Is engineering management bullshit? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#331

Post by pyb » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 5:17 PM UTC

orliesaurus wrote: post #37

My take is like this: Engineering management works if EMs are good at their job. According to this tweet: - Startups with managers 33% more likely to develop product innovations - Firing a bad manager and replacing them with a top manager drops costs 5%, since you reduce turnover. - In a car factory, replacing a bad manager with a top manager diminishes the hours needed to build a car by 30%. - In the game industry -…

> Startups with managers 33% more likely to develop product innovations

If the upside of managers is only 33%, they're probably not worth the added complexity/friction/expense !

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#332

Post by 28304283409234 » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 5:17 PM UTC

ethanbond wrote: post #76

ipaddr wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Because they employ humans and humans are flawed.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#333

Post by ewuhic » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 5:23 PM UTC

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…

PM as product or project?

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#334

Post by johnnymarr666 » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 5:23 PM UTC

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…

this is just personal and professional immaturity. bonecrusher2102's empty comment does not respond to any of the arguments in the blog post. instead it's repeating the same tired prejudice that the commenter inhibits against anyone who is trying to articulate a critique of business management. i really hope bonecrusher is able to grow out of this mindset. they'd be a lot happier and more productive

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#335

Post by csours » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 5:25 PM UTC

Knowledge workers have to manage so much of their own workflow that they should be treated like managers. Developers starting their careers should be trained on how to manage their own work.

I have worked in an automotive assembly plant, I have read about the rise of scientific management and later the Toyota Production System. In a physical system, you have to respect the production environment and the product. If there is an oil leak or fire hazard you must address that if you want to continue producing.

In knowledge work, the factory is inside someone's mind. They have to be ready, willing, and able to manage their own mind. They have to bring that to the job. It is also imperative that management methods do not damage that production environment. Fear, shame, frustration, and anxiety can all shut down that factory. Some of those emotions can be used to force production, but that is like running a motor over it's torque and power spec - you can do it for a while but you're damaging components that you can't see and it will have to be replaced or rebuilt before it's stated service life. Also we're talking about humans not machines. Humans can choose to leave.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#336

Post by lunias » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 5:28 PM UTC

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…

This sounds like a generalization to me.

During my time writing software professionally I've had good, bad, and neutral managers.

I've found most of my good managers at companies that produce software as a product. These managers were technically trained and rose to their management roles through working as engineers at other companies. In two cases these managers were actually the CTO.

Most of my bad managers have been at companies that rely on software to facilitate their business, but do not consider software to be their business. These managers knew little about software and our teams were usually bloated by non-technical roles and often unproductive. Every idea ultimately had to be passed through engineers for validation / refinement and engineering became a very constrained resource.

Neutral management is where I would place most of my managers. They don't really aid in or detract from my productivity. They're there and doing things (even if those things are not always visible to me). They demonstrate enough value to dispell the feelings of: "If you weren't here then we could hire another engineer to actually work on this problem".

That said, you are 100% correct that if I didn't think about these things at all then I'd be much happier. After all, happiness is reality minus expectation.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#337

Post by proser » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 5:31 PM UTC

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.

I still think there's an issue here just from the phrasing. "Taking time away from the team" implies that the team has better things to be doing. A manager isn't stealing a team's time by aggregating information to share upstream. A good manager is keeping the team aligned and informed so that they're working on the right thing at the right time. If the manager isn't there, the team needs to do that work, or be potentially wasting their time.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#338

Post by kodah » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 5:32 PM UTC

lunias wrote: post #336

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…

This sounds like a generalization to me. During my time writing software professionally I've had good, bad, and neutral managers. I've found most of my good managers at companies that produce software as a product. These managers were technically trained and rose to their management roles through working as engineers at other companies. In two cases these managers were actually the CTO. Most of my bad managers have b…

This is most accurate to my experience as well. While I don't think it's helpful to disparage management as a whole, I do think it's beneficial to talk about where bad management exists, why, and how frequently. On the flip side, people talking as if bad management doesn't exist or is some minority I think are forgetting not every SWE works in the valley at a FAANG or bootstrapped to-be-unicorn company.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#339

Post by Jensson » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 5:34 PM UTC

bradyd wrote: post #310

fezfight wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The technical team leader. Staffing is management/HR at the behest of and under the direction of the team lead.

> The technical team leader. AKA the manager.

No, they are different roles. Technical leads makes technical decisions, not staffing decisions. Managers makes staffing decisions. They can be the same person, but often aren't.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#340

Post by namdnay » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 5:40 PM UTC

feoren wrote: post #291

namdnay wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's more like protecting the team from being shut because some asshole somewhere managed to convince an exec that there was overlap with their team, or raising warnings when some product idiot has a new idea that's obviously going to end up having a last-minute dependency on the team, hustling to get licences to use Circle instead of Jenkins or whatever, etc

So middle managers are important because upper managers are fucking awful? That's the idea? We need the middle-management tier because of the upper-management tier? And why is the upper-management tier there? To protect middle-management from the C-tier? I think you're kinda making our point here.

100%. And all of the above are necessary because customers and investors are the fucking worst.

Ok, that’s how the world works, do we stick our fingers in our ears and pretend we can ignore it? Or do we embrace it and accept the rules of the game?