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Is engineering management bullshit?

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Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#321

Post by writeinpencil »

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…

I don't agree. There is a good line in the book "Impro" about good and bad teachers. It says that we think of "good teachers" as providing a lot of some substance called "education" while "bad teachers" provide only a little. In fact bad teachers can and often do not only fail to provide education but actively make students less educated by, for instance, teaching wrong ideas, punishing arbitrarily, etc etc. The same is true of managers. They can easily drop below zero and start to have a negative impact on productivity and their employees.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#322

Post by bumby »

mrits wrote: post #290
felizuno wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you'r point is that people with 10 or fewer years of experience (which I think is many people in this thread based on the comments) might have a sample bias issue that stems from working around fewer total managers and fewer companies, where those companies also may be worse than average at selecting managers? I would agree that there are probably plenty of people who fit that mold given the state of our indu…

I see that the phrase "draining resources" can be taken to only mean a net negative. I was attempting to state that it takes time away from the team for the manager to function. That manager could see positive or negative returns on the time it took.

>it takes time away from the team for the manager to function.

I think a more accurate take is that it can "drain resources" from the individual to provide a net positive impact to the team (ideally). The problem with a lot of the cynical takes here is they appear to be only considering the perspective of the individual.

It's like the idea that if somebody stops by my office to ask a question; it's great for them to get an answer, but a detriment to me because it interrupts my work. If all I cared about was personal productivity, I would lock my door but the overall team productivity would likely suffer. A good manager puts together a system/culture that balances all those competing goals to the betterment of the team.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#323

Post by rco8786 »

015a wrote: post #145
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…

Maybe these articles are written by people who have never been managers themselves. I'd also posit that most of the defense of the position comes from managers. Do you not recognize the irony in this? I'm sure you're aware of what they say: Its difficult to get someone to understand something when their paycheck depends on it. Do you have the self-awareness to recognize that this, alone, is a huge reason why managers…

> I'd also posit that most of the defense of the position comes from managers. Do you not recognize the irony in this?

That’s not irony. That’s someone with no domain expertise saying something and then someone with domain expertise refuting it.

If I, a casual baseball fan, made a claim about umpires being useless in baseball and then an umpire came in to explain otherwise, that would not be irony.

I’m also not an EM, though I have been one in the past.

I don’t understand your point about PMs. You’re saying that the responsibilities of an EM should be that of a PM. So you’re just arguing for a name change? Or something else?

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#324

Post by SilverBirch »

WalterBright wrote: post #317

I know the rank & file almost universally consider management to be morons and how could anyone be so incompetent and stupid. Naturally, in the businesses I've run, I'd get regularly informed about how incompetent and stupid I am, and how a squirrel could do better. Yet anyone can start their own business, and thus prove how much better they are. Some do (even though their employees think they're incompetent), most f…

One thing I've noticed repeatedly is that counter to the old adage "Success has many fathers, failure is an orphan", the opposite is almost always true. At every successful company I've worked at there's been probably 1 thing that drives the success, and a thousand things that hinder the success. But just that one thing driving success can overcome the thousand hinderances. It's because that one nugget of success is so strong, you can afford to fail in lots of other ways. The core driving success of a large company almost always spawns a load of other problems which would sink any smaller company, but it survives because the good outweighs the bad, and when the good is massive, the bad can be pretty enormous too.

The problem is, it's often almost impossible to really know what's driving th success. And by hacking away at the problems you can endanger the unique combination of things that drives success.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#325

Post by ska »

koonsolo wrote: post #221

I think a lot here miss the main point of the article. Managers used to be smarter than their subordinates, so they could steer the work. With knowledge work, as soon as you turn manager, you're away from the knowledge. That means all of a sudden your subordinates are smarter than you. So where does that leave the manager? Well, as the article also kind of concludes, the manager is now at the service of the team. Big…

> you're away from the knowledge. That means all of a sudden your subordinates are smarter than you.

This is incorrect in a subtle but important way: Being closer to "the knowledge" as you put it, doesn't change how smart you are, it changes how well informed/up to date you are. That being said, it's always better to hire people smarter than you if you can :)

Similarly, being closer to "the knowledge" tends to make you poorly informed about other important aspects of your business, almost unavoidably. This information is often critical to actual success, more than IC's/engineers often realize.

To some degree this is zero sum, and reflects where you spend your time. Done well, a good EM will be an interface between the goals (from above) and capabilities (from below) and keeping them aligned.

This: > it will be hard for you to notice a great manager, but easy to notice a bad one.

is very true. The corollary is that as an IC you often perform much better in a high functioning team with a good or great manager, but it's easy/comfortable to believe this is mostly yourself.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#326

Post by halfmatthalfcat »

ragona wrote: post #318
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…

> understood that managing down is much more important than managing up and (3) knew how to say "no" to upper management effectively. Wait, saying "no" to upper management _is_ managing upwards. If you have a high performing team you can damned near ignore them as long as you're paying attention to what matters to them so that you can manage up effectively and keep bullshit off their place. If you have a team that ne…

I didn't say that there is no managing up, only that managers should be focused on managing down while simultaneously pushing back against top-down bullshit. I've usually seen managers just focusing on the later (whether it's ass kissing, career gunning or from bullshit) while neglecting their team.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#327

Post by joebob42 »

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.

Sure, but none of this is free. That's all extra work that has to happen. The fact that I'm doing it in "down time" doesn't make it free, I have a million other things I could theoretically do at any given down time.

Not to say this work is necessarily not worth the cost, but it absolutely costs something.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#328

Post by Thursday24 »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #199
Thursday24 wrote: post #97

I'd say: No, not at all! Read about Admiral Rickover. He built the first practical nuclear submarine in the world, for the US navy, in record time of 3 years. He cleared bureaucratic hurdles, played the politics when needed, kept tight control, delved deep into the technicalities of the project, recruited and trained a large number of people into the program, and ultimately made the project successful. Dig deeper int…

I think there is a huge difference between managers who can get a project over the finish line and ones who can get multiple large projects over the finish line. I'm not saying that Admiral Rickover didn't/couldnt do that but many managers are effective at cracking the whip and making X happen but at the expense of their teams health which leads to burnout and turnover. I'd also say military management is significant…

Rickover was near the top echelons of US navy for ~60 years, as far as I know. Definitely, he knows a thing or two about burnout and turnover. He executed many, many sophisticated projects throughout his life. That's why he had such a long & successful career. I'd recommend reading his book - The never-ending challenge of Engineering. In my readings, this has been the best book on Engineering management.

Secondly, about burnout and turnover. Let's discuss from an empirical standpoint. The number one proximal cause of turnover is lack of "commitment". There are longitudinal empircal studies which demonstrate this. Job satisfaction is important as well; however commitment dominates every other factor.

Hence, it is important for managers to generate commitment, one way or another. I believe from these aspects, Rickover truly understood engineers and technical folks... In fact, he went against the US military books, and emphasised Individual initiative and judgement, regardless of what the rulebooks said. In a way, Rickover was able to work around the navy rules to create sufficient commitment to get complicated jobs done.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#329

Post by pyb »

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

IME, The managers who believe this tend to hide too much information from their team. The team doesn't have enough context as a result, and is in the dark re. what's really expected of them by higher-ups.
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