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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

#181

Post by throwaway2037 »

thesuavefactor wrote: post #17
alephnerd wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to work at an early stage startup - in fact most people don't. But some people do wish to participate in an early stage startup, and plenty do in Europe as well. > So you have a good work/life balance. I currently work 4 hours a week. And this is why when I was a PM, we shut down our Amsterdam office and shifted it to Praha, Bucharest, and Warsaw. You won't find as many people who will complain about a…

Working more hours however =/= getting more done. In fact, some experiments show the opposite (within boundaries of course).

I disagree. It is more accurate to say that more working hours is a continuum of productivity. Imagine that you have two nearly identical software engineers. One works 40 hours per week and the other 41 hours per week. Which will be more productive? Very likely the 41 hour per week engineer. Now, if you compare 50 vs 51, then 60 vs 61, and so forth, the productivity gap will become much smaller, possibly hard to measure after 60. I have witnessed a few young engineers in my career with simply unbelievable work ethic and talents that could work 80+ hours a week for months on end. It was amazing to see, and their output was unmatched.

From personal experience, I worked like a dog in my younger years for two reasons: (1) To become a better engineer, you need to make a lot of mistakes and fix them yourself. (2) Much junior engineering work is just time in front of the screen pounding out simple features for a CRUD app. The more that you complete, the quicker you get promoted.

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

#182

Post by Y-bar »

f1shy wrote: post #178
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.…

I want to hazard a guess that a motivational manager is just like a well-oiled cog in a machine. You essentially never notice them as having influence over your motivation and only pay attention to the squeaky and rattling and faulty ones.

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

#183

Post by throwaway2037 »

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.

It is better to divide motivation between intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic comes from within and is probably best explained as an inherited personality trait. Extrinsic comes from external factors, usually money and rewards, as well as positive feedback. Demotivation is most probably a result of poor management (leaving aside mental health issues).

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

#184

Post by theshrike79 »

jimbo808 wrote: post #170
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 yo…

Also:

- not letting me have ownership of what I build and dictating features

- not giving me autonomy of how to solve a problem

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

#185

Post by throwaway2037 »

OhMeadhbh wrote: post #69
charcircuit wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good ideas need the right timing to line up. AT&T can afford to keep a research project around until the timing is right where a startup needs to find market fit immediately.

i'm not sure that is true about AT&T. you may be thinking about Bell Labs, which effectively destroyed it's culture in the 90s or early 2000s. but i take your point to mean there are large companies that have budget to maintain projects that do not have an immediate need to be profitable. and agree that for startups, it's a great idea if you're building things for which a market is emerging. everyone talks about how…

Before the 1990s, Bell Labs was the research arm of the world's largest and richest telecommunications monopoly. That explains the difference between old and new Bell Labs.

Wiki says:

    > With the breakup of the Bell System, Bell Labs became a subsidiary of AT&T Technologies in 1984, which resulted in a drastic decline in its funding.

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

#186

Post by theshrike79 »

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.

Why the fuck would an union cap anyones salary? Is this an American thing?

Over here the purpose of unions is to: Provide a strong enough legal response and guidance to deter companies from trying shady shit, pay better unemployment fees than the government and provide training/networking. They also negotiate collectively with the employers on behalf of everyone for things like paid sick leave, paid vacations etc.

I pay a flat fee every month because the union I'm in has always had relatively low unemployment, for others it's usually a percentage of their monthly gross salary (usually around 10-50€).

In what scenario would capping people's salary be good for the workers?

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

#187

Post by friendzis »

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 good manager understands this, and motivates by helping you understand how the things you are doing are actually critical to the success of the team and the company

Your definition of a "good manager" is essentially "does not actively sabotage work of subordinates". That's not motivation, that's merely absence of active demotivation. A person knowing how and in what ways their work contributes to the success of the unit and the whole are absolute basics and if a person is not aware of those either their manager is incompetent as hell or actively hostile.

Reminds me of those job ads where "benefits" section contains gems like "salary paid on time". That is not a benefit, that is such a basic that even mentioning it puts into question everything about such company.

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

#188

Post by AdamN »

f1shy wrote: post #178
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.…

You're making a nuanced point but it's correct. Good managers can give a little motivation (mostly by talking about and finding the right areas to work on for those people that don't otherwise already know). But for the most part good management is buffering the core that allows individuals own motivation to be self-sustaining (and productive over time) and also making sure that people aren't on a path that won't be useful (i.e. the manager knows the company will never fund phase 2).

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

#189

Post by friendzis »

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 have read the sibling comments here and it is so saddening. The general expectations for management are, apparently, so low, that a manager attempting to do some duties in their job description is lauded as some savior.

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

#190

Post by xkbarkar »

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 have experienced both.

I d argue its not the manager that motivates people that can only be found inbooks. Its the manager that can come in and mend a toxic and dysfunctional team.

The toxic teams end up breaking good managers in the end and they either become part of the problem or leave.

The hero manager described in the phoenix project is a myth.

The motivational one imho is very real but they need a good platform just like everyone else.

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