Debate over 'fake work' and 'lazy management' in tech industry • Hacker News Board

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

#71

Post by disqard » Mon, Jul 10, 2023, 2:31 PM UTC

endtime wrote: post #57

eysquared wrote: post #32

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 worki…

Part of why I left Google was poor leadership at the VP level. The org wasn't set up for success and - as far as I could tell - the vision was myopic and incoherent. VP performance was more or less opaque to me for most of my career there, but eventually I got senior and experienced enough to have a real opinion. Really liked my direct manager, but we were in it together, and there was nothing he could have done abou…

If you're willing to share, how long ago did you quit?

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

#72

Post by juve1996 » Mon, Jul 10, 2023, 2:33 PM UTC

rs999gti wrote: post #17

greatpostman wrote: post #9

The older I get the more appalled I am at what managers are bringing to the table versus senior engineers.

> what managers are bringing to the table What I noticed in my org, are the senior managers are the ones who get to talk to the business people and get to muddle the waters and do a lot of repetitive work. Sometimes things do not get done until a project manager or senior dev actually talks to the business person and gets the correct requirements out. I don't know why it is this way at my org, but the IT director doe…

> I don't know why it is this way at my org, but the IT director does not want to talk to PMs, Devs, or Analysts. He would rather have a top level circle of senior managers who insulate him from the actual work.

To me this makes...sense. A general doesn't meet each individual field soldier, it's not feasible and doesn't scale.

Not sure what kind of firms people on here work for, but most of my managers all the way up have 0 life at all. They're constantly working dealing with millions of little details where they have to make an instant decision. It honestly looks like hell.

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

#73

Post by DeathArrow » Mon, Jul 10, 2023, 2:33 PM UTC

penjelly wrote: post #64

eysquared wrote: post #32

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 worki…

same in my experience as well so youre not alone. i dont see a solution though, its not like upper management is going to fire themselves.

Why there needs to be a solution? As long as shareholders and the board are happy...

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

#74

Post by ProfMeowsworth » Mon, Jul 10, 2023, 2:35 PM UTC

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’d expect from someone making 300kUSD a year to come up with their own ideas instead of spinning their wheels. Reading the article and some of the comments here, that seems to be an unpopular opinion, at least in tech.

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

#75

Post by GreedClarifies » Mon, Jul 10, 2023, 2:36 PM UTC

eysquared wrote: post #32

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 worki…

“ The blame there lies solely in upper level leadership ”

Not what I saw. Leadership was shockingly hard working. I have never seen a person who works harder than Calder at GOOG. Urs never stopped as well. Lower level VPs were always “on” as well. But VPs can’t do everything, they can’t peer into everyday lives of the lower levels, the orgs are too big. I think you want something superhuman from them.

The problem in tech, such that it is, is that the perf process is somewhat broken. But that’s a discussion for another day, and is likely intractable.

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

#76

Post by atomicnumber3 » Mon, Jul 10, 2023, 2:36 PM UTC

throwaway1492 wrote: post #70

eysquared wrote: post #32

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 worki…

> 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. I tend to agree but there's a real danger in leaving engineers to their own devices. I know this will be downvoted, but software engineers are the worst at planning their own work. The vast majority will just go off and do wtf ever they want. There really has to be guard rails…

>The vast majority

I really don't think this is the case. I think there are a lot of less-experienced developers who will be very sidetracked, yes. But anyone even close to senior should have developed an intuition of when it is time to build carefully and when it is time to "just ship". (this isn't just "go slow at first and then haul ass to hit deadline", you can switch between these two mindsets several times even within a single PR.).

And at a higher level - I expect senior and staff-type engineers to have at least a decent amount of product sense. Their job may not be to do product management, but they should be able to reasonably-accurately judge what product work will be more business impact vs less.

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

#77

Post by pc86 » Mon, Jul 10, 2023, 2:38 PM UTC

screye wrote: post #51

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 Given the number of new grads out of college working 60+ hr weeks, I am not sure there is much leeway left for managers to 'work more'. With a manager's job, time invested and outcome is even less correlated than a code-monkey (no offense, I am one too) who at least has a slightly-less-than-linear relationship with work/time. Find yourself a good manager.…

Not sure I'd consider someone not pulling their weight on a team a "different lifestyle." I've worked for taskmasters before and it's not fun but if everyone on the team is working a full 40 hour week, and one person is working 25 or 30, it will become apparent over time and should be handled quickly.

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

#78

Post by ericmcer » Mon, Jul 10, 2023, 2:41 PM UTC

ProfMeowsworth wrote: post #74

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’d expect from someone making 300kUSD a year to come up with their own ideas instead of spinning their wheels. Reading the article and some of the comments here, that seems to be an unpopular opinion, at least in tech.

It can be pretty stifling on giant teams to make any actual change.

Sure it sounds romantic to sit down with a cup of coffee and write some amazing code that makes things better. The reality is writing documents, hunting down code owners and stakeholders, organizing meetings and running into tons of adversity just so you can attempt something very risky as it is impossible to have full context on everything.

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

#79

Post by noirbot » Mon, Jul 10, 2023, 2:43 PM UTC

blitz_skull wrote: post #50

noirbot wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difficulty becomes that, in a bad organization, a good manager can easily get stuck unable to both be a good leader to their team and be a good manager as seen by the organization. I've had multiple managers fired/reassigned because they were leading the team well in a fractured organization, but because they weren't prioritizing the things that upper management wanted over the objections of their teams. If what…

No doubt. This is the dichotomy of leadership. The alternative is don't become a manager in a bad organization. But barring that solution, your only alternative is to grind on both sides of the wall until you've either got breakthrough... or you get fired. It's not a good answer, but it lines up with the reality I've experienced.

Oh for sure, but I think the GP's "you can't really be a good manager in a bad org" is generally true on the long term. Either the org crushes you into being a bad manager, or you're pushed out. The odds are that a single, or even a few, good managers aren't enough to turn the ship of a bad org for the better.

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

#80

Post by lukeschlather » Mon, Jul 10, 2023, 2:45 PM UTC

GreedClarifies wrote: post #75

eysquared wrote: post #32

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 worki…

“ The blame there lies solely in upper level leadership ” Not what I saw. Leadership was shockingly hard working. I have never seen a person who works harder than Calder at GOOG. Urs never stopped as well. Lower level VPs were always “on” as well. But VPs can’t do everything, they can’t peer into everyday lives of the lower levels, the orgs are too big. I think you want something superhuman from them. The problem in…

An example is the recent sale of Google Domains to Squarespace. Seems like it was a profitable product, why get rid of it? I'm sure they worked very hard on selling Google Domains, doesn't seem like it actually benefited Google as a company in the long term. Working hard isn't helpful if you don't have a solid vision for what you're working toward.

In fact working slower with a more coherent vision is often better, since you actually get closer to a goal rather than just bouncing around between undefined local maxima as fast as you can.