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

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

ablg.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 361 posts

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

#271

Post by TuxSH »

Muromec wrote: post #221
TuxSH wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For good companies; there are _quite_ a few companies that underpay and not as many interesting job opportunities. Let's just say "at least 2x~2.5" and move on.

Also, even if you did not mention it, UK is a bit of a special case (English-speaking countries that has thus been attracting quite a lot of international talent (and companies) at least until recently), I wouldn't put it in the same bucket as EU countries.

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

#272

Post by Gravityloss »

numpy-thagoras wrote: post #155
exabrial wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yep, if you were to watch what happens at a 996 shop, it's people literally living their at-home life with their fellow employees for most of the time.

Why is this theater kept up?

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

#273

Post by simianwords »

LemonWho wrote: post #203
simianwords wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

This is the Charlie Kirk argument against gun control, "I'm ok with a small number of gun deaths, it's a small price to pay for freedom". All well and good until you become one of those gun deaths.

I agree with him by the way. But this kind of maximalist thought ending cliche is weird and anti intellectual.

One death of an amazon employee means we should change the whole system? A huge number of people are employed by them, enjoy their lives, became multi millionaires.

Why am I flagged for a fairly normal opinion? A few deaths are okay if the wast majority are satisfied?

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

#274

Post by Muromec »

theshrike79 wrote: post #263
bob001 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

This "spread it around" sounds like some trickle down ecodomics madness to me =) If the company can't pay more to a high performer they surely won't just give thast money to the average folks. It'll just go to C-staff bonuses and conference trips to exotic countries. (Provided that the average performers are above the union minimum already)

The likely two outcomes are -- 1) the upper limit of salary band for everyone in the same role is raised high enough or 2) the high performing person is leaving to a place that pays it with a band or without.

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

#275

Post by Herring »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #268
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…

Seeing the wage difference in Europe and the UK even for enterprise developers let alone those who work for major (mostly American based ) tech companies, is not a rousing endorsement for unions for developers

When your fascists get done with you, if there's anything left, you'll deeply wish you had spent that wage difference to get rid of them. Inequality is very corrosive to society. Europe had to learn that lesson the hard way too.

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

#276

Post by nemomarx »

Gravityloss wrote: post #272
numpy-thagoras wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, if you were to watch what happens at a 996 shop, it's people literally living their at-home life with their fellow employees for most of the time.

Why is this theater kept up?

Bosses like it, and maybe it keeps people from interviewing for other jobs?

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

#277

Post by malfist »

Muromec wrote: post #201
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? Huh? If you have a collective agreement, all the compensation ranges are written down there. You get level 11 comp contract and your manager puts you at 85% of the scale, then the union decides the scale goes from say 85k to 95k. The next time the agreement is renegotiated, the scale gets bumped to 90k to 100k and you can't get past 100k unti…

Employers already have salary caps and comp ranges. They're called the "pay band" at most companies. You can head over to levels.fyi to look at most of them.

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

#278

Post by Muromec »

bob001 wrote: post #242
acdha wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 g…

It's both really and that's why the scale is capped.

Union shops still have compensation levels. If your pay is defined as 85% of a scale L8 and the collective agreement says it gets increased by 2 and half percentage points each year, you will eventually reach 100% and will just sit there and still make 10k less than L9. The scale itself is adjusted yearly.

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

#279

Post by Muromec »

TuxSH wrote: post #271
Muromec wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

For good companies; there are _quite_ a few companies that underpay and not as many interesting job opportunities. Let's just say "at least 2x~2.5" and move on. Also, even if you did not mention it, UK is a bit of a special case (English-speaking countries that has thus been attracting quite a lot of international talent (and companies) at least until recently), I wouldn't put it in the same bucket as EU countries.

There is a lot of everything and I got lowballed with 85 today (with three mandatory hebeas corpus days, while the rest of the team is in a different country lol).

I'm not sure where the UK part comes from zo? Nobody upthread mentioned it.

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

#280

Post by dkarl »

setopt wrote: post #262
TuringNYC wrote: post #251

"I know several top 1% engineers in the Valley who disengage from recruiting processes when 996 or something similar is mentioned." Setting this expectation early seems honest and the best thing to do. The worst is when companies sell people on WLB but then flip it to 996 -- you end up with all the wrong people and no one wins. Best to be transparent from the onset. I always encourage candidates to go visit the compa…

> including a visit at 5:30pm or 6:30pm to see the state of the office and attendance As an academic, I used to work 11am-8pm many days when I was younger thanks to flexible working hours, and I wasn’t the only one working late but not early. I realize this is probably more rare in corporate settings, but keep in mind if the place has flexible hours you might see more people at 6pm despite people not doing 996.

That was true of me as well, and at the same time, I was working alongside parents who worked 7:30-5:30 with a break to pick up the kids from school.

Nobody wants a "visit" from the founder, anyway. They want timely two-way flow of information, access and guidance on the occasions when they need it, and maybe (maybe) an occasional chance to hang out socially as a group with no reference to work. Nobody wants the founder randomly dropping by during work hours to assess morale.

Post reply on HN