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Hunting Tech Debt via Org Charts

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Re: Hunting Tech Debt via Org Charts

#11

Post by Zigurd »

1cvmask wrote: post #3

The main takeaway: Engineers prioritizing making systems easier and more consistent end up with overly complex, difficult to operate systems Product managers prioritize shipping features and end up making the software development process slower Security prioritizes minimizing risk of change and ends up maximizing the risk of out-of-date software. Flat organizations prioritize open communication and end up with clique…

Most of the ills in this article would be fixed by better product management that has earned clout with senior management. For example, the product manager should be able to tell everyone what most likely constitutes a minimum viable product (MVP), and be able to defend that against, for example sales-driven feature creep. And on the other hand, product management should be able to communicate to engineering the value of time-to-market. If your product manager is unable to do this and is just tallying feature requests and trying to cram in as much as possible you are screwed in multiple dimensions.

Re: Hunting Tech Debt via Org Charts

#12

Post by AlexCoventry »

Zigurd wrote: post #10
rendall wrote: post #9

In most organizations that has one, the sales department has an outsized influence on every other department including tech.

Hire a department full of persuasive people. Expect to get persuasion. On top of which, subverting an organization's decision making processes and channels is a core competency of good sales departments. A two-edged sword if there ever was.

> subverting an organization's decision making processes and channels is a core competency of good sales departments

Know of any good books on this aspect of sales?

Re: Hunting Tech Debt via Org Charts

#13

Post by lostapathy »

sejtnjir wrote: post #8
jcadam wrote: post #4

High turnover also contributes to tech debt. When turnover becomes ingrained in company culture, engineers have no incentive to care overly much about the overall health of the code base.

I have the opposite experience. When people typically stick around for the majority of their career, there's no incentive to capture knowledge thoroughly. Onboarding time was noticeably longer because of it.

The ideal is almost certainly somewhere in the middle.

The people who have only been on the job a couple months are probably not truly onboarded themselves, hard for them to document what they don’t know.

Re: Hunting Tech Debt via Org Charts

#14

Post by echelon »

jcadam wrote: post #6
ryanmcbride wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can attest to this because the company I currently work for has the highest turnover I've ever experienced. People are barely making it 8 months, meanwhile the bosses are pushing for faster growth to match our newish funding. That's leading to people who have been here for 2 months hiring _more_ people to replace the people who left at 8 months. Just about every project is suffering from simply not understanding wh…

The current job market is punishing poorly run companies. It's too easy to pick up the phone and get a new job quick these days if you're unhappy, contributing to churn.

When does the market for engineers turn into a buyer's market?

If the economy goes into recession or worse, do those playing hot potato get stuck out in the cold?

Re: Hunting Tech Debt via Org Charts

#15

Post by ryanmcbride »

jcadam wrote: post #6
ryanmcbride wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can attest to this because the company I currently work for has the highest turnover I've ever experienced. People are barely making it 8 months, meanwhile the bosses are pushing for faster growth to match our newish funding. That's leading to people who have been here for 2 months hiring _more_ people to replace the people who left at 8 months. Just about every project is suffering from simply not understanding wh…

The current job market is punishing poorly run companies. It's too easy to pick up the phone and get a new job quick these days if you're unhappy, contributing to churn.

Yup. I'd never blame someone for taking a better job elsewhere.

Re: Hunting Tech Debt via Org Charts

#16

Post by jcadam »

echelon wrote: post #14
jcadam wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current job market is punishing poorly run companies. It's too easy to pick up the phone and get a new job quick these days if you're unhappy, contributing to churn.

When does the market for engineers turn into a buyer's market? If the economy goes into recession or worse, do those playing hot potato get stuck out in the cold?

It's a cycle, like anything else. Tech was largely spared during the last recession. Who knows what's going to happen during the next?

Re: Hunting Tech Debt via Org Charts

#17

Post by datavirtue »

sejtnjir wrote: post #8
jcadam wrote: post #4

High turnover also contributes to tech debt. When turnover becomes ingrained in company culture, engineers have no incentive to care overly much about the overall health of the code base.

I have the opposite experience. When people typically stick around for the majority of their career, there's no incentive to capture knowledge thoroughly. Onboarding time was noticeably longer because of it.

And everyone new has to run to the lifers...which means that the new people never learn deeply...and always have to run back to the lifer.

It takes a loooong time to learn a system when you have this dynamic.

Re: Hunting Tech Debt via Org Charts

#19

Post by collaborative »

criticaltinker wrote: post #2

Had to read quite a bit before Conway’s Law was mentioned, but glad it was. Viewing organizations and software engineering through this lens has been a game changer for me personally. As an individual contributor I now appreciate horrendous technical debt and glacially slow development as systematic organizational issues, rather than blaming burnt out or lazy engineers. Now I’m much more aware and critical of technic…

This is why my dream is to work completely alone. I still need employment to survive but hope one day I won't

Another good quote is "a cow with 2 owners gives no milk and eats no grain" (castilian proverb)

Re: Hunting Tech Debt via Org Charts

#20

Post by jjtheblunt »

> Fortunately for us, the realities of flat organizations are pushing them out of favor and lively conversations about engineering leadership as a craft are taking over. Flat organizations are a nice idea, but they just don’t reflect how people behave.

this makes me wonder who "us" means.

i make the educated guess it's "managers", which were dead weight in the Apple engineering scheme I joined, which functioned super efficiently without them, as it was emphasized how flat was a feature, not a bug, for getting things done.

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