Is engineering management bullshit? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#351

Post by drc500free » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 6:18 PM UTC

Maursault wrote: post #307

drc500free wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really the only two dimensions that matter for development as a function are time to market at a sufficient quality, and resources needed to maintain the codebase at sufficient quality once delivered. Any metrics about individual devs needs to support one of those two group goals. The fewest lines of codes is an ok metric in that it often means more maintainable. But it can mean less maintainable if it's too cute. It…

> Faster code is an irrelevant distraction 90% of the time. Time is money. Say a piece of code is executed zillions of times by hundreds of millions of customers. What would seem like a negligible increase in results, even a few milliseconds, adds up at scale. Sparing resources translates to saving money, both in energy expenditure and in squeezing in as many transactions in a minute as possible.

Most code is not executed a zillion times by hundreds of millions of customers.

Most products are not concerned with squeezing in as many transactions in a minute as possible.

All of those have their time and place. B2C codepaths used by all normal users in their most common daily usage? sure. HFT platform? sure. Pretty much anything else? You're probably spending more in dev salary than AWS savings and getting sniped by a competitor.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#352

Post by WastingMyTime89 » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 6:23 PM UTC

noneeeed wrote: post #94

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.

This was the question I asked myself that totally changed how I thought about sales and marketing people. I cannot do sales, I do not want to do sales, but if I want a job someone needs to do sales. To me sales looks like an awful job, but some people really get a kick out of it and I'm glad they do because otherwise I would earn a lot less than I do. We love to think that "if we build it they will come" but the real…

> To me sales looks like an awful job

You meet new people. They tell you about their problems. You explain to them how your product can alleviate them. You work on finding a common position regarding what you could bring at which price. When it works, you get a big cheque. It’s pretty fun really.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#353

Post by fisf » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 6:25 PM UTC

beernet wrote: post #73

fisf wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not degrading or a value judgment (at this point).

But OPs post / self described high impact activities pretty much fit the definition of (company) politics perfectly.

The many pertinent questions I am asking are: Is it useful or necessary, to have people doing company politics full time, what are the incentives? What does this say about an organisation? Is such (internal) politics healthy for an org, how much is it predicated on, and much does it foster internal tribalism?

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#354

Post by lunias » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 6:25 PM UTC

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…

Whenever I feel like my management is not sufficiently technical or experienced I think of the construction foreman. I imagine what things would be like if you could become a foreman without ever learning construction yourself. How would that work?

Software development at some companies often seems like that. The person in the position of leadership is instead led (at the expense of productivity) by the people they're meant to lead.

Of course this would never be allowed in a field where there are serious non-reversible consequences of negligence stemming from a lack of knowledge.

I feel like this is largely a phenomenon local to software development.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#355

Post by koonsolo » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 6:29 PM UTC

ska wrote: post #325

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 y…

> 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.

But the question is here the same: is the manager most informed to take the decisions? I would expect the functional analyst to know most about the domain and what is required, and the sales or business development people about how to extract money out of the customer. In all cases, I think the experts of all fields are at the lowest level.

> Done well, a good EM will be an interface between the goals (from above) and capabilities (from below) and keeping them aligned.

I agree that the vision needs to come from the top downwards. That means "where do we want to go", but the "how will we do this", is in my opinion all the people at the lowest levels.

As for capabilities, a great manager will present what needs to be done to the team, and the team will decide what effort will be required.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#356

Post by koonsolo » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 6:32 PM UTC

commandlinefan wrote: post #272

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…

I'm reminded of football coaches. Some of them used to play football, but even then were rarely superstar players. They definitely can't suit up and take over for a missing player - yet they're held responsible for the wins and losses more than the players themselves, and the players have incredible respect and deference for what they do.

I still feel football coaches bring more expertise on the table. They handle the strategy used and which player does what.

For software development, those things should be in the hands of the developers and architects.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#357

Post by TeeMassive » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 6:36 PM UTC

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

If you have to have people sitting in meetings all day just to avoid corporate crap to clutter you devs' work than you have a bit problem in the upper layer of the organization. Best solution is to leave.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#358

Post by Maursault » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 6:38 PM UTC

drc500free wrote: post #351

Maursault wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Faster code is an irrelevant distraction 90% of the time. Time is money. Say a piece of code is executed zillions of times by hundreds of millions of customers. What would seem like a negligible increase in results, even a few milliseconds, adds up at scale. Sparing resources translates to saving money, both in energy expenditure and in squeezing in as many transactions in a minute as possible.

Most code is not executed a zillion times by hundreds of millions of customers. Most products are not concerned with squeezing in as many transactions in a minute as possible. All of those have their time and place. B2C codepaths used by all normal users in their most common daily usage? sure. HFT platform? sure. Pretty much anything else? You're probably spending more in dev salary than AWS savings and getting snipe…

> You're probably spending more in dev salary than AWS savings and getting sniped by a competitor.

I don't doubt you, but it is asinine if dev salaries are under such oppressive scrutiny when mind-boggling amounts of spending is wasted on management and especially executive salaries. Talk about bending over a dollar to pick up a dime.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#359

Post by mrits » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 6:50 PM UTC

proser wrote: post #337

mrits wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 poten…

I see this as a rephrasing for a bias towards the management. Obviously a manager can completely waste the time of the team and company. Anecdotally I've had more managers do this than not that reported to me. I have been lucky with the people I've reported to myself especially earlier in my career.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#360

Post by warcher » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 6:57 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…

The MBA is for people who want to skip right to "being in charge" without having to learn how to actually do anything first.

The scary part is, if you went to a selective enough school, it kinda works.

The Ivy League undergrad -> elite MBA -> management consulting -> C-suite pipeline is especially frightening.