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Principles of Engineering Management

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Re: Principles of Engineering Management

#111

Post by sailfast »

havkom wrote: post #36

As an engineering manager myself I concur with all the points. Some of them are difficult though, for example: “optimize the dual objectives of delivering value to the organization and giving individuals problems that build their skillset, impact, satisfaction, …” and “ Managers with excellent execution skills and deep domain knowledge must resist the urge to present solutions to their reports.” To what extent should…

An underrated approach here is to ask questions if you think someone is making a mistake, and then see how they answer. "Oh, cool - why do you think X is going to be better than what we've been using?" etc.

There's a huge difference between asking questions about an approach and prescribing an approach or saying "Nope that's not the right way" and there's a ton of room there to avoid the really suboptimal stuff.

Re: Principles of Engineering Management

#112

Post by majormajor »

gfody wrote: post #103
tschellenbach wrote: post #45

Lot of misconceptions here that cause teams to underperform. 1. Managing comes first. (Nope, as a manager your are primarily responsible for ensuring a good outcome. As your title goes from manager, senior, higher to VP etc this becomes more important. Lower job titles you get paid to "do the work", higher titles are about "achieve outcome".) In the current market you'll often run into team members that don't perform…

> hold people accountable to an acceptable level of performance > end up having whole teams being fired since your manager didn't set the right pace Whatever work exists where a manager can control such things as "pace" and "performance level" it aint engineering.

I've seen teams that got very little done for a long time because their manager didn't hold them to finishing tasks. So the team was perpetually in a state of polishing just a few more edges and never finally shipping things.

I don't know what sort of company would respond by firing the whole team, though. If a manager fails, the manager should be out, and a new manager should try to turn the team around.

Re: Principles of Engineering Management

#113

Post by antod »

acjohnson55 wrote: post #87
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…

Author here. I think the lack of specificity is a fair criticism of what I wrote in the piece, but this is also something I was very aware of when I wrote it, which is why this caveat is included: > The management principles below reflect lessons I have learned the hard way. These are things I wish I would have known and internalized when I first became a manager. By keeping this brief, I hope that it will be easily…

I rate your article (ie up to a dozen headings with a paragraph of text each) higher than having to wade through a book of padding to get not much more actual information.

Thanks.

Re: Principles of Engineering Management

#114

Post by lostcolony »

wnolens wrote: post #110
lostcolony wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everywhere I've worked has had on call rotations. Literally everywhere. Nowhere have devs been the first line of support (i.e., not "instead of" per the parent post, but "as well as"), but they've been in the mix. Quite frankly, I wouldn't want to work somewhere that didn't. I have a huge problem with the idea of "my team wrote the code, and now isn't responsible for it". I intentionally optimize against "avoid 2 AM…

It all makes sense and I don't have much in the way of an argument against it fundamentally. But it does make this career path rather miserable to me.

Well...I also have not worked anywhere that you personally got paged more than maybe once or twice a year, and that any after hour pages led to the expectation you'd take twice that amount of time off the next day, and if it was more than a couple hours, or interrupted your sleep, you'd take the full day off.

And those were not FAANG. So I think it's also the culture and expectations, and it's not ludicrously impossible to get. It just requires, getting back to the topic, a reasonable manager who understands the negative effects of getting paged.

Re: Principles of Engineering Management

#115

Post by redisman »

marcinzm wrote: post #37
willturman wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

>it seems that the basics of being a decent human being are often being overlooked by management. People working in tech companies may not realize how un-decent a lot of other companies and their management are.

Tech is hardly a paragon of good management. I can count on two fingers the amount of skilled managers I’ve had in my 15 year career. Both got promoted out of line management very quickly because they were too good. Some have been truly terrible and abusive towards their team.

Re: Principles of Engineering Management

#116

Post by acjohnson55 »

wheaties wrote: post #106
acjohnson55 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here. I think the lack of specificity is a fair criticism of what I wrote in the piece, but this is also something I was very aware of when I wrote it, which is why this caveat is included: > The management principles below reflect lessons I have learned the hard way. These are things I wish I would have known and internalized when I first became a manager. By keeping this brief, I hope that it will be easily…

Alan, nice to see you on the front cover of HN. Life has been good for you post-Arena, eh? Most of those critical of what you wrote haven't had an article like this happen. Don't sweat it.

Thanks Owein! I've been around HN long enough to know that nothing pleases everyone, but getting enough upvotes to hit the top of the front page feels great. On a day without Elon buying Twitter, I might have hit #1 :)

Re: Principles of Engineering Management

#117

Post by acjohnson55 »

gmfawcett wrote: post #104
acjohnson55 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here. I think the lack of specificity is a fair criticism of what I wrote in the piece, but this is also something I was very aware of when I wrote it, which is why this caveat is included: > The management principles below reflect lessons I have learned the hard way. These are things I wish I would have known and internalized when I first became a manager. By keeping this brief, I hope that it will be easily…

Eh, there are literally thousands of manuals on being a good manager. Still I hope people find your contribution helpful!

I could have phrased it better, but my point is that no single book on management can reliably make people into good managers, any more than a single book on engineering can make people into good engineers.

Re: Principles of Engineering Management

#118

Post by StopDarkPattern »

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…

Honestly the blog post was really half assed and referenced very little cited sources or material. What does it deserve like a 3/10?

Re: Principles of Engineering Management

#119

Post by kqr »

hintymad wrote: post #73
nickff wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a bit skeptical of "Turn the Ship Around" because of its title, and despite all the positive reviews, but it's one of the best management books I've ever read. It's definitely worth a read, even if you're not a manager, as it applies to any team-related activity, and provides a useful toolkit for improving your team, whether you're the leader or not.

Yeah, the book also passes Taleb's Skin in the Game test: the author is also the practitioner of what he wrote about.

Hm. That's a generous take. Marquet lived the experience once. Now he goes around and lectures people in it instead.

I have all respect for Marquet and I agree with most of the things he says about leadership, as well as try to apply it daily myself. But my best reading of Taleb is that the sort of thing Marquet does (potentially get lucky, extract oneself from the situation, and then live off of the one experience), that's the opposite of skin in the game.

Re: Principles of Engineering Management

#120

Post by nuancebydefault »

redisman wrote: post #115
marcinzm wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>it seems that the basics of being a decent human being are often being overlooked by management. People working in tech companies may not realize how un-decent a lot of other companies and their management are.

Tech is hardly a paragon of good management. I can count on two fingers the amount of skilled managers I’ve had in my 15 year career. Both got promoted out of line management very quickly because they were too good. Some have been truly terrible and abusive towards their team.

This!
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