Knowing where your engineer salary comes from • Hacker News Board

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#181

Post by Aeolun » Wed, Apr 09, 2025, 12:18 PM UTC

weitendorf wrote: post #174

hayst4ck wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Admiral Rickover was likely the single most competent engineering manager in the last century and wrote this: Doing a Job https://govleaders.org/rickover.htm Complex jobs cannot be accomplished effectively with transients. Therefore, a manager must make the work challenging and rewarding so that his people will remain with the organization for many years. This allows it to benefit fully from their knowledge, experien…

The thing is, Rickover was working on nuclear submarines for the US between 1950 and 1958. He could attract the best engineers because nuclear energy was THE cutting edge technology of the time, the budget was enormous, the project was extremely interesting, and people were literally building something that they thought would protect them and their families from a nuclear attack from the USSR (or another Holocaust; R…

By the end of this message I felt like I was having a stroke. Wut?

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#182

Post by hansmayer » Thu, Apr 10, 2025, 10:22 AM UTC

shalmanese wrote: post #171

hansmayer wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, actually. He said it was a part of his job because they did not understand his work? So we are back at square one here, why do people not understanding engineering work, end up managing engineering work?

> It's up to me to "sell" that benefit to upper management. There's no point in assuming they'll figure it out by accident. Part of my job is enumerating the value I add. Nowhere is that said. The benefit of them selling is not for the management to understand, it's for the worker to understand and be able to articulate as it will flow downstream to strategy. Maybe the management doesn't understand but my point is it…

> Because engineers are typically (although not always) terrible at business. Or marketing. Or Sales. Or whatever.

You do realise that almost all of the unicorns and almost-unicorns of the last two decades were conceived, started and built by engineers, do you? Perhaps beacuse having ones brain primed to very hard problems, does not make it so hard to learn the "hard" business skills on the side after all, all the while coding up the product? But how would former humanities students get their "tech salaries" if we did not somehow convince engineers that they suck at what are honestly said, third-tier competencies.

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#183

Post by m_rpn » Thu, Apr 10, 2025, 12:58 PM UTC

hansmayer wrote: post #16

bruce511 wrote: post #2

I work on a product that has been built over 25 years. Lots of the work I did years ago is to ensure the product longevity. Lots of the work I do now is to ensure it lasts another 25 years. Thats good, but its only the start of "my work". It's up to me to "sell" that benefit to upper management. There's no point in assuming they'll figure it out by accident. Part of my job is enumerating the value I add. By all means…

I get your point at the basic level, but as engineers and managers, we need to stop this nonsense. Think deeper about why do you need to "sell" your work inside (some) companies ? Could it be because those companies are full of people who somehow occupy important positions without understanding the basics of the engineering work. What's the value such busywork managers are adding, besides the anti-value of layers of…

Man, you are making too much sense, somebody is going to have his feelings hurt by your words. Management is now trying to have even more control on the people that actually do things, and AI is being used as scapegoat to entrench their position. The reason is fear, because most managers couldn't do even 1/10 of the work people under them can do.

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#184

Post by shalmanese » Thu, Apr 10, 2025, 4:31 PM UTC

hansmayer wrote: post #182

shalmanese wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's up to me to "sell" that benefit to upper management. There's no point in assuming they'll figure it out by accident. Part of my job is enumerating the value I add. Nowhere is that said. The benefit of them selling is not for the management to understand, it's for the worker to understand and be able to articulate as it will flow downstream to strategy. Maybe the management doesn't understand but my point is it…

> Because engineers are typically (although not always) terrible at business. Or marketing. Or Sales. Or whatever. You do realise that almost all of the unicorns and almost-unicorns of the last two decades were conceived, started and built by engineers, do you? Perhaps beacuse having ones brain primed to very hard problems, does not make it so hard to learn the "hard" business skills on the side after all, all the wh…

You replied to the wrong person in the thread.