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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

#191

Post by settsu »

move-on-by wrote: post #46
Aeolun wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

With an actual fire (or hazardous environment) people’s lives are at risk and it makes a big difference. Hopefully those executives act accordingly or they’ll face jail time for putting their employees in harm’s way. That is not the same as being unable to produce. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/ex-coal-chief-gets-one-y...

It's funny because I read "executive reaction" as pertaining to an individual's physiological response, not as "the actions taken by the organization's leadership", which then gave "Executive Dysfunction" a whole new meaning for me...

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

#192

Post by mewpmewp2 »

esperent wrote: post #100
hnbear wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had an ex-marine boss leading QA and Prod support. Every time someone would go nuts about incidents being the end of the world, especially our biz users, he'd just ask if anyone was at risk of getting shot. If not, focus up and solve the problem, but no need to run causing extra fuss and stress.

I've used a similar analogy a few times - do we make medical software where someone will literally die if we don't fix this in the next few hours? No? Then chill the hell out and we'll get it fixed without giving ourselves stress related diseases. In a week or a month no one will remember this particular "emergency" but we'll all remember the general level of stress we felt on this team for years. I've said this out…

How would you handle something that is possible to put into monetary numbers, because technically certain amount of money could save a life.

E.g. this incident cost us $5 million - this type of money could be used to save many lives.

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

#193

Post by lazide »

screye wrote: post #79
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…

It's easy to validate the veracity of 'War mode'. If survival hinges on a critical deliverable, then the promised reward must be in line with the stakes. You can't have an employer offering a 20% bonus for keeping them alive. It's an insultingly low payoff or the crisis was a lie. There is definitely such a thing as wartime software engineering. But such moments offer a clear path to millions of dollars or generation…

Do you think the privates trying to get off the boats on D-Day had the promise of millions of dollars if they made it off the beach?

Sometimes, the ‘amazing’ reward is not going bankrupt, and that is enough.

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

#194

Post by mangamadaiyan »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #136
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Stack ranking may push you out long before a major layoff

Don't know why you're getting downvotes, this is indeed a fact. (Edit: you don't have to be a bad performer to get shunted out by stack ranking. In a rotten enough organization, it is possible for a manager to write a performance review that acknowledges every goal that you've met, and still gives you a bad rating for any old excuse)

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

#195

Post by ShufflerL »

__loam wrote: post #187
ShufflerL wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just sharing my own experience..I used to work for start-ups and now I am working for a seemingly boring, profitable company that is not venture funded. By boring I meant there is not alot of media news about them. They just bunker down and do the work. There's way less craziness - more focused, mature approach towards problems.

How do I find jobs like that?

These companies do the regular stuff such as advertising via the usual channels- job boards and LinkedIn. And sometimes with recruiters - not those fancy ones who recruit for start-ups.

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

#196

Post by lazyant »

koonsolo wrote: post #101
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, so let's make it concrete: which things to you not like about the Agile manifesto? 1. Value individuals and interactions over processes and tools 2. Value working software over comprehensive documentation 3. Value customer collaboration over contract negotiation 4. Value responding to change over following a plan And then there are the 12 principles: 1. Customer satisfact…

They are fluff values with little actionability and the scrum/agile rituals seem unrelated to these anyways.

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

#197

Post by lazyant »

pjc50 wrote: post #129
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.…

> 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. This is slightly OT, but I believe wartime in the UK and US forced a number of cultural changes towards egalitarianism and what would nowadays be called "diversity" because things had to actually work . Being upper class in the UK would not save you from Ge…

Not arguing with your point but see also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Bamber_Bridge

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

#198

Post by hnbear »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #192
esperent wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used a similar analogy a few times - do we make medical software where someone will literally die if we don't fix this in the next few hours? No? Then chill the hell out and we'll get it fixed without giving ourselves stress related diseases. In a week or a month no one will remember this particular "emergency" but we'll all remember the general level of stress we felt on this team for years. I've said this out…

How would you handle something that is possible to put into monetary numbers, because technically certain amount of money could save a life. E.g. this incident cost us $5 million - this type of money could be used to save many lives.

At most firms the money was never earmarked for saving lives and there's no expectation it ever would have.

By not earning the money (or losing it), you're not actually impacting anyone's life.

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

#199

Post by nothercastle »

lazide wrote: post #193
screye wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to validate the veracity of 'War mode'. If survival hinges on a critical deliverable, then the promised reward must be in line with the stakes. You can't have an employer offering a 20% bonus for keeping them alive. It's an insultingly low payoff or the crisis was a lie. There is definitely such a thing as wartime software engineering. But such moments offer a clear path to millions of dollars or generation…

Do you think the privates trying to get off the boats on D-Day had the promise of millions of dollars if they made it off the beach? Sometimes, the ‘amazing’ reward is not going bankrupt, and that is enough.

Well they got off the boat so that they could die a little further down the beach or if lucky down the road. Death slightly later is a big motivation.

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

#200

Post by lazide »

nothercastle wrote: post #199
lazide wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think the privates trying to get off the boats on D-Day had the promise of millions of dollars if they made it off the beach? Sometimes, the ‘amazing’ reward is not going bankrupt, and that is enough.

Well they got off the boat so that they could die a little further down the beach or if lucky down the road. Death slightly later is a big motivation.

yeah, and ‘Not going bankrupt right now’ is the economic equivalent.

It doesn’t have to be a nice juicy carrot to be sufficient motivation for things to happen.

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