No management needed: anti-patterns in early-stage engineering teams • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by nebula8804 » Wed, Jan 14, 2026, 6:23 AM UTC

lqstuart wrote: post #165

nebula8804 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Well on a positive note, it may eventually lead to a union or works council for technologists. Will coders be a part of that or will that skill set go the way of carpenter? Remains to be seen. But there is still other roles in tech that could take the place of coders (infrastructure, security etc.).

Also remains to be seen how long this process will take. Could take a decade or two but hopefully it will happen. Its just so nice to see little wins like a Democratic Socialist like Mamdani getting elected in the finance capital of America. It shows that people are slowly chipping away at the capital class and sooner or later they will have to throw us some breadcrumbs.

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

#172

Post by ahf8Aithaex7Nai » Wed, Jan 14, 2026, 6:24 AM UTC

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…

> Again, they are not part of the capital class.

I vaguely remember reading something recently, probably by Branko Milanović, about how there is a class of workers in the tech sector who earn so much money that they are gradually starting to become capitalists. When you have so much money left over that you can start putting your capital to work for you, you cross that very line. I don't mean a home savings plan or ETFs or anything like that, but if you have seven figures and can skim off returns that you could live well on, then you're definitely no longer working class.

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

#173

Post by zeroq » Wed, Jan 14, 2026, 6:46 AM UTC

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…

It is.

Motivation is a whimsical thing.

  The fantastic element that explains the appeal of games to many developers is neither the fire-breathing monsters nor the milky-skinned, semi-clad sirens; it is the experience of carrying out a task from start to finish without any change in the user requirements.

As a lead or mgmt I set my highest priorities to:

(a) make sure that the goals are set to stone and crystal clear

(b) the team can do their work without any unnecessary distractions

(c) try to remove some of these "necessary" distractions as well

It can be really hard. And it can very ungrateful. I aim to be a nightwatchman, and I'm really proud of myself when the team thinks I'm getting paid for nothing. The bigger the structure the bigger the drama and I don't want them to be any part of it.

Meanwhile I struggle with stakeholders who are like "c'mon, you already build the skyscraper, we just want you to move the parking lot from the underground to second story, how hard can it be, you have all the parts in place, just move them around".

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

#174

Post by array_key_first » Wed, Jan 14, 2026, 6:49 AM UTC

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.

I think the truth is that there really isn't 10xers, and that's more or less a propaganda technique to get people to crab bucket each other.

Of course everyone likes to think they're santa's special engineer, so they don't need hurdles like protections and a level playing field. But, simultaneously, the industry has been doing everything in its power to make engineers as fungible as possible. The "wet dream" is to make engineers practically assembly line workers - you can just plop some rando in at any time, and it'll probably be fine. You can see this with the extreme turnover in a lot of the industry.

These concepts are in almost perfection contradiction, but they both have the same goal: to convince you and me that the status quo is desirable for each of us personally.

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

#175

Post by Culonavirus » Wed, Jan 14, 2026, 6:51 AM UTC

marcus_holmes wrote: post #137

jayd16 wrote: post #15

I think its clearly false that motivation is an inherent trait. That would imply that demotivation is also inherent, which I think is even more obviously wrong.

I think demotivating people is incredibly easy, see any Dilbert cartoon featuring the PHB ever. That doesn't mean that motivating people is also easy. They're not equivalent. Motivating people requires understanding their psychology, their values, what they want from their life, etc, and then applying that knowledge to create a workplace culture that feeds all of that. Demotivating them just requires not understandin…

Ah yes the workplace culture, psychology angle. I would expect to read that on Linkedin, not here.

No, motivating people simply requires giving them more money (performance bonuses, stock options, thirteenth salary/end-of-year bonus...). DUH. OBVIOUSLY.

People in management positions always try to weasel their way out of paying their people more. (Well, not always, not all of them do, but you get my point.)

Unless you work on truly cutting edge stuff (by which I mean the likes of SpaceX and its equivalents in different industries), motivation is money.

It's as simple as that. No need to twist yourself into all kinds of pretzels.

No, it's not the coworkers (which, by the way, are not your friends unless you meet outside of work), it's not the job as such (very few people outside of art actually enjoy doing their job as an activity after say 10 years of doing it), it's money.

Money is the primary motivator (by far). You work for money. End of story. Anyone saying otherwise is a bs artist.

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

#176

Post by array_key_first » Wed, Jan 14, 2026, 6:58 AM UTC

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #6

Hire good people and trust them, they will build the best they can for the users they can talk to If you don’t know what good people look like you can’t win.

The biggest thing is trust, in just about any relationship. The truth is, I think, most people are very well meaning and highly ambitious. It's disillusionment and distrust that creates the rift.

People want to work hard and they want to do good - but they're scared. They're scared that working hard will only be to their detriment and, well, can you blame them? When managers create an almost adversarial relationship, it can feel like doing your best is setting yourself up for failure.

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

#177

Post by rectang » Wed, Jan 14, 2026, 7:13 AM UTC

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?

I had one manager who got extremely excited about whatever you were working on. It was infectious and motivated most of the team including myself. He’s an innately curious person, but also whip smart and surely developed this skill deliberately.

I had another boss, a founder, who had a difficult relationship with engineering but was extremely gifted and had a great vision. I found myself highly motivated at this company as well, but for wholly different reasons. There are many paths to success.

Both startups had successful exits, and I felt as though I contributed meaningfully to both.

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

#178

Post by f1shy » Wed, Jan 14, 2026, 7:14 AM UTC

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 been working for more than 30 years. I was seriously demotivated by managers, but never motivated by them. The beat I got was protection from them to give me free space to work. But the motivation was always internal.

Being a manager myself, I never got to motivate anybody do anything they didn’t want to. If they wanted to, it worked, but the motivation AFAIK was internal.

Of course that is one person speaking. Milage can vary.

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

#179

Post by evalstate » Wed, Jan 14, 2026, 7:36 AM UTC

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…

A lot of those books are more about persuasion than motivation - they can look similar from a distance.

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

#180

Post by solatic » Wed, Jan 14, 2026, 7:47 AM UTC

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'll agree with you that the author tried to put in a sound bite and it failed to clarify the author's point.

The author is trying to argue for hiring early engineers who have exhibited ownership values and who want to take ownership for their work. These are the people for whom you establish "extreme transparency" (see: late in the post), a Google Doc for them to help align with others on high-level plans, a kitchen for people to informally talk in, and then get out of their way. That kind of environment is indeed in and of itself quite motivating for a certain kind of engineer.

Of course, it doesn't scale to BigCorp-size. Eventually you have too many cooks in the kitchen. The truth is that the vast majority of engineers really do want someone to tell them exactly what to do, so that they can come in to a highly structured 9-5 job and earn a paycheck that pays their mortgage and feeds their family. Author's prescriptions do not apply to large companies or to most engineers, and Author makes it clear as such.