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Keep work fresh by teaching your successors and investing a bit in long-shots

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Re: Keep work fresh by teaching your successors and investing a bit in long-shots

#11

Post by titanomachy »

jstarfish wrote: post #8
angarg12 wrote: post #5

> If you’re doing what you’re told to do, they are paying you too much. I'm glad Kent Beck got that one out. I work for a Big Tech that pays (comparatively) well, and sometimes there is lot of ambiguity. Some new hires have a hard time adapting, and complain that they lack direction or have nothing to do. When these kind of companies pay you big bucks, part of the job is to be proactive at finding and solving the pro…

[flagged]

I'm not sure I agree. If I'm paying you nearly half a million a year as a US FAANGish senior engineer, I'm not going to have much patience for the excuse that "my manager didn't find enough high-value work for me to do". Compensation like that, to me, implies a higher degree of ownership and responsibility.

If you're a junior engineer, or sitting somewhere on the left-hand peak of the bimodal software engineer compensation curve [0], then sure, I'd expect your manager/PM/TL to slice up some reasonably high-impact work for you to take care of. Otherwise, bug PMs for ideas. Learn the basic shape of the organization you work in. Draft some one-page proposals and pitch them.

Don't expect to get paid like a heart surgeon just for crushing well-scoped React feature requests.

[0] https://danluu.com/bimodal-compensation/

Re: Keep work fresh by teaching your successors and investing a bit in long-shots

#12

Post by ghaff »

titanomachy wrote: post #11
jstarfish wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I'm not sure I agree. If I'm paying you nearly half a million a year as a US FAANGish senior engineer, I'm not going to have much patience for the excuse that "my manager didn't find enough high-value work for me to do". Compensation like that, to me, implies a higher degree of ownership and responsibility. If you're a junior engineer, or sitting somewhere on the left-hand peak of the bimodal software engineer compen…

Yeah. I've never had that sort of comp but for long stretches of my career I've largely charted my own path. While my first manager in my current job and I always got along very well, he traveled a lot, I traveled a lot, and I never expected much in the way of specific direction. If I had a question I asked him.But we largely did our own things under a general umbrella. Probably atypical but I was hired pretty atypically as well. (Basically a position was created for me.)

Re: Keep work fresh by teaching your successors and investing a bit in long-shots

#13

Post by zeroxfe »

jstarfish wrote: post #8
angarg12 wrote: post #5

> If you’re doing what you’re told to do, they are paying you too much. I'm glad Kent Beck got that one out. I work for a Big Tech that pays (comparatively) well, and sometimes there is lot of ambiguity. Some new hires have a hard time adapting, and complain that they lack direction or have nothing to do. When these kind of companies pay you big bucks, part of the job is to be proactive at finding and solving the pro…

[flagged]

> Expecting ICs to "find something and kill it" signals desperation

Ugh. Way to misrepresent GP. Table stakes for strong engineers is to be able to proactively find and solve problems in products (among other things.) Of course, they'll need the support of the larger organization, managers, PMs, etc., but they're are not just a bunch of drones that take orders.

Re: Keep work fresh by teaching your successors and investing a bit in long-shots

#14

Post by scarface_74 »

angarg12 wrote: post #5

> If you’re doing what you’re told to do, they are paying you too much. I'm glad Kent Beck got that one out. I work for a Big Tech that pays (comparatively) well, and sometimes there is lot of ambiguity. Some new hires have a hard time adapting, and complain that they lack direction or have nothing to do. When these kind of companies pay you big bucks, part of the job is to be proactive at finding and solving the pro…

Our guidelines (BigTech consulting department) on a high level are

L4 - problem and solution is well defined

L5 - problem is well defined, your responsibility to come up with a solution or at least be able to reach out to the right people for help.

L6 - neither problem nor solution is well defined

Re: Keep work fresh by teaching your successors and investing a bit in long-shots

#15

Post by singleshot_ »

NoboruWataya wrote: post #9

Only somewhat related, but in my line of work (corporate law), where we work on a lot of different kinds of transactions, I find that my experience of working on a particular type of transaction can be roughly divided into five stages: - Stage 1: The first few times you work on a particular type of transaction, you are completely lost. You've never seen these documents before, it all feels alien and scary (bearing in…

Outsider perspective: you have nailed the training pathway, at least conceptually. Many level five practitioners are so far out of touch with level one that they have a tough time getting anyone else to level three. Keep up your good work!

Re: Keep work fresh by teaching your successors and investing a bit in long-shots

#16

Post by singleshot_ »

jstarfish wrote: post #8
angarg12 wrote: post #5

> If you’re doing what you’re told to do, they are paying you too much. I'm glad Kent Beck got that one out. I work for a Big Tech that pays (comparatively) well, and sometimes there is lot of ambiguity. Some new hires have a hard time adapting, and complain that they lack direction or have nothing to do. When these kind of companies pay you big bucks, part of the job is to be proactive at finding and solving the pro…

[flagged]

I developed and managed a team of professional services consultants and I have the opposite view. Teammates who needed me to explicitly tell them what to do are ok if they’re interested in growing beyond that but not otherwise. Ideal team members would see problems coming down the track, identify a solution, implement it, and brief me before I heard about it from someone else. If I thought their solution was not workable, I have a window to redirect them. If not, they solved a problem and I make a note so I can help them get promoted later.

Granted my PS practice ain’t no Google, but subordinates who require direct instruction for any longer than it takes to get comfortable are for the birds.

Re: Keep work fresh by teaching your successors and investing a bit in long-shots

#17

Post by realitythreek »

I wholeheartedly agree with this but want to add that the 80/15/5 split aren’t set in stone. It’s more like risk tolerance. The more you spend on the riskier activities (not exactly what you’re asked to do), the higher the chance of failure but the greater the reward. You can drive your team or organization in a completely different direction.

Re: Keep work fresh by teaching your successors and investing a bit in long-shots

#18

Post by ethanbond »

jstarfish wrote: post #8
angarg12 wrote: post #5

> If you’re doing what you’re told to do, they are paying you too much. I'm glad Kent Beck got that one out. I work for a Big Tech that pays (comparatively) well, and sometimes there is lot of ambiguity. Some new hires have a hard time adapting, and complain that they lack direction or have nothing to do. When these kind of companies pay you big bucks, part of the job is to be proactive at finding and solving the pro…

[flagged]

No decent manager on the planet thinks that they know everything that needs to be done.

Re: Keep work fresh by teaching your successors and investing a bit in long-shots

#19

Post by singleshot_ »

scarface_74 wrote: post #14
angarg12 wrote: post #5

> If you’re doing what you’re told to do, they are paying you too much. I'm glad Kent Beck got that one out. I work for a Big Tech that pays (comparatively) well, and sometimes there is lot of ambiguity. Some new hires have a hard time adapting, and complain that they lack direction or have nothing to do. When these kind of companies pay you big bucks, part of the job is to be proactive at finding and solving the pro…

Our guidelines (BigTech consulting department) on a high level are L4 - problem and solution is well defined L5 - problem is well defined, your responsibility to come up with a solution or at least be able to reach out to the right people for help. L6 - neither problem nor solution is well defined

1) I don’t know what the problem is. 2) I can see the problem but I need to be told both the solution and how to implement it. 3) I see the problem and if you tell me the solution I can execute it. 4) I see the problem and I know the solution. Should I execute the solution? 5) advisory: I found a problem and I solved it.

Once you have a critical mass of threes and fives in the team you can go do something else and they can take over.

Re: Keep work fresh by teaching your successors and investing a bit in long-shots

#20

Post by extragood »

singleshot_ wrote: post #16
jstarfish wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I developed and managed a team of professional services consultants and I have the opposite view. Teammates who needed me to explicitly tell them what to do are ok if they’re interested in growing beyond that but not otherwise. Ideal team members would see problems coming down the track, identify a solution, implement it, and brief me before I heard about it from someone else. If I thought their solution was not work…

I'm currently in a similar situation by the sound of it.

There's an ebb and flow of inbound projects, and one of the engineers has taken advantage of his down time by building out infrastructure and reusable platforms. He pauses that and resumes paid work for clients as they come. I love it - he gets a lot of satisfaction out of building what he thinks we'll need without explicit deadlines, and consults me and his direct manager as necessary. His work is inspiring the more junior engineer on the team to learn and work more creatively and productively. That frees me up to establish better relationships with our Sales and Success teams to bring us new and better clients, which in turn increases their close rates. With the right people and environment, you can create a positive feedback loop that is fairly self-sustaining.

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