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No management needed: anti-patterns in early-stage engineering teams

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Re: No management needed: anti-patterns in early-stage engineering teams

#121

Post by bob001 »

nebula8804 wrote: post #113
bob001 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Engineers were the privileged class. They were part of the group occupy wall street wanted to bring down. Not hard to guess why they didn't want that.

Privileged is too generic of a word that does not accurately describe the cohorts. There is the capital class. Occupy was after the Capital class but im not sure if they accurately zeroed in on that. Its been too long since then. Engineers were never part of that class. They work for a living while capital owns assets that work for them. Engineers were part of the "Intellectual Elite" class that made good money but w…

Having talked to Occupy Wall Street people at the time I don't think many on the ground differentiated as much as you think they did. I used a generic word because from my experience that is how they saw the world. I got told I deserved to have everything I own set on fire for saying I spent $100 on a nice dinner once. That was on the more extreme side but the sentiment seemed to not differentiate.

Re: No management needed: anti-patterns in early-stage engineering teams

#122

Post by bob001 »

nebula8804 wrote: post #114
mothballed wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say more precisely, engineers are closer to the managerial or capital wielding class; usually the adversary of the union.

They are closer but they are not part of the class so does it really matter how close they are? Engineer still has to trade their time for wealth in the form of work. Capital class has assets that work for them.

To me the only question is if there's a hypothetical revolution who will end up swinging in the wind by their neck and I have no doubt many engineers working for big tech would have been in that group. There's always nice rhetoric and focused rhetoric to not make too many enemies but the people on the ground differentiate a lot less and have in every revolution.

Re: No management needed: anti-patterns in early-stage engineering teams

#123

Post by amarant »

joe_mamba wrote: post #93
amarant wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they? Do you have a source for that? My impression is that it's easier to find engineering work in Stockholm than in silicon valley atm, but I haven't measured objectively.

Stockholm is not representative of entire Europe same how SF isn't representative of entire NA. There's too many variables and shades of gray to give a simple answer, with closest to a correct answer being "it depends" based on where you live, how good you are and how in demand your skill set is to the demand of your local market, but the market is pretty much fucked in many high-CoL locations worldwide due to offsho…

I deliberately chose to compare two tech-heavy locations to avoid weird and difficult comparisons like the tech industry in rural Nebraska Vs Moldavia.

Stockholm was a natural point of comparison for me given that I used to live there until very recently.i have a decent picture of the dev market in Stockholm. Silicon valley is the most mentioned tech centre on here, and is therefore the American tech market I know the most about (even if my knowledge is very limited in this front)

Re: No management needed: anti-patterns in early-stage engineering teams

#124

Post by crazygringo »

bob001 wrote: post #120
crazygringo wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has nothing to do with motivation or competence. Teams don't just work together magically and "organically". They're made of diverse human beings, every one of us, who come from different backgrounds with different expectations about when and what to communicate and when and what not to and around what is who's responsibility when. Different levels of experience, having worked at different places with different pr…

To me you're describing a team with mediocre communication and social skills. That's common but its not all teams. It has everything to do with maturity, motivation and competence. The best teams I've been on didn't care about these rituals because each person bridged the gap with other people. The TLs kept an eye on everything the TL and EM kept an eye on all the people side and concerns. In a startup it'd be the fo…

> Have a meeting, align on some norms for these things and then hold people accountable to them. It's not hard. We're all adults. You don't need constant meetings to hand hold people like little kids.

Yes... the meetings are called retrospectives.

One of the norms is called standups.

You don't need to belittle these processes as being for "little kids". That's deeply unprofessional.

Maybe there are some teams made up entirely of these 10x communicators you describe where everybody perfectly "bridges the gap" with other people. All I can say is, I've never seen it. And knowing everything I know about how easy it is for miscommunication to happen, I'm inclined to suspect that if you think you worked somewhere like that, you simply weren't aware of how much further communication and processes could have improved. After all, how could you? It's incredibly easy for us to assume that things are working as well as they could be. Until we try something like standup+retrospectives and are surprised at how much value they end up bringing.

Re: No management needed: anti-patterns in early-stage engineering teams

#125

Post by matusp »

Swizec wrote: post #21

> at 15 engineers, it is very doable for a single person to keep track of everyone's work and ensure alignment. All my past experience disagrees. Sure you have 15 engineers, but you're supporting a business of 150 people. This is a pretty common ratio. The noise gets very loud at that scale and it becomes almost impossible for self-managed engineers to make forward progress. At the very least you need super clearly d…

Yup, 15 is just too many. I think that 10 is already pushing it, depending on how many projects are going on at the same time.

Re: No management needed: anti-patterns in early-stage engineering teams

#126

Post by denkmoon »

al_borland wrote: post #53
bob001 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until recently American engineers made a lot of money at comparatively cushy jobs. A decent engineer in the US could make 5x their equivalent in most European nations. Staff+ engineers at FAANG could make 5x that. People in a good position tend to not like rocking the boat.

Not just that, but the union would likely end up capping their salary much lower so the wealth can be spread around. How hard is the 10x engineer on the team going to work when the compensation is the same regardless? This is where people end up working multiple jobs, if they can keep up with their peers only working one day per week.

That's right, no more "10xers" working 80 hr weeks making those who can't or won't look unproductive.

Re: No management needed: anti-patterns in early-stage engineering teams

#127

Post by Aurornis »

pyrale wrote: post #27

> I know several top 1% engineers in the Valley who disengage from recruiting processes when 996 or something similar is mentioned. A few years back, on this board, 996 was something people made fun of when it was reported that some Chinese companies did it [1]. And now, the strongest claim this blog can make is that some engineers in the US would disengage from recruiting? That the issue with working on saturdays is…

> And now, the strongest claim this blog can make is that some engineers in the US would disengage from recruiting?

The statement was specifically about top 1% engineers in Silicon Valley. That’s a very, very small subset of all engineers in the US.

The pointy end of the talent spectrum in SV is a very weird place because it has had a lot of engineers for whom work is life. Living at the office and having coworkers working 24/7 might be something they like.

I’m not condoning this or saying it’s common. It’s not common. However, once you narrow down to the extreme outliers in the long tail of talent distribution you will find a lot of people who are downright obsessive about their work. Their jobs also pay north of $1mm including equity, so spending a few years of their life 996ing on a topic they love with energized people isn’t exactly a bad deal for them.

In general, if a recruiter told an average engineer that 996 was expected that would be the end of that conversation. Average US engineers are not signing up for 996 for average compensation.

Re: No management needed: anti-patterns in early-stage engineering teams

#128

Post by reactordev »

bob001 wrote: post #121
nebula8804 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Privileged is too generic of a word that does not accurately describe the cohorts. There is the capital class. Occupy was after the Capital class but im not sure if they accurately zeroed in on that. Its been too long since then. Engineers were never part of that class. They work for a living while capital owns assets that work for them. Engineers were part of the "Intellectual Elite" class that made good money but w…

Having talked to Occupy Wall Street people at the time I don't think many on the ground differentiated as much as you think they did. I used a generic word because from my experience that is how they saw the world. I got told I deserved to have everything I own set on fire for saying I spent $100 on a nice dinner once. That was on the more extreme side but the sentiment seemed to not differentiate.

They basically hated on anyone making more than a livable wage at the time ($60k).

Re: No management needed: anti-patterns in early-stage engineering teams

#129

Post by Aurornis »

Herring wrote: post #35
pyrale wrote: post #27

> I know several top 1% engineers in the Valley who disengage from recruiting processes when 996 or something similar is mentioned. A few years back, on this board, 996 was something people made fun of when it was reported that some Chinese companies did it [1]. And now, the strongest claim this blog can make is that some engineers in the US would disengage from recruiting? That the issue with working on saturdays is…

It’s better to look at what didn’t happen: unionization. Americans often remind me of Steve Jobs trying to cure cancer using diets & acupuncture. You know what the solutions are, you just don’t like them.

There are unionized engineer jobs in the United States. Every time this conversation comes up people act like we don’t have any unions, but that’s not true. There are unionized engineering jobs.

One of them even tried striking a couple years ago, quite publicly. They ended the strike a couple days later without gaining anything.

I think American engineers know their situation and options better than you think.

Re: No management needed: anti-patterns in early-stage engineering teams

#130

Post by tayo42 »

OhMeadhbh wrote: post #96
burnto wrote: post #18

> Motivation is a hired trait. The only place where managers motivate people is in management books Initial motivation is the hired trait. It’s very easy to demotivate people. The trick is to not do that.

we used to say "employees don't quit jobs, they quit managers." i was very happy at Amazon until they moved me under a sub-optimal manager. i quit less than a month later. that manager got promoted. this will tell you everything you need to know about working at Amazon. maybe they were trying to get me to quit. maybe that area's director was incompetent. maybe both.

Do managers ever get fired or fail? All of my worst managers seem to keep moving up the ladder from what I see on LinkedIn. I don't understand it.
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