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Is engineering management bullshit?

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Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#61

Post by droopyEyelids »

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #51
rco8786 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s silly. Managers exist on the same spectrum as any other role. Most are about average. Some are better, some are worse. Same with engineers themselves. These articles are undoubtedly written by people who have never been managers themselves, and frankly just don’t have any idea what the job is for. Which is fine - everyone starts that way. But to then assume the job is useless is classic sign of imaturity. > No…

The power dynamic between managers and those they manage is the differentiator. Sure it's a spectrum but half of that spectrum (from average to god awful) have power over your career/work, to your detrement.

I think this is the sign of inexperience/immaturity.

What you're describing is a universal aspect of life. From parents, to teachers, to managers all the way back to chieftains of prehistoric tribes there have been power differentials between people and the more competent person has not always been the more powerful.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#62

Post by 015a »

gautamdivgi wrote: post #19
halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh please, there's a reason why those comments exist - because more terrible managers exist than those "good ones" that you allude do. I would posit a guess that most, if not all, engineers on HN have had to live through at least one terrible manager that has soured/tainted the position. Speaking for myself, I've lived through many and it's a miserable experience to be under these people. Nobody is saying that the fu…

Isn’t that true for everything though? More bad devs exist than good one? I guess a manager could make the same claim that devs are making his life miserable.

Its true, but I think the impact is what matters. Even a below average dev produces output; it may be substantially less than a great dev, it may not be of the highest quality, they may require more hands-on reviews and mentorship from other devs on the team, but its still producing output. In comparison, a bad manager can invert the productive output of a team or individuals on that team; high attrition rates, high quiet-quitting rates, prioritizing the wrong things, interrupting work such that little gets done, not playing defense, etc etc etc.

The "old" saying (well, I've heard it said a few times) is: bad software (probably) won't kill your business. There's a litany of examples to this effect. However, bad management will, with increasingly leveraged effects the further that bad management is from the line worker.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#63

Post by peckrob »

namdnay wrote: post #25
halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #4

Most of the "engineering managers" I've had to work under have been utter bullshit. Didn't learn anything from them (technically or in regards to leadership) and were there merely to check a box, play babysitter and/or sit in meetings all day that had zero impact on our work streams. The few who did have impact (1) were skilled engineers in their own right and were able to translate that into more management, (2) und…

> sit in meetings all day that had zero impact on our work streams maybe the manager was busy in meetings all day in order to ensure you had zero impact on your work streams :) the role of an EM in a large organisation is in large part to be an "enterprise abstraction layer", ensuring the people in the team(s) can work in a way that is as close as possible to what they could do in a startup/solo project

This is an excellent comment that really does distill down what an EM is supposed to be.

As someone who's been on all sides of this (currently an EM, been a tech lead and an individual contributor in the past), I really think there is a lack of understanding among large parts of the tech community about what engineering managers do. A good manager's first and primary responsibility is to reduce chaos for their team. In an ideal world you won't even know I'm here, because I am shielding you from all the stuff that is going on further up in the company and clearing out obstacles so that you can work without interference.

Good managers reduce chaos, bad managers create chaos. In my experience, engineering managers are a lot like all other employees: you have a few outstanding performers, a significant number of average/acceptable/mediocre managers, and some number of pretty bad ones. The difficulty comes in knowing which type you have, and often that only becomes clear when a manager leaves. Either a new EM makes things better, or things get dramatically worse because a good EM is no longer helping the team.

It's like that Futurama episode where Bender meets God: "When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all."

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#64

Post by jiggawatts »

Bell curves apply to every profession. There are a few truly terrible managers, a bunch of mediocre ones, and a few truly great ones. Same with developers, engineers, teachers, nurses, or whatever.

For someone in some profession 'A' at the top 5% of their peer group, everyone else seems incompetent by comparison. However, it's easy to ignore the incompetence of their own peer group. There are a few reasons for this. For example, if you're good at 'A' and someone is bad at 'A', you can more easily fill the gaps with your own knowledge and paper over that problem, which makes it seem less important. Similarly, highly skilled people tend to work in teams with other similarly skilled peers, etc...

However, when looking at random samples from profession 'B' (whatever that is), then the top-5%-at-A person will typically come across median 'B' people. That's just statistics.

So what does a top 5% at 'A' person think of median people in profession 'B', 'C', and 'D'? That they're all idiots and that their jobs are not as complex or meaningful as whatever 'A' is, of course!

Don't assume anything about what 'A' is. Could be engineering, science, finance, or whatever. The statistics is the same.

Management however gets significantly more flak than other professions, because they're forced onto employees. You don't generally get to choose your manager, you're assigned one. You don't get to fire your "superiors", even if they're clearly in the bottom 5% of the management profession and you're in the top 5% of your profession.

This is why you hear skilled engineers grumbling about bad management. So does every other skilled member of every other profession, including skilled managers, which have random managers above them!

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#65

Post by sumtechguy »

drstewart wrote: post #17
bonecrusher2102 wrote: post #6

This is such a tired take. It's part of a steady stream of commentary that reads something like "non-engineering-role X is bullshit." Here, we see engineers reduce the contributions of such common roles as: Product Manger, Program/Project Manager, Scrum Master, Marketer, CEO, etc., as fungible or run by the biggest boogeyman of all, the dreaded MBA. These arguments most typically result from not an inability, but an…

One of my least favorite things about being on the technical side of things is this overarching smug sense of superiority that every other role is bullshit and doesn't do anything of real value. Or that other roles are malicious and/or incompetent and if engineers got their way the product would be perfect and free of defects of errors. e.g: "Don't blame the developers for X, we only put it in because of product or s…

Good way to bash that down is to ask 'would you want their role?' It makes them stop and think what does that person really do and they usually do not want to do it at all.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#66

Post by [deleted] »

bonecrusher2102 wrote: post #6

This is such a tired take. It's part of a steady stream of commentary that reads something like "non-engineering-role X is bullshit." Here, we see engineers reduce the contributions of such common roles as: Product Manger, Program/Project Manager, Scrum Master, Marketer, CEO, etc., as fungible or run by the biggest boogeyman of all, the dreaded MBA. These arguments most typically result from not an inability, but an…

[deleted]

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#67

Post by UncleMeat »

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #13
bonecrusher2102 wrote: post #6

This is such a tired take. It's part of a steady stream of commentary that reads something like "non-engineering-role X is bullshit." Here, we see engineers reduce the contributions of such common roles as: Product Manger, Program/Project Manager, Scrum Master, Marketer, CEO, etc., as fungible or run by the biggest boogeyman of all, the dreaded MBA. These arguments most typically result from not an inability, but an…

Oh please, there's a reason why those comments exist - because more terrible managers exist than those "good ones" that you allude do. I would posit a guess that most, if not all, engineers on HN have had to live through at least one terrible manager that has soured/tainted the position. Speaking for myself, I've lived through many and it's a miserable experience to be under these people. Nobody is saying that the fu…

There are oodles of terrible managers. There are oodles of terrible everything and we definitely remember the bad experiences more than the good experiences. Especially since a lot of what a good manager does (deflect distractions, ensure consistent prioritization, hire people who don't suck) makes it seem like nothing is actually happening.

A very large number of people really are saying that these roles aren't necessary. Larry Page famously fired all of the managers at Google at one point in the past. I regularly see people say that zero management at all would be preferable, both for startups and megacorps. Heck, the article itself is about this very idea.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#68

Post by BurningFrog »

bonecrusher2102 wrote: post #6

This is such a tired take. It's part of a steady stream of commentary that reads something like "non-engineering-role X is bullshit." Here, we see engineers reduce the contributions of such common roles as: Product Manger, Program/Project Manager, Scrum Master, Marketer, CEO, etc., as fungible or run by the biggest boogeyman of all, the dreaded MBA. These arguments most typically result from not an inability, but an…

I think it's part of the common "I'm surrounded by idiots" attitude of the many jerks in our industry.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#70

Post by abc_lisper »

nine_zeros wrote: post #33
bonecrusher2102 wrote: post #6

This is such a tired take. It's part of a steady stream of commentary that reads something like "non-engineering-role X is bullshit." Here, we see engineers reduce the contributions of such common roles as: Product Manger, Program/Project Manager, Scrum Master, Marketer, CEO, etc., as fungible or run by the biggest boogeyman of all, the dreaded MBA. These arguments most typically result from not an inability, but an…

You are right. Running a business is nuanced and smart people are required for it. Imo, the real problem is that engineering work is disproportionately difficult compared to management and yet, management gets recognition, visibility and power to control engineer lives. This happens in every step. Engineering interviews are insanely harder than management, engineering promos are opaque and need grinding for years as…

Spot on. The fact that engineers keep having to learn things continuously for years, decades treading through anywhere from technically difficult issues to bad documentation, mostly on their own time for fear of falling behind, while running to honor daily and hourly deadlines and being imaginative, smart and personable at work is insane. Atleast managers get to rely on their experience that adds up while engineers jump through languages frameworks and libraries while attending leet code interviews is crazy. But peasant, get back to work and no quiet quitting for you, and you are a lower form of life is the prevalent attitude among many managers. There are good managers, most of them technical like you said, a smaller portion among them have empathy
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