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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?

#91

Post by dieselgate »

JohnMakin wrote: post #71
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…

Why does this have to take place in a meeting? Why can't it be in a team slack? What value gain do you give talking an engineer through what's bothering them? Are they not capable of that independently of you? A middleman's value is quite limited, of course as a middleman, you don't see it that way, but I find these meetings extraordinarily unproductive, even anti-productive, depending on how bad the "manager" is.

Usually people clam up and are not vocal during group meetings. I am not one of them but it's super common. 1-1s allow people to be more candid.

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

#92

Post by al_borland »

strken wrote: post #50

The one time I worked at a large corporate, my time was split between failing to find useful projects that I was allowed to work on, and failing to deliver much on the useless projects I was given because I didn't understand that it would e.g. take six weeks and two review meetings to provision an extra half a terabyte of storage on a db cluster. I eventually worked out that the bureaucratic red tape was a hurdle rat…

Sometimes teams get a req to hire someone and it’s use it or lose it. They’d rather get someone in the seat that will hopefully be useful at some point, and simply retain or grow the team size, than to give it up and be short staffed down the road.

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

#93

Post by junior44660 »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #29
ismailmaj wrote: post #4

In my experience a lot of companies try really hard to be data oriented and try to find objective metrics for impact, sometimes it’s good, often it’s bad. Like LOC count, PR count, time in meetings or time spent at the office. Enough of this and people will learn to play the game over doing the right thing.

on the flip side, try to get an open source maintainer to define what the criteria are for merging a pull request, or what a bug report needs in order to be fixed. they all say one thing and it is always another. it feels like pulling your hair out.

You forgot the gigachad gif.

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

#94

Post by MagicMoonlight »

DanHulton wrote: post #47
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…

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…

[dead]

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

#95

Post by antonvs »

sethjgore wrote: post #75
cjbgkagh wrote: post #14

What you are describing as performative I would describe as bureaucratic. The Iron Law or Bureaucracy: Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and sc…

Makes me think of this timeless and excellent quote by Oscar Wilde: “The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.”

*Commonly attributed to Oscar Wilde. There doesn't appear to be any definitive source for it.

The quote actually reads like a summary of Parkinson's Law, that bureaucracies inherently tend to grow because officials create work for each other another and seek to increase their numbers. But the exact quote doesn't appear in Parkinson's original essay. Quote from that essay:

"Factor 1: An official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals; and

Factor 2: Officials make work for each other."

-- https://archive.org/details/parkinsons-law-the-economist

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

#96

Post by watwut »

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…

1:1 adds value if the managers spends most of the time actually managing and 1:1 is a place where he gets part of input for that. 1:1 with lead that spends most of the time doing 1:1 is pointless

> what is the job you think line managers are supposed to be doing, if not listening to devs, going to meetings you would prefer not to sit through, and writing up carefully documented feedback for the under-performers you seem convinced surround you at every turn?

Actually managing. The listening to devs and sitting on meetings is pointless if you are not actively using those meetings to organize, prioritize, plan and execute parts of plan.

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

#98

Post by osigurdson »

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.

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

#99

Post by thelittlenag »

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.

Precisely! And this is true not just for managers but also higher-level ICs. Its ok for Senior and below to be team focused, but moving to the next level means broadening scope and that means talking with people, regularly!, outside your immediate team.
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