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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

#161

Post by ungreased0675 »

The author is ignorant, and I mean that literally, not as an insult. They haven’t thought deeply about why some methods of work produce better outcomes, and are still looking at the surface level artifacts. A management function is important for aligning effort, enabling performance, and clearing obstacles. Even if there isn’t a “manager” those functions are still helpful.

Bad managers also exist, and can reduce performance, which can be fatal to a startup. But that’s not a reason to avoid having management functions assigned to employees.

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

#162

Post by [deleted] »

johnfn wrote: post #156

> Motivation is a hired trait. The only place where managers motivate people is in management books. This seems entirely false to me. To be honest it is so incorrect it significantly puts into question the rest of the article. 1. I have absolutely had managers motivate me to work harder. I have also had managers completely demotivate me and cause me to quit. How on earth can anyone who has worked in the industry for…

[deleted]

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

#163

Post by Glyptodon »

As a former engineer at a YC startup from pre-A to post-B, I generally agree with much of this in a broad way if the startup is a technology first one with organic growth or hasn't really figured out product/market fit.

But I think some of the management and team stuff is much more complicated in B2B or B2B2C situations, regulated industries, or cases where there are substantial non-engineering employees, perhaps doing sales, onboarding, or things related to the "offline" world (if there are physical aspects to the business).

In particular, I don't think you can have a super flat eng structure run out of a few docs if eng needs to be working with one or more teams larger than the eng team itself unless there's some kind of separate interface to large outside teams.

If you end up with a significant sales team, account management team, support team, significant numbers of contractors, or other categories of workers because of the nature of the business, you will have to be more regimented about how things are structured. In companies that face this issue, it's often one of their major challenges and not avoidable compared to other kinds of startups - your sales team may have all kinds of ideas and some of them may even be good, and some may even want to sell them before you've built them. And if your sales team is 2x the size of product and engineering... it's not easy to run out of one document. (Note that I don't love or endorse this, but in certain kind of markets and products it seems like a bit of an unavoidable issue.)

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

#164

Post by tayo42 »

johnfn wrote: post #156

> Motivation is a hired trait. The only place where managers motivate people is in management books. This seems entirely false to me. To be honest it is so incorrect it significantly puts into question the rest of the article. 1. I have absolutely had managers motivate me to work harder. I have also had managers completely demotivate me and cause me to quit. How on earth can anyone who has worked in the industry for…

So what did those managers do to make you more motivated?

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

#165

Post by lqstuart »

nebula8804 wrote: post #139
bob001 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

By the time there is a revolution, i'd imagine that most engineers will have fallen to the working classes where they are technically a part of. Again, they are not part of the capital class. They were lucky to come across a special moment in time where there was a paradigm shift bringing with it enormous wealth and the capital class did not part with some of their wealth out of charity but out of greed because they…

It’s so depressing how right you are

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

#166

Post by idontwantthis »

tayo42 wrote: post #164
johnfn wrote: post #156

> Motivation is a hired trait. The only place where managers motivate people is in management books. This seems entirely false to me. To be honest it is so incorrect it significantly puts into question the rest of the article. 1. I have absolutely had managers motivate me to work harder. I have also had managers completely demotivate me and cause me to quit. How on earth can anyone who has worked in the industry for…

So what did those managers do to make you more motivated?

Treat me like a human being, work with me to set reasonable expectations, share blame and focus praise.

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

#167

Post by dannersy »

tayo42 wrote: post #164
johnfn wrote: post #156

> Motivation is a hired trait. The only place where managers motivate people is in management books. This seems entirely false to me. To be honest it is so incorrect it significantly puts into question the rest of the article. 1. I have absolutely had managers motivate me to work harder. I have also had managers completely demotivate me and cause me to quit. How on earth can anyone who has worked in the industry for…

So what did those managers do to make you more motivated?

Cared about anything other than their own upward movement, actively worked towards my professional development, made sure I had actual, not hand wavey, feedback, and made sure my compensation reflected my growing responsibility.

I am aware that all of those things may not be in their power to give, but some combination of that in any org that is somewhat functional would be motivating.

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

#168

Post by the_mar »

Aurornis wrote: post #127
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 w…

I am this person (not a genius or whatever) but work is absolutely life for me. I still absolutely resent the 996 culture and would never do that. I'd like to have agency when I want to abuse myself

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

#169

Post by sgillen »

tayo42 wrote: post #164
johnfn wrote: post #156

> Motivation is a hired trait. The only place where managers motivate people is in management books. This seems entirely false to me. To be honest it is so incorrect it significantly puts into question the rest of the article. 1. I have absolutely had managers motivate me to work harder. I have also had managers completely demotivate me and cause me to quit. How on earth can anyone who has worked in the industry for…

So what did those managers do to make you more motivated?

In addition to what the other responses said:

1. Share a cohesive and inspiring vision for the project.

2. Understand your skills, strengths/weaknesses etc and try to give you work that challenges you / help you grow / are interesting.

I think these are rare and can be hard to do (I'm now trying to do it myself!), but when it happens it's very motivating.

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

#170

Post by jimbo808 »

johnfn wrote: post #156

> Motivation is a hired trait. The only place where managers motivate people is in management books. This seems entirely false to me. To be honest it is so incorrect it significantly puts into question the rest of the article. 1. I have absolutely had managers motivate me to work harder. I have also had managers completely demotivate me and cause me to quit. How on earth can anyone who has worked in the industry for…

I've only experienced de-motivation from managers, personally. At least for me, motivation comes from ownership, impact, autonomy, respect. You can cause me to lose motivation in a lot of ways, but you can't really cause me to gain motivation unless you've already de-motivated me somehow.

You can de-motivate me in a lot of ways, some examples:

- throwing me or a coworker under the bus for your mistakes

- crediting yourself for the work of someone else

- attempting to "motivate" me when I'm already motivated

- manufacturing a sense of urgency, this is especially bad if you try to sustain this state all indefinitely

- using AI or market conditions as a fear tactic to motivate the team

- visibly engaging in any kind of nepotism

Honestly this list could go on and on, but those are some that come to mind.

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