have time. Stuff like, “how are you feeling with ${latest_company_happenings}?” or “how do you think the team i…

>“how are you feeling with ${latest_company_happenings}?” or “how do you think the team is doing?” or “are you interested in the work these days, or burnt out?” That is the worst questions to ask to the experienced people. You cannot share your negative feelings, so the answer should be socially acceptable bullshit. Are you burnt out? Yes? Sorry to hear that! I'll put a high attrition risk to your name in the system.…

> That is the worst questions to ask to the experienced people.

God what a know-it-all. This is just a vent without substance by someone that I can safely assume hates his job and his manager.

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