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How to Lead Your Team When the House Is on Fire

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Re: How to Lead Your Team When the House Is on Fire

#31

Post by willturman »

wrs wrote: post #8

I have a shelf full of histories of British science and engineering during WW2, so I feel like I have some remote idea of what being an engineer in an actual “wartime mode” is like. Think about, e.g., working in the lab trying to improve radar to be able to stop the daily bombing raids. It’s hard to imagine “wartime mode” as being an appropriate metaphor for any US company, other than as a sort of fantasy role play.…

Those books about British science/engineering during WW2 sound interesting. Any recommendations?

Re: How to Lead Your Team When the House Is on Fire

#32

Post by getnormality »

> For EMs, wartime means leading low-morale teams through ambiguity, hard constraints, frequently changing goals, and intense pressure to perform.

Why the assumption that goals are frequently changing? If you're making something that's actually valuable and not just looking good by surfing trends, I would think that the virtue would lie in having a clear vision and sticking to it.

Re: How to Lead Your Team When the House Is on Fire

#33

Post by AdrianB1 »

afro88 wrote: post #26
debacle wrote: post #12

> Decentralize decision-making authority as much as possible. Remove barriers in their way, slash approval layers, attack dependencies. This is awful advice. You can only operate in this mode for at best 2-3 months before your entire SDLC grinds to a halt because it's been the wild west in github. > Bias heavily toward action - it's better to decide and be wrong sometimes than to paralyze the team with analysis. This…

>> Decentralize decision-making authority as much as possible. Remove barriers in their way, slash approval layers, attack dependencies. > This is awful advice. You can only operate in this mode for at best 2-3 months before your entire SDLC grinds to a halt because it's been the wild west in github. If that happens, you decentralised more than was possible ("as much as possible" doesn't mean "completely"). You remov…

The idea is that you should already have the decision in the right way, if you push more towards decentralization then you are already in the danger zone. Yes, you should not do that.

Re: How to Lead Your Team When the House Is on Fire

#34

Post by imetatroll »

dakiol wrote: post #23

It all feels like theatre. Been working in many companies in “war mode” and they all think that in order to become profitable (none of them were) you need to push the most “important” features out of the door asap, otherwise your competitors will eat you alive. It’s a lie. Executives and VPs and all those folks that earn 5x what a normal engineer earns, don’t really care about the company they work for. All they care…

Where do you work that you get to avoid agile, scrum, and war mode? I'm jealous. Then again I've always just been stuck working for startups my entire career. I have a family and desperately need something more stable.

Re: How to Lead Your Team When the House Is on Fire

#35

Post by XorNot »

herval wrote: post #18
debacle wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook has a very thorough code review process, and their product is heavily data driven. They've even productized their code review process internally, and that product is also data driven.

The code review process is quite literally “you need a stamp from anyone because of some regulations we follow”. Definitely nothing thorough.

The seriousness of any code review process can be determined by whether it diffuses liability from the original code author for any bugs.

So far in my career this has never been the case.

Re: How to Lead Your Team When the House Is on Fire

#36

Post by neilv »

> Identify on-the-job learning opportunities, like giving someone the chance to lead an incident response or a high-visibility project. Critical mistakes can still be catastrophic, but because of the fast-changing nature of wartime work, it's easier to process smaller errors with a healthy learning mindset.

I don't understand how wartime makes this easier.

Pre-wartime, you could've also had short-turnaround tasks, and the realities of generous funding of nonviable businesses mean you'd have more luxury to rollback dropped balls.

Seems like wartime means that you have to be more responsive and successfully.

Re: How to Lead Your Team When the House Is on Fire

#37

Post by move-on-by »

wrs wrote: post #8

I have a shelf full of histories of British science and engineering during WW2, so I feel like I have some remote idea of what being an engineer in an actual “wartime mode” is like. Think about, e.g., working in the lab trying to improve radar to be able to stop the daily bombing raids. It’s hard to imagine “wartime mode” as being an appropriate metaphor for any US company, other than as a sort of fantasy role play.…

I have an (actual) engineering buddy who occasionally has small fires flare up in the factory he works at. Ever since talking with him about it, I’m very much off put when someone at my cushy software company talks about ‘a fire’. No, some system is down or throwing errors- there is no fire.

Re: How to Lead Your Team When the House Is on Fire

#38

Post by giantg2 »

wrs wrote: post #8

I have a shelf full of histories of British science and engineering during WW2, so I feel like I have some remote idea of what being an engineer in an actual “wartime mode” is like. Think about, e.g., working in the lab trying to improve radar to be able to stop the daily bombing raids. It’s hard to imagine “wartime mode” as being an appropriate metaphor for any US company, other than as a sort of fantasy role play.…

Most of what comes out of executives mouths is fantasy role play. It's always exaggerated to motivate.

Re: How to Lead Your Team When the House Is on Fire

#39

Post by Aeolun »

imetatroll wrote: post #34
dakiol wrote: post #23

It all feels like theatre. Been working in many companies in “war mode” and they all think that in order to become profitable (none of them were) you need to push the most “important” features out of the door asap, otherwise your competitors will eat you alive. It’s a lie. Executives and VPs and all those folks that earn 5x what a normal engineer earns, don’t really care about the company they work for. All they care…

Where do you work that you get to avoid agile, scrum, and war mode? I'm jealous. Then again I've always just been stuck working for startups my entire career. I have a family and desperately need something more stable.

Are BigCos any more stable in the US? At least in a startup they probably actually need you because you already know their system.

Overseas BigCo means permanent contracts and being very hard to let go, but that doesn’t seem to be the case in the US (e.g. Elon Musk Twitter).

Re: How to Lead Your Team When the House Is on Fire

#40

Post by Aeolun »

move-on-by wrote: post #37
wrs wrote: post #8

I have a shelf full of histories of British science and engineering during WW2, so I feel like I have some remote idea of what being an engineer in an actual “wartime mode” is like. Think about, e.g., working in the lab trying to improve radar to be able to stop the daily bombing raids. It’s hard to imagine “wartime mode” as being an appropriate metaphor for any US company, other than as a sort of fantasy role play.…

I have an (actual) engineering buddy who occasionally has small fires flare up in the factory he works at. Ever since talking with him about it, I’m very much off put when someone at my cushy software company talks about ‘a fire’. No, some system is down or throwing errors- there is no fire.

The executive reaction is the same as when a factory is on fire though. Whether we can’t produce due to system down or due to hazardous environment makes little difference.
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