201–208 of 208 posts
I misread that last word as peasant. I felt simultaneously insulted and ready to write some tests.
I've watched a colleague go from a good engineer, to a great engineering manager, to an awful project manager. I see him hating what his career has become and I feel terrible for him.
I've also seen horrible engineers whose code made entire teams miserable become amazing managers tho
IMO, whether one of these individuals can be used is the distinction of whether a role is line supervisor or management. Line supervisors need the subject knowledge to teach fresh hires and know how to identify and fix problems caused by slackers. Management would rely on the senior employees for mentorship and keep their ear to the rumor mill to identify suspect underperformers.
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Your personal experience notwithstanding, I don't think that it can be generalized that there is always an under-performer on every team. If I may offer my anecdata, I've seen several teams that could be characterized by stability and depth of expertise in their respective areas. You could say they always performed on a very high level, but never over-perform, because the high level is what is expected. Stack ranking…
It depends how big a “team” you consider. At the 5-10 level maybe not. At the 30-50 level most likely yes. At the 100+ level there are certainly a few. In the well run orgs at Amazon the bell curve is applied at the larger scales where it makes sense.
But sure, the larger the structures the more likely regression toward the mean will kick in.
I started as an engineering manager (CTO of a small startup) a few years ago; my life has changed a lot, and for every aspect you love and hate, I share the same feelings. My additional advice here is to meditate. For real. Sit quietly long enough for your brain to switch off before making essential and impactful decisions that could harm your people. In the beginning, you become a kind of parent-to-child genius. You…
Ha! I just recently became a parent, and the skills are highly transferable between EM to parent.
Some days I feel like I am employing skills learned on the job to managing my family.
> Your words have weight. If you, an IC, say "guys, we really should write tests", everybody goes "oh, crazy old Vladimir, all grumpy again, haha, where do you see tests fit here?". If you, an EM, casually say "guys, we really should write tests", you might be surprised to find the tests unexpectedly growing in different places. Pleasant. Many years ago, I was standing in my then-boss’s office while he got off the ph…
As the senior IC on my team it’s my manager that asks me to bring things up with the team since they actually listen to me. Managers just get ignored unless they actually threaten you with consequences and you have to use that sparingly.
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Are there any books etc that you could recommend on Linux internals. I am mostly write c# code, and I didn't do computer science, I mostly self taught. I recently set myself the task of learning some c as I was finding that I was hitting a brick wall when it came to trying to learn more lower level concepts. I want to work my way through computer systems a programmers perspective : https://www.amazon.co.uk/Computer-S…
I recommend consuming everything Brendan Gregg produces. His work is mostly around kernel performance profiling and tracing, but you can learn a lot from just doing that. Also, the vast majority of time when you need to dive into kernel internals it is for performance reasons. https://www.brendangregg.com/linuxperf.html If you prefer physical books “Systems Performance” by Brendan is good as well. As the sister comme…
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Are there any books etc that you could recommend on Linux internals. I am mostly write c# code, and I didn't do computer science, I mostly self taught. I recently set myself the task of learning some c as I was finding that I was hitting a brick wall when it came to trying to learn more lower level concepts. I want to work my way through computer systems a programmers perspective : https://www.amazon.co.uk/Computer-S…
If you're the kind of guy who likes to work through one 1000+ page behemoth at a time, I can recommend The Linux Programming Interface specifically. As a nice secondary bonus, the code examples are all in good old fashioned C, so you can compile and run them to test things out as you please. :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're the kind of guy who likes to work through one 1000+ page behemoth at a time, I can recommend The Linux Programming Interface specifically. As a nice secondary bonus, the code examples are all in good old fashioned C, so you can compile and run them to test things out as you please. :)
Seconded and the book is https://man7.org/tlpi/ . One can even reads parts of it digging deep into the area one is trying to understand better.