Was this written by ChatGPT? Very generic.
Coaching engineering managers to take on organizational problems
21–30 of 49 posts
Re: Coaching engineering managers to take on organizational problems
#22I don't think the class of problems talked about in here are necessarily the biggest problems. Rather, it's politically motivated decision-making. Not in the sense of insert your pet US politics issue, but rather about capturing influence within the organization to make themselves status-y. For example, Google managers over-inflating their team numbers to make their resume look better.
Re: Coaching engineering managers to take on organizational problems
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
A company is not a single entity. Your experience can be very different depending on your team, manager and department.
The experience only differs because of how much or little you are sheltered from reality of the inter-organization politics.
"Sheltered from the reality of inter-organization politics" is a pretty wide bucket. I've been on teams that constantly fight with each other to get resources and executive attention, and I've been on teams that collaborate with each other to make the best decisions taking into account everyone's constraints and capabilities. In my experience there's a huge qualitative difference that doesn't have much to do with hiding or disguising anything.
Re: Coaching engineering managers to take on organizational problems
#24Re: Coaching engineering managers to take on organizational problems
#25Was this written by ChatGPT? Very generic.
Hah! Nope, 100% wet-neuron generated work here.
Re: Coaching engineering managers to take on organizational problems
#26Your engineering manager may not know:
* How to manage people.
I realize this is snarky in tone but in 2023 this still rings true for many people.
Much of management doesn't know anything about engineering. Many engineers don't know anything about managing people.
The worse the management the worse the politics.
Re: Coaching engineering managers to take on organizational problems
#27Your engineering manager may not know: * How to manage people. I realize this is snarky in tone but in 2023 this still rings true for many people. Much of management doesn't know anything about engineering. Many engineers don't know anything about managing people. The worse the management the worse the politics.
In my current situation it feels like much of management doesn't know anything about managing people :(
Re: Coaching engineering managers to take on organizational problems
#28Was this written by ChatGPT? Very generic.
This accusation is thrown about a lot. I suspect we're on the cusp of a refinement into actual:
"did you use ChatGPT to write this"
"this is so bad it must have been ChatGPT"
"this is so good you must have used ChatGPT"
Re: Coaching engineering managers to take on organizational problems
#29I have trouble with the premise. Organizational problems are not the hardest problems a company faces, not by a long shot. Rather, organizational problems are a manifestation of leadership dysfunction, and by leadership I mean senior leadership (board of directors, CEO and down). They are easy to fix when the right-minded people are in charge and impossible to fix when they're not. Unless engineering managers are pro…
This feels like a circular - but also not fully correct - claim to me. Leadership issues and organization issues can feed on each other in a vicious cycle, but they can also exist separately.
The CEO may not know how to effectively organize an [engineering,marketing,sales,whatever] team. That doesn't mean any company with a team that's adrift due to poor organization suffers from leadership dysfunction at the CEO level. Yes, it's the CEO's responsibility to fix that, but in many cases they don't have the direct ability to fix outside of hiring and delegating to the right people.
Organizational problems are also fractal: a data org of 100 people may not be working in the best way with an infrastructure org of 50 people. But within the data org things might also be bogged down because a team of 5 people is not working well with another team of 10 people. And within that, two people on that team of 10 may be in totally the wrong role for their skillets and preferences.
(And conversely, sometimes you have well-organized, smooth-running teams let down by capricious management.)
And most ironically, if your company is doing a reorg every 6 to 12 months... your organizational issues probably aren't getting fixed any time soon. Organizational issues that affect execution and delivery are too complex to be fixed by moving some lines around on a singular hierarchical org chart.
Re: Coaching engineering managers to take on organizational problems
#30I have trouble with the premise. Organizational problems are not the hardest problems a company faces, not by a long shot. Rather, organizational problems are a manifestation of leadership dysfunction, and by leadership I mean senior leadership (board of directors, CEO and down). They are easy to fix when the right-minded people are in charge and impossible to fix when they're not. Unless engineering managers are pro…
> They are easy to fix when the right-minded people are in charge and impossible to fix when they're not.
Sorry, no. I don't know your story but it feels unlikely you have real experience with this. Even with right-minded people there can be many, many reasons and dynamics that an organizational problem is difficult to solve.
Good intentions - even from the most senior leadership - can be slow to manifest in real change based on market forces, client forces, cultural dynamics, norms (especially the unspoken ways things "just get done") and capability (e.g., making the wrong decision on a change management strategy which sets the whole change effort back years). There are a near infinite number of contextual considerations, and they are not all rendered null because the executive committee wants to do the right thing. Unexpected second-order effects may be likely given what is being changed, bringing great risk on its own.