No management needed: anti-patterns in early-stage engineering teams • Hacker News Board

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

#351

Post by nebula8804 » Fri, Jan 16, 2026, 9:54 AM UTC

Izkata wrote: post #326

nebula8804 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the time there is a revolution, i'd imagine that most engineers will have fallen to the working classes where they are technically a part of. Again, they are not part of the capital class. They were lucky to come across a special moment in time where there was a paradigm shift bringing with it enormous wealth and the capital class did not part with some of their wealth out of charity but out of greed because they…

> By the time there is a revolution, i'd imagine that most engineers will have fallen to the working classes where they are technically a part of. "Working class" isn't an adjective+noun that refers to anyone who works, it's a compound noun that specifically refers to physical labor. Knowledge workers of any sort are not part of it, despite both using the word "work".

From Wikipedia:

"The working class is a group of people in a social hierarchy, typically defined by earning wages or salaries through their ability to work. Members of the working class rely primarily upon earnings from wage labour. Most common definitions of "working class" in use in the United States limit its membership to workers who hold blue-collar and pink-collar jobs, or whose income is insufficiently high to place them in the middle class, or both. However, socialists define "working class" to include all workers who fall into the category of requiring income from wage labour to subsist; thus, this definition can include almost all of the working population of industrialized economies."

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_class

Since I am referring to a hypothetical in the future, let me be more clear: I believe software developers will be relegated to blue collar or worse roles given enough time because it is in the interest of the capital class to find a way to make this happen. I gave examples in my prior comment.

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

#352

Post by ragall » Fri, Jan 16, 2026, 4:19 PM UTC

ljm wrote: post #270

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".

It would be more useful if you explained why the rest of my comment didn't provide a good enough reason (because of your clear dissatisfaction with the first sentence of it), because this is just snark that doesn't further a conversation. Anyone can quote a subset of a message and drop a remark without substance after all, but I didn't come on HN to read Twitter-quality stuff.

You started it buddy.

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

#353

Post by raw_anon_1111 » Fri, Jan 16, 2026, 6:55 PM UTC

fastasucan wrote: post #349

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a lot easier when you make 3x the comp of the average developer in the EU and I am not even in BigTech (anymore). I can absolutely guarantee you that the average enterprise CRUD developer living in a 2nd tier US city is better off than a developer in the EU. Let alone the top 10-20% working in BigTech or equivalent.

Have you factored in healthcare costs, welfare (if you ever need that), childcare/kindergarten costs, benefit of living in a safe society, sick leave, holiday, worker protection, better work/life balance etc when you say better off?

Yes my “if I lose my job” budget includes $1000 month for health insurance on the open market or my wife still has her CDL. She doesn’t with now. But she could easily get a job as a school bus driver and get insurance. That was basically why she worked for the first 8 years of our marriage.

Every professional company gives sick leave (usually 10 days), holidays (usually 10 days), paid vacation (usually 15-20 days), I have never had a job where I was expected to work for more than 40 hours a week in 30 years across 10 jobs. If it did, I would get another job .

If you make three times the wages, it pays for a lot of stuff - including self funding your emergency fund, child care cost etc.

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

#354

Post by raw_anon_1111 » Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 1:37 AM UTC

fastasucan wrote: post #348

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

Thats an extremely simplistic view of things? All else is equal? Why do you think that is a product of unions?

So tell me how would I union improve my life as a worker in tech?

I don’t make the eye popping BigTech salaries (been there done that). I spent my entire long career until 2020 as an enterprise Dev in a second tier city.

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

#355

Post by Animats » Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 10:21 PM UTC

OhMeadhbh wrote: post #116

Animats wrote: post #101

If you need motivation, maybe the organization is designed badly. It was once said of the Roman legions "The Legion is not composed of heroes. Heroes are what the Legion kills." Field Marshall the Viscount Slim, who commanded in the China-Burma-India theater in WWII, once wrote "Wars are won by the average performance of the line units." He wrote negatively on various special forces type units, preferring to use regu…

in the military we had a saying "you don't go to war with the army you want, but with the army you have." consequently, there was a lot of effort given to training and planning. the nature of most combat arms roles is such that you need most of the team operating at a decent level. i think the idea behind so much training is that if you can raise the performance of the worst performers, you might be able to improve t…

"Boyd" (2004) is a bio of John Boyd. Boyd was a USAF fighter jock and a very good one, and his OODA (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) cycle is a Marine icon. The USAF never really liked him, because he was loudly critical of some high level USAF aircraft decisions.

Boyd had a lot of influence on the design of the F-16, the fighter jock's dream airplane. He also pushed for, of all things, the A-10 Warthog, hated by fighter jocks, loved by ground troops who really needed close air support.

Reading up on the OODA loop is useful. Boyd himself barely wrote anything about it. Others have written volumes.

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

#356

Post by josecodea » Tue, Jan 20, 2026, 6:52 AM UTC

ljm wrote: post #345

pessimizer wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

It stands to reason that if someone makes an argument you can make a strawman against it. In this thread, a manager is compared to earthquakes, ratpoison and gravity… which has fuck all to do with management. Come on…just say if you don’t like something, like “I don’t like managers and you can’t change my mind.” Be fucking honest for a minute. Have some god damn conviction instead of this weaksauce shit. Interpersona…

It stands to reason that if a clown can upset you at work, they can also cheer you up. (no, not really lol)

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

#357

Post by josecodea » Tue, Jan 20, 2026, 6:54 AM UTC

lan321 wrote: post #244

Y-bar wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

but we are a family /s

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

#358

Post by josecodea » Tue, Jan 20, 2026, 7:01 AM UTC

burnto wrote: post #18

> Motivation is a hired trait. The only place where managers motivate people is in management books Initial motivation is the hired trait. It’s very easy to demotivate people. The trick is to not do that.

Fully agree.

No one plans to hire their assistant based on how much they will motivate the other people that are going to deal with the assistant. Sure, it is important that they are pleasant, but that's it. Their role is actually an administrative one of brokering information. Managers are essentially the same role with higher stakes, trying to make it about anything deeper seems to be main character syndrome in full effect.

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

#359

Post by josecodea » Tue, Jan 20, 2026, 7:03 AM UTC

loire280 wrote: post #46

burnto wrote: post #18

> Motivation is a hired trait. The only place where managers motivate people is in management books Initial motivation is the hired trait. It’s very easy to demotivate people. The trick is to not do that.

I may not be using the same definition of "motivation" as the author, but understanding what motivates your people, putting the right mix of people together to work on the right problems, and knowing how and when to apply pressure to get people to do their best work are absolutely something managers can do to motivate their teams.

To leverage their pre-existing motivations*, which is the argument on OPs side, this pre-existing motivation is hired-for, not generated on the role.

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

#360

Post by josecodea » Tue, Jan 20, 2026, 7:11 AM UTC

neilv wrote: post #192

It sounded good, up until the examples for: > I'll dedicate a post to specific ways you can identify motivation during hiring, but in short, look for All will be gamed by interviewees, by the afternoon this hits the HN front page. (And, for example, tech interview prep has already been telling people to fake passion and curiosity, for many years now.) Here's what you do: 1. Consider that the early startup also belong…

> 3. With equity like you're serious, make the salaries low-ish. Not so low that it's nonviable for modest family cost of living, but low enough to self-select out the people who aren't committed to the company being successful, or who don't actually believe in the company.

This is how you select for anyone that cannot land a better payrate. There are startups that get better funding and can pay real salaries.