Principles of Engineering Management • Hacker News Board

Re: Principles of Engineering Management

#21

Post by PragmaticPulp » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 3:52 PM UTC

I consumed a lot of blog posts like this before becoming a manager. It feels satisfying to read vague principles like this:

> Facilitate wellbeing

> Personal safety, dignity, and wellbeing of every team member are paramount. Team success is only success if team members feel good about it.

But then you become an actual manager and realize that these are largely just feel-good aphorisms that don't really help navigate the hard work of being a manager.

Don't get me wrong: I think "facilitate wellbeing" and similar tidbits are valid advice. Likewise, a manager who chooses to not facilitate wellbeing would clearly be in the wrong. But when you get into management you realize that the hard work isn't waking up and deciding to facilitate wellbeing. The hard work often involves making unpopular decisions, or telling someone "no" when their pet request wouldn't be in the best interests of the team, or defusing interpersonal conflict among two team members who have been feuding for months.

These feel-good blog posts seem rather vacuous after being in the trenches of management for several years. Again, not because the advice is bad or wrong, but because it's just a lot of text around the basics of being a decent human being. Learning how to do the hard things about management or how to make unpopular but necessary decisions is something that you won't learn from the average blog post or LinkedIn post, largely because these function more as personal branding pieces than actual advice.

In my experience, the best management advice comes from talking to the best managers you know personally. Online, the most practical management advice comes on smaller forums where people are either anonymous (and therefore less interested in personal brand building) or older and accomplished (and therefore not worried about blowback impacting their career). The type of feel-good blog posts or LinkedIn blurbs that people associate with their personal brand don't really add much value after you've read 5-10 articles saying the exact same aphorisms.

Re: Principles of Engineering Management

#22

Post by 0xbadcafebee » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 3:58 PM UTC

photochemsyn wrote: post #15

This sounds pretty good, all these are qualities anyone would want in their manager if they had a job doing 'the critical path of execution'. There's few things more frustrating than continually having to halt in the middle of one task to jump over to another task because someone's pants are on fire. Sure it happens, but it should be the exception not the norm. However, there's another side to the manager's job that…

- Choose and limit your battles

- Provide data to make an argument

- Put your concerns in writing

- Challenge your manager to ask their bosses tough questions

- Form coalitions with other managers to try to solve problems together

- Ask for a skip level (IMHO once a quarter, not just to address business problems but to maintain good relationships)

- If your employees are still at risk and upper management does nothing, threaten to quit

Re: Principles of Engineering Management

#23

Post by ttoinou » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 4:05 PM UTC

skeeter2020 wrote: post #12

ttoinou wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's not just about the managers but also how do employees treat the relationship with their managers. i.e. it's a two way street

It is, but I think it's the manager's job to be the first to take the emotional risks, and continue to do so even when they're not immediately reciprocated.

If the other doesn't know you moved forward, why would he/she change his behavior ? It looks like the relationship will continue as it began forever - one sided.

Re: Principles of Engineering Management

#24

Post by ttoinou » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 4:08 PM UTC

prmph wrote: post #13

AlwaysRock wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100%. I've worked for a lot of bad managers and 2 good ones. 1 of the good ones wasnt a great human but an incredible teacher. The other was an okay teacher but an incredible human. The later I'm still in contact with and we've stayed in touch for 5 plus years. A lot of what I'm looking for in a boss is just someone who kind and understanding. It's shocking how low that is on most managers agendas.

Well, as an engineering team lead for years, and recently founder of a small gig, increasingly I've been shocked at how many people (employees, contractors, prospective business partners or co-founders) just want to take the easy way out, instead of putting in honest, conscientious, reflective work and effort, or are just plain incompetent at what they claim to be good at. Every once on a while you come across someon…

It's even worse than what you say sometimes : some people are actually competent in engineering, but when it comes to simply remembering basic stuff or communicating about what they do -- total blackout. Meaning, they just want someone else to manage every little thing they have to do, remember the small details. And then they'd complain they don't like to be micro managed

Re: Principles of Engineering Management

#25

Post by deeptote » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 4:08 PM UTC

onion2k wrote: post #16

deeptote wrote: post #14

This is typical, MBA armchair psychology. Here's the real Principals of Engineering Management, according to pretty much every middle manager, director, and vp I've ever worked with: 1. Be caviling and pedantic, so you can reinforce your position of petty power. 2. Contribute exactly zero code, infrastructure, etc. Basically, anything that actually provides value to the engineers or the customers, you don't touch. 3.…

according to pretty much every middle manager, director, and vp I've ever worked with You might be right and every manager is terrible, but it's worth noting that the common denominator in all of these interactions is you.

No post body was provided.

Re: Principles of Engineering Management

#26

Post by jahbrewski » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 4:10 PM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #21

I consumed a lot of blog posts like this before becoming a manager. It feels satisfying to read vague principles like this: > Facilitate wellbeing > Personal safety, dignity, and wellbeing of every team member are paramount. Team success is only success if team members feel good about it. But then you become an actual manager and realize that these are largely just feel-good aphorisms that don't really help navigate…

Good feedback here. Do you have any example “smaller forums” that you have found particularly helpful?

Re: Principles of Engineering Management

#27

Post by ttoinou » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 4:12 PM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #21

I consumed a lot of blog posts like this before becoming a manager. It feels satisfying to read vague principles like this: > Facilitate wellbeing > Personal safety, dignity, and wellbeing of every team member are paramount. Team success is only success if team members feel good about it. But then you become an actual manager and realize that these are largely just feel-good aphorisms that don't really help navigate…

Thank you for bringing a different opinion. I feel like the "Thats the spirit!" crowd liking this kind of blog posts are employees who don't know what their manager are going through dealing with them

Re: Principles of Engineering Management

#28

Post by TameAntelope » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 4:15 PM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #21

I consumed a lot of blog posts like this before becoming a manager. It feels satisfying to read vague principles like this: > Facilitate wellbeing > Personal safety, dignity, and wellbeing of every team member are paramount. Team success is only success if team members feel good about it. But then you become an actual manager and realize that these are largely just feel-good aphorisms that don't really help navigate…

I think "facilitate wellbeing" is more than just a feel-good aphorism, because it really does help when there's a difficult decision on your desk, at least for me.

My instinct is to push hard, let "the most correct" idea win, and not really give a shit about how it impacts others. All, as you know, awful, very bad, no good ways of managing. Being reminded that one of my primary jobs is to "facilitate wellbeing" helps keep me grounded.

Let someone take the day off even if there's a deadline looming, be cool with a later start date than would be perfect, take that vacation week and really don't plug in, a) for yourself and b) to show that as acceptable behavior for your team to do as well.

None of this is how I, naturally, would behave, and I need to be reminded and continually work at doing things like that, for the sake of the health of my team. None of this is theoretical in my view, I see it as specific and practical advice.

Re: Principles of Engineering Management

#29

Post by joshbetz » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 4:15 PM UTC

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #22

photochemsyn wrote: post #15

This sounds pretty good, all these are qualities anyone would want in their manager if they had a job doing 'the critical path of execution'. There's few things more frustrating than continually having to halt in the middle of one task to jump over to another task because someone's pants are on fire. Sure it happens, but it should be the exception not the norm. However, there's another side to the manager's job that…

- Choose and limit your battles - Provide data to make an argument - Put your concerns in writing - Challenge your manager to ask their bosses tough questions - Form coalitions with other managers to try to solve problems together - Ask for a skip level (IMHO once a quarter, not just to address business problems but to maintain good relationships) - If your employees are still at risk and upper management does nothin…

Be honest with the people who report to you about your feelings. You don't have to go out of your way to stir up trouble, but if people come to you with concerns that you share, it can be very helpful to know that you're not alone and your manager is on your side.

Re: Principles of Engineering Management

#30

Post by willturman » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 4:21 PM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #21

I consumed a lot of blog posts like this before becoming a manager. It feels satisfying to read vague principles like this: > Facilitate wellbeing > Personal safety, dignity, and wellbeing of every team member are paramount. Team success is only success if team members feel good about it. But then you become an actual manager and realize that these are largely just feel-good aphorisms that don't really help navigate…

> Again, not because the advice is bad or wrong, but because it's just a lot of text around the basics of being a decent human being.

Judging by the trends observed in the Great Resignation [1] and the popularity of forums like /r/antiwork, it seems that the basics of being a decent human being are often being overlooked by management.

I took a very different interpretation of what facilitating wellbeing looks like than you - interpreting facilitating wellbeing as being flexible when team members need some time to navigate their personal lives, scheduling project timelines and scoping work to necessitate productive work while alleviating burn-out, providing space for people to discuss ideas or provide feedback in a team setting, allowing for growth or transition into roles they may find more interesting or rewarding. Facilitating wellbeing doesn't conflict with making necessary but perhaps unpopular decisions, or de-prioritizing a pet project or whatever - it's much more basic than that.

[1] https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/talent-acqu...