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Mental health in software engineering

vadimkravcenko.com

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Re: Mental health in software engineering

#431

Post by crossroadsguy »

xerxesaa wrote: post #228
surfingdino wrote: post #27

I used to be in (moderate) awe of young college drop-out CEOs. Then I worked for a couple of them. Now I refuse to work for startups that have 20-somethings at the top, because they really do not know how to manage or lead. They are motivated by fear of failure and having accomplished nothing so far they treat others like garbage. Avoid.

In theory, yes. But in practice, is it true? Are Amazon and Oracle better places to work than Facebook and Stripe?

At least work life balance wise it has been said that Amazon is worst of these companies. Oracle arguably better than all of these.

Re: Mental health in software engineering

#432

Post by tstrimple »

shiroiushi wrote: post #428
tstrimple wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are these the engineers who exert no control over their environments and just sit back and bitterly complain while taking no steps to resolve the issues? Those engineers who complain about "stupid management decisions" yet have made no real effort to influence the people and processes which led to those decisions? Sure. You can be a developer and avoid talking to humans as much as possible. You're just not going to b…

Maybe you worked in some small companies or something where ICs can actually talk to customers, but when you're working in a 100,000 person company, that simply isn't something you do. If you go over your managers' head, they tend to get very angry, and that's just within the company, to say nothing about unsolicited contacts with customers from someone in a position that isn't customer-facing.

I'm currently working for a company which has over 350k employees. My previous company had over 100k. The company before that had over 220k employees. Literally every single one of them is starved of engineers who give enough fucks to speak up.

Re: Mental health in software engineering

#433

Post by hayst4ck »

tstrimple wrote: post #432
shiroiushi wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you worked in some small companies or something where ICs can actually talk to customers, but when you're working in a 100,000 person company, that simply isn't something you do. If you go over your managers' head, they tend to get very angry, and that's just within the company, to say nothing about unsolicited contacts with customers from someone in a position that isn't customer-facing.

I'm currently working for a company which has over 350k employees. My previous company had over 100k. The company before that had over 220k employees. Literally every single one of them is starved of engineers who give enough fucks to speak up.

No. This is not how reality works.

They are not starved of engineers who "give enough fucks to speak up", they are starved of management who are invested and take enough responsibility to solicit direct feedback from the "assembly line" engineers and then make short term concessions on behalf of long term interests in defiance of what shareholders prefer.

Here is a quote from (imho) one of the top 5 greatest engineers of the 20th century, if not the number 1 greatest engineering leader:

> A major flaw in our system of government, and even in industry, is the latitude allowed to do less than is necessary. Too often officials are willing to accept and adapt to situations they know to be wrong. The tendency is to downplay problems instead of actively trying to correct them. Recognizing this, many subordinates give up, contain their views within themselves, and wait for others to take action. When this happens, the manager is deprived of the experience and ideas of subordinates who generally are more knowledgeable than he in their particular areas.

It's also worth reflecting on Pournelle's Law of Bureaucracy: https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html

The only result of fighting the incentive structure put in place by management (far too often: punishment for pushed deadlines, reward for cutting corners) as an engineer is mental illness.

Re: Mental health in software engineering

#434

Post by UncleMeat »

jjav wrote: post #427
UncleMeat wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are woefully misinformed if you think that doctors have a significant say in their day to day work. My sister is in medicine. Her entire day, down to each 30 minute block, is prescheduled for her. Often, she is forced to see multiple patients at once to increase revenues. The services that she is allowed to provide are governed by a completely separate insurance company. Strict metrics are tracked about the outco…

> You are woefully misinformed if you think that doctors have a significant say in their day to day work. But then, I did not say that. I said doctors get more respect as they gain experience, which is true.

As do engineers.

Re: Mental health in software engineering

#435

Post by n4r9 »

ElevenLathe wrote: post #416
n4r9 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an oversimplification to say they "should have never been" a leader. In truth, they could have used specific training in prioritisation, delegation, and emotional intelligence. I find it's rare that this sort of training is provided. Instead, good performers are thrown into the deep end to see if they can hack it.

This might be true in a harm mitigation sense, but really "leadership" itself is a scam invented by the people who benefit from hierarchy. It is a way of mystifying the relationship between you and your boss (or commanding officer, or politicians, etc.), attributing an abstract quality to them that justifies their position over you, rather than the truth which is that the only thing different about them is their posi…

As I see it, there's management and there's (technical) leadership.

Management comprises:

  - Performance evaluation (inc. salary negotiation, promotions etc...)

  - General admin (sick days, annual leave)

  - Fostering teamwork, communication, and individual learning

  - General management workflow (prioritisation, goal-tracking, delegation etc...)

  - Hiring and firing
Technical leadership comprises:

  - Contributing vision and ideas

  - Technical guidance to management (e.g. giving technical feedback on interviews or individual performance)

  - Code ownership and responsibility (e.g. maintaining conceptual coherence)
With really good internal systems, you can obviate a lot of the management duties. But companies generally find it helpful to have someone who takes ownership of them for each team. You're right though, those people do not need to be framed as "special" or "higher up" than individual contributors, nor does it really make sense to give them more perks.

Re: Mental health in software engineering

#436

Post by ElevenLathe »

n4r9 wrote: post #435
ElevenLathe wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might be true in a harm mitigation sense, but really "leadership" itself is a scam invented by the people who benefit from hierarchy. It is a way of mystifying the relationship between you and your boss (or commanding officer, or politicians, etc.), attributing an abstract quality to them that justifies their position over you, rather than the truth which is that the only thing different about them is their posi…

As I see it, there's management and there's (technical) leadership. Management comprises: - Performance evaluation (inc. salary negotiation, promotions etc...) - General admin (sick days, annual leave) - Fostering teamwork, communication, and individual learning - General management workflow (prioritisation, goal-tracking, delegation etc...) - Hiring and firing Technical leadership comprises: - Contributing vision an…

I was actually trying to make a larger point about how the entire concept of leadership is a scam, even "technical leadership". People are clever, or charismatic, or whatever, but leadership describes nothing in particular. It's pure propaganda, and we should all feel bad when we use it as if it were a real concept (and I'm guilty of this myself). Here, you've defined "technical leadership" as basically just "being a software engineer". We are eating from the trashcan of ideology.

Re: Mental health in software engineering

#437

Post by n4r9 »

ElevenLathe wrote: post #436
n4r9 wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I see it, there's management and there's (technical) leadership. Management comprises: - Performance evaluation (inc. salary negotiation, promotions etc...) - General admin (sick days, annual leave) - Fostering teamwork, communication, and individual learning - General management workflow (prioritisation, goal-tracking, delegation etc...) - Hiring and firing Technical leadership comprises: - Contributing vision an…

I was actually trying to make a larger point about how the entire concept of leadership is a scam, even "technical leadership". People are clever, or charismatic, or whatever, but leadership describes nothing in particular. It's pure propaganda, and we should all feel bad when we use it as if it were a real concept (and I'm guilty of this myself). Here, you've defined "technical leadership" as basically just "being a…

> Here, you've defined "technical leadership" as basically just "being a software engineer"

I really don't think that's true. Software engineers can spend their whole career just checking off Jira cards, having no overarching ideas about the company's technical direction. And that's great. But leadership is specifically about leading others. That can mean establishing new processes, making global architectural decisions, mentoring juniors, and owning and driving an internal technical product roadmap. It also means having a general attitude of "how can I help the rest of the team succeed". If you learn something slightly obscure from a colleague, or a helpful language feature, document it on your internal knowledge base or make a post in Teams/Slack before moving on.

Re: Mental health in software engineering

#438

Post by ElevenLathe »

n4r9 wrote: post #437
ElevenLathe wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was actually trying to make a larger point about how the entire concept of leadership is a scam, even "technical leadership". People are clever, or charismatic, or whatever, but leadership describes nothing in particular. It's pure propaganda, and we should all feel bad when we use it as if it were a real concept (and I'm guilty of this myself). Here, you've defined "technical leadership" as basically just "being a…

> Here, you've defined "technical leadership" as basically just "being a software engineer" I really don't think that's true. Software engineers can spend their whole career just checking off Jira cards, having no overarching ideas about the company's technical direction. And that's great. But leadership is specifically about leading others . That can mean establishing new processes, making global architectural decis…

These are all concrete things! That's great, but to say that they constitute "leadership", as if these are the same things an Army Captain or CEO should do, does not clarify anything, but merely clouds things. If leadership means something different in every context where it arises, it doesn't mean anything at all. Anyway I don't think we're arguing, just speaking at different levels of generality. I admit this is a poor forum to make this semi-anarchist point.

Re: Mental health in software engineering

#439

Post by lukas099 »

ElevenLathe wrote: post #397
chrisweekly wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of the scene in Schindler's List where the SS officer asks the enslaved factory worker to show him how fast he can assemble a particular component. The terrified worker races to assemble it in record time, anxious to please and impress the nazi -- who responds to the effect of: "if you can make them that fast, why is your daily quota so low?"

This was also a standard technique on American plantations, then adapted to the industrial economy in the form of Taylorist time-and-motion studies. If you trace modern management practice, it is basically a straight line back to chattel slavery.

The plantation thing was so horrible. They would track your personal best output, and every day you didn’t beat it you would get whipped based on how much you fell short. Of course this made you work faster, but it was like a game of 21 because you knew if you went over you would now have a higher quota to meet from then on.

Re: Mental health in software engineering

#440

Post by n4r9 »

ElevenLathe wrote: post #438
n4r9 wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Here, you've defined "technical leadership" as basically just "being a software engineer" I really don't think that's true. Software engineers can spend their whole career just checking off Jira cards, having no overarching ideas about the company's technical direction. And that's great. But leadership is specifically about leading others . That can mean establishing new processes, making global architectural decis…

These are all concrete things! That's great, but to say that they constitute "leadership", as if these are the same things an Army Captain or CEO should do, does not clarify anything, but merely clouds things. If leadership means something different in every context where it arises, it doesn't mean anything at all. Anyway I don't think we're arguing, just speaking at different levels of generality. I admit this is a…

Ah okay. I concede that "leadership" more generally is a nebulous concept. And that it just wouldn't apply in an ideal world because people wouldn't have had their self-confidence and internal drive trodden into the ground through years of authoritarian "education". I do sympathise with a healthy dose of anarchism. All the best.
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