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Doing too much work on one's own before looping in others

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Re: Doing too much work on one's own before looping in others

#271

Post by zomglings »

abofh wrote: post #55
davidhyde wrote: post #38

> "the biggest mistake I see engineers make is doing too much work on their own before looping in others" > "For more senior engineers, it can happen because they like to work on their own and may be overconfident in finding solutions. It can also happen if the team culture is toxic and engineers fear getting criticism early in the design process." Not saying the above statement is incorrect but here is an alternativ…

You are not wrong. I generally sell as a mercenary, and prefer it that way - I've been doing this longer than some of my managers have been alive. I'm paid just as well if they want to "pair program" or jira the whole process, but yeah, you hired me to fix a problem - if you are the problem, I get paid just the same. Welcome to the real world, if your work is interesting, the clock might not turn on when I'm having f…

Haha I like everything you said except the "pair program" bit.

From my point of view as both a programmer and an employer, this is the cleanest way to make sure knowledge transfers between short-term and long-term team members.

Why the disdain? (If I interpreted correctly.)

Re: Doing too much work on one's own before looping in others

#272

Post by pjscott »

grp000 wrote: post #269
buttercraft wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work for a company in which employees in some departments would do 2 or 3 year "shifts" as managers. When your shift was up, you went back to a regular employee in the same department, and someone you had been managing took over. It was not uncommon to have a young manager, but not everyone was eligible, obviously. I think it prevented the "us vs. them" mentality from creeping in, and I got the impression t…

How did that work out overall? I really like that idea, but I haven't heard of it before. People seem very motivated to stick to career tracks.

I’m also intrigued. I’ve seen this happen several times but always de facto: someone would become a manager as an experiment, try it for a few years, and then (usually) decide to stop.

Re: Doing too much work on one's own before looping in others

#273

Post by jacobyoder »

Victerius wrote: post #86
abofh wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not wrong. I generally sell as a mercenary, and prefer it that way - I've been doing this longer than some of my managers have been alive. I'm paid just as well if they want to "pair program" or jira the whole process, but yeah, you hired me to fix a problem - if you are the problem, I get paid just the same. Welcome to the real world, if your work is interesting, the clock might not turn on when I'm having f…

> I've been doing this longer than some of my managers have been alive. In what organisation do 25 year olds manage 50 year olds?

I'm ... late 40s. Have been paid for working on software development in some capacity for... 28 years (first paid contract was 1993), and did hobby/amateur for several years before that.

I'm contracting with a couple different companies, and one of them... the others on the team range from ... 27-32. So... I've been doing professional/paid development work longer than most of them have been alive, certainly longer than any of them have been adults. The manager(s) I interact with - one just turned 31, and one is... I think 29 or 30.

The older you get the more common this may become.

Re: Doing too much work on one's own before looping in others

#274

Post by buttercraft »

grp000 wrote: post #269
buttercraft wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work for a company in which employees in some departments would do 2 or 3 year "shifts" as managers. When your shift was up, you went back to a regular employee in the same department, and someone you had been managing took over. It was not uncommon to have a young manager, but not everyone was eligible, obviously. I think it prevented the "us vs. them" mentality from creeping in, and I got the impression t…

How did that work out overall? I really like that idea, but I haven't heard of it before. People seem very motivated to stick to career tracks.

They're still doing exceedingly well, so it must not have hurt them. I think it takes a small but stable company to pull it off. Maybe they have stopped doing it by now, I don't know.

These people cared about their work a lot, and they enjoyed doing it. Not sure which way the causation goes though...

Edit to add: the rotating managers I'm referring to were doing budgets and performance reviews, not creating business strategies.

Re: Doing too much work on one's own before looping in others

#275

Post by heurist »

Kaze404 wrote: post #253
Trasmatta wrote: post #53

I'm good at working on a team and looping in others. I also find it to be one of the most exhausting parts of software development. It's so difficult to constantly need to get feedback and buy-in from other people, and takes away a lot of the creativity and joy in programming (for me). Which isn't to say you shouldn't do it, just that it's one of the things that makes me dislike working on a team. I actually think th…

> It's disempowering to feel like you're never able to make a decision yourself, despite supposedly being hired for your expertise in the field. I'm going through exactly this at the moment. For reasons HN will probably consider fiction, my superiors have started treating me as a toddler that needs oversight on every single decision that needs to be made. It's something I've been dealing with in therapy, and the way…

Leave that company immediately and find something that gives you room to breathe.

Re: Doing too much work on one's own before looping in others

#276

Post by Jensson »

jseban wrote: post #168
Jabbles wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-trivial problems often require exploration of the solution space. You're not expected to ask management if they've changed their mind, you're meant to present your finding so far, and ask if they have any feedback. Simply stating that you did as instructed is not a viable excuse for a human, that's not what they're paying you for. Computers can get away with it.

> Simply stating that you did as instructed is not a viable excuse for a human, that's not what they're paying you for. Getting paid for doing what someone tells you to do, is literally the definition of a job. What you're saying actually, is that it's not your job to do your job, it's your job to also do the managers/PO's job.

You also get paid to be the scapegoat for when your manager fails to do his job, like in this story.

Re: Doing too much work on one's own before looping in others

#277

Post by heurist »

TameAntelope wrote: post #150
Panoramix wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wholeheartedly agree, if you need daily feedback you're a bad manager (unless you're in some exotic situation like a rocket launch or something). This issue largely disappears if your engineers are given the proper context, background and system overview. I'm not advocating everybody should take their project and run with it for weeks on end, but daily updates are ridiculous.

I'd actually flip that, and say if you can't give daily feedback you're a "bad" developer (I'd probably use "inexperienced" or "new" rather than "bad", because it's a hard mindset shift and it takes time). In fact, not only should you be able to give daily updates, you should be able to ship functionality on the daily. From first line of code into production and in front of customers should only ever take about 2 to…

There are engineers who can produce on a constance cadence, and there are engineers who need to let the pressure build until a dam breaks and the code comes rushing out. The latter engineers can still be good engineers. It all depends on how your brain works.

The systems supporting shipping daily should exist either way, though.

Re: Doing too much work on one's own before looping in others

#278

Post by MauroIksem »

alexashka wrote: post #260
icedchai wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is better if the managers of technical people are technical themselves. Otherwise you wind up with the Dilbert "pointy-haired-boss" syndrome. The non-technical manager is extremely easy to bullshit, so it's better for the company in almost all ways.

When you think you're fooling someone, you're really only fooling yourself. It doesn't take a genius to know who is doing the work and who is looking for every excuse to be 'blocked'. Managers simply know that they can't hire or fire and that calling someone on their bullshit would accomplish nothing, so they say nothing. Managers are masters of soft power. Soft power is very hard for engineering/techie types to unde…

There is a lot of bullshit in this comment.

Re: Doing too much work on one's own before looping in others

#279

Post by LAC-Tech »

I've got the opposite issue, and if I'm being frank - maybe it's not such a great look for me as a senior.

But also at the same time... why should we suffer alone? Sometimes something that might take you a day by yourself might take you an hour with another person with a fresh perspective. Isn't it more efficient? Let's loop each other in, often. I'm always down to share screen.

Unless of course I'm the only one oh God I've outed myself as useless on HN...

Re: Doing too much work on one's own before looping in others

#280

Post by lostcolony »

paulcole wrote: post #258
lostcolony wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have encountered non-technical managers who were good, but in every case they would have been better still had they had some technical background. I have encountered technical managers who were not good, for various reasons. I think having a technical background is always a benefit, HOWEVER, it is neither necessary nor sufficient for being a good manager.

The same is true of software engineers. Every single one of them would be better if they had more of a non-technical background.

Yep; though enough time working for companies tends to instill some knowledge and understanding of the business side of things, and as long as understanding of the business correlates with their own influence it tends to work out okay.

Management is weird in that understanding of the tech side of things doesn't correlate with influence.

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