Is engineering management bullshit? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#211

Post by tayo42 » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 3:26 PM UTC

rco8786 wrote: post #166

tayo42 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? If most managers are useless that means most in the role aren't actually helping or doing anything yet the world seems to go on. Why have that role then? If you can have someone who is a negative in that role, then you can get rid of it.

> If most managers are useless Big IF. Even worse-than-average managers are not useless. To have a truly useless manager is an extreme rarity. > means most in the role aren't actually helping or doing anything You're painting a broad spectrum of people on a binary scale. A bad manager is maybe 30% as useful as a great manager. But 30% useful is still better than not existing. > If you can have someone who is a negati…

Idk if its that big of an "if". People who are ending up as managers are rarely highly trained in the job or receiving a ton of support. Often just attracting bad personalities. Its always someone who wants to do something different then engineering, they become a manager. Imagine if we hired engineers because someones friend thought it sounded interesting and they had to do all their learning on the job.

> By this logic every job is useless. Any role can have someone bad at it.

Its not really the same because there's only one manager. If i had redundant managers maybe then a couple bad ones could get by. bad engineers have a tons of checks to prevent them being a real drain. theres no code review for a manager.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#212

Post by don_neufeld » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 3:26 PM UTC

[Context: After founding a startup and being a VPE or CTO four times, I now train and coach engineering leaders at vpecoach.com]

Engineering management is anything but a bullshit job, the impact of good leadership is very, very high. Knowing where you are going and why, having good processes, and solid communication is a step function improvement in basically every dimension of engineering team performance.

But I also understand this person’s take, because just because it’s an important and impactful job doesn’t mean YOUR engineering leader or manager is any good.

Like everything, management and leadership are skills, and most leaders have received next to no training during their entire career.

What level of leadership do you realistically expect from an untrained person? And if that isn’t what you need, what are you doing about it?

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#213

Post by adra » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 3:26 PM UTC

abc_lisper wrote: post #80

edmundsauto wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People with emotional issues aren't as likely to be promoted into management. Management is often way more stressful as you're getting dumped on from above, from peer managers, and all the negative feedback from devs all at the same time (plus needing to actually facilitate getting things built). Maybe you work at some poor company that can't promote devs high enough so they're forced into some form of management role to get a promotion. Those companies suck because they steal good IC talent for roles they're less suitable/valuable for, and causes the company to have perverse incentives to over bloat their management pool than necessary.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#214

Post by eranation » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 3:27 PM UTC

Engineering management (when done right) has some key benefits

- protect the team from bullshit corporate politics / micromanagement (pad the team estimates with a buffer / push back on management unrealistic expectations)

- help team member fulfill their potential and grow outside their comfort zone

- give the team credit when credit is due (help shy people be seen etc)

- promote good people (and fire toxic / bad performers that drag the team down)

- help the team prioritize / prevent going into rabbit holes

- help the team get to decisions faster

- hire good people

- provide training

- provide budget / enable / arrange fun activities (offsite / hackathons)

- ensure inclusive environment (give room for introverts to speak their mind in a non awkward way / make sure not only extroverts are speaking in meetings by splitting to smaller groups / doing activities that are async e.g. writing ideas anonymously via virtual post it notes etc)

All of this can be done by a good peer or mentor, doesn't have to be a manager, but it sure helps if your manager is also a mentor.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#215

Post by mattkrause » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 3:27 PM UTC

aniforprez wrote: post #143

linuxftw wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 'average' manager may indeed be a net-negative, much like the average car crash. > frankly just don’t have any idea what the job is for We know what the job is for, but maybe there's no actual value there. Do doctors have managers? Do lawyers have managers? No, they might report to some administrative body, but they mostly work on contract or in teams. The 'communicate with customers' nonsense is delegated to low…

> Do doctors have managers? Yes. If a doctor is working in a hospital, there are most certainly managers. Obviously not "technical" managers in that they're doctors themselves or the doctor's "boss" but in that there are managers who are co-ordinating workforce, priorities, staffing, supplies etc etc. This is very much a thing and is more broad than engineering managers but is an incredibly important task so the dail…

If you consider interns and residents doctors (which they are), it's not a wild leap of imagination to consider attendings "medical managers".

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#216

Post by tayo42 » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 3:28 PM UTC

compiler-guy wrote: post #195

tayo42 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are managers of doctors saying ridiculous things like you need to only seem patients 30 and up this week, or your not diagnosing enough strep throat.

I have plenty of friends in the medical field and yes you hear stuff like this all the time. “Thirty and up” because maybe there is an underserved community. “Not diagnosing enough strep throat” because maybe there is a recently discovered epidemic and doctors hadn’t been testing for that. People who have a high level view can direct the folks down in the trenches quite productively.

> People who have a high level view can direct the folks down in the trenches quite productively.

This shouldn't be middle managers. technical leader is better for that or most senior on the team. An actual leader on the team.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#217

Post by sidlls » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 3:28 PM UTC

Koshkin wrote: post #29

gautamdivgi wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But the worst thing ever is when a bad dev gets promoted to the position of a dev manager or a tech lead. Armed with “knowledge” and “experience,” and now with a degree of authority, they would put their weight on everything they touch. The damage will be immense (but no one would care).

So now we’re including actual engineers in this perpetual rant against management, now? Is it only engineers whose sole job is to write code given a spec who are valuable? At what level of seniority is a job “useless” or worse?

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#218

Post by AndrewKemendo » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 3:29 PM UTC

I'll just rewrite this paragraph and it will answer the question for the author:

An experienced engineering manager anticipates the secondary effects of every change, and weighs tradeoffs between a multitude of approaches in solving problems. By continuously modeling software systems, the organization they work for, and customer behavior, the most effective managers readjust their approach to problems daily.

This is a great example of what good engineering managers do because after a certain size of a project, one person can't build while also keeping all the downstream externalities in their head.

But wait! Microservices and self documenting APIs will fix all this right?

Nope - people and process management is as important here as it is on a car assembly line.

To adulterate a quote from James Madison:

If [programmers] were [perfect robots], no [management] would be necessary.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#219

Post by klooney » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 3:30 PM UTC

Swizec wrote: post #140

mrits wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over the first 10 years of a an engineers career they might only be exposed to a few different management roles. It's possible that the manager isn't fulfilling the actual role so what you have left with is just the distraction. Regardless if the manager is helping the team they almost always drain resources to aggregate information that they can synthesize upstream. It's a system that is so fragile it's not hard to…

> they almost always drain resources to aggregate information Here’s an idea: Provide this information before they have to ask, when it’s convenient for you. Like between tasks. Took a 5min break? Move the damn story over to done. Got stuck and seeking clarity but are blocked? Leave a quick comment. If your manager has to ask what’s going on, you’re not communicating enough.

Of course, the managers don't rely on the ticketing system either, because not enough people are super diligent about updating the tickets.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#220

Post by julik » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 3:30 PM UTC

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…

And no extra agency and no extra authority. I've been in that spot, had the best 4 months of my life (lack of authority was painful). Then 2 clueless managers were hired above me.