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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

#281

Post by pessimizer »

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.

This is really my priority to achieve at a job, and one of the reasons I try to be good enough to be indispensable is to be allowed to roll in in the morning whenever I get there.

I have a very tough time in the morning convincing myself to go to work, and a very tough time at work tearing myself away from something in an intermediate state. Things at work are always in an intermediate state at 5:00, unless you stopped working well before then (or got very lucky), so I always end up working late whether I come in on time or come in late.

So I'm always trying to get to the point where management lets me get there when I get there, and trusts me to be productive. It's a mental thing. I get up early and do a lot in the morning; I'm a morning person. Maybe too much so. The time between getting off work and going to bed is garbage time for me; a long annoying commute and a meal. When I leave at 5:00 I just fall asleep by 9:00.

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

#282

Post by jt2190 »

crazygringo wrote: post #117
bob001 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. In a company of 5-6 total engineers who are actually self-motivated and competent none of these things matter. If you need stand-ups for people to be aware of work being done then you're bandaid fixing a deeper issue. Same for retros since all of that should already be getting communicated in five other ways. If not then you've got bigger issues. Same for 1-on-1s. If the founders don't know these things o…

It has nothing to do with motivation or competence. Teams don't just work together magically and "organically". They're made of diverse human beings, every one of us, who come from different backgrounds with different expectations about when and what to communicate and when and what not to and around what is who's responsibility when. Different levels of experience, having worked at different places with different pr…

> Teams don't just work together magically and "organically".

This is the “employees are resources” mentality, and is common in mature companies. In a startup, however, you need to hire for individuals that will “make it rain”, and not wait around for some process or manager to tell them to communicate or do work. If your employees are not coming together as a team and figuring things out without your handholding you’ve hired the wrong people.

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

#283

Post by pessimizer »

philipallstar wrote: post #236
ragall wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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".

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

It stands to reason that if gravity can make things fall down, it can make things fall up.

It stands to reason that if an earthquake can collapse a building that it can build one.

It stands to reason that if rat poison can kill rats then it can make them stronger.

("reason" left to be worked out by the reader as an exercise)

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

#284

Post by bsoles »

> Intellectual curiosity in the form of hobbies, nerdy interests that they can talk about with passion

Although I know that a lot of people would argue for "what's wrong with doing your day job well and going home to your family, friends, etc?", in my experience, it is also true that the best software engineers I've seen during my 25 year career are the ones that made their job also their passion and hobby. I think intellectual curiosity and being a 9-5 person are inversely correlated, again in my experience.

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

#285

Post by _blk »

Did I miss the article mentioning to ask the eng staff how they actually like to work? I get corporate culture and all but engineers like having their subculture and that's fine. As a manager, it's my job to make sure my ppl feel equipped (schedule included) and to keep upper mgmt happy and convinced that it works even if work hours don't match other jobs. So I don't thinly it's ever too soon to hire a manager, as long as he thinks of himself as part of the eng team. Concerning motivation, you can absolutely motivate people by explaining why their work matters and by helping them with the corp paperwork. Example: engineers don't like SAP, I don't like it either, but the project we're working on is so cool that it's worth the 30min hassle per week and I'll sit with them until they get it.

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

#286

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

Herring wrote: post #275
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

While I support mostly liberal causes - I consider myself a liberal not a leftists - like an increased social safety net, universal healthcare etc, unions are just a bridge too far.

But me personally, at 51, I have said before that I plan to go by the Ben Kenobi strategy. When things get too bad, my wife and I will just become hermits somewhere and when the evil empire comes looking for us just give up and die.

We are seriously looking at “Plan B” countries to live in after retirement and are planning to spend 6 weeks in one of those countries starting next month. I work remotely.

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

#287

Post by nerdponx »

bsoles wrote: post #284

> Intellectual curiosity in the form of hobbies, nerdy interests that they can talk about with passion Although I know that a lot of people would argue for "what's wrong with doing your day job well and going home to your family, friends, etc?", in my experience, it is also true that the best software engineers I've seen during my 25 year career are the ones that made their job also their passion and hobby. I think i…

You can make your job in general a passion/hobby/craft but that doesn't mean you have to work more than your fair share for your employer to be a competent craftsperson.

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

#288

Post by avcloudy »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #181
thesuavefactor wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working more hours however =/= getting more done. In fact, some experiments show the opposite (within boundaries of course).

I disagree. It is more accurate to say that more working hours is a continuum of productivity. Imagine that you have two nearly identical software engineers. One works 40 hours per week and the other 41 hours per week. Which will be more productive? Very likely the 41 hour per week engineer. Now, if you compare 50 vs 51, then 60 vs 61, and so forth, the productivity gap will become much smaller, possibly hard to meas…

You're making a feely argument for a phenomenon that has evidence. The evidence is that there's a max amount of work you do per week, and the more you work the less you do per hour - and that max amount is below 40 hours, incidentally.

There's effective evidence that people who work 6 hours a day are more productive than people working 8 hours a day, and after 4 hours of active practice, you aren't getting any better.

And on top of this, perpetually tired and exhausted people are not at their best.

Regardless of whether or not you accept that someone working 41 hours really isn't doing more work than someone doing 40 - you can see that two people working 30 is much better than one person working 60. Working people for long hours is mismanagement, at some level.

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

#289

Post by friendzis »

watwut wrote: post #259
friendzis wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Your definition of a "good manager" is essentially "does not actively sabotage work of subordinates". This is not even remotely what that person said. They said "motivates by helping you understand how the things you are doing are actually critical to the success of the team and the company". That is not nearly "does not actively sabotage". > A person knowing how and in what ways their work contributes to the succe…

> They said "". That is not nearly "does not actively sabotage".

We seem to be misaligned on some fundamental level here. We are in a thread countering the notion that motivation is primarily intrinsic. My stance is that understanding the impact of individual contributions is crucial to net positive contribution towards overall success and is a tool in IC toolbox. Therefore, I value lack of such alignment as demotivating and alignment being present as motivation-neutral. In my book this is one of the core duties of a manager.

> Oh please. If you reject every single thing good managers do to motivate people as "does not count" then of course you will end up with nothing.

If you include every single thing managers do then you will simply end up shifting the definition so that every manager is "good". What's so suddenly wrong with being everyday average Joe? I do dismiss some things that not being done would reduce motivation below baseline. If a developer is expected to build a notoriously slow to compile template-heavy, multi-million sloc c++ codebase multiple times a day, a latest and greatest workstation managing the build in reasonable times is just a tool, not some motivational perk. On the other hand, a potato running the build for 4 hours would be demotivating.

So yes, I do reject alignment on things critical to overall success from things good managers do as that is something everyday regular normal manager should be doing anyway.

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

#290

Post by the_af »

bsoles wrote: post #284

> Intellectual curiosity in the form of hobbies, nerdy interests that they can talk about with passion Although I know that a lot of people would argue for "what's wrong with doing your day job well and going home to your family, friends, etc?", in my experience, it is also true that the best software engineers I've seen during my 25 year career are the ones that made their job also their passion and hobby. I think i…

Your overall opinion might be true, but it's also unfair to competent people who treat it like their day job, and do it competently (but maybe without being amazing).

There is a place for this kind of people, among which I count myself nowadays -- I used to be way nerdier, learning new programming languages and embarking on projects just because, until life got in the way, my interests shifted, etc.

> I think intellectual curiosity and being a 9-5 person are inversely correlated, again in my experience.

I think this is objectively false. I've seen plenty of terrible coworkers -- terrible at their jobs, that is -- who I later found to have hobbies they were passionate about. One was an excellent standup comedian in her spare time. Another did lots of sports and took them seriously. They just weren't very good at software, and they also "phoned it in". One was essentially a "used car salesman" personality, I'm sure he would have excelled at selling used cars! But his code was awful, and he was very combative towards the rest of the team during code reviews, resisted testing his stuff in any way, shape or form, etc. A friend of mine is a middling developer (not bad, but he's the first to admit he's average), but is an awesome guy, funny, and also an outstanding magician.

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