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Is engineering management bullshit?

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Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#171

Post by adra »

mechanical_bear wrote: post #113
sumtechguy wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think that often engineers hold the view that the role in question doesn’t need to exist. And some roles are just welfare for MBAs.

I've never personally felt that race-to-the-bottom capitalism would generally allow for such parasitic drains on productivity, but then again, if you're hiring on past contributions only, how would you as a non-expert in sales/marketing/etc know what makes efficiency?

I don't think your view is anywhere near as common as you think it is, but maybe in your immediate peer group there's some self-selecting cause for believing so.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#172

Post by wahnfrieden »

Graeber's Bullshit Jobs is a good background context for this discussion. I feel most are replying about individually good and bad managers and taking a lot about our hierarchies for granted as the most productive formations for society. Maybe the hierarchy is only necessary when the workers have to be kept motivated without any financial upside to business outcomes they generate

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#173

Post by drstewart »

Test0129 wrote: post #44
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…

Here's the thing. At the end of the day all of the "complexity and nuance" of running a business doesn't matter. The only way you even get to execute on that is if you're flanked by good engineers. All roads lead to the engineer. Bad managers can be worked around. Mindless PMs can be worked around. But if every engineer at apple suddenly stopped working there would be real economic consequences. If managers and PMs s…

> If managers and PMs stopped working they'd be replaced by engineers who are by and large more capable at adaptation anyway.

It's funny how these ultracapable genius engineers don't just start their own company free of these bullshit manager and PM roles and just steamroll the competition, isn't it?

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#174

Post by andsoitis »

fezfight wrote: post #16
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 you're being as disingenuous as TFA. There are just as many useless managers as there are useless reports. The reason you see so many 'managers suck' posts is because they're in a position of authority over the talent they manage. That's all. Management shouldn't mean authority, it should be like HR or IT, a support role.

Who should be held responsible for engineering projects or initiatives that require more than one engineer? Who should be tasked with originating and prioritizing and staffing such projects?

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#175

Post by rco8786 »

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.

> Sure it's a spectrum but half of that spectrum (from average to god awful) have power over your career/work, to your detrement.

It is always your responsibility to advocate for yourself, your career, and your work.

If you are an engineer you should view your manager as a marginal value add only. Some managers add more value to your career than others, for sure, but it's still marginal relative to the effect that YOU have on your career. If you find yourself on a team with a truly bad manager who is having a negative affect on your career, get out...but this is truly a rare occurrence in my experience.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#176

Post by bratbag »

soperj wrote: post #147
sulam wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can justify it quite easily. Take it away and see what happens.

I've worked for months while they hired a new manager, and we just had less meetings.

Conversely, I had to attend more meetings when I didn't have a manager, because they were no longer there to act as a filter/shield for the chaff around the corn of what I needed to know.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#177

Post by wahnfrieden »

Maursault wrote: post #139

> Despite years of effort, and a market value for individual software companies of over trillions of dollars, we’ve yet to formalize a way of measuring how effective a developer is or isn’t. I am not a developer, but I studied CS until my eyes bled, and I've been watching you guys. Seems to me you (royal, developers) have already long figured this out with 2 metrics. The first isn't how many lines of code, but the op…

those two have no demonstrated correlation with business performance, unlike DORA measures

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#178

Post by tayo42 »

paxys wrote: post #129
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…

I'd wager the percent of terrible managers is the same as that of terrible engineers. We all have worked with such coworkers at some point in our careers. Yet no one ever turns around and says "the engineering role is bullshit", simply because that would invalidate their own careers.

Eningeers get tons of actually effective training and schooling. Alot of people probably spent at least 4 years in school learning a science where there are right and wrong answers. It's easy to evaluate engineers. Most managers seemed to get to that role by accident, or because they knew the right person. I think there's way more underperforming managers. Managers aren't going to school for years, even when they do the degree they come out with feels useless.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#179

Post by 015a »

bratbag wrote: post #149
sulam wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can justify it quite easily. Take it away and see what happens.

What happens is that an otherwise productive engineer has to step up and perform the role, but without any recognition of the extra responsibilities or any reduction in expectations of their individual contributions. So then they find a job somewhere else and another otherwise productive engineer has to step up..... Meanwhile the other engineers continue on blissfully unaware, patting themselves on their backs for ho…

I've seen this happen in smaller teams; it can work well! Productive teams and skilled engineers can manage their own workload. Not all of them want to do that, so that needs to be taken into account, but it can work spectacularly.

I've also seen it work poorly. We've already established that there are good and bad EMs; there's good and bad in everything. That doesn't justify the role of the EM!

I've also seen PMs do this. This is the far more common situation, and it works! Workload planning ends up being a collaborative effort on the team, with the senior engineers holding domain knowledge over operations, maintenance, architecture, implementation, while PMs/Designers/etc hold domain knowledge over the business, customers, etc. Work once in an environment like this; well, at least a good one; and it will make anyone and everyone question why EMs exist at all. There's no room for them. They wouldn't contribute anything even if they were added to the mix.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#180

Post by IanCal »

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…

One of the best things I ever did was run a business on my own very early on.

I was terrible at it. Forced to actually contact customers I had no clue what to do. I had no idea how to price things. I communicated terribly and drove away initial customers.

I learned a healthy respect of other positions in a company, because when I tried them I had to accept they were actually hard.

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