Let’s have no managers, instead of managers with no engineering experience • Hacker News Board

Re: Let’s have no managers, instead of managers with no engineering experience

#91

Post by frostburg » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 6:05 PM UTC

cdevs wrote: post #61

I was recently a lead developer and asked to manage the team by the team. I noticed running the team can't be generalized in one size fits all, some people just want clear descriptions of projects to work and and some people want to over engineer and make a 1 day thing a 2 month job no matter how you say it should be done. Problem is how do you handle a engineer that says something can't be done in 2 hours? Well so f…

You sound more like someone who let a modicum of authority go to his head and projects a lot than a good manager, here. It might work now because you're directly familiar with the inner workings of this project, but you can't expect that in general.

Re: Let’s have no managers, instead of managers with no engineering experience

#92

Post by scruple » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 6:14 PM UTC

dlandis wrote: post #84

> Business types with none to little engineering experience should never, under any circumstances, manage engineers In my experience as a developer at a bunch of different companies, the worst managers have actually been the opposite -- they were ex-engineers who knew nothing about management and decided to become managers for the wrong reasons (small raise, more power, etc), and had no passion for management. The lo…

In addition to that, it's been my experience that their Engineering skill diminishes over time, like any other skill that isn't getting the maintenance that it requires, and they seem to be largely unaware of that. Despite their now-undersized technical knowledge / capabilities, they can still be found forcing technical decisions against the better judgement of their departments actual technical leadership. I've also had this same style of manager become a rate limiting bottleneck by forcing _all_ cross-team decision making to route through him. We gamed that, of course, because we had to, but it was still tacking days on to "decision making" that we had to suffer through just to do our jobs.

Want to watch an Engineering team go from: can produce and deliver to doesn't have a clue? Just get yourself a couple of these jokers to be your Engineering teams management.

Re: Let’s have no managers, instead of managers with no engineering experience

#93

Post by gowld » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 6:18 PM UTC

cdevs wrote: post #61

I was recently a lead developer and asked to manage the team by the team. I noticed running the team can't be generalized in one size fits all, some people just want clear descriptions of projects to work and and some people want to over engineer and make a 1 day thing a 2 month job no matter how you say it should be done. Problem is how do you handle a engineer that says something can't be done in 2 hours? Well so f…

Honestly you sound like you want to be dramatic about everything.

Re: Let’s have no managers, instead of managers with no engineering experience

#94

Post by san_at_weblegit » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 6:19 PM UTC

This is indeed an important discussion. I was looking for some similar experience in the top few comments but couldn't find it, so I thought about writing my own. From my experience its about the person in the role, not the role itself. Two of the best managers I had were non-technical but they could read people. They kept their distance from the technical work but would step in when required to control. Ofcourse this also means that they hired good engineers to begin with. A good engineering team can run by itself when it comes to technical work.

Re: Let’s have no managers, instead of managers with no engineering experience

#95

Post by darkerside » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 6:23 PM UTC

Arwill wrote: post #18

Brajeshwar wrote: post #10

It depends. I've worked along-side and led multiple managers and have experienced various types of managers. The good ones usually stood out. A good manager is usually the ones that shield their teams from the onslaught of clients' un-managed demands. She is the one that liaises effectively between a looming deadline and the sanity of the team. She is the one making sure the clients are making their timely payments w…

>have empathy and have more of people skill than technical or design skills The problematic ones i've seen had some people skills, or they were thinking they had. The problem was when they did not understand engineering problems, and were thinking that everything was a people problem/issue. So they either assume that the developers are lazy, or they simply can't accept that the engineer can have some real objective c…

> can't accept that the engineer can have some real objective concerns

This is the opposite of people skills. If a report has a concern that doesn't seem to make sense, it is the manager's job to help them structure a clear explanation of the problem, help identify the best solutions for said problem, and collaborate with stakeholders to pick the right solution based on trade offs they are comfortable with. To be fair, to an entry level report, that process--unless done in a truly excellent way--often does seem like a lack of sympathy or empathy for the developer's challenge.

Re: Let’s have no managers, instead of managers with no engineering experience

#96

Post by ordinaryperson » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 6:23 PM UTC

dlandis wrote: post #84

> Business types with none to little engineering experience should never, under any circumstances, manage engineers In my experience as a developer at a bunch of different companies, the worst managers have actually been the opposite -- they were ex-engineers who knew nothing about management and decided to become managers for the wrong reasons (small raise, more power, etc), and had no passion for management. The lo…

Exactly.

Recently I interviewed with a company that had promoted their Senior Dev into a management role.

When a company VP emailed this guy to say a website form wasn't working, costing the company tends of thousands of dollars every day it was down, his response was, "Thank you for alerting me to this situation. I will process your request and respond within 2 business weeks."

Obviously, they'd taught him that boilerplate to help him adjust to interfacing with the business, but he lacked the common sense to realize the house was on fire.

They also said he preferred honing his coding skills and being perceived as a 'master developer' but couldn't quickly produce a list of in-flight projects, and that things were way behind schedule.

Having a bad manager who's a business type does not mean you don't need managers or all business types are bad managers. I mean, what's the sample size you're working off of? Less than 10?

I know it's unpopular on HN and elsewhere to stick up for business types at the perceived expense of engineers but managing people is a very hard thing to do, and the skills that make a great engineer too often make for bad middle-management, IMHO.

Re: Let’s have no managers, instead of managers with no engineering experience

#97

Post by tachyoff » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 6:27 PM UTC

KirinDave wrote: post #78

I wrote 1000 words on this subject and prior spectacular failures of the "no management" style in Silicon Valley. I deleted it. No good can come of talking about it here. Instead of an essay, I'll use a modern writing format: the pithy list. 1. This article gravely underestimates the difficulty of engineering management. One must simultaneously handle HR functions, he roadmap of their team and other teams, and their…

This is well-said. To add some anecdata, I work in a “managerless” organization. It sucks. It’s hard or impossible to make certain changes because nobody has any authority to do things that aren’t necessarily politically sexy (e.g. fixing bad security or setting up asset management). There’s also this expectation that if you want to do something, you can just do it. This sounds great on paper, until you realize that doing things like managing infrastructure is a full-time job for an entire team, and not a “once in a while” position for someone with little experience. I’d love to go the extra mile, but I only have 40 hours or so in my work week, and I’m busy with my actual assigned tasks.

There needs to be a good balance (obviously too much red tape is counterproductive). Having managers can be nice when it explicitly assigns roles and responsibilities to a group, because that means not only are there dedicated people for certain tasks, but presumably they have a modicum of power to get things done. It also makes it plainly obvious whom you talk to if you need, say, a new laptop, or a printer set up, or a VPN account. Without managers you get company-wide emails like “who controls our website? I need to update something.”

Re: Let’s have no managers, instead of managers with no engineering experience

#98

Post by prepend » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 6:30 PM UTC

unethical_ban wrote: post #76

coolso wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: may I ask why, in describing a plurality of good managers, you chose to use a lot of singular feminine pronouns and no plural gender-neutral pronouns; while in describing a singular (one) bad manager, you avoided the use of a pronoun altogether in one sentence; used one plural general-neutral pronoun in another; and then switched from using the pronoun you previously extensively used when describing…

Serious question: Why does it matter? The masculine singular has been used through most history and in modern times it is as acceptable to use the feminine singular as a "general case" pronoun. His specific example was obviously about an actual, specific man.

I think it matters as much a clear writing and proper grammar matters.

I don’t think it matters from a content perspective, but is a bit more confusing so I had to spend a few seconds thinking about it.

I had a similar thought as OP as to whether this was significant.

But it wasn’t a big enough deal for me to comment as I figured it out, reach much the same conclusion as you did.

Re: Let’s have no managers, instead of managers with no engineering experience

#99

Post by tachyoff » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 6:32 PM UTC

coolso wrote: post #46

Brajeshwar wrote: post #10

It depends. I've worked along-side and led multiple managers and have experienced various types of managers. The good ones usually stood out. A good manager is usually the ones that shield their teams from the onslaught of clients' un-managed demands. She is the one that liaises effectively between a looming deadline and the sanity of the team. She is the one making sure the clients are making their timely payments w…

Serious question: may I ask why, in describing a plurality of good managers, you chose to use a lot of singular feminine pronouns and no plural gender-neutral pronouns; while in describing a singular (one) bad manager, you avoided the use of a pronoun altogether in one sentence; used one plural general-neutral pronoun in another; and then switched from using the pronoun you previously extensively used when describing…

If you pick at this any more it’s going to get infected.

Re: Let’s have no managers, instead of managers with no engineering experience

#100

Post by com2kid » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 6:52 PM UTC

scruple wrote: post #92

dlandis wrote: post #84

> Business types with none to little engineering experience should never, under any circumstances, manage engineers In my experience as a developer at a bunch of different companies, the worst managers have actually been the opposite -- they were ex-engineers who knew nothing about management and decided to become managers for the wrong reasons (small raise, more power, etc), and had no passion for management. The lo…

In addition to that, it's been my experience that their Engineering skill diminishes over time, like any other skill that isn't getting the maintenance that it requires, and they seem to be largely unaware of that. Despite their now-undersized technical knowledge / capabilities, they can still be found forcing technical decisions against the better judgement of their departments actual technical leadership. I've also…

> I've also had this same style of manager become a rate limiting bottleneck by forcing _all_ cross-team decision making to route through him.

I've seen that work incredibly well when the manager in question did keep up on his technical skills.

It can result in a very well designed and consistent system.

It also burned out the dev manager in question after two and a half years.

A strong talented leader can make a huge difference. Applying the lessons of the past means a lot of engineering mistakes can be avoided.

Also, at some point, decisions do have to be made. There will be a disagreement on the team about a direction to take, and having a benevolent dictatorship becomes very useful. Especially in a corporate setting where forking and doing both paths can be disastrous (both paths get underfunded and fail), or just not viable.