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

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

#231

Post by lupire » Tue, Jul 11, 2023, 1:36 PM UTC

globalreset wrote: post #213

greatpostman wrote: post #9

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

Manager are for managing low skilled workers that need supervision and help. The idea that you hire "the best SWEs" and then you have to slap a manager to oversee them like they are burger flippers is ridiculous on its face. SWEs might benefit from some help from experienced technical leadership - someone to consult, get feedback from etc. and from bureaucratic assistance (help get paperwork out of the way), but typi…

Managers manage the team direction and prioritization and alignment with other teams, not supervise the people working.

10 people working individually well but at cross purposes or unimportant but technically challenging work are a bad team.

Even the best elite burger flipper needs to switch to making fries if that's what the customer needs.

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

#232

Post by lupire » Tue, Jul 11, 2023, 1:37 PM UTC

galleywest200 wrote: post #14

greatpostman wrote: post #9

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

I appreciate a good manager, but not really middle managers. I moved to DevOps and I report directly to a VP and it is a game-changer compared to when I reported to a middle-manager in Support. However, the Principal (senior) Engineer I work with can be a bit of an angry ass sometimes and I am unsure he would make a good manager.

A good middle manager is a good manager of your managers. Unblocking them and coordinating with other teams. You wouldn't even know them, unless your manager was a bad apple and you needed middle manager's help.

A bad middle manager is out there thought leading and babbling distracting garbage to everyone.

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

#233

Post by ChuckNorris89 » Tue, Jul 11, 2023, 1:40 PM UTC

lupire wrote: post #219

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't only referring to just people who are tied down to one place and one lifestyle. There's plenty of tech people who are in a stage of their lives when they are easily mobile and still live a frugal lifestyle, yet almost everyone chooses the same wealthy and least ethical companies, while complaining their jobs are boring and unethical. Not judging people who take well paying jobs at unethical companies, but th…

Your post is absolutely disgusting for no benefit. It makes your question not worrg answering. Be better.

Show on the doll where my comment touched you.

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

#234

Post by lupire » Tue, Jul 11, 2023, 1:40 PM UTC

arbitrage wrote: post #141

ProfMeowsworth wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

One doesn't get paid $300k/year to fuck around and choose what you work on yourself. Very often you will get punished for making management decisions above your pay grade at this level.

Especially if your decisions are better and more popular than your manager's.

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

#235

Post by lupire » Tue, Jul 11, 2023, 1:42 PM UTC

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #45

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…

> 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. Such projects could certainly lead to all sorts of career successes... if someone high above you recognizes the value of the project as measured my immediate marketability and profit. But in the other 99.99% of cases, it just looks bad. "The rest of…

Thomas Edison was one of the worlds greatest wheedlers of all time, the Steve Jobs of his era, stealing credit from every engineer he could find and browbeat.

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

#236

Post by mike_hearn » Tue, Jul 11, 2023, 2:16 PM UTC

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #90

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…

That doesn't always (or usually) work in some of these BigCorps. It's not that they don't give you freedom to go ... do stuff -- they often do -- but there are also are often very concrete boundaries about who is allowed to actually have the stuff they do go into any kind of production codebase. And very rigorous review processes, etc. and often the first question in a code review on something exotic and new at a pla…

It was many years ago but when I was at Google I started a new project in my 20% time and then took it all the way to production, it's still there and handles millions of requests per second because it's integrated into many of their biggest products (it wasn't a standalone thing). Yes, I had to write design docs, do PRDs, do privacy reviews, get launch approvals and many other things. Sometimes I had to integrate the project with other people's codebases myself. But, so what? These things had a purpose. The design doc for this project was dozens of pages printed out, it was my pride and joy.

I recall reading at the time comments on HN saying things like, 20% projects don't really exist, or that it's impossible to launch things at Google because of all the approvals you need. And then I went back to launching a 20% project into production.

If you do really care about making a project fly then filling out forms, getting people on board and getting approvals won't stop you.

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

#237

Post by disgruntledphd2 » Tue, Jul 11, 2023, 2:56 PM UTC

lupire wrote: post #228

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean yeah, theoretically. It's nonsense though. Just count the number of individual contributors vs managers at a director level and it quickly becomes apparent that one of the parallel tracks is much, much larger than the other.

Not entirely fair, because most of those low/mid managers are active developers too. What's stranger is that managers write more code than high level (not line level) "org tech leads" who sit in meetings all day.

> Not entirely fair, because most of those low/mid managers are active developers too.

I dunno, certainly at IC5 (so I think IC4 now) level at FB, my manager was totally judged on the output of her team, and strongly discouraged from working on her own projects.

Meanwhile, at the same level as an IC, I was working on my own projects but mostly helping others accomplish theirs.

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

#238

Post by kevinventullo » Tue, Jul 11, 2023, 4:09 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.

As a manager in big tech, it’s fantastic when folks come up with their own ideas. But the hard part is not just coming up with the idea: you have to evangelize it horizontally and vertically, and be open to the possibility that there are valid reasons not to do your idea. Helping folks sell their idea or convincing them it might be a hard sell is part of my job.

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

#239

Post by bluefirebrand » Tue, Jul 11, 2023, 4:25 PM UTC

ntr-- wrote: post #204

Spivak wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seconded and thirded. Nothing is more soul draining then doing nothing for 8 hours a day, the idea that devs are lazy and don't want to code is like the antithesis of our whole profession. Most of us do it in our free time. When you actually have a real actionable thing to work on that gives the line workers meaningful "wins" the management pyramid flips and they all become "servant managers" trying to direct the exc…

> Most of us do it in our free time. I used to believe this but after my most recent position I no longer do. A lot of the developers there didn't code outside of work hours, or if they did it was just using the same technologies as the day to day. When asked what tools we could use to filter for higher quality candidates in open roles I responded: > Ask them to show you a personal project they're proud of, that will…

> There are simply a lot of uninspired developers who are just in it for the money now.

Personally I am happy that the industry is maturing to the point where people can just enter it as a career and not a ~~passion~~

This mentality that software devs should have loaded up github repos with side projects and live & breath code all the time is super toxic for the industry.

By the way there are plenty of talented coders who only code at work.

And there are likely plenty of hacks who code all the time, but never learned how to code well, or work with a team or understand how to scale a project or any host of other skills that are necessary for building commercial products.

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

#240

Post by cratermoon » Tue, Jul 11, 2023, 6:29 PM UTC

yunohn wrote: post #209

cratermoon wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These days the title "senior engineer" is handed out like candy. Anyone with three years experience is now "Senior" in title. In the US, doctors fresh out of med school have a minimum of three years ahead before they can even begin to practice independently. For programming, and pretty much any other profession, senior doesn't really begin until nearing 10 years of work experience. At that point, that itch to turn bo…

“No True Senior SWE” paradox? 10yrs is a very long time in Computer Science. All the engineers I’ve worked with from earlier eras are very influenced by what they started their career with. Heck I’m the same way as I approach my decade threshold.

Title inflation. I speculate based on no evidence other than my own observations that it's because companies aren't willing to pay entry or junior engineers well enough, so lots of them get hired at lowball rates with an implicit understanding that they'll get promoted to senior after 3 years and get the a corresponding pay raise. Either that, or they don't get promoted or a raise, change jobs, and get the senior title by default.