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Is engineering management bullshit?

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Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#131

Post by mgraczyk »

bonecrusher2102 wrote: post #6

This is such a tired take. It's part of a steady stream of commentary that reads something like "non-engineering-role X is bullshit." Here, we see engineers reduce the contributions of such common roles as: Product Manger, Program/Project Manager, Scrum Master, Marketer, CEO, etc., as fungible or run by the biggest boogeyman of all, the dreaded MBA. These arguments most typically result from not an inability, but an…

The real issue is that in most software engineering teams, these roles are better done by a SWE who is good at X than somebody who exclusively does X, but especially at big companies the person doing X doesn't really understand software engineering.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#132

Post by linuxftw »

sumtechguy wrote: post #65
drstewart wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of my least favorite things about being on the technical side of things is this overarching smug sense of superiority that every other role is bullshit and doesn't do anything of real value. Or that other roles are malicious and/or incompetent and if engineers got their way the product would be perfect and free of defects of errors. e.g: "Don't blame the developers for X, we only put it in because of product or s…

Good way to bash that down is to ask 'would you want their role?' It makes them stop and think what does that person really do and they usually do not want to do it at all.

I don't want the janitor's role either, but that person isn't in charge of me. Engineering managers are glorified secretaries. We should replace them with actual secretaries that are subordinate to engineers.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#133

Post by bojo »

sulam wrote: post #105
__alexs wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been a manager and a manager of managers and I think we really do not have good data on whether not "management" as a profession in software engineering really adds value. We're bad at quantifying the value of engineers, and we're worse at quantifying the value of managers. There are definitely a wide range of non-engineering skills required to produce good software but that doesn't automatically justify the e…

I can justify it quite easily. Take it away and see what happens.

Exactly this.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#134

Post by mkl95 »

Engineering management is oddly similar to some martial arts that are plagued by bullshit artists despite having a few legit uses and practitioners.

Also, if you don't have solid project management you shouldn't bother with engineering management. Hire a good PM instead. I've seen half a dozen companies make this mistake with serious consequences.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#135

Post by mring33621 »

Good management can add tons of value for both employers and employees.

Bad management can subtract value.

Bad management often results from a misalignment of incentives.

Sorry, I'm too lazy to give details and it is a pretty complex topic.

Def not bullshit tho.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#136

Post by boredumb »

bonecrusher2102 wrote: post #6

This is such a tired take. It's part of a steady stream of commentary that reads something like "non-engineering-role X is bullshit." Here, we see engineers reduce the contributions of such common roles as: Product Manger, Program/Project Manager, Scrum Master, Marketer, CEO, etc., as fungible or run by the biggest boogeyman of all, the dreaded MBA. These arguments most typically result from not an inability, but an…

Being younger and 'technical' it's easy to feel as if you're a linchpin to the whole process and everything else is peripheral (This happens in every department though btw). I think everyone should try their hand at starting a business or launching a product (technical or non-technical). You will be amazed the labor and efforts that go into even the most mundane things and you will quickly be wishing you could hire on someone to help manage your product/project, help you market and network, help you find out which forms you need to fill out for taxes you didn't realize you needed to pay, what these terms actually mean, how to find capital, etc, etc, etc. If your product takes off I would guarantee you aren't going to hire an engineering manager to 'analyze' your engineers in order to optimize them as much as you are wanting someone to keep up with day-to-day issues and priorities so you don't have a dozen engineers sheering yaks or you aren't spending an inordinate amount of time dealing with a dozen engineers individual issues while trying to run a business and allocate yourself in a dozen other directions. Like you mention you become a lot more happy when you realize the tremendous efforts people on your team make (there are always exceptions) that may or may not be in your department.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#137

Post by btown »

felizuno wrote: post #49
bonecrusher2102 wrote: post #6

This is such a tired take. It's part of a steady stream of commentary that reads something like "non-engineering-role X is bullshit." Here, we see engineers reduce the contributions of such common roles as: Product Manger, Program/Project Manager, Scrum Master, Marketer, CEO, etc., as fungible or run by the biggest boogeyman of all, the dreaded MBA. These arguments most typically result from not an inability, but an…

I work with a lot of technical founders who struggle to accept the inevitable truth that taking the time to specify, coordinate, and resource what they want to do leaves no time to be the one doing any of those things. They eventually solve this problem by hiring other engineers to focus on the implementation step while they keep everything on the straight and narrow. When the company grows and they run out of time t…

I think that a helpful abstraction is that writing code is just one of many "levers" that one can deploy to transform one's ideas into a massively impactful, scalable system. Writing specifications, unblocking colleagues, and building team culture are equally powerful and often provide even more leverage. And if it's 10x better leverage, even if you're a slightly less efficient manager than you were a coder, that can still result in a net enhancement in your team's ability to turn ideas into reality. Of course, this won't be for everyone, and one's enjoyment of the day-to-day is perhaps even a larger factor. But if what you enjoy is seeing things come alive, it can be worth taking the plunge into uncharted waters.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#138

Post by wiredearp »

bonecrusher2102 wrote: post #6

This is such a tired take. It's part of a steady stream of commentary that reads something like "non-engineering-role X is bullshit." Here, we see engineers reduce the contributions of such common roles as: Product Manger, Program/Project Manager, Scrum Master, Marketer, CEO, etc., as fungible or run by the biggest boogeyman of all, the dreaded MBA. These arguments most typically result from not an inability, but an…

If you click the link, you'll find that the article features text below the headline that deals with literally none of those things.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#139

Post by Maursault »

> Despite years of effort, and a market value for individual software companies of over trillions of dollars, we’ve yet to formalize a way of measuring how effective a developer is or isn’t.

I am not a developer, but I studied CS until my eyes bled, and I've been watching you guys. Seems to me you (royal, developers) have already long figured this out with 2 metrics. The first isn't how many lines of code, but the opposite; the best coders will meet programming specifications with the least lines of code, the smallest program that produces the required results. The second metric is how fast this code on a given platform produces the results, and the faster the better.

Isn't this how you all praise each other, with how clever and efficient the code is? Perhaps this doesn't scale, but it is measurable.

Re: Is engineering management bullshit?

#140

Post by Swizec »

mrits wrote: post #122
felizuno wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work with a lot of technical founders who struggle to accept the inevitable truth that taking the time to specify, coordinate, and resource what they want to do leaves no time to be the one doing any of those things. They eventually solve this problem by hiring other engineers to focus on the implementation step while they keep everything on the straight and narrow. When the company grows and they run out of time t…

Over the first 10 years of a an engineers career they might only be exposed to a few different management roles. It's possible that the manager isn't fulfilling the actual role so what you have left with is just the distraction. Regardless if the manager is helping the team they almost always drain resources to aggregate information that they can synthesize upstream. It's a system that is so fragile it's not hard to…

> they almost always drain resources to aggregate information

Here’s an idea: Provide this information before they have to ask, when it’s convenient for you. Like between tasks.

Took a 5min break? Move the damn story over to done. Got stuck and seeking clarity but are blocked? Leave a quick comment.

If your manager has to ask what’s going on, you’re not communicating enough.

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