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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

#81

Post by ghaff »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #67
Aeolun wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

IBM didn't have it's first round of major layoffs until the 1990s, Google and Microsoft didn't have their first major layoffs until 2008-2009, Facebook/Meta didn't have its first major layoffs until 2022, etc. Even then, only a fraction of their employees were affected. People can last quite a long time at such places with a little luck.

You can be in the wrong place at the wrong time anywhere--but, yeah, generally speaking given reasonable competence, you can ride a reasonable, if not spectacular, gravy train at most large organizations for a long time. Maybe that's not your thing--which is fine--but it's probably the case at a lot of large companies.

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

#82

Post by szszrk »

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.…

Your comment reminded me instantly of book by PKD, Time out of joint. I think it shows very well the mental pressure of people trying to use science to stop a defeat at wartime.

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/698034.Time_Out_of_Joint

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

#83

Post by lukan »

wrs wrote: post #50
willturman wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I’m traveling so can’t look on the shelf, but off the top of my head I’d recommend The Wizard War: British Scientific Intelligence 1939-1945 , R. V. Jones, 1978.

I found it on the Internetarchive and I just read a bit in it and it is delightful.

https://archive.org/details/wizardwarbritish00jonerich

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

#84

Post by wrs »

hi_hi wrote: post #77
wrs wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m traveling so can’t look on the shelf, but off the top of my head I’d recommend The Wizard War: British Scientific Intelligence 1939-1945 , R. V. Jones, 1978.

Amazing. I came here to specifically recommend another RV Jones book, the Most Secret War ( https://www.amazon.com/Most-Secret-War-R-V-Jones/dp/01410428... ). I wasn't aware of his other book, so very much looking forward to reading this. I first read this book when I was starting out as a Dev some 20 years ago. It made a huge impression and is still relevant. Some things I remember off the top of my head. - It was t…

It’s the same book, just a different title for the US version. (We don’t have a “Most Secret” over here.)

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

#85

Post by ang_cire »

bongodongobob wrote: post #61
imetatroll wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Literally anywhere that isn't a startup.

nah, I work at a Fortune 100 company right now that is in "War Mode"

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

#86

Post by ang_cire »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #53
getnormality wrote: post #32

> 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.

There's a lot of virtue in that, and managers prefer that just as much as engineers do. But sometimes it's as the article says: "Your organization might not have the luxury of years of runway, and the environment you're operating in is rapidly changing". If you've got a big customer making 20% of your revenue who's threatening to jump ship (not an uncommon scenario for small to medium sized companies), you simply hav…

Either your product is at its core useful, or its not. If the environment is rapidly changing, either your product is still relevant, and you should be focusing on stability, or it's no longer useful and it's too late to change that.

> If you've got a big customer making 20% of your revenue who's threatening to jump ship (not an uncommon scenario for small to medium sized companies), you simply have to deliver whatever they want as fast as you can and worry about your vision later.

But that's one new requirement (or set of), not a changing environment. If that customer is changing their requirements as they go, so that you're constantly shifting focus, you need to either pin them down to one goal, or cut them loose and deal with the fallout. They don't see or care about the "war mode" they've created, and placating them will just invite more demands, and you can't keep it up forever.

The one time I've seen a "war mode" succeed was making a change that was a precondition for acquisition, when a set of requirements was laid out in the acquisition offer. It couldn't be altered once it was accepted, so the "war mode" had a fixed goal and deadline. Apart from something like that, it's just going to result in a spiral.

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

#87

Post by bazoom42 »

ern wrote: post #78
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…

I really don't understand the hate for Agile. Adaptation, empiricism, iteration self-managed teams etc...what's not to like? I'm currently involved with two programs run by project managers who probably haven't written code for 30 years (if ever), and it's a nightmare.

Agile is great. The problem is “agile methodologies” like Scrum which create lots of overhead and ceremony. I have seen Scrum work well but it is the exception.

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

#88

Post by Wurdan »

hitekker wrote: post #72

Speaking as an engineering manager, this is wish-fulfillment. According to his own LinkedIn, the author has never been a first-level engineering manager. His blog is accordingly heavy on cliches and mostly free of actual work experience. Taken at face value, the article is a recipe for burning out first-level managers, while the building is burning down. It neglects to focus on stopping the fire, because the author w…

I'm also an engineering manager, currently working in a department that feels on fire, and I think there is good wisdom in the article. The part about not fostering a "us vs them" mentality was good food for thought, as I do find it tempting to build short term camaraderie. When faced with big picture issues that can't be changed (believe me, they can't) it's easy to reach for a "We all know that these exec decisions don't make sense, but we can still do right for each other among this BS" type of conversation. But it's worth thinking about what that will do for the long term motivation of that team member at the company.

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

#89

Post by boogieknite »

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.…

"It's like (violent_thing) on (hard_drug)!"

sadly i think im numb to ppl speaking this way. genuinely: thanks for the reminder this language is inappropriate

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

#90

Post by oulu2006 »

drekipus wrote: post #14

That actually reminds me of a great story, for when I had to do exactly what the title is suggesting.. back when I worked at Amazon as a software engineer, the CRAZIEST thing happened to me. Here’s the story… I was working from home with my girlfriend (at the time), when suddenly I get an urgent ping from my coworker: “Our service is experiencing a SEV 2! We need all hands on deck!” Uh oh, our team’s application has…

not really a classic anecdote
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