Do not be a sole founder / tech lead / manager who uses obscure tech or add immediate geometrically-increasing tech debt to be paid almost immediately by others.
No management needed: anti-patterns in early-stage engineering teams
241–250 of 361 posts
Re: No management needed: anti-patterns in early-stage engineering teams
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
That’s not how unions work negotiations work, and the younger worker getting paid less is 100% thinking that they’ll be the senior guy some day.
"Senior". Looks like you've already made it a tenure and not output based pay system. Which I think proves exactly what people don't like about unions or those who push for them.
In an output based system the number of high level people is relatively small and terminal level is far from the top level. It doesn't take much for people to realize that there's little chance of them becoming an L8 so why shouldn't an L8 get paid less? Moreover in my experience people have little insight into the value those at higher levels provide so will consider them dead weight.
Re: No management needed: anti-patterns in early-stage engineering teams
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would tell a recruiter directly that 996 is a red flag. Prior to that it was cracked (née 10x (née ninja)) engineers or sigma grindset or whatever. It's performative. If you bring people together to build something that they actually give a shit about, you'll out-perform a group of people who are grinding out of fear. And you'll _definitely_ out-perform the kinds of people who are buzzword heavy.
i agree. but. there's something in the behaviour of these unicorns that should be examined. the idea that an engineer can be a ninja, 10x or unicorn independent of the processes of their environment and working group is laughable. i have known several people who were identified as "highly productive" and they all had some individual traits like a) they were very good with individual time management, b) were not afrai…
What is a ‘wicked’ problem?
Re: No management needed: anti-patterns in early-stage engineering teams
#244Earlier 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 want to hazard a guess that a motivational manager is just like a well-oiled cog in a machine. You essentially never notice them as having influence over your motivation and only pay attention to the squeaky and rattling and faulty ones.
The best one I had in that regard was just a nice dude who I wanted to help as much as I could since he'd help me when needed. I don't think any other way would really work in the current landscape. Whenever a manager talks about our grand product and the clients dying to get a taste of our artisinal code stew, even they can't take themselves entirely seriously. The only thing that seems to help is just being liked so your team wants to make your life easier. (outside of money/benefits/promotions and maybe short term gaslighting)
Re: No management needed: anti-patterns in early-stage engineering teams
#245> 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 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.…
This is a core part of systemantics [0]! People are going to do what they’re going to do, as a manager the most you can do to help is to put people in the right teams and to get distractions out of their way.
It’s a difficult idea to accept but once you accept it, it’s kind of liberating. It follows that hiring and then work-assignments during roadmapping are the two points of highest leverage in making a mutually-successful employee-manager relationship.
The problem you’re solving there is a search problem. You’re trying to discover if the employee’s motivation landscape peaks in any dimensions that align with the roadmap. They can be the most skilled person in the world, but if the peaks don’t overlap, the project will never run smoothly. It also follows that in extreme cases where you have a tenured employee that you want to retain for future work, you should absolutely let them drive and shape the roadmap.
Re: No management needed: anti-patterns in early-stage engineering teams
#246Earlier 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.
What you are saying is that companies would want to pay theor employees more money, but they can’t because of unions. Sorry, hard sell.
> companies would want to pay theor employees more money, but they can’t because of unions
Well, inkind-of sort-of makes sense. It happens that companies would like to spread the salary increase budget as they please, while unions tend to request that the lowest salaries get a larger share.
Re: No management needed: anti-patterns in early-stage engineering teams
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are those who can provide 10x output in certain kinds of problems. Either due to experience or however their minds work. If their output is as a tech lead then even a 2x can provide an overall 10x increase through second order impact via their team. There are also those who provide 0.5x and 0.1x output on a wide range of problems.
> If their output is as a tech lead then even a 2x can provide an overall 10x increase through second order impact via their team. This is something the 10x mythology tends to leave out: there are a vanishingly few people who are significantly above the 90th percentile in terms of individual productivity but if the discussion shifted to team dynamics, that’s where you can actually see really big gains by helping a la…
I think its also that few companies have a way to allow a 10x individual productivity engineer to focus on just the things they are 10x as good at. It's almost never everything. Once you add in meetings, politics, proposals, perf ladder requirements, mentoring, code reviews, etc. the result is a regression to the mean.
Re: No management needed: anti-patterns in early-stage engineering teams
#248> I know several top 1% engineers in the Valley who disengage from recruiting processes when 996 or something similar is mentioned. A few years back, on this board, 996 was something people made fun of when it was reported that some Chinese companies did it [1]. And now, the strongest claim this blog can make is that some engineers in the US would disengage from recruiting? That the issue with working on saturdays is…
Former Alibaba employee for a season of my life. I have to be careful with my next sentences because on the internet because it's easy for people to read things in a vacuum and interpret in the worse possible way, so don't do that because thats not how I mean it. The 996 hours are not useful work. It's appearance over productivity.
The mythology is:
- 30 people between the ages of 18 and 25 sharing a tiny, single office room working on folding tables and CAT 7 cables hanging from the ceiling
- Whiteboards from floor to ceiling on every wall covered in scribbles and diagrams in red, black, and blue pen, half-erased with some "SAVE FOREVER" circled parts
- Typing really fast on loud, clicky keyboards
- Doing nothing but coding or working 18 hours/day with no life at all
- Living at work in sleeping bags
- Surviving on cold delivered pizza, hot instant ramen, and coffee with only a mini fridge, a microwave, and a coffee pot
- Spending absurdly little money on everything
The problem is that if even one gigabusiness began vaguely in such a manner, someone will declare some aspect(s) were "essential" and try to cargo cult the "hard work" pseudo-signals without considering sustainability or that it's even necessary. There are far too many engineers who will overwork themselves until they reach burn out or will not maximize real productivity by working less and taking breaks/vacations, and then won't want to work on a venture at all anymore.
PSA: Don't be a sucker and don't work for below market rates. Eschew working for other people and megacorps when possible; form unions, worker-owned co-ops, and/or get significant amounts of preferred liquidation-preference shares.
Re: No management needed: anti-patterns in early-stage engineering teams
#249Earlier 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…
The minimum wage thing in France is true but it's so low for developers that it doesn't play any role in salary négociation.
Never seen any upper threshold except just what the company décides.
By law people with the same job and same qualification etc in a company must earn the same thing but that's theory more than practice, except maybe large companies.
Also being in an union or not does not change anything.
Re: No management needed: anti-patterns in early-stage engineering teams
#250Earlier 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.…
This is a core part of systemantics [0]! People are going to do what they’re going to do, as a manager the most you can do to help is to put people in the right teams and to get distractions out of their way. It’s a difficult idea to accept but once you accept it, it’s kind of liberating. It follows that hiring and then work-assignments during roadmapping are the two points of highest leverage in making a mutually-su…
I read that book as I was 8 or 10! Must be still in my head!