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Debate over 'fake work' and 'lazy management' in tech industry

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Re: Debate over 'fake work' and 'lazy management' in tech industry

#31

Post by trgn »

golergka wrote: post #30
JamesHinnek wrote: post #16

Just a reminder that lazy managers are the source of burnout for those who are under them. As a manager I can say, there is no easier job than just forwarding requests from directors directly to developers, not planning, and promising crazy deadlines to avoid conflict with higher management. If someone is being paid more, this person has to work more, I have seen so many people becoming managers just to actually avoi…

> If someone is being paid more, this person has to work more No, they should deliver more value. Best managers I had didn't have that much tasks scheduled. They: 1. Made important decisions right. 2. Processed all incoming requests, both from their reports and from outside, swiftly and with full attention. 3. Had enough psychological stamina to say "no" when it's necessary and defend their team from pressure and anx…

> lazy people are better suited to do it properly.

ha, have you heard of this quote from an officer from the german military? https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/02/28/clever-lazy/

Re: Debate over 'fake work' and 'lazy management' in tech industry

#32

Post by eysquared »

I’m seeing a lot of comments that seem to point to first line management as the problem here. In my own anecdotal experience, I’ve seen a lot more “fake work” come from listless leadership that lacks a true vision for the product. That rolls down to Product Managers that can’t prioritize features and don’t really understand what they’re building or why. Ultimately this leads to engineers and members of the team working on things they don’t believe in or that don’t actually move the needle and are scrapped.

In places like this the engineers and managers closest to the product and customers tend to have a better feel for what to work on, but in a large enough org it’s impossible to align those priorities across teams to get things done. This leads engineers to either POC ideas that aren’t possible in production yet or to focus on smaller features that don’t have dependencies.

The blame there lies solely in upper level leadership who often care more about org size than output.

I’m tired of the messaging around “lazy workers” pointing the finger where it doesn’t belong. Gut from the top if you want to get rid of the problem. It’s not the L5 engineer or the first line manager that’s holding any product back. These people tend to be the most invested in building something in my experience.

Re: Debate over 'fake work' and 'lazy management' in tech industry

#33

Post by blitz_skull »

taeric wrote: post #28

Odds are silly high that this will be a ton of talking past each other in experiences. Good management is almost certainly situation specific. Such that for a good manager, you also need a good organization. And for that organization, you likely need a certain kind of worker. Tech work is an odd one as we can't decide if we are general contractors, artists, or line workers. Each will have different quirks on how they…

> for a good manager, you also need a good organization

False. Being a good manager is aligned with being a good leader, which is 100% down to the person who is the manager. Sure you may not have an "effective team" without a good organization, but as a manager your job is to make the team succeed, and if you're following the laws of leadership, it has nothing to do with your organization.

Re: Debate over 'fake work' and 'lazy management' in tech industry

#34

Post by codesnik »

ryoshu wrote: post #27
wahnfrieden wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Managers usually fire team members rather than take the fall for the team.

Bad managers do that. Good managers accept accountability for the failures of their teams. Delegation makes a leader more accountable, not less.

I'd love to see an example of such an accepted accountability at least once in my life.

Re: Debate over 'fake work' and 'lazy management' in tech industry

#35

Post by i_k_k »

harimau777 wrote: post #2

Why do we expect to have good managers when we promote based on technical competency rather than leadership ability? Sure, a certain basic level of technical competency is needed, but after that management and development require different skills.

Another problem is that much of the industry sees getting into management as a promotion.

This is something that Microsoft tried, at least, to get right: pay/rank was mostly divorced from job function.

Re: Debate over 'fake work' and 'lazy management' in tech industry

#36

Post by TeMPOraL »

trgn wrote: post #31
golergka wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If someone is being paid more, this person has to work more No, they should deliver more value. Best managers I had didn't have that much tasks scheduled. They: 1. Made important decisions right. 2. Processed all incoming requests, both from their reports and from outside, swiftly and with full attention. 3. Had enough psychological stamina to say "no" when it's necessary and defend their team from pressure and anx…

> lazy people are better suited to do it properly. ha, have you heard of this quote from an officer from the german military? https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/02/28/clever-lazy/

Who hasn't? The real question is, is there a single historical figure who hasn't had this quote attributed to them at some point?

Re: Debate over 'fake work' and 'lazy management' in tech industry

#37

Post by danaris »

JamesHinnek wrote: post #16

Just a reminder that lazy managers are the source of burnout for those who are under them. As a manager I can say, there is no easier job than just forwarding requests from directors directly to developers, not planning, and promising crazy deadlines to avoid conflict with higher management. If someone is being paid more, this person has to work more, I have seen so many people becoming managers just to actually avoi…

Unfortunately, the belief of many is that if you are paid more, you are a more valuable person, and thus get to look down on those who make less than you.

This very frequently manifests in believing that it is the Lower People who have to do actual work, while your job as a Higher Person is just to make sure they are doing their work (in the simplest way possible—butt in seat == working), and not doing things above their station. Like thinking, or trying to understand why it is that their job, which can be done entirely on any computer with an internet connection, must be done in the office, or questioning why, when the business loses money, the execs still get fat bonuses.

Re: Debate over 'fake work' and 'lazy management' in tech industry

#38

Post by Gorbzel »

snide wrote: post #19

Maybe I'm missing a core piece from this article, but it leaves out quite a bit of agency from the employee. I never understand pieces like this that rail against employers, but also seem to cast the employees in such a helpless light. If you're stuck in a situation where you're not getting great feedback on what to work on, that seems like a great time to just build things and experiment on your own. Do it within th…

> it leaves out quite a bit of agency from the employee

Good catch. Of course it does, as the easiest and most lazy trend in software engineering thinkpieces is to blame middle management.

Keep in mind that 90% of the article (itself “fake work” as another commenter pointed out) has nothing to do with managers. The only substantiated mention there is from a gaggle of “strategic” academics at overpriced universities, i.e. those part of what is currently the biggest scam industry of them all.

Nonetheless, the causes here are so glaringly obvious that the article somehow still calls out 1) overhiring endorsed from the very top and 2) infantile responses from engineers who take absolutely no responsibility for their circumstances or trying to make things better.

And yet, there’s absolutely no accountability for either of those groups. C-suite is rewarded by the market, fueled by culture that fetishes misguided views of developers.

Nowhere is this worse than HN, where engineers can do no wrong. Yet speaking of make work, completely pointless arguements and “Show HN”s building a CRUD API client app for the thousandth time predominate. These (lazy/pointless) projects are then evidence that these super talented minds deserve $200k+ jobs where, yet again, managers have to deal with their egos and it’s the manager’s fault when shockingly these “individual contributors” have no idea how to contribute value to a project or in many cases even act like an adult.

Re: Debate over 'fake work' and 'lazy management' in tech industry

#39

Post by bombolo »

Simulacra wrote: post #5

I thought this article might have been on bullshit jobs in the tech industry but it's not. Are their bullshit jobs in the tech industry?

Plenty of it.

Who do you think is writing all the comments about how copilot can easily make them redundant, for example.

Re: Debate over 'fake work' and 'lazy management' in tech industry

#40

Post by whatyesaid »

snide wrote: post #19

Maybe I'm missing a core piece from this article, but it leaves out quite a bit of agency from the employee. I never understand pieces like this that rail against employers, but also seem to cast the employees in such a helpless light. If you're stuck in a situation where you're not getting great feedback on what to work on, that seems like a great time to just build things and experiment on your own. Do it within th…

I guess the employee raising the concern may risk having their role made redundant by going to management. I guess the only option really is switching teams.

The other problem is that often they have too many people already. That's why layoffs had basically no impact.

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