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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

#221

Post by Muromec »

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.

I rounded up a bit for nicer numbers, but it's more like 75-95 than 50-80 this year.

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

#222

Post by KptMarchewa »

Aurornis wrote: post #149
tptacek wrote: post #144

We're apparently back to making psychoanalysts out of interviewers: I'll dedicate a post to specific ways you can identify motivation during hiring, but in short, look for: the obvious one: evidence that they indeed exhibited these external signs of motivation (in an unforced way!) in past jobs; signs of grit in their career and life paths (how did they respond to adversity, how have they put their past successes or…

10 years ago I bought into the idea of hiring for nerdy interests and hobbies as a proxy for motivation. I will say I met some excellent people during this time, but looking back those same people would have been hired anyway due to their accomplishments at companies. > though it's a great way to keep your Slack channels full of zesty, nerdy, non-remunerative enterprise during the core hours everyone has to actually…

>10 years ago I bought into the idea of hiring for nerdy interests and hobbies as a proxy for motivation. I will say I met some excellent people during this time, but looking back those same people would have been hired anyway due to their accomplishments at companies.

>Nerdy interests and hobbies is not a good proxy for work ability.

Aren't you actually describing a great proxy?

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

#223

Post by ljm »

n4r9 wrote: post #218
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…

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.

Yes. It stands to reason that if a manager can demotivate you, then they must be able to do the opposite. Both building the vibe and killing it can achieve that in terms of extrinsic motivation, culture, the psychological contract, and so on.

These are important factors to consider for people who work in highly collaborative teams as opposed to those who prefer to be 10x lone wolves, which is the impression I get from the article and the overall startup vibe I've experienced over the past few years.

HN might be over-indexed on the "leave me alone to do my work", "I don't have friends I have colleagues," type of person but it's not representative of the entire population.

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

#224

Post by snovv_crash »

appellations wrote: post #153
tyre wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been an early employee (sub 10 and 20) in two unicorns and another (a presidential campaign) that didn't have a valuation but did the equivalent. People did not work 40 hours per week, and I feel comfortable saying that the companies could not have been as successful if people had. The common threads were: - incredible ICs - founders who spiked in the most important areas for that market - a mission that everyon…

Are you saying people worked less than 40 hours a week or more than 40 hours a week in those organizations? I’m assuming over, but it’s unclear to me from the tone of your post.

Been there too, and for me it was under 40 hours. Sometimes you'd have to cut people off and say they needed to go home if they were trying to pull more. But the whole 'strategy' is that cleaning up mistakes takes way more time than getting it right the first time, so keeping people fresh and without distractions is the most important thing.

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

#226

Post by bob001 »

theshrike79 wrote: post #209
joe_mamba wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 ge…

> The maximum cap sounds just stupid.

Conceptually unions are a democracy and people are selfish. Why should I let some other worker make 10x what I do when I can instead have them make 1x and spread out the other 9x around including to me?

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

#227

Post by bob001 »

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…

Unions aren't about what you want them to be about but what the average member wants them to be about. More or less.

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

#228

Post by n4r9 »

friendzis wrote: post #187
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…

> A good manager understands this, and motivates by helping you understand how the things you are doing are actually critical to the success of the team and the company Your definition of a "good manager" is essentially "does not actively sabotage work of subordinates". That's not motivation, that's merely absence of active demotivation. A person knowing how and in what ways their work contributes to the success of t…

Disagree. This is explicitly active: "helping you understand how the things you are doing are actually critical to the success of the team". It could include building out a team dashboard that tracks the consequences of bugfixes, for example.

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

#229

Post by bob001 »

data-ottawa wrote: post #158
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 find it hard to believe workers would vote for a union to lower or cap their wages. That feels like a total straw man. In my experience unions suck when they overemphasize fairness over real world practicalities (see almost anything seniority based). They don't have to be that way.

There is a large pay disparity. Why wouldn't someone at the 50th percentile vote to have those at the 95th get lower salaries so the 50th percentile goes up a bit?

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

#230

Post by ragall »

ljm wrote: post #223
n4r9 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes. It stands to reason that if a manager can demotivate you, then they must be able to do the opposite. Both building the vibe and killing it can achieve that in terms of extrinsic motivation, culture, the psychological contract, and so on. These are important factors to consider for people who work in highly collaborative teams as opposed to those who prefer to be 10x lone wolves, which is the impression I get fro…

> It stands to reason that if a manager can demotivate you, then they must be able to do the opposite.

You share that with no justification. There's no such "reason".

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