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Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?

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Re: Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?

#111

Post by wrxd »

mercutio2 wrote: post #35

The idea that 1:1s with devs adding very little value to the team is… pretty wild. If you think 1:1s don’t add value, your slice of the reality of what even modestly sized teams need to operate smoothly is so far from my experience I don’t think we’re likely to bridge the divide. But to make a good faith effort: what is the job you think line managers are supposed to be doing, if not listening to devs, going to meeti…

With most of my managers 1:1 have always been a way for them to catch up with what I’ve been working on, despite doing a standup every single day so that the team knows what each other is doing.

Re: Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?

#112

Post by Havoc »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #15

> Like the majority of the team is doing useless stuff that management thinks is impressive This is arrogant thinking typical of developers. Most developers I have talked to (including myself 10 years ago) thinks that they or their friends who agree with them about all sorts of random code quirks are the only one that does work and "carries" the team, and everyone else's work is largely useless. The reality is that a…

> This is arrogant thinking typical of developers.

Also very typical of hn. Prevailing sense of anyone not physically coding adding no value

Re: Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?

#113

Post by thih9 »

solumos wrote: post #72
JohnMakin wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does this have to take place in a meeting? Why can't it be in a team slack? What value gain do you give talking an engineer through what's bothering them? Are they not capable of that independently of you? A middleman's value is quite limited, of course as a middleman, you don't see it that way, but I find these meetings extraordinarily unproductive, even anti-productive, depending on how bad the "manager" is.

Yeah, if blockers are coming out in 1-on-1 meetings, that’s a really bad sign

For the company, yes. But not for the manager - who now has insanely actionable stuff.

Re: Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?

#114

Post by red-iron-pine »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #15

> Like the majority of the team is doing useless stuff that management thinks is impressive This is arrogant thinking typical of developers. Most developers I have talked to (including myself 10 years ago) thinks that they or their friends who agree with them about all sorts of random code quirks are the only one that does work and "carries" the team, and everyone else's work is largely useless. The reality is that a…

> This is arrogant thinking typical of developers

typical for a lot of knowledge workers. "engineer's disease"

i am good at solving problems in X domain, and believe that carries over to all domains. it's just so simple, they're so dumb, etc.

these guys get to management and then crash out.

Re: Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?

#115

Post by KaiserPro »

JohnMakin wrote: post #71
DanHulton wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, honestly, as one of those managers with calendars full of 1:1s, I was kinda surprised at this. They’re frequently the most-useful meetings I have all week. The first ten minutes are usually kinda whatever, just catching up or chatting, but at around the halfway point, the REAL shit comes out. The things that were bothering them, or the task they were stuck on, or the team that’s been blocking them, or in better…

Why does this have to take place in a meeting? Why can't it be in a team slack? What value gain do you give talking an engineer through what's bothering them? Are they not capable of that independently of you? A middleman's value is quite limited, of course as a middleman, you don't see it that way, but I find these meetings extraordinarily unproductive, even anti-productive, depending on how bad the "manager" is.

> Why can't it be in a team slack?

Only a few people can adequately explain themselves through slack.

It doesn't help that a lot of managers are _bad_ managers, and don't/can't/don't know how to run a tight 1:1.

the point of the 1:1 is to provide a high bandwidth way of getting worries and steers from employees to management and direction back to employees. if there is nothing to talk about then cut the meeting short.

Re: Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?

#116

Post by KaiserPro »

eudamoniac wrote: post #59
mercutio2 wrote: post #35

The idea that 1:1s with devs adding very little value to the team is… pretty wild. If you think 1:1s don’t add value, your slice of the reality of what even modestly sized teams need to operate smoothly is so far from my experience I don’t think we’re likely to bridge the divide. But to make a good faith effort: what is the job you think line managers are supposed to be doing, if not listening to devs, going to meeti…

Funny how high performing startups delivering real value don't have these meetings and they sort of appear out of the ether after the 1000th employee is hired.

I would hope that people, having dealt with LLMs for a few years would understand that its all about context.

In a 25 person company, context is easy, assuming even half arsed communications. Its possible to hold the state of the entire company in your head.

That scales to about 50. after that it becomes hard. then you start having team meetings and the like.

Even at my old startup we had 1:1s when we were ~25 people. it was a great way to get additional context that was otherwise hidden

Re: Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?

#117

Post by KaiserPro »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #15

> Like the majority of the team is doing useless stuff that management thinks is impressive This is arrogant thinking typical of developers. Most developers I have talked to (including myself 10 years ago) thinks that they or their friends who agree with them about all sorts of random code quirks are the only one that does work and "carries" the team, and everyone else's work is largely useless. The reality is that a…

Working at FAANG, acutally the stuff I was doing was mostly bollocks. Nothing of real value, apart from a few projects was delivered.

Re: Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?

#118

Post by psygn89 »

Schlagbohrer wrote: post #46
Jeremy1026 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Elon pretended to notice it. Instead of taking his time and doing it right, he was performative in his own actions causing unnecessary problems. In doing so got rid of the important pieces as well as the bloat.

It is actually shocking that twitter is still standing after his severe headcount cuts. I have not yet read an analysis of that. How was the system able to keep going with almost no downtime after such severe layoffs?

Is it really that shocking to you? Twitter is a very narrow company compared to Microsoft, Meta, Google, and Apple. The system was already up and running, they probably kept the employees that built or knew the system deeply and fired the others. Apparently it had around 7,500 employees at its peak. To me that seems excessive for something like Twitter.

Re: Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?

#119

Post by Sharlin »

Aurornis wrote: post #79
DanHulton wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, honestly, as one of those managers with calendars full of 1:1s, I was kinda surprised at this. They’re frequently the most-useful meetings I have all week. The first ten minutes are usually kinda whatever, just catching up or chatting, but at around the halfway point, the REAL shit comes out. The things that were bothering them, or the task they were stuck on, or the team that’s been blocking them, or in better…

> The first ten minutes are usually kinda whatever, just catching up or chatting, but at around the halfway point, the REAL shit comes out. I worked at a range of startups before joining my first corporate style company. This 1:1 meeting ritual was hard for me to adapt to. At the startups, particularly the high performing ones, issues were addressed immediately. If a problem arose you talked to the people involved qu…

The thing is, "everybody just communicates" really does break down when the size of the organization grows past some limit. Everything is easy in a ten-person company, but that absolutely does not scale to a 1000-person company.

Re: Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?

#120

Post by nitwit005 »

You're both criticizing management for not knowing who's doing important work, and also for spending time talking to engineers to understand what's going on.

Most solutions to understand what's going on, in detail, are naturally going to be quite time consuming.

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