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

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

#191

Post by darkerside » Mon, Jul 10, 2023, 9:18 PM UTC

potatolicious wrote: post #87

throwaway1492 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> "I tend to agree but there's a real danger in leaving engineers to their own devices." Agree with this concern but that's a false dichotomy no? "Upper management is bad" isn't necessarily proposing that engineers be left to their own devices, it's to cycle out upper management with more competent replacements. I tend to agree with your overall point: companies where the culture encourages individual front-line team…

> it's to cycle out upper management with more competent replacements

This is a wildly optimistic statement

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

#192

Post by Buttons840 » Mon, Jul 10, 2023, 10:03 PM UTC

antipaul wrote: post #89

abeppu wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's also an issue that execs can create the appearance of being busy (and may indeed spend a ridiculous number of hours in meetings) but it can be hard to see if they're contributing anything valuable. I was at a startup which over a period of years repeatedly had new execs come in, claim that something was wrong with our planning or goal-setting process, "restart" the whole thing in a way which was virtu…

"It can be hard to see if they're contributing anything valuable" Indeed. It's easier to evaluate "the appearance of change" than actual value or improvement. When I consider this problem, my current belief is that only long-term discipline from senior leadership can change this system.

I was thinking about all this recently and came up with the question:

In the event that someone fails, is it possible for it to be you?

There are people who cannot fail at their jobs. I want one of those jobs. An upper manager who attends meetings and "makes decisions" and is personal friends with the CEO often cannot fail. If the product stops selling, it will be considered a failure of those below the upper manager and the team will be laid off, the upper manager cannot fail.

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

#193

Post by kimburgess » Mon, Jul 10, 2023, 10:05 PM UTC

kimburgess wrote: post #129

abeppu wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's also an issue that execs can create the appearance of being busy (and may indeed spend a ridiculous number of hours in meetings) but it can be hard to see if they're contributing anything valuable. I was at a startup which over a period of years repeatedly had new execs come in, claim that something was wrong with our planning or goal-setting process, "restart" the whole thing in a way which was virtu…

That failure mode is not isolated to tech, and predates modern org structures too. See Chesterton’s Fence ( https://simple.industries/notes/chesterton's-fence.html) .

Unborked link: https://simple.industries/notes/chesterton's-fence.html

Looks like the single quote doesn't play nicely with the auto-linker.

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

#194

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

alwaysbeconsing wrote: post #179

rogerkirkness wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how you do high quality skip levels: 1. What is going well? 2. What is not going well? 3. What can be done to improve? Pretty much know what's going on. Anyone who BSes the second question needs to be layered or leave.

Isn't the necessity of skip meetings itself a pathological sign? The only thing you legitimately need to talk to your manager's manager about is things your manager can't handle -- i.e. mostly problems with and/or praise for your manager. Everything else should go through your manager, or what are they there for?

When communicating through a middleman you always lose information or it gets distorted. There is definitely value in talking to upper levels directly.

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

#195

Post by icedchai » Mon, Jul 10, 2023, 11:11 PM UTC

Buttons840 wrote: post #192

antipaul wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It can be hard to see if they're contributing anything valuable" Indeed. It's easier to evaluate "the appearance of change" than actual value or improvement. When I consider this problem, my current belief is that only long-term discipline from senior leadership can change this system.

I was thinking about all this recently and came up with the question: In the event that someone fails, is it possible for it to be you? There are people who cannot fail at their jobs. I want one of those jobs. An upper manager who attends meetings and "makes decisions" and is personal friends with the CEO often cannot fail. If the product stops selling, it will be considered a failure of those below the upper manager…

A friend recently took a job in a company with more managers than employees. Example: one department has a VP managing a director managing 2 reports. One of the reports has more experience than the VP and director (combined.) The VP has no other reports. It's truly absurd.

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

#196

Post by willio58 » Mon, Jul 10, 2023, 11:16 PM UTC

As someone who just started web dev management in my mid-20s, it's hard. It's hard to do _right_. It requires being able to support, build rapport, guiding but not nitpicking or micro-managing, etc. And it requires being able to work with people of different experience levels. I never want to go full manager, I love coding. But I do derive some pleasure from being a supportive manager. I think it's specifically because I've had some lackluster managers in my past.

A good manager will provide challenges to you. They will support you enough to allow you to grow while having the time and energy to do so. So many managers out there just dread their work and come to work for the paycheck. A paycheck is great, but loving your job is almost as important when it comes to being a good manager.

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

#197

Post by icedchai » Mon, Jul 10, 2023, 11:21 PM UTC

shusson wrote: post #114

throwaway1492 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> software engineers are the worst at planning their own work. The vast majority will just go off and do wtf ever they want There are successful companies that have senior engineers managing/leading teams and still coding. This idea that software engineers need managers and that somehow being a software engineer means only coding (IC) is a pattern that early American tech companies went with. Originally I imagine it…

In the mid-2000's, I worked at a company where the engineering managers were actual engineers that coded. They often did double duty as PMs. You don't see that often today.

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

#198

Post by solarmist » Mon, Jul 10, 2023, 11:26 PM UTC

JohnFen wrote: post #186

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking truth to power is rarely easy. Some leaders can take genuine feedback others cannot. Until you have a good pulse on the situation, is it really surprising most people default to inauthentic critiques?

This is why I'm very skeptical on the use of 1-on-1 meetings with management as a means to keep a finger on what's going well or badly in an organization. If someone is OK with telling management things they don't want to hear, they'll tell management those things regardless of 1-on-1s.

They can’t be done in an in-demand or ad-hoc manner. They need to be consistent over time.

If they aren't consistent then it devolves into what you're saying.

But if you have a relationship with management then you can build a sense of trust based on the contents of that relationship.

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

#199

Post by juve1996 » Mon, Jul 10, 2023, 11:33 PM UTC

rs999gti wrote: post #95

juve1996 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

It makes sense to me with 3/5 senior managers. They came from working IT backgrounds as developers, network admins, or SAP developers/senior admins. 2/5 of these senior managers have zero IT experience either in role or outside of this company. Yet they make very technical decisions, which either need to be corrected or clarified. Complaints to the director about this have fallen on deaf ears.

Seems to be accurate. The fact is there is a need for 5/5 competent managers but it's unlikely to find 5/5 competent managers. Just as there are 10x devs and 1x devs.

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

#200

Post by urda » Mon, Jul 10, 2023, 11:49 PM UTC

It's across all areas of the industry. I had a coworker from a startup I worked in SF, let's call them "Eric W". I kept in touch with Eric W after leaving SF, and through a chunk of the pandemic. However, the pandemic turned them both selfish and paranoid (they really got hung up on my ethnicity and religion supposedly controlling all of finance and only bitcoin could save us). They would parade on Discord and Steam how "little work I did today" and "how many games I played during meetings" as he drained whatever startup he went to and from. Some folks are just proud slackers.

I'm glad I cut them out of my life.