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

Ask HN: What mistakes in your experience does management keep making?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 396 posts

Re: Ask HN: What mistakes in your experience does management keep making?

#71

Post by marcus_holmes »

alexandercrohde wrote: post #6

- Trying to "create a buzz" around the office, asking for a "sense of urgency," and other things that result in an illusion of productivity. - Focusing on fixing problems, rather than preventing problems - Acting as yes-men to bad upper-management strategy, thereby creating a layer of indirection between the people who think it's a good plan vs the engineers who can explain why it's not quite that easy - Trying to us…

Jira management :(

I've seen so many "managers" spend all their time staring at Jira instead of talking to their actual team or reading the code.

I'm convinced Jira is an anti-pattern for management

Re: Ask HN: What mistakes in your experience does management keep making?

#72

Post by asveikau »

Not knowing the difference between "high performer" and social biases. Eg. Is your top person your top person because they are really doing good work on their merits, or do you just like them personally and therefore give them important projects, attention, recognition? Are your lesser favorites the ones doing real work? If they had equal opportunity, would they outperform the "top" people? Maybe they are outperforming them already?

Re: Ask HN: What mistakes in your experience does management keep making?

#74

Post by sidlls »

stickfigure wrote: post #7

I've never met a manager that wouldn't rather pay four average people $100/hr to solve a problem that one smart person could solve in half the time for $400/hr. There seems to be some sort of quasi-religious belief in the fundamental averageness of humans; consequently the difference between developer salaries at any company varies by maybe 50%, whereas the productivity varies by at least a full order of magnitude. U…

These 4x (or 10x or whatever outlandish multiple) developers are rare, if they even exist, unless one constrains the scope of their work to a tiny sliver of their particular expertise.

Hiring for such micro optimization is inefficient at best, ineffective usually, and counterproductive at worst.

Re: Ask HN: What mistakes in your experience does management keep making?

#75

Post by daxfohl »

Not enough one-on-one time with the coders. As a coder, it's very easy in a stand-up for any coder to say "yeah yeah yeah, I've got this covered". Then a week before release everyone realizes that person has a month's worth of work ahead of them. I've been all three: the "yeah yeah" guy, the manager, and one of the other coders that has to take the slack. It's a situation that seems easily avoidable just by a little better teamwork. Oftentimes "yeah yeah" can just mean "I have no idea what I'm doing", but dev2 (or mgr) could do and teach that task in half an hour, but dev1 just doesn't know who to ask.

Re: Ask HN: What mistakes in your experience does management keep making?

#76

Post by LoSboccacc »

not sharing company goals with engineering - engineers have to second guess whether it's the moment for building or polishing, for adding new features or for consolidating before a big push etc.

this cause a wealth of secondary problems like deadline that seem arbitrary, focus on random features that need to be rushed every stint without logic or order, developer burnout and the need for ever-increasing micromanaging.

Re: Ask HN: What mistakes in your experience does management keep making?

#77

Post by nilkn »

stickfigure wrote: post #7

I've never met a manager that wouldn't rather pay four average people $100/hr to solve a problem that one smart person could solve in half the time for $400/hr. There seems to be some sort of quasi-religious belief in the fundamental averageness of humans; consequently the difference between developer salaries at any company varies by maybe 50%, whereas the productivity varies by at least a full order of magnitude. U…

I think the folks discussing whether or not 10x developers exist are missing the more basic point here. In most companies, a manager's status is determined almost entirely by how many people he or she manages. It's absolutely in their best interest to hire more mediocre people than fewer exceptional people because the correct incentives haven't been put in place for managers in the company.

At many places, the best thing that can happen to a manager is for their team to become "too big". Oops, now they have to split it into two teams, and suddenly they're a Director instead of a Team Lead (or whatever titles are used).

Re: Ask HN: What mistakes in your experience does management keep making?

#78

Post by corporateslave2 »

stickfigure wrote: post #7

I've never met a manager that wouldn't rather pay four average people $100/hr to solve a problem that one smart person could solve in half the time for $400/hr. There seems to be some sort of quasi-religious belief in the fundamental averageness of humans; consequently the difference between developer salaries at any company varies by maybe 50%, whereas the productivity varies by at least a full order of magnitude. U…

Companies do. They're called quant hedge funds and Facebook/google. If you're really 10x, someone will pay

Re: Ask HN: What mistakes in your experience does management keep making?

#79

Post by viach »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #70
stickfigure wrote: post #7

I've never met a manager that wouldn't rather pay four average people $100/hr to solve a problem that one smart person could solve in half the time for $400/hr. There seems to be some sort of quasi-religious belief in the fundamental averageness of humans; consequently the difference between developer salaries at any company varies by maybe 50%, whereas the productivity varies by at least a full order of magnitude. U…

In my experience, the 10x programmer is a bit of a myth. Where I have seen people do some incredible feats of productivity, it usually came with a clutch of bad stuff, too. Like: - they didn't work well with others and soaked up a lot of management time dealing with their shit. - they had really limited areas of expertise where they were amazing, but couldn't fill in for a sick colleague. - they worked in 2-3 day spr…

This. And also, code if this kind if 10x developers is often unmaintainable and untested, which brings 100x effort for their teammates in the future.

Re: Ask HN: What mistakes in your experience does management keep making?

#80

Post by Cerium »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #60
ww520 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having 100M revenue with 10% profit is better than 10M revenue with 20% profit.

Yes, as you can tell by the fact that your overall profit in the first scenario is $10M while in the second it is $2M. How is that an argument against overall profit?

I think it is an argument for overall profit which might come from focusing not on margin but on margin and volume.
Post reply on HN