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

Balancing engineering cultures: Debate everything vs. just tell me what to build

fishmanafnewsletter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 128 posts

Re: Balancing engineering cultures: Debate everything vs. just tell me what to build

#51

Post by starbugs »

atomicfiredoll wrote: post #38
Aurornis wrote: post #13

This is the most common failure mode I’ve experienced: > A critical piece of avoiding endless debate is to know who makes the final decision and how it gets made. Consensus-seeking leads to endless debate. Every rapidly growing company I’ve worked for has reached a point where we have product managers and program managers and engineers and engineering managers and stakeholders and suddenly nobody can even identify wh…

I don't think consensus-building is necessarily bad on it's own. Depending on the environment, when people don't feel like they have an opportunity contribute, it can potentially lead to other issues. To your point, I think a lack of leadership can kill a consensus-building process. Whoever is coordinating needs the authority and will to end the discussion when the time is right (among other things.) Otherwise, it re…

> I don't think consensus-building is necessarily bad on it's own.

Making decisions based on consensus is just often not the right choice in this context. If used for the wrong type of decision, it will lead to a "design by committee" type of process and result, driving a lot of people mad along the way.

A better way to make decisions in a software project is to consult with stakeholders (if necessary), identify the appropriate decision maker based on competence and then let that person make a decision.

Re: Balancing engineering cultures: Debate everything vs. just tell me what to build

#52

Post by orthoxerox »

Aurornis wrote: post #13

This is the most common failure mode I’ve experienced: > A critical piece of avoiding endless debate is to know who makes the final decision and how it gets made. Consensus-seeking leads to endless debate. Every rapidly growing company I’ve worked for has reached a point where we have product managers and program managers and engineers and engineering managers and stakeholders and suddenly nobody can even identify wh…

A good way to approach this is to think like a military: there might be a staff, but there is only one commander in the unit. Their whole job is making the right decision as quickly as possible and assuming responsibility for it.

If the manager keeps avoiding making decisions and diluting responsibility, they aren't fit to be a manager.

Re: Balancing engineering cultures: Debate everything vs. just tell me what to build

#53

Post by wizhi »

eastbound wrote: post #47
orand wrote: post #32

Sometimes (but not always) the reason for these cultures is more due to nature than nurture, in which case it can be virtually impossible to change without replacing people. I worked on a team that went from a very strong "debate everything" culture to a very apathetically strong "just tell me what to build" culture, and it was primarily due to the hires we made. We hired for the ability to grow technically, and that…

Another startup founder here. I regret not working early enough with an HR expert. It takes forever (any many relationships and many tries) to find the correct one, but: - They’ll help you profile who you need. Questions you would never have dared asking, like “Tell me a situation when you reacted to xyz”, not only they filter the person, they also change the attitude of the relationship, the person itself goes from…

How would me answering how I once "reacted to xyz" make me any more likely to "put the extra neurons in"?

Re: Balancing engineering cultures: Debate everything vs. just tell me what to build

#54

Post by atoav »

Aurornis wrote: post #13

This is the most common failure mode I’ve experienced: > A critical piece of avoiding endless debate is to know who makes the final decision and how it gets made. Consensus-seeking leads to endless debate. Every rapidly growing company I’ve worked for has reached a point where we have product managers and program managers and engineers and engineering managers and stakeholders and suddenly nobody can even identify wh…

As someone who studied film/arts I always thought the art world was a disorganized mess. That was, until I worked at some corporate places and realized that in the art/film world you have at least the artist/director with a clear stance towards the project.

A good film set runs like a well oiled machine with an extremely clear division of responsibilities. Decisions can be made fast, because time is of the essence (the sun only shines so long). This is cool, because if I do the camera I usually don't need to worry about anything else. But usually I also don't have to do anything else: For the duration of the shooting, the film becomes all I need to worry about. I get food, I get a place to stay and most importantly: I chose to be there.

Meanwhile in corpoworld there are X meetings with people who don't even know why they were invited, don't wanna be part of it, are not given the time/resources/mental headspace to be there and then corperate wonders why the project doesn't goes as swimmingly as it could. If your people already do two jobs and the project becomes a third, guess what: they are going to avoid doing too much and maybe if you are lucky some poor sap carries that thing over the finishing line alone. But if that is the outcome, wouldn't it have been better to free that person from their daily duties and put them in charge of the project and whom to talk to? The resoueces of the company would have been better spent, the result would have been better, the thing would get done quicker etc.

If you want to take two things away from this post:

- put someone in charge of the project, make sure they want to do it

- Daily cruft is the enemy of projects. Free people from the rest of their duties, even if it is just a day of the week, e.g. "on Fridays Frida works on project X".

Re: Balancing engineering cultures: Debate everything vs. just tell me what to build

#55

Post by KaiserPro »

One of the key problems that exacerbates this is removing the business use case from engineering.

In most cases, you are engineering a solution to solve a business need. Each engineer should know the business metrics you are trying to move, and why, not just the PM. This tends to highlight that navel gazing on which framework to use is pointless, because unless you actually build something, the money isn't going to arrive, and you'll be out of a job.

Software engineering is all to often treated as a black box, that must be isolated from the real world, lest the magic smoke escape. But that leads to terrible decisions, and allows "carbon fibre" programmers to flourish. Engineering should be a business unit like any other part of the company.

Re: Balancing engineering cultures: Debate everything vs. just tell me what to build

#56

Post by HelloNurse »

uoaei wrote: post #21

If you're on the side of "just tell me what to build", you better really, really trust your leads and managers. Bad managers can destroy engineering culture in an instant to the point where "just tell me what to build" becomes a symptom of burnout and not a bona fide aspect of a work culture.

The next level of burnout is the double bind.

I am not empowered to make decisions, I have nobody to discuss meaningfully with, and I'm told what to build perentorily but vaguely and often incorrectly. Will I be able to read the mind of my boss? Better to stall, complain, and avoid making mistakes.

Re: Balancing engineering cultures: Debate everything vs. just tell me what to build

#57

Post by upupupandaway »

Aurornis wrote: post #13

This is the most common failure mode I’ve experienced: > A critical piece of avoiding endless debate is to know who makes the final decision and how it gets made. Consensus-seeking leads to endless debate. Every rapidly growing company I’ve worked for has reached a point where we have product managers and program managers and engineers and engineering managers and stakeholders and suddenly nobody can even identify wh…

Saw this firsthand when I worked at Nokia. It was consensus building taken to extreme levels, resulting in having 7 different UI toolkits and 4 developer platforms. Absolute hell, but very polite and conflict-free.

Re: Balancing engineering cultures: Debate everything vs. just tell me what to build

#59

Post by ricardobeat »

KaiserPro wrote: post #55

One of the key problems that exacerbates this is removing the business use case from engineering. In most cases, you are engineering a solution to solve a business need. Each engineer should know the business metrics you are trying to move, and why, not just the PM. This tends to highlight that navel gazing on which framework to use is pointless, because unless you actually build something, the money isn't going to a…

I agree, unfortunately the trend over the last decade is for a lot of developers to want software-factory style jobs, and think that business is “not their problem”.

Re: Balancing engineering cultures: Debate everything vs. just tell me what to build

#60

Post by DeathArrow »

Aurornis wrote: post #13

This is the most common failure mode I’ve experienced: > A critical piece of avoiding endless debate is to know who makes the final decision and how it gets made. Consensus-seeking leads to endless debate. Every rapidly growing company I’ve worked for has reached a point where we have product managers and program managers and engineers and engineering managers and stakeholders and suddenly nobody can even identify wh…

So we're better with benevolent dictators.
Post reply on HN