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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

#71

Post by chasd00 »

orthoxerox wrote: post #52
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.

I’ve used this analogy before but people hate it. on internal projects at my firm everyone wants everyone else to have an equal voice out of guilt. The meetings and navel gazing never stop and the work becomes working on the process and never actually delivering on the need.

With client projects it’s different, you have a budget and deadline. Miss it or screw up on the way and the client fires you and hires your competitor. My client delivery teams are a much harsher environment but roles and responsibility for decisions are very clear and everyone’s job is at stake so it gets taken pretty seriously. There’s no room or time for consensus building, the flip side being owning a bad decision means working somewhere else.

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

#72

Post by blitz_skull »

llamaLord wrote: post #68
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…

Damn I wish any PM I had ever worked with had this attitude. Honestly I don’t recognize any of this ownership in the last few companies I’ve worked with. PMs are just people that don’t talk with customers, review a product backlog, and cover their eyes and point at the Feature du jour. I wish more PMs had your ownership approach.

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

#73

Post by eschneider »

Debate "everything" isn't optimal, but it's tolerable so long as a decision is made and folks can move on. Even if the decisions aren't the ones I'd make or I'd consider optimal, that's a situation that I can deal with.

What I'll never do again is work at a place where every decision is subject to re-debate anytime someone decides "they don't like it." I just don't have the mental energy for that bullshit any more.

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

#74

Post by jimberlage »

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?"

It’s important for your boss to frame that differently if it’s truly optional.

They can’t leave it at “do you want to do this project?” They need to follow up with, “It really is optional, I won’t be hurt if you say no.”

They also can’t do it with a big decision first. They have to frame small decisions that way sometimes, to build trust that when they say you have the ability to decline, they mean it. Then, they can ask that way on big decisions.

If a decision isn’t optional, they should phrase it a different way. I use something like - “I need you to do this project - how does that make you feel?” I want them to tell me if it’s a hardship, but I don’t want to imply that I’m leaving the door open to a different outcome necessarily.

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

#75

Post by sime2009 »

jruohonen wrote: post #10

I am not sure whether I can agree. Isn't this just another Goldilocks principle? In addition, not only company but also national culture matters. Ref.: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38437104

Yes, it kind of is. But the whole article talks about the extremes but spends zero time describing what the desirable middle ground looks like.

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

#76

Post by haswell »

llamaLord wrote: post #68
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…

When I started my first PM role, I was lucky enough to work for a boss/mentor who had the same mindset. As a dev for most of my career before moving into PM, it made sense to me:

“If things go well, dev team gets the credit. If things go poorly, PM takes the blame”.

This is fundamental to building trust with the dev team and gaining the respect of leadership.

This made it possible to guide the product in directions the dev team wasn’t immediately comfortable with, because they knew it was my ass on the line. And when those decisions led to good outcomes, it further reinforced the trust relationship.

I haven’t countered many PMs who live by this, but it sure makes a big difference.

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

#77

Post by 0x0203 »

regularfry wrote: post #61
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.

I would go even a bit further. For a good consensus to be had, everyone that cares to should have the opportunity to share their opinion and defend it, to provide stakeholders all the viable options. The "consensus" then isn't that we all agree on the "right" option, but that we all agree that the person in charge, after evaluating the options, makes the final decision and we all move forward with that plan without taking any disagreements personally or getting angry if your option wasn't selected.

I'm lucky enough to work in such a team, and it's been fantastic.

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

#78

Post by smogcutter »

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…

> and suddenly nobody can even identify who is the decision maker.

For management more interested in playing politics, this kind of ambiguity is a feature, not a bug. This is how you take credit for successes, and shift blame for failures.

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

#79

Post by marcosdumay »

chasd00 wrote: post #71
orthoxerox wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’ve used this analogy before but people hate it. on internal projects at my firm everyone wants everyone else to have an equal voice out of guilt. The meetings and navel gazing never stop and the work becomes working on the process and never actually delivering on the need. With client projects it’s different, you have a budget and deadline. Miss it or screw up on the way and the client fires you and hires your comp…

Oh, it's important that everybody has a voice. But it should never be equal, making it equal almost guarantees the project will stop.

Making sure everybody has a voice is a task for the people that actually have power there. The other part of that task is cutting those people down and overruling them when needed.

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

#80

Post by fusslo »

LAC-Tech wrote: post #11

Debate is a good if you all have a shared idea of what constitutes 'good'. IE, simplicity, performance, whatever.

I had a engineering lead who encouraged 'debate everything', but had the idea that 'good' meant 'his idea'.

every new hire under him lasted about 8 months, then were burnt out and stopped being active in debate

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