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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

#191

Post by solatic »

OsrsNeedsf2P wrote: post #5
givemeethekeys wrote: post #2

I'd like to add to this, only because it is an early stage item but maybe a little unrelated: If you are an early stage startup and your founders have a habit of talking about "competitors", run like hell.

> If you are an early stage startup and your founders have a habit of talking about "competitors", run like hell. Why? Comparing what the competitors are doing can be a great way to come up with new ideas

Your competitors are not necessarily targeting the same users, and their internal strengths and weaknesses are different from yours. All comparisons to competitors are superficial and distract you from building what your users want and improving upon your internal strengths and weaknesses.

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

#192

Post by neilv »

It sounded good, up until the examples for:

> I'll dedicate a post to specific ways you can identify motivation during hiring, but in short, look for

All will be gamed by interviewees, by the afternoon this hits the HN front page.

(And, for example, tech interview prep has already been telling people to fake passion and curiosity, for many years now.)

Here's what you do:

1. Consider that the early startup also belongs to the early hires. It's their startup too. You're the last-word decider, but it's not only your startup. You want it to also be theirs. Believe this, and act like it.

2. Reflect that in the equity sharing. "0.5%", to be diluted, as options, with ISO rules that discourage exercising at all... while co-founders divide up 70% of founder real shares between themselves... is nonsense, for that founding engineer, who you should want to be as motivated as you, and contributing as much as you do.

3. With equity like you're serious, make the salaries low-ish. Not so low that it's nonviable for modest family cost of living, but low enough to self-select out the people who aren't committed to the company being successful, or who don't actually believe in the company.

4. Have an actually promising company and founding team, or you won't get many experienced people biting.

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

#193

Post by Buttons840 »

neilv wrote: post #192

It sounded good, up until the examples for: > I'll dedicate a post to specific ways you can identify motivation during hiring, but in short, look for All will be gamed by interviewees, by the afternoon this hits the HN front page. (And, for example, tech interview prep has already been telling people to fake passion and curiosity, for many years now.) Here's what you do: 1. Consider that the early startup also belong…

I'm quite cynical, but all this sounds fair to me.

Modest compensation with good equity sharing is hard for candidates to game too.

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

#194

Post by joe_mamba »

amarant wrote: post #123
joe_mamba wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stockholm is not representative of entire Europe same how SF isn't representative of entire NA. There's too many variables and shades of gray to give a simple answer, with closest to a correct answer being "it depends" based on where you live, how good you are and how in demand your skill set is to the demand of your local market, but the market is pretty much fucked in many high-CoL locations worldwide due to offsho…

I deliberately chose to compare two tech-heavy locations to avoid weird and difficult comparisons like the tech industry in rural Nebraska Vs Moldavia. Stockholm was a natural point of comparison for me given that I used to live there until very recently.i have a decent picture of the dev market in Stockholm. Silicon valley is the most mentioned tech centre on here, and is therefore the American tech market I know th…

Sure but then you still can't extrapolate the comparison beyond SF and Stockholm. I'm also in Europe but the job market where I live don't give a shit about what it looks like in Stockholm but they can diverge massively.

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

#195

Post by joe_mamba »

theshrike79 wrote: post #186
al_borland wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

No, it's a thing in most of Europe like France or Germany for unionized trades. All trades there have publicly documented salary bands based on education and YoE per job, where the negotiations starting point for a wage for a position must not be below the minimum threshold but also can't exceed a certain upper threshold. In some cases, the company can decide to place you outside the union agreed tariff/band range to give you a higher wage, but then you might be exempt from some strict union rules like 35h/week working hours and such.

And they cap the top end of the salary bands because the yearly budget for wage increases is a fixed pie for most companies, and so to have money left to give entry level workers the great wage increases as mandated for by unions, they need to cap the increases to the top wages to prevent bleeding/bankruptcy. Do you think all European companies have unlimited money to give all their workers X% wage increases?

This is how it works in Austria.

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

#196

Post by Buttons840 »

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.

Reminder that unions don't have to do anything about salary.

I'd love a tech union that simply says:

Every time an on-call engineer has to work during off-hours, they get compensated 4x that time in PTO, and that PTO must be used during the next 30 days, or it is paid out at 20x their normal hourly rate.

This ensures everyone shares in the burden of off-hours work. If off-hours work is happening often, then engineers are going to be spending a lot of time away on PTO, and if the company pressures them to not take the PTO, then the company is going to be paying them a lot. Let's align incentives, I don't want to work on off-hours emergencies, and the company doesn't want me to either.

No mention of pay anywhere. Unions can do a lot of good without ever touching pay.

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

#197

Post by joe_mamba »

nebula8804 wrote: post #171
lqstuart wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 j…

>Well on a positive note, it may eventually lead to a union or works council for technologists.

Good luck fighting offshoring.

> It shows that people are slowly chipping away at the capital class and sooner or later they will have to throw us some breadcrumbs.

That means nothing. I'd be surprised if he can implement 10% of what he promised in his campaign or if he's just gonna be another plant of the capital class that promises impossible things but then ends up doing nothing when the finances hit the road.

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

#199

Post by Skinney »

Culonavirus wrote: post #175
marcus_holmes wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 y…

> You work for money.

I work for money because I need food on the table and a place to sleep. It doesn't motivate me much more than that. In fact, I wouldn't even call it motivation. It's a requirement to live.

There have also been studies that have found that money stops making people happier or more motivated once their yearly salary exceeds a certain amount (the equivalent of 700.000NOK here in Norway).

Some people are primarily motivated by making as much money as possible, sure, but most people I've worked with have found someplace else to work once their current job stops being interesting.

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

#200

Post by yolo3000 »

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 think you can indirectly motivate, or is that something else? If you create a good working/team environment and reduce the factors that demotivate people, then you will indirectly motivate them. This includes working on yourself as a manager. There are of course edge cases, but most people will thrive if the environment is good.
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