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Ways to annoy your senior engineer

thecaringtechie.com

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Re: Ways to annoy your senior engineer

#11

Post by tossandthrow »

While all these points are valid - and I for one have a couple of people to forward the article to - I think there is more to this.

Alignment and understanding the product: As engineers it is easy to dismiss their task as conveying how the product works and defer to "it is implemented!".

I have stup a goal to post in the non-engineering Slack channels at least a couple of times with a video of how new features work, or give a short introduction on "that new testing framework" in human language.

Doing so is first and foremost a proactive move. Secondly it takes away the excuse of not knowing what eng is up to.

Re: Ways to annoy your senior engineer

#12

Post by throw_it_now »

My pet peeve:

"Could we have a meeting with your coworkers so you convince them this is the best course of action?"

I'm not a salesman or an evangelist. I'm a tech person and actually the local expert in the subject, a fact that you constantly advertise to the board. If you trust me, make a decision, it's your job.

Instead of that, you book the meeting, make me explain what we should do (that you vehemently agreed on before) and, when the others frown (the juniors because it's work, the seniors because it's change) you reverse the decision and quickly rebuke me and tell me we'll do it gradually (=never).

Re: Ways to annoy your senior engineer

#13

Post by thenoblesunfish »

A really good senior engineer knows how to deliver a "quick hack" that is as well-documented and extensible as possible to avoid the most contagious tech debt. There is a big difference between "hack in production" and "suboptimal, incremental solution in production".

It's very easy to see the PMs etc. as the enemy, but they would have their own list of unfair gripes about engineers (e.g. as evidenced by this article, they seem to just want to be solitary geniuses left alone to work on things they aren't communicating about).

Re: Ways to annoy your senior engineer

#14

Post by AstroJetson »

I fixed giving “napkin” or “rough estimate” times out. I roll a D6 for number of people, D12 for number of months, D20 for the day we will go to production ( not allowed to do installation during end of month). D% is used to say how accurate the estimate is. With the requester there, I pull them out, roll them, give the estimate.

I did have a VP in a meeting go “I don’t like that estimate.” I pushed the dice over and said “Ok, you roll”. Their hand got about 1/2 way before their brain caught on to what was happening and they pulled their hand back.

We normally agree on them writing a 2-3 page scope and I do an estimate based off the scope. Slow learners ask, How long to get the estimate, I look them dead in the eye and reach for the dice again saying “I’d like to see the scope beforehand but ....”

Re: Ways to annoy your senior engineer

#15

Post by karparov »

You need to read this for a while to understand that with "engineer" they mean "programmer". Nowhere does it say "software engineer". Indicating that somebody is trying to give general advice but is actually too deep into their bubble to realize the big picture.

> Engineers juggle a million things at once.

Eh what? If that's how your "engineer" calendar looks like then your org has more serious problems than a spontaneous "30 min sync" popping up in your calendar.

What is a "senior engineer" anyway? Everybody beyond intern stage is called "senior" these days.

Re: Ways to annoy your senior engineer

#16

Post by dcminter »

kstrauser wrote: post #7

First reaction: Has this person been my coworker? I feel like someone’s been taking notes on places I’ve worked. Second: But OK, those ones about shifting priorities? That’s startup life. Sometimes you throw something out the door because a customer wants to pay you $12M if you can salve over that one pain point. You know darn well that hack’s going to be there until The Rewrite (which, if you’re lucky, will never co…

> OK, those ones about shifting priorities? That’s startup life.

I've seen it at pretty much all scales. I think it's usually worse in bigger corps actually. Great point though - it behoves us to remember where the money for our technical airs and graces comes from.

Re: Ways to annoy your senior engineer

#18

Post by mytailorisrich »

AstroJetson wrote: post #14

I fixed giving “napkin” or “rough estimate” times out. I roll a D6 for number of people, D12 for number of months, D20 for the day we will go to production ( not allowed to do installation during end of month). D% is used to say how accurate the estimate is. With the requester there, I pull them out, roll them, give the estimate. I did have a VP in a meeting go “I don’t like that estimate.” I pushed the dice over and…

When I'm told "I don't like that estimate" I take it as an invitation to negotiate (same as when you don't like a quote from a tradesman) and so counter with "OK, we may be able to shave x off of it if you give us y and z in addition to what we have now or if we cut w out of the scope".

Re: Ways to annoy your senior engineer

#19

Post by karparov »

sumanthvepa wrote: post #4

I'm the 'pointy-haired' boss and I usually don't take my engineering teams estimates at face value. I've learned to multiply the estimates to know when I can reasonably expect something to be completed. The multiplier is never less than 1.5. And I can see if they are making progress and where they might be hitting difficulties. (Most roadblocks have nothing to do with the tech. It's usually either some organisational…

And since everybody knows that this is how management deals with estimates, there is no incentive to improve upon their own.

Re: Ways to annoy your senior engineer

#20

Post by rswail »

I really really hate the use of the term "engineer" for "coder" or "programmer".

All of the issues in this article are about coders that are cogs in the SAFe/Agile machines that now infest software development.

NONE of them are relevant to actual engineering, software or otherwise.

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