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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

#211

Post by bojan »

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…

> No, it's a thing in most of Europe like France or Germany for unionized trades.

This is how it often works even without unions. Everywhere I worked there were salary ranges you can't go out of without changing the role, and I was never in a union.

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

#212

Post by TuxSH »

Muromec wrote: post #206
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.

>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?

SWE rarely earn $100k gross/yr TC in Western European nations. It's closer to $50k~$80k in many cases.

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

#213

Post by epolanski »

The whole thing about motivation is non sense.

1. Motivation is a feeling, it's an emotion, it comes and goes, it's a bonus. It's discipline and professionalism that make the huge difference. Many people have the motivation and dream to "create their own programming language", "launch their startup", "make it to the NBA", "lose 40 pounds and get fitter" but this motivation, a feeling, will consistently fight the emotions telling you to have fun, relax, go out with friends, play video games to relieve stress. Motivation is a great boost to discipline and professionalism, but those two survive even when motivation goes off, whereas won't take you anywhere.

2. You cannot hire for motivation and if you're looking for that trait you'll likely projecting your own biases. I suspect that the author of the blog post has nerdy hobbits so he projects himself on candidates. Non sense. Yes, nerdier engineers are likely more interested in the craft and in overall engineering, but that says absolutely nothing about them being motivated in building yet another B2B SaaS.

3. A very good engineer joining a startup, should have the implicit motivation of wanting to get rich in few years, otherwise he/she's be joining a cushier job that pays better.

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

#214

Post by Draiken »

yolo3000 wrote: post #200
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.…

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.

I agree with the parent because what you're describing doesn't indirectly motivate people, it merely avoids demotivation. If the person doesn't feel motivated by themselves (e.g. someone burned out or who does not care) they won't suddenly be motivated because the environment is good. It's still an internal force.

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

#215

Post by cudgy »

ubercore wrote: post #205
AdamN wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In this case, I would prefer an average manager that does not try to interfere with my motivations.

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

#216

Post by Yokohiii »

dcastm wrote: post #74
amarant wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they? Do you have a source for that? My impression is that it's easier to find engineering work in Stockholm than in silicon valley atm, but I haven't measured objectively.

I live in Spain. I’ve been in the industry for the last 10 years. I’ve seen from a very close distance several European companies move a big part of their operations to India. Have had close friends laid off recently and seen them struggle for months to find a new jobs. Plus, I see tighter freelance market these days. This was unthinkable not long ago.

My former company had the brilliant idea to outsource native app development to india. This was mabye 2015 in germany and they tried to roll out the app for several years. There were severe communication and quality problems. Our company wasted massive time on it, until they finally added a single native app dev and we started making progress. We already had like 30 people in tech department and adding a single position was a fucking joke on the payroll.

Any manager that thinks he can beat the value of a single dev with a random ass sweatshop from india is delusional. The cultural difference is massive, quality and work ethics as well. It's a high friction job for a manager. Well at least if you expect a bit of quality and timeliness.

(Sorry for all indians that do a good job, it's just the sweatshop/agency remote software dev culture simply doesn't work. Even a european sweatshop usually delivers worse quality then inhouse devs.)

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

#217

Post by dogman1050 »

As a manager, my job was to make sure they were working on the right thing. If they didn't carry their weight, I either reduced the impact by assigning them necessary-but-boring tasks to offload the high performers, or PIP'd them. I "rehabilitated" several engineers over the years and even gave them references when we parted. Staff that lied to me more than once were terminated.

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

#218

Post by n4r9 »

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…

Great managers absolutely can provide motivation. They can have a genuinely compelling vision for a product - "we're going to build the best damn FooGadget on the web". They can figure out what motivates their reports and work to make it transparent to them - for example some engineers like to see positive client feedback, whilst other engineers like having thorny problems to solve.

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

#219

Post by stuartjohnson12 »

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 think what people miss about indexing on social signals is that convincing social performance is hard. My suspicion when people say things like "ah but if you index on a social signal then everyone will just perform the social signal" are themselves feeling as though they do not naturally signal that thing, and ironically are frustrated by the effort that it takes to appear as though they do.

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

#220

Post by KptMarchewa »

TuxSH wrote: post #212
Muromec wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

SWE rarely earn $100k gross/yr TC in Western European nations. It's closer to $50k~$80k in many cases.

It's higher in Poland lol.
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