Earlier quoted context omitted.
This whole management heavy culture needs to F off. 9/10 people who wants to be a manager are awful as software engineers and they know this is the only way they can stay in the game. Out of those who do become engineering managers it seems all they do is talk a bunch of nonsense and add tremendous levels of roadblocks because they suck at understanding the actual technical problems and I’ll be honest. They’re usuall…
Aren't you just replacing the word manager with the word "team lead"? What in your view is the difference between the responsibilities of a manager vs a team lead if the team still reports to the team lead?
the director level (it could be multiple people) receive leadership objectives for the quarter or year. Their only job is to take their resources/battalion and divvy the work up into small atomic fire teams. Obviously there are many players from UX product QA devops etc. There is a directive, and everyone needs to be on board to WORK.
The team lead is in charge of ensuring the eng work gets done. There might be product or other folks, they’re specialists on the team like a marksman or medic or automatic weapons specialist. This is a tech company we are taking about, the output is a product backed by technology.
They need to be strong technically and take their team to the finish line. They don’t need to waste their time with 1:1 where they can’t remember the last session or making up stupid stories and wasting time in meetings. Just do the work. The team lead is the best engineer on the team and the rest of the team just does their job.
Maybe incentive structure could be set up where the entire team is rewarded for completion. If people don’t feel it’s fair they can leave, but when things work out the reward would be 100s of thousands of dollars for everyone. If you just need bodies to throw at some low hanging problem outsource that work. Otherwise focus on execution.
Like imagine trying to take a building with many doors and floors from an enemy. You want each team nimble enough to move independently of each other while working together via the team leads talking to each other. They lead their teams towards their objective of taking the building.
Engineering managers would just be dead weight. They’re not in the building and don’t have line of sight. They are far away (rarely have I seen eng managers code or get their hands dirty) and because of this cause confusion and disarray. They get information that gets lost in translation or some hero noob on the team wants to try their own plan and the manager gives them time to try it out. Good luck taking that building.
Just keep the work lean, and keep focused on work.
Like so many managers allow their teams to waste time and effort with “finding the right process” or bullshit meetings. Just focus on taking that building.