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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

#201

Post by Muromec »

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?

Huh? If you have a collective agreement, all the compensation ranges are written down there. You get level 11 comp contract and your manager puts you at 85% of the scale, then the union decides the scale goes from say 85k to 95k. The next time the agreement is renegotiated, the scale gets bumped to 90k to 100k and you can't get past 100k until you promoted to the next function with a different comp level in a contract.

That's excluding pager duty hazard pay, may the God allmerciful steer your path away from it.

Unions are more about making the job conditions better than about maximizing the comp. Want to grind, go full 996 and sleep at work to afford that fancy house in Las Vegas.

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

#202

Post by Muromec »

Buttons840 wrote: post #196
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.

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…

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

The union is the party that negotiates my annual salary increases that are not performance related. They will however not negotiate it up to FANG level because it's not FANG and I'm not in US. I will also get mostly the same comp as the guys on the left and on the right even if they aren't really bright (I'm not either).

>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.

why not 100x? why work off hours anyway?

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

#203

Post by LemonWho »

simianwords wrote: post #198
dbetteridge wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One is too many...

[flagged]

This is the Charlie Kirk argument against gun control, "I'm ok with a small number of gun deaths, it's a small price to pay for freedom". All well and good until you become one of those gun deaths.

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

#204

Post by ernst_klim »

joe_mamba wrote: post #195
theshrike79 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

Same in Germany. That's why usually Max Mustermann (55) get's a better compensation for doing bare minimum than you for doing more work.

But in case of layoffs you will be kicked out first and he would be kicked out the last and with a far better severance package.

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

#205

Post by ubercore »

AdamN wrote: post #188
f1shy wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Good managers will help you find your own motivation and set you up to follow it. Bad managers will kill it.

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

#206

Post by Muromec »

bob001 wrote: post #43
Herring wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s better to look at what didn’t happen: unionization. Americans often remind me of Steve Jobs trying to cure cancer using diets & acupuncture. You know what the solutions are, you just don’t like them.

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.

>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.

So... 500k is the normal pay and 2.5mil is the staff+ pay, right? How many people you know actually make that?

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

#207

Post by Muromec »

array_key_first wrote: post #174
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.

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 ma…

There aren't 10x ers, but there are definetly 0.15xers

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

#208

Post by trusche »

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…

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

Sadly, I have seen this in almost every startup led by founders without an engineering background I've ever been a part of.

In my personal experience, this is often caused by overeager sales team promising the world for the next deal, only to fob it off to the engineering team who now "urgently" need to build "features" and "work hard" to make it happen. This is when your intrinsically motivated engineers start looking for the exit.

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

#209

Post by theshrike79 »

joe_mamba wrote: post #195
theshrike79 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

In Finland we have salary bands for some jobs, but it's usually just the minimum. Some have a maximum, but there are always "personal bonuses" the employer can give on top of that. But these are usually "old" professions like teachers, nurses, factory workers.

For IT jobs I haven't seen an official salary band anywhere and there basically is no union mandated maximum and the minimum is mostly a suggestion.

We also get universally negotiated percentage raises every now and then, but it's like 1-2%. Personal raises are on top of that and can be a LOT more.

The maximum cap sounds just stupid. When you hit the limit, why would you do anything past the absolute minimum to stay at that level?

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