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

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

#61

Post by regularfry »

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…

In my experience this is usually a result of misapplying the idea of "consensus". The best formulation I've seen work is "nobody is vetoing". It doesn't mean that everyone agrees, just that nobody disagrees strongly enough to block progress.

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

#62

Post by _0ffh »

DeathArrow wrote: post #60
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.

I think there's a reason why historically many cultures in a time of crisis tend to choose a leader to take responsibility until the crisis is dealt with, like the dictator in republican Rome. Pirates often elected and even unelected their captains, but during any action their power was absolute. And so on.

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

#63

Post by layer8 »

DeathArrow wrote: post #60
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.

In the spectrum between consensus and dictatorship, there’s also democracy.

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

#64

Post by ListeningPie »

atoav wrote: post #54
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 (t…

How do you evaluate whether someone wants to do a project? If a boss asks, "Do you want to do this project", seems like another way to ask "Do you want to remain employed?"

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

#65

Post by ownagefool »

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 think weak leadership is the default, with a micromanager trying to own everything as an over-correction coming in as the runner up.

I've worked across 18 companies, and about 2-3 times I've been given a person to onboard me, once we had a decent central wiki, and the rest of the times I've basically been left figure it out.

I don't even think these things are overly hard to figure out, but very few people in tech straddle the lines between tech and org, and when they do, they're usually kept at bay by the non-technical tech roles ( deliver manager, etc ).

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

#66

Post by herpdyderp »

ListeningPie wrote: post #64
atoav wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (t…

How do you evaluate whether someone wants to do a project? If a boss asks, "Do you want to do this project", seems like another way to ask "Do you want to remain employed?"

Establishing a culture where that assumption is not the case and engineers can say “no I’m not very interested in that”. Also a boss that can actually read people (correctly).

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

#67

Post by n0w »

roenxi wrote: post #4

Culturally it is best to train developers to just do something, then provide non-judgemental feedback when what they do isn't what you want. Maybe schedule in some rework time to try again. That way, developers move quickly and sooner or later start building useful things. "Just tell me what to build" is a dangerous attitude to foster. It pushes more work into the management layer which is already a bottleneck for ma…

This sounds a lot like letting the monkeys bang away on typewriters while you sit back waiting for Shakespeare...

TFA seems to present reasonable advice. Yet lots of comments here don't seem to agree that "give experts necessary context and trust to build good products" is a decent strategy.

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

#68

Post by llamaLord »

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 a PM, I believe what you're describing is the torrent of people who used to work as "project managers" and "business analysts" who've transitioned into Product for the higher pay, without appreciating any of the differences between the roles.

IMO, the fundamental role of a PM is to make the decisions nobody else wants to (and own the consequences of them). If my team is making progress and decisions are being made, I get the fuck out of the way.

I jokingly refer to myself as the "designated scapegoat", basically meaning it's my job to tank the risk for situations where everyone is nominally in agreement about something, but nobody wants to be the person to put their hand up and own the decision because of the risk if it backfires.

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

#69

Post by rprospero »

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…

> unless you actually build something, the money isn't going to arrive, and you'll be out of a job.

The sad part is that many employees have come to the rational and correct solution that the above is not true. Out of the people I've known, more have lost their jobs to the results of C-suite malfeasance (e.g embezzling, illegal behaviour) than have ever lost their jobs to their own actions.

Conversely, unless the organisation you work for is exceptionally incompetent, your own personal failures shouldn't put them out of business. Think about all the cancelled Google projects. If the devs that worked on them had just come into work and played Minecraft all day, Google would still be in business. My personal opinion is that, if the Google Reader devs had never delivered a product, Google would be better off today than it actually is because it wouldn't have such a devoted community angry at it for killing off a beloved product.

The navel gazing framework discussion is like selling your own lotto tickets. If someone's number actually comes, you're on the hook for millions of dollars and probably broke for life. However, a person with a risk taking mentality will recognise that the odds of someone winning the lotto is tiny and, barring that outcome, selling your own lotto tickets is free money.

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

#70

Post by bluedino »

At some companies there are so many places where things can be changed or undone.

We had a simple avatar upload. Done this in every app we had ever made. It "broke". And I mean it didn't really break, but it changed enough where it might as well have.

Who changed it? Sales (aka the customer)? QA? Development? Design?

CEO.

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