"Good engineering management" is a fad

Agreed, I haven’t seen this in my career at least. I’ve worked with contractors on a yearly basis who would take some time off and then hit the ground running.

If there’s any data supporting the opposite, I’d love to see it.

But that's the kind of argument you're making by dismissing opinions that e.g. clubbing other athletes since winning is the most important thing is bad, and that if we don't like it we should "join a commune".

Others have already explained that while a business must make money, that's not always the most important thing, there are competing goals (not excluding money, but sometimes as important).

And if you didn't understand the original comment by stavros, then he clarified what he meant. So now you have the chance to stand corrected: he meant making money at the expense of all else, including worker happiness. This point has been made more than once already, you cannot have missed it.

It's ridiculous to expect every single aspect of the employer-employee relationship spelled out in the contract. There are - or should be - certain societal expectations that the employer will not cause undue stress or unhappiness on the worker. This must not be negotiated in a cutthroat manner; that's such an American thing to expect (which was partly stavros point, I believe).

There are other ways to conduct business that are less exploitative without requiring a specific clause in the contract saying the employee will be treated well.

Companies lay off employees for all sorts of evil reasons unrelated to "we will go under otherwise". There's reason to believe the "great layoffs season" of a few years back was at least partly an act of collusion by big tech companies (which it then cascades to smaller companies) which had more to do with regulating down wages than with them risking going under.

Someone mentioned a few weeks back Nadella's memo explaining some big layoffs at Microsoft where he rambled about how it seemed contradictory that the company was doing so well yet they were letting go so many employees "which we've known and learned from for years" yet "the Lord works in mysterious ways" (ok, I made up this last phrase, but what he said amounted to the same). He failed to point out a single specific reason, and in particular he never mentioned "or else Microsoft's profits will go down" or whatever. I guess if Microsoft ex employees don't like it they can go join a commune!

P.S. as an example of how American this is, in some countries companies cannot simply let someone go unless they can provide legal reasons for this (bad performance beyond all fair chances, justified cost cuttings, etc). You can argue whether this is good or bad, but the point is: there is more than one way of conducting business.

> It's ridiculous to expect every single aspect of the employer-employee relationship spelled out in the contract.

It's not necessary to spell out in the contract what the legal requirements are.

The words "exploitative" and "treated well" are very fuzzy words, and everyone has a different idea of what they mean.

> for all sorts of evil reasons

Then the employee can press charges or sue.

> regulating down wages

How that works out in the real world is companies cheat on these cartels. Remember when Jobs complained that Google was violating their "no poaching" agreement? Cartels are unstable and unable to enforce their cartels, so they don't really work.

Nadella does not need to justify his layoffs. If they don't fit into Microsoft's plans, they get laid off. Microsoft does not owe them a job. BTW, I know many people who have left Microsoft for a panoply of reasons. Many went to other companies, many started their own, some succeeded, some didn't, some went back to Microsoft. It's a chaotic, dynamic system. I also know some that made incredible fortunes off of their stock options. How horrible that Microsoft minted tens of thousands of multimillionaires out of their employees! Some even into 9 figures. What a hell-hole! Microsoft is probably the worst example you could mention as an evil employer.

Dummy me that didn't get hired on by MSFT in the 1980s. Or I shoulda invested everything I had into MSFT stock. When I went to the doc for a catscan, I asked the operator to set the dial to 1987 so I could tell my foolish earlier self to buy buy buy MSFT! Sadly, the catscan machine had the side effect of wiping my memory of the trip.

> You can argue whether this is good or bad

It's bad, because it makes businesses highly reluctant to hire people, which makes the economy less prosperous.

fads come and go but idiocy is forever

this guy didn't write a blog post, he wrote the preface material for a training module to be sold to the least-competent HR execs he can find

it is generally a bad sign when you set out to taxonomize all possible productive behaviors. in this case, possibly a worse sign is that this guy has two "clusters" making up eight "foundational skills." for perspective, when Immanuel Kant set out to taxonomize all possible human experiences, he came back with four "clusters" of four "skills"

apparently engineering management encompasses the same complexity as half of all possible human experiences, from tabula rasa. good to know, i guess

(perhaps obviously, i did not read the essay any further than the introduction of "eight foundational skills" in "two clusters." at that point clearly I am being sold nonsense, and I feel free to stop reading and just poke fun at the author instead.)