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"Good engineering management" is a fad

lethain.com

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Re: "Good engineering management" is a fad

#71

Post by sfink »

WalterBright wrote: post #59
stavros wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First post: > the pill to swallow is that most employees including managers are grist to the mill Meaning that employees are disposable, and their only purpose is to produce value for the business. Your reply: > Businesses exist to make money. If you want a commune instead, join one! Thus agreeing with the parent that the sole purpose of a business is to make money above all else. My reply: > That's not the only reas…

I infer you don't know of any particular business that does not exist to make money? If you run a business that loses money, who is going to pay for those losses?

I know of no business that does not involve making money.

I know of many businesses for which making money is not the primary reason to exist. And the majority of businesses do not try to maximize profit at all costs, even when their primary reason for existence is to make money.

Random example: I know someone who teaches singing. She no longer employs other people, but has done so in the past. The IRS agrees that it is a business. She makes money from it and depends on the money from it. She has other skills that would earn her more money elsewhere. If her business made moderately more money but no longer taught anyone to sing better, she would stop running the business and do something else.

If you're going to say that the business's existence depends on the function of making money, as in if that purpose were removed then it would be called a hobby and not a business, then that's a No True Scotsman argument and it's pointless to discuss.

(Basically, I'm with stavros on this.)

Re: "Good engineering management" is a fad

#72

Post by sfink »

WalterBright wrote: post #66
stavros wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dammit, Walter, did you not read any of the very extensive comment? It was an entire treatise about why that exact line is misleading and in bad faith, and you reply with it anyway?

It's not at all in bad faith. Businesses are formed to make money. If the IRS discovers that your business is not intended to make money, they will re-define it as a "hobby" and will not let you deduct expenses. Surely you can give an actual example of a business not formed to make money? P.S. When you talk about bad faith, I recommend that you do not invent things I did not write, put those things in quotes pretendi…

> Surely you can give an actual example of a business not formed to make money?

Why? That was never claimed. The claim was that businesses can have other reasons for existing in addition to making money. Furthermore, those other reasons can be a higher priority for a particular business.

Re: "Good engineering management" is a fad

#73

Post by sfink »

constantcrying wrote: post #20

This is about software and management for software. But software developers have no engineering culture, they have a craftsmanship culture, favoring things like individualism and "taste". The article pretty clearly demonstrates this, as this is not how any actual engineering organization or any actual engineer thinks about management. Software has something, which no engineering discipline has. Encapsulation. If you…

> Software has something, which no engineering discipline has. Encapsulation. If you are building a car, a plane or a train everything affects everything.

In other engineering disciplines, a lot of work goes into preventing everything from affecting everything. You overbuild a bridge so that you don't have to consider oscillation magnitudes (other than to conservatively figure out the maximum you need to support, and that maximum will be a worst case specifically so you don't need to consider the interaction of everything else.) Any time you're adding a safety margin, you're removing from consideration all of the things that could go wrong but not wrong enough to exceed the margin.

Re: "Good engineering management" is a fad

#74

Post by sfink »

fijiaarone wrote: post #9

A manager’s job isn’t to guide the company, it’s to make sure his team does the tasks they are assigned. Likewise, a worker’s job isn’t to “think about the big picture” and come up with a strategy for the organization. So who is supposed to do it? Because executives sure aren’t.

Disagree. Software development requires a lot of expert knowledge that executives won't and can't possess. If you're not employing that expert knowledge to benefit the company you're a part of, why are you even in the field?

Personally, I find a lot of appeal in having the expertise and influence to be more than a small cog, even when working as a generic staff engineer at the leaf level of my organization. I don't think there are many professions where that is possible, or at least nowhere where that degree of influence is near as feasible (apocryphal stories about janitors coming up with the next breakthrough product notwithstanding).

Re: "Good engineering management" is a fad

#75

Post by oasisaimlessly »

sokoloff wrote: post #49
ozim wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not fun part is when team delivers good valuable stuff but market isn’t there.

What valuable stuff was delivered if the market isn’t there?

Whatever the sales department failed to create a market for.

Re: "Good engineering management" is a fad

#76

Post by the_af »

WalterBright wrote: post #69
chickensong wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, I enjoyed and agree with your thoughtful comment, and found the response disappointing. Having known privately-owned mom-and-pop businesses, I can confirm not everyone is out for profit at all costs, even in America. For some, it's enough to make ends meet doing something you're passionate about.

You are arguing with "at all costs" which I never wrote, and so do not feel any need to reply to that. Mom and pop businesses definitely do it to make money. They aren't charities. They pay taxes on the money they make. And if they don't make money, what are they going to live on? Non-profits are not out to make money, but (again) they are not considered businesses.

Nobody argued pop & mom ("and larger") businesses don't strive to make money, the argument was that that's not their only goal.

We're arguing against your "at all costs" because you did imply it. Maximizing money earned at the cost of employees well being and happiness is ONE way of making money, but not the only way. You can earn money but not seek to maximize the money at the cost of burning out employees, for example.

Re: "Good engineering management" is a fad

#77

Post by WalterBright »

sfink wrote: post #72
WalterBright wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not at all in bad faith. Businesses are formed to make money. If the IRS discovers that your business is not intended to make money, they will re-define it as a "hobby" and will not let you deduct expenses. Surely you can give an actual example of a business not formed to make money? P.S. When you talk about bad faith, I recommend that you do not invent things I did not write, put those things in quotes pretendi…

> Surely you can give an actual example of a business not formed to make money? Why? That was never claimed. The claim was that businesses can have other reasons for existing in addition to making money. Furthermore, those other reasons can be a higher priority for a particular business.

You didn't write "in addition" in what I responded to.

Re: "Good engineering management" is a fad

#78

Post by WalterBright »

the_af wrote: post #70
WalterBright wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not at all in bad faith. Businesses are formed to make money. If the IRS discovers that your business is not intended to make money, they will re-define it as a "hobby" and will not let you deduct expenses. Surely you can give an actual example of a business not formed to make money? P.S. When you talk about bad faith, I recommend that you do not invent things I did not write, put those things in quotes pretendi…

Your answer seems in bad faith because it ignores parts of the answer like this: > "Instead, I will respond to the former, which is the original point, and say that there are plenty of mom-and-pop (or larger) businesses, as well as cooperatives, whose goals are not actually to exploit the worker to maximize the amount of money they make, but is primarily to give the owners a good work/life balance, or to help their c…

> The point is that the goal of making money is not necessarily meant at the cost of crushing employees or considering them disposable.

I never wrote that it was.

But as an employee, you and the business sign a contract in advance. The contract spells out the obligations of the company to the employee, and the obligations of the employee to the company. If you expect more than that, negotiate it as part of your agreement.

Also, if the company does not make money, how are the employees going to get paid? The company has to cut expenses, and that means some of the employees have to be let go. Companies also regularly evaluate employees, and if they are not delivering value in excess of what they cost, they'll be let go.

Yes, you can be let go. You'll also get the severance package you agreed to in your employment contract. You can also quit at any time for any reason. It's a fair arrangement. It's not a marriage.

Re: "Good engineering management" is a fad

#79

Post by WalterBright »

the_af wrote: post #76
WalterBright wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are arguing with "at all costs" which I never wrote, and so do not feel any need to reply to that. Mom and pop businesses definitely do it to make money. They aren't charities. They pay taxes on the money they make. And if they don't make money, what are they going to live on? Non-profits are not out to make money, but (again) they are not considered businesses.

Nobody argued pop & mom ("and larger") businesses don't strive to make money, the argument was that that's not their only goal. We're arguing against your "at all costs" because you did imply it. Maximizing money earned at the cost of employees well being and happiness is ONE way of making money, but not the only way. You can earn money but not seek to maximize the money at the cost of burning out employees, for exam…

Then you're arguing with yourself, because I never wrote "at all costs" nor did I imply it. It's your (rather ridiculous) strawman.

Consider I want to enter a marathon with the intention of winning it. Do you think that implies I want to club the other athletes so I can win "at all costs"?

Re: "Good engineering management" is a fad

#80

Post by jjav »

zmmmmm wrote: post #65
tyleo wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like a lot of leadership positions are like this. I was a Principal Tech Lead at a 300 personal company and I did everything from PMing large tech teams, to collecting info from top users in spreadsheets, to building demos directly for the CEO, to building a key part of our tech used by over 100 other engineers. I always told people I’d plunge the toilets myself if they were preventing the staff from working.…

> identifying and executing on whatever is highest value that you have the skills for There's a hidden assumption there though, that you CAN actually do that. At least management skills mostly stick over time but even a year away from hands on technical work is going to leave you likely stranded and unable to execute on the technical aspects. Which is why I continue to push back against suggestions technical managers…

> but even a year away from hands on technical work is going to leave you likely stranded and unable to execute on the technical aspects

This is an interesting myth, but certainly a myth. I guess if we consider technical skill to be intimate knowledge of the latest fad framework, that might be one source of the myth. But that's not technical skills, just trivia about an implementation detail.

The fundamentals like networking, process and memory management, databases and SQL, all change slowly and are very long-lived career-spanning knowledge.

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