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Senior Engineers Build Consensus (2019)

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Re: Senior Engineers Build Consensus (2019)

#31

Post by atypicbiped »

anonytrary wrote: post #24
whateveracct wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

oh i agree - that's why i left a streak of startup jobs to get paid more to do less at BigCo. BigCo isn't fratty at all in my limited experience. Be professional, follow whatever 10 commandments the C-suite prints out & laminates for you, and sell yourself once a year in self-review and you'll win out and barely work if you're remote. Smaller companies have very little org-chart structure - it's a single small tree.…

You sound like me. Cheers. I hope it works out for us.

Same here. Does anyone you work with know your plan? If not, how do you deal with the loneliness?

Re: Senior Engineers Build Consensus (2019)

#32

Post by sarakayakomzin »

Spooky23 wrote: post #8
zaphirplane wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s called an oligarchy in politics. Can’t say it’s a great operational model

It makes sense where you have a lot of stakeholders. Would you ever debate an approach to doing something in front of a customer? Likewise, if a meeting is where you adjudicate something, you need consensus to focus on the key issue, whatever that is. Otherwise, you’re likely to head into some rabbit hole that results in no decision.

>Would you ever debate an approach to doing something in front of a customer? the dumbest take i've ever seen in economics

Re: Senior Engineers Build Consensus (2019)

#33

Post by redis_mlc »

anonytrary wrote: post #6
TheDudeMan wrote: post #3

10x engineers get it done without others even knowing about it.

And this is how you end up with an entire engineering team that has no idea what the hell is going on. Don't be a "10x engineer". Empower 10 other people around you. That's what the real 10x engineers are doing.

Talk is cheap, but I know that won't stop you.

Re: Senior Engineers Build Consensus (2019)

#34

Post by robjan »

TheDudeMan wrote: post #3

10x engineers get it done without others even knowing about it.

Engineers who do things without other people knowing about it are a liability, not an asset. It results in a bus factor of 1.

There is a big difference from asking for forgiveness, which is often required to get things moving, vs. working in an entirely opaque way.

Re: Senior Engineers Build Consensus (2019)

#36

Post by vishnugupta »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #23
andrewem wrote: post #17

I used to work with an engineer who would have a loud negative emotional reaction the first time they were told about some new thing that would be happening at our company, and after a little bit would be totally fine with it. After one or two instances of this pattern, the manager learned to talk to the engineer ahead of time, so the upset reaction wouldn’t happen in a big meeting. I suspect that more of us are like…

I obviously don't know why this engineer reacts the way they do, but I can see myself reacting that way not because of the change itself but because there was no advance warning or discussion.

> because there was no advance warning or discussion.

As a manager I learned to keep my senior engineer pre-informed the hard way. Personally, when I was an IC, I was totally fine not being kept in the loop because I was impervious to such news or changes. So I just assumed that’s how it’s with everyone. Clearly I was wrong.

That said, it is important to release that pre-information in an informal fashion lest they start acting on it before it’s formally announced. Especially ones that impact the immediate peer teams such as re-org.

Re: Senior Engineers Build Consensus (2019)

#37

Post by whateveracct »

atypicbiped wrote: post #31
anonytrary wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sound like me. Cheers. I hope it works out for us.

Same here. Does anyone you work with know your plan? If not, how do you deal with the loneliness?

I'm married and have pets :shrug:

Use your free time post-covid to build up something worthwhile. A cat is a good start!

Love for its own sake is more than enough. But it takes a suspension of disbelief that modernity may have beat out of you.

Re: Senior Engineers Build Consensus (2019)

#38

Post by ZephyrBlu »

vishnugupta wrote: post #36
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I obviously don't know why this engineer reacts the way they do, but I can see myself reacting that way not because of the change itself but because there was no advance warning or discussion.

> because there was no advance warning or discussion. As a manager I learned to keep my senior engineer pre-informed the hard way. Personally, when I was an IC, I was totally fine not being kept in the loop because I was impervious to such news or changes. So I just assumed that’s how it’s with everyone. Clearly I was wrong. That said, it is important to release that pre-information in an informal fashion lest they s…

Are you really impervious to changes though? You're almost certainly going to be affected in some way.

Also, I don't really see the point in hiring supposedly intelligent engineers and then cutting them out of the decision making process.

Btw I'm not even a senior engineer, I'm a _junior_.

Re: Senior Engineers Build Consensus (2019)

#39

Post by vincentmarle »

cle wrote: post #7
tootie wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a boss type guy and I absolutely do this intentionally but not because it's not really me setting policy as much as I'm focus group testing. I run it past peers or a few influential people who could be receptive. Get them to to think about it and give some feedback. When I bring it up to the group it's because it's been well-received and the other influencers are ready to back it. Similar to how this article expl…

Yep exactly. If you go into a meeting and you haven't talked to at least a few of the people there about the topic beforehand, IME it's not going to be a productive meeting. I usually start with getting feedback from one or two subject matter experts, building consensus with them, and then slowly expand my circle of people I get feedback from, until we have "the big meeting". Having a "big meeting" with no pre-establ…

Also known as: consensus driven decision making

Re: Senior Engineers Build Consensus (2019)

#40

Post by __blockcipher__ »

alexashka wrote: post #20
bww wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've probably noticed that there aren't really any successful companies that are run as democracies. There are good reasons for that.

You can't get to a better future by demanding that it have existed in the past. That doesn't make any sense. Now I'd really like to hear these 'good reasons' and what makes them 'good'. Before you list them, please try and apply them to 'why should we abandon slavery'. If your arguments work for both instances, please explain why we ever abandoned slavery, since clearly there are 'good reasons' for owning slaves, so…

A word of advice, injecting such topics needlessly distracts from the actual point you’re trying to make.
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