Debate over 'fake work' and 'lazy management' in tech industry • Hacker News Board

Re: Debate over 'fake work' and 'lazy management' in tech industry

#131

Post by Sohcahtoa82 » Mon, Jul 10, 2023, 4:13 PM UTC

harimau777 wrote: post #2

Why do we expect to have good managers when we promote based on technical competency rather than leadership ability? Sure, a certain basic level of technical competency is needed, but after that management and development require different skills.

I'm finding many companies are learning that technical ability and leadership ability are entirely different functions.

I consider myself highly technically competent, but if you asked me to lead a team, delegate, etc., I would crash and burn. I just don't have the interpersonal and communication skills to set expectations.

Could I learn those skills? Oh, certainly. But why? The work doesn't interest me. The more I'd go up the management chain, the more I'd get disconnected from the technical work that I actually find interesting, and my day is spent in bullshit meetings where we'd rehash the same bullshit plans on a weekly basis.

Re: Debate over 'fake work' and 'lazy management' in tech industry

#132

Post by danaris » Mon, Jul 10, 2023, 4:17 PM UTC

potatolicious wrote: post #98

endtime wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of why I left Google was poor leadership at the VP level. The org wasn't set up for success and - as far as I could tell - the vision was myopic and incoherent. VP performance was more or less opaque to me for most of my career there, but eventually I got senior and experienced enough to have a real opinion. Really liked my direct manager, but we were in it together, and there was nothing he could have done abou…

+1 on this. Spent 4 years at Google including spending time as a TLM. Left around 2020 so my impressions may be a bit out of date. I spent time in both the Geo and Search PAs, and IMO Google's biggest problem is listless senior leadership. Google's orgs tend to lack product vision - there's a lot of abdication to front-line teams to ideate, come up with their own ideas, and ship features. My VP-levels were AFAIK only…

The thing is, I don't think that the basic idea there—senior management being primarily concerned with making the organization work well for the people in it, with the people further down the ladder being the ones directly in charge of the products—is inherently a bad or unworkable one.

It just requires the senior leadership to openly acknowledge that it means they don't own the products, and shouldn't be the ones making decisions on them, at least not without extensive discussion with the people in the organization that do own the products. That includes decisions to kill off a product, for any reason other than a dire emergency.

The problem, as is so depressingly common, is that being higher up in the org chart makes them believe they are better, smarter people, who always know best. So they make decisions without getting the right information, and very frequently for the wrong reasons.

Re: Debate over 'fake work' and 'lazy management' in tech industry

#133

Post by snide » Mon, Jul 10, 2023, 4:18 PM UTC

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #90

snide wrote: post #19

Maybe I'm missing a core piece from this article, but it leaves out quite a bit of agency from the employee. I never understand pieces like this that rail against employers, but also seem to cast the employees in such a helpless light. If you're stuck in a situation where you're not getting great feedback on what to work on, that seems like a great time to just build things and experiment on your own. Do it within th…

That doesn't always (or usually) work in some of these BigCorps. It's not that they don't give you freedom to go ... do stuff -- they often do -- but there are also are often very concrete boundaries about who is allowed to actually have the stuff they do go into any kind of production codebase. And very rigorous review processes, etc. and often the first question in a code review on something exotic and new at a pla…

I appreciate your comment and think it's very truthful (speaking as someone who has worked in a bunch of different environments). I think your last point though is the most important. There's still personal agency in the situation (though you do give realistic outliers when it can be tough).

I think it's mostly the tone I don't like about this article. It speaks to a defeastism that feels infectious at the moment. It feels very contrary to the normal spirit of communities like HN, which overall I've witnessed being someone positive.

Re: Debate over 'fake work' and 'lazy management' in tech industry

#134

Post by starbugs » Mon, Jul 10, 2023, 4:19 PM UTC

evo_9 wrote: post #102

Even the laziest manager is 10 times more useful and effective than a scrum master. They are the biggest BS jobs in the tech industry by a mile.

Had to smile a little bit when I read this.

I think most scrum masters are employed to virtue signal some kind of agility and organizational potential for change. Which then never results in anything tangible.

It’s quite sad.

If you really care and do what you are supposed to as an SM, you are very likely to get into trouble, because upper management usually isn’t interested the least bit in real change.

Real change is hard and will only happen if the pain is already too strong.

Real change might involve talking to your customer and changing the processes they are used to, which is usually not beneficial to the “management” level.

It’s really not about scrum as such, but about the incentive structure that’s present in most medium to big sized companies.

Re: Debate over 'fake work' and 'lazy management' in tech industry

#135

Post by fatnoah » Mon, Jul 10, 2023, 4:19 PM UTC

potatolicious wrote: post #98

endtime wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of why I left Google was poor leadership at the VP level. The org wasn't set up for success and - as far as I could tell - the vision was myopic and incoherent. VP performance was more or less opaque to me for most of my career there, but eventually I got senior and experienced enough to have a real opinion. Really liked my direct manager, but we were in it together, and there was nothing he could have done abou…

+1 on this. Spent 4 years at Google including spending time as a TLM. Left around 2020 so my impressions may be a bit out of date. I spent time in both the Geo and Search PAs, and IMO Google's biggest problem is listless senior leadership. Google's orgs tend to lack product vision - there's a lot of abdication to front-line teams to ideate, come up with their own ideas, and ship features. My VP-levels were AFAIK only…

Interesting. I spent time at another FAANG, and the product teams were very, very, very strong...among the best I've worked with. It was the Engineering leadership that was essentially invisible. I managed a team of 12. They knew the names and faces of every PM that intersected with our work (including the Director & VP), but none could name anyone in the Engineering hierarchy beyond my skip level. In my case, the above description of VP levels applied (IMHO) to the Engineering leadership, much to the same detriment.

Re: Debate over 'fake work' and 'lazy management' in tech industry

#136

Post by arbitrage » Mon, Jul 10, 2023, 4:24 PM UTC

codesnik wrote: post #34

ryoshu wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bad managers do that. Good managers accept accountability for the failures of their teams. Delegation makes a leader more accountable, not less.

I'd love to see an example of such an accepted accountability at least once in my life.

I've seen it before. After that manager stepped in to help me, I would've stepped in front of a bus for him. That is the one time I had a manager like that in my entire career.

It's rare, but it does happen.

Re: Debate over 'fake work' and 'lazy management' in tech industry

#137

Post by alexpotato » Mon, Jul 10, 2023, 4:26 PM UTC

Having worked in finance for many years at various types of firms (banks, hedge funds, fintech startups) and hired many FAANG folks, this breakdown from a former FAANG hire put it best:

"At FAANG, there were always more people than work to do. This led to lots of infighting for the best projects.

In finance, there is always more work than people so the fighting is more about trying to make multiple stakeholders happy with limited resources."

Another ex-FAANG colleague called it "cookie licking" since everyone wanted to make sure a cool project was theirs before anyone else took it away.

I can only imagine that this all happened due to the economic effects of being monopolies and therefore being able to just hire all of the best talent without necessarily having something for that talent to do.

Re: Debate over 'fake work' and 'lazy management' in tech industry

#138

Post by cratermoon » Mon, Jul 10, 2023, 4:27 PM UTC

manicennui wrote: post #115

atomicnumber3 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The vast majority I really don't think this is the case. I think there are a lot of less-experienced developers who will be very sidetracked, yes. But anyone even close to senior should have developed an intuition of when it is time to build carefully and when it is time to "just ship". (this isn't just "go slow at first and then haul ass to hit deadline", you can switch between these two mindsets several times even…

Senior engineers are often good at turning boring problems into more interesting problems (to them) by doing unnecessary rewrites or introducing new technology.

These days the title "senior engineer" is handed out like candy. Anyone with three years experience is now "Senior" in title. In the US, doctors fresh out of med school have a minimum of three years ahead before they can even begin to practice independently. For programming, and pretty much any other profession, senior doesn't really begin until nearing 10 years of work experience.

At that point, that itch to turn boring problems into interesting problems takes on a different form: What becomes "interesting" is doing things within constraints, including the constraint of staying with existing technology, when it's solving the problem.

Re: Debate over 'fake work' and 'lazy management' in tech industry

#139

Post by arbitrage » Mon, Jul 10, 2023, 4:28 PM UTC

matrix_overload wrote: post #113

snide wrote: post #19

Maybe I'm missing a core piece from this article, but it leaves out quite a bit of agency from the employee. I never understand pieces like this that rail against employers, but also seem to cast the employees in such a helpless light. If you're stuck in a situation where you're not getting great feedback on what to work on, that seems like a great time to just build things and experiment on your own. Do it within th…

Tried that. Your colleagues, and some managers, will immediately see you as a threat (how dare you have something to show when we don't) and will start treating you as a personal enemy. Sabotaging every thing you are trying to do, trying to blame you for every failure, and overloading you with completely useless work. Nope, fish rots from the head. If everyone around you is useless, there are good reasons for it, and…

You are narrating my life back to me right now, and it's creepy and weird.

I'm sorry that you've experienced this horrible treadmill of despair, as well. It doesn't get better.

Re: Debate over 'fake work' and 'lazy management' in tech industry

#140

Post by watwut » Mon, Jul 10, 2023, 4:28 PM UTC

harimau777 wrote: post #2

Why do we expect to have good managers when we promote based on technical competency rather than leadership ability? Sure, a certain basic level of technical competency is needed, but after that management and development require different skills.

I did not seen all that much promotions based on technical competency. We promote based on impressions of upper management that have zero to do with technical competency and zero to do with leadership ability.

Also, pretty much all non technical lower level managers were disaster. And issue was not just their lack of tech knowledge in pure form, but their insecurity, inferiority complexes and what not everybody else had to deal with. And profound not understanding of culture around tech just lead to completely unnecessary misunderstanding.

Lack of technical knowledge in the context of managing technical people imply that you will fail in social aspect too.