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Is engineering management bullshit?

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Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#71

Post by __alexs »

rco8786 wrote: post #42
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…

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…

I have been a manager and a manager of managers and I think we really do not have good data on whether not "management" as a profession in software engineering really adds value. We're bad at quantifying the value of engineers, and we're worse at quantifying the value of managers.

There are definitely a wide range of non-engineering skills required to produce good software but that doesn't automatically justify the existence of a dedicated engineering manager role in most or even any teams.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#72

Post by UncleMeat »

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 do think that this is fair and it is a reason why bad managers stand out so much in people's minds. I think that making it feasible for a team to fire its own manager would be generally a good thing.

But this has little to do with the argument that management as a concept itself is self serving bullshit.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#73

Post by beernet »

fisf wrote: post #3
RichardCNormos wrote: post #2

I'm a manager. This is a low-energy take on management, focused on the part of the job I call "keeping the spice flowing": knocking out tickets, landing key results, and coordinating with other teams. For a manager, this is all low-impact work. High impact management work isn't mentioned here. These are things like developing your people and networking. It's a lot of work to get somebody promoted, even if that person…

Note how everything you categorize as 'high-impact' is basically politics. "Rather than focus on delivering results (which again is difficult(!), might be wrong, and often not easily identified by leadership), these people spend time making alliances and crafting narratives about outcomes instead of delivering. Title acquisition becomes the goal, seeking to maximize the expected organizational rewards, at the expense…

Degrading "developing your people and networking" as "politics" just shows the lack of overall business and people acumen that engineers tend to suffer from. This is not necessarily a bad thing if you are aware of this, but these type of statements usually lead to engineers drifting away more and more from the purpose of the company.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#74

Post by halfmatthalfcat »

droopyEyelids wrote: post #61
halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And we're honing in on the pain point of that aspect of life. I'm not having a revelation here, I'm lamenting the fact with my peers on a site dedicated to technology/engineering.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#75

Post by dxf »

Very long time Engineering Manager here.

Engineering Management is not bullshit, though there are many bad Engineering Managers out there, even at companies (like Google, where I've been an EM for over 6 years) that strive to build and support Engineering Managers. Google itself did research into the question of, "Do Engineering Managers matter?" The answer was Yes:

Google set out to determine what makes a manager great at Google. But first, a research team tried to prove the opposite: that managers actually don’t matter, that the quality of a manager didn’t impact a team’s performance. This hypothesis was based on an early belief held by some of Google’s leaders and engineers that managers are, at best, a necessary evil, and at worst, a layer of bureaucracy.

The team defined manager quality based on two quantitative measures: manager performance ratings and manager feedback from Google’s annual employee survey. This data quickly revealed that managers did matter: teams with great managers were happier and more productive.

https://rework.withgoogle.com/guides/managers-identify-what-...

Google currently asks Engineering Managers to focus on three areas: Leading work, developing people, and building community.

What are some ways I spend my time?

1. Making sure my people are supported in their lives and careers. This can mean giving someone a task they will take a long time to finish, because it's the right thing for them (and the team) to have that person learn about that area. You are trading off project/feature delivery for personal and team growth. It can also mean helping someone find ways to still have impact when they are struggling with some aspect of their job.

2. Clarifying strategies and priorities. There are only so many things the team can do successfully, and someone needs to be the person who says No. I am also the person best situated to look outward to other groups and teams to identify areas of collaboration.

3. Making sure we are organized appropriately and effectively, and that we are following good Engineering processes. I hate unnecessary process as much as anyone -- I've always said process should be something that helps you get your job done properly and effectively, not a hoop you need to jump through in order to do your job.

As an EM (and when I worked as a developer), I have had my own share of high-quality and poor-quality managers and Directors above me. If you feel EM is bullshit, I'm sorry you've never experienced what it's like to work on a team with a good, supportive manager.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#76

Post by ethanbond »

ipaddr wrote: post #20
wikitopian wrote: post #8

Engineers that have to do management and paperwork stuff cry that they're so busy with paperwork that they can't engineer. So management hires a guy for them and they cry about how that guy doesn't do anything.

The core problem sounds like the bullshit paperwork you allude to which is unnecessary and adds time to projects but provides leadership a fake status used to drive other decisions.

And yet it seems nearly every organization of meaningful scale has a large amount of this “cruft.”

Why don’t we see companies that “simply don’t” add this cruft, and accordingly sail off into orbit under propulsion of their own excellence?

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#77

Post by rektide »

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…

The complaint about OKRs - using only specific meazurements to destroy the ability to decide/agency to land actual outcomes/results - seemed pretty spot on. It's not even engineering managers necessarily; knowledge working orgs in general, and, in my view, it's not immature to grumble about, it's immature orgs that ruin their best potential, that dont get knowledge work & actively obstruct it.

Having these ideas in mind, particularly backed up by some good background as is present here - some discussion on knowledge work, Peter Drucker quotes - is context orgs ought to try to be aware of, prevent from happening.

Sad to see such a well written well explained article reduced to "grow out of their mindset" antagonism. There's not any argumentation in this rebuttal, just personal badmouthing & berating. The conflict described is real, but apparently people who feel tensions & dissonance of it all are all just "immature".

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#78

Post by nine_zeros »

edmundsauto wrote: post #53
nine_zeros wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As someone who has switched between management and IC work, I’ve found management to be much, much more difficult to do well. Management should be managing people, which is much harder than managing code. Perhaps this is why there are so many bad examples. The job is nearly impossible to do exceptionally well.

> Perhaps this is why there are so many bad examples. The job is nearly impossible to do exceptionally well.

I believe that the job is nearly impossible to do well. Which leads a lot of people to suspect that the role of Engineering managers is badly defined. Which leads to all the complaints above. Nobody is happy with the current org structure.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#79

Post by spiderice »

radicalbyte wrote: post #58
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…

> Most are about average. That is not how averages work. It depends on the distribution.

To answer your nitpick with a nitpick, averages can work that way. Do you know the distribution of engineering managers well enough to say that most aren't "about average"? GP was making a claim about engineering managers.. not about all averages.

But regardless, that's missing the point. The point is that the distribution of engineering manager quality is likely pretty similar to that of any other role. So claiming that "there are way more bad engineering managers than good ones" seems likely to be untrue unless you also believe that about nearly any other engineering/management/product position.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#80

Post by abc_lisper »

edmundsauto wrote: post #53
nine_zeros wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As someone who has switched between management and IC work, I’ve found management to be much, much more difficult to do well. Management should be managing people, which is much harder than managing code. Perhaps this is why there are so many bad examples. The job is nearly impossible to do exceptionally well.

I have seen many (extremely smart too) engineers cry at work, but never managers. Make of it what you will.
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