221–230 of 249 posts
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same in my experience as well so youre not alone. i dont see a solution though, its not like upper management is going to fire themselves.
Why there needs to be a solution? As long as shareholders and the board are happy...
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I'd love to see an example of such an accepted accountability at least once in my life.
Next time there’s a re-org, look around for managers who net lost reports, or even “decided to move on”.
Meanwhile the most useless people are failing upward into CEO.
Just a reminder that lazy managers are the source of burnout for those who are under them. As a manager I can say, there is no easier job than just forwarding requests from directors directly to developers, not planning, and promising crazy deadlines to avoid conflict with higher management. If someone is being paid more, this person has to work more, I have seen so many people becoming managers just to actually avoi…
"Management" definitely seems easier, than having to do technical work, without proper accountability. But it seems it's hard to hold management accountable. For an IC such as an engineer, if you don't deliver code for the deadline or check-in, it's clear you haven't delivered. But how do you judge the performance of managers? Oh, right, by the size of the "empire"...
Size of the empire isn't something a manager does, it's a reward senior management gives. This is true unless the company has open allocation, as Google did before it started eating its own corpse.
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As a former engineer and now manager, it's not easier. It's different. Like, yes I write much less code, but I also have to show much more empathy and be able to communicate with different people differently. Helping every engineer on the team advance their careers is tough, because everyone heard feedback differently. Combine that with the one on ones where someone tells you about how shitty their life has been rece…
Thanks for your comment. I'm pretty sick of the low effort takes on this site (read: internet in general). Every role is different. Each has its own challenges and anybody can be good or bad in a given role. Too many people trying to blame upper management, blame L1 managers, blame developers, without understanding, or even attempting to understand, the challenges they face. It doesn't just work like that. I'm 9 year…
Just a reminder that lazy managers are the source of burnout for those who are under them. As a manager I can say, there is no easier job than just forwarding requests from directors directly to developers, not planning, and promising crazy deadlines to avoid conflict with higher management. If someone is being paid more, this person has to work more, I have seen so many people becoming managers just to actually avoi…
Unfortunately, the belief of many is that if you are paid more, you are a more valuable person , and thus get to look down on those who make less than you. This very frequently manifests in believing that it is the Lower People who have to do actual work, while your job as a Higher Person is just to make sure they are doing their work (in the simplest way possible—butt in seat == working), and not doing things above…
This kind of finger pointing / blaming is not helpful. Basically, the reason why big organizations are a lot less efficient than smaller ones is the communication overhead; and the resulting miscommunication. Small groups of people don't even need managers because they can figure out between themselves what needs doing and in what order. Management is introduced when small groups become larger and point to point comm…
Having worked in finance for many years at various types of firms (banks, hedge funds, fintech startups) and hired many FAANG folks, this breakdown from a former FAANG hire put it best: "At FAANG, there were always more people than work to do. This led to lots of infighting for the best projects. In finance, there is always more work than people so the fighting is more about trying to make multiple stakeholders happy…
> In finance, there is always more work than people It would seem the general theme is: If the work is "cool" or "new", there isn't much of it to go around. If it is "legacy" or "profitable", no one wants to be in the same building as it.
And elite companies won't hire less "brilliant" but worth ethical to do the boring work. During the fat times, they paid people too much for work they hate that wastes their talent. Google is full of PhD scientists maintaining CRUD apps.
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Facebook and Google also have parallel tracks up to very senior levels.
I mean yeah, theoretically. It's nonsense though. Just count the number of individual contributors vs managers at a director level and it quickly becomes apparent that one of the parallel tracks is much, much larger than the other.
What's stranger is that managers write more code than high level (not line level) "org tech leads" who sit in meetings all day.
Why do we expect to have good managers when we promote based on technical competency rather than leadership ability? Sure, a certain basic level of technical competency is needed, but after that management and development require different skills.
First, it's ego. Engineers are a deeply opinionated species that will not heed the advice of a man they deem to be inferior to them in technical ability. Technical competency based promotion is about managing hubris and egos. For the second, I have a hot-take: "All problems in tech are work estimation problems." And so too is who gets to be manager. Nothing annoys an engineer more than a manager who estimates arbitra…
What matters is finding the 10x to 1000x value thing to build, and putting resources (usually many people) building it. It doesn't matter how long it takes, as long as it's something people need and can afford and you are able to build it.
Is there really a “debate” over “fake work”, or is that just some made up term a clueless and unethical VC tweeted? There’s been a hard push from capital to put pressure on labor. All these fantasy stories about “fake work”, “people working two jobs”… are all just cover stories for capital and execs to ramp up the pressure and punitive actions. I’m sure BusinessInsider is more than happy to play along. While this art…