Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Individuals Matter

danluu.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 419 posts

Re: Individuals Matter

#211

Post by DocTomoe »

dharmab wrote: post #193
efitz wrote: post #116

I am a security engineer but have been a business leader from time to time. Business leaders often need to plan around dates- eg ”should we spend $50k announcing at conference Y in month Z, or should we wait until month A?” “Our competition just launched; will we be able to launch this quarter (the board wants to know, and we have to report material financial impact items quarterly or face SEC fines)?” Every team I h…

A technique I read once (and lost the link) was to track both the estimated time metrics and the error in estimation for every engineer. Over time you could build reasonable error bars around every engineer's estimations, and then sum the estimates _with the confidence intervals_ together and figure out the probability of achieving a certain ship date.

That's what Fog Creek Software's FogBugz tried to do. I liked it a lot, it also allowed for some team structure planning (e.g. giving you a chance to see if your team consists of pessimistic estimaters or positive ones, and mix accordingly). Unfortunately, their marketshare got gobbled up by Jira.

Re: Individuals Matter

#212

Post by rStar »

dgreensp wrote: post #170
jcims wrote: post #36

I'm an introvert, I love working from home, I live in the woods with a 1/3rd mile long driveway. Since my youngest went off to college I'm here alone with her fish and a cat. I go into town once or twice a week for supplies and the rest of the time I'm just out here in my little sanctuary enjoying the lack of people. That said, even I know that while individuals matter, teams matter more. And I don't see anything in…

Wow, how do I start a list of people to never work for.

i’ve had one for years. the way you start is, when you meet an asshole, write their name and company and job title down, and a short, less than 20 words, statement describing the assholery. keep doing that for a few years and watch as patterns start to emerge.

Re: Individuals Matter

#213

Post by bobm_kite9 »

My takeaway is that danluu is saying that, at the small scale, people understand how individuals contribute to teams. But at the large scale (like the HR department) we don't.

At the small scale, we're able to apply systems thinking - a team can be viewed as a system composed of a set of interacting parts.

However at larger scales, systems thinking becomes unwieldy - the interactions increase quadratically. There, we fall back to the Law of Large Numbers [1].

"Fungibility" and the related failures arise as a result of this.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers

Re: Individuals Matter

#215

Post by quickthrower2 »

hinkley wrote: post #99
csee wrote: post #16

Realizing this is important for retention. It's damaging when upper management falsely thinks people are interchangeble, which is a common view among non-technical types and HR. This leads to 10x people feeling underappreciated and resentful, ultimately causing them to resign for higher compensation and more appreciation elsewhere. It can literally destroy small companies if an individual's unique contribution isn't…

What I've experienced at companies on a death spiral is that there are a few people everyone can agree are useless, and beyond that you start picking people based on your poor understanding of how the sausage is actually made. Once someone really useful has been let go, you have the sudden realization that your situation isn't that different than theirs. If management can misunderstand Tim's value, they sure as hell…

Yeah been there, and instaquit. That company seems to be a shell now.

Re: Individuals Matter

#216

Post by Smaug123 »

Kinrany wrote: post #208
barry-cotter wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Previously from danluu.com on the topics you mentioned Company culture matters https://danluu.com/culture/ Different organisations have radically different expectations about how fast and well you can work https://danluu.com/productivity-velocity/ Different organisations are capable of different things because of the (kinds of) people who work there https://danluu.com/in-house/ Two different kinds of oransations work…

All of these are about organizations and individuals, not teams.

No, they're not - at least if teams have some base level of autonomy. A team could choose to grow itself along the dimensions in https://danluu.com/culture/ without the company even knowing.

Re: Individuals Matter

#217

Post by noduerme »

bobm_kite9 wrote: post #213

My takeaway is that danluu is saying that, at the small scale, people understand how individuals contribute to teams. But at the large scale (like the HR department) we don't. At the small scale, we're able to apply systems thinking - a team can be viewed as a system composed of a set of interacting parts. However at larger scales, systems thinking becomes unwieldy - the interactions increase quadratically. There, we…

Oddly, though, most critical moments in history have been shaped by (highly error-prone, but non-fungible) individuals, acting on their own.

Re: Individuals Matter

#218

Post by DnDGrognard »

alfiedotwtf wrote: post #198
rramadass wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>One of the primary jobs of managers at all levels is to plan and then execute in accordance with the plan "Plans" can never be set in stone. They evolve based on the people involved and circumstances. A Manager's job is to understand his people and then Plan accordingly; not the other way around. >If all you can do is complain This is exactly the wrong way to frame the discussion. Pointing out that you are clueless…

> "Plans" can never be set in stone Setting plans in stone was the entire Waterfall Methodology where contracts had requirements and milestones locked in and any deviation meant heavy penalties.

Not when I have done waterfall - each waterfall phase can iterate

Re: Individuals Matter

#219

Post by aahortwwy »

jcims wrote: post #137
aahortwwy wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So show me a methodology that mere mortals can implement successfully. Commit to a deliverable or a deadline, but never both.

“Ok awesome! Glad to hear you’ve committed to deliver widget, when do you think it will be done? We have four business units that were going to use wedgie but that’s getting decommed next year and they’d much rather avoid a pivot. Oh and change restrictions start in six weeks, don’t forget that. BTW what’s your team’s vacation schedule looking like? We only get to roll over 7 days this year, hopefully they took some…

"No."

It's remarkably powerful.

Re: Individuals Matter

#220

Post by quickthrower2 »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #80
throwawaygh wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this really true for small companies? A senior at FAANG is worth sometimes well north of 500K/yr. There are plenty of folks strewn about small software companies that do similar work to a senior or even staff/principal at a faang at wildly huge discounts. It's hard to find numbers for the value of small software businesses (OP's quote), but this article [1] puts the number at $667k. If that's true, the engineer is…

> A senior at FAANG is worth sometimes well north of 500K/yr. There are plenty of folks strewn about small software companies that do similar work to a senior or even staff/principal at a faang at wildly huge discounts. Those discounts are why it's easier to poach the employees. If a company has 10 engineers earning $200K/year, why would you buy the company for $667K per person and then pay the employees on top of th…

There are only so many $500k spots available. If every engineer in the world said “I’m moving to SF and applying to Google” and assuming visa allowed that you’d see Google paying a lot less for talent! Which means that while some people earning 200k are underpaid, they can’t all be underpaid.
Post reply on HN