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Why senior engineers let bad projects fail

lalitm.com

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Re: Why senior engineers let bad projects fail

#81

Post by cm2012 »

cj wrote: post #44
BeetleB wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reminds me of one of my managers who said, “Sometimes, you have to let people fail.” I often say "Sometimes, you have to let the manager fail." Some managers don't like being told their ideas won't work. If you refuse or argue, you are seen as the reason his idea failed. I've found what works best with them is to proceed with the work, but keep them informed very frequently, so they can see how things evolve, and w…

I can’t imagine holding a job where I had to do work that I expect will fail. Sounds absolutely depressing. What keeps you motivated?

Happens all the time

Re: Why senior engineers let bad projects fail

#83

Post by jetru »

LaFolle wrote: post #82

Are people here reading the article comfortable sharing it, or similar articles, with their teams? I can't do it, and i'm not really sure why.

No I'm not. Because the people who need this mentality shift are also people who won't listen anyway and have a negative attitude. And the people who already understand this don't need to see this article.

Re: Why senior engineers let bad projects fail

#84

Post by denkmoon »

cj wrote: post #44
BeetleB wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reminds me of one of my managers who said, “Sometimes, you have to let people fail.” I often say "Sometimes, you have to let the manager fail." Some managers don't like being told their ideas won't work. If you refuse or argue, you are seen as the reason his idea failed. I've found what works best with them is to proceed with the work, but keep them informed very frequently, so they can see how things evolve, and w…

I can’t imagine holding a job where I had to do work that I expect will fail. Sounds absolutely depressing. What keeps you motivated?

We the unwilling, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, for so long, with so little, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing.

"Fulfilling" work is a rarity afforded by a fairly unique time and place in history. For the rest of us, work is a means to an end and ideally a fulfilling life outside work lets you keep plugging away on some rich idiot's hare brained scheme so you can keep living that fulfilling life outside work. 12 years in and I've not had a single project I worked on reach its own benchmark for success. No fault of mine, just the wrong ideas at the wrong time and place. A day late and a dollar short, all those other euphemisms.

Re: Why senior engineers let bad projects fail

#85

Post by gizmo686 »

BikiniPrince wrote: post #9

Reminds me of one of my managers who said, “Sometimes, you have to let people fail.” It does take a lot of energy to keep some people afloat. My hope has always been they learn to swim as it were, but sometimes it’s just effort better spent elsewhere. I know one project did not have my involvement and couldn’t have succeeded without my knowledge. They were so bad they would work in questions casually to their actual…

Letting people fail and letting projects fail seem fairly different to me (at least for large projects).

There have been a bunch of times in my career where I've allowed people under me to "fail". Often times, an individual failing at something is just not that expensive; while being highly educational. Sometimes, it turns out that there approach actually worked, and we as a group gained a new bit of institutional knowledge.

Re: Why senior engineers let bad projects fail

#86

Post by shermantanktop »

ljm wrote: post #43
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #17

I have to question the judgment of the manager talking shit about another team and its leader to a junior engineer. Going and looking at the author's LinkedIn history (it's available via his About page) makes it pretty clear that this was happening within Google. I think it speaks poorly of their manager's professionalism, and what sort of behavior they consider to be acceptable with regard to colleagues.

The entire post devolved into a treatise on playing politics and trading political capital in a specific corporate culture. I’ve seen people who played the game well at Google or Amazon fall completely flat on their ass at a different company, thinking the game hasn’t changed (or that there even is a game), barely lasting a few months on the C suite before being softly moved along.

Someone who succeeds at a game with arbitrary rules without realizing that it's a game - it sounds nonsensical, but I've seen it too. It's some kind of selection bias for people who naturally operate that way, plus the Peter Principle.

When the game rules shift, those people flail. Recent example was that in 2021-2 nobody could hire fast enough, but now staff expansion is not common. Managers who excelled at coming up with reasons to spawn new teams did great until the money dried up. Some of them shifted gears and adapted, but others just couldn't get the message.

Re: Why senior engineers let bad projects fail

#87

Post by ajkjk »

whattheheckheck wrote: post #33
ajkjk wrote: post #4

Letting it die is the self-serving, career-optimizing, amoral take. But it's more ethical to stand up for what's right even at personal cost. A bunch of people wasting years of their life, not to mention all the resources, is a tragedy worth avoiding. Of course, the wisdom of taking the person risk is a continuum. In some cases it is and in some it isn't. But.. To omit the ethical angle entirely seems like a bad take…

How do you know it's right? You can't run the same experiment of life twice so you only get one shot

that's not how morality works... morality is about doing what you think is right instead of excusing yourself not doing it. If you think a bad thing is going to happen that you have agency to prevent, that's on you. Whether you have the data from repeated events or not doesn't matter. (Of course, your confidence in your own belief goes up with more data. But there are still plenty of cases where you can be sure even on the first shot.)

Re: Why senior engineers let bad projects fail

#88

Post by ajkjk »

bossyTeacher wrote: post #8
ajkjk wrote: post #4

Letting it die is the self-serving, career-optimizing, amoral take. But it's more ethical to stand up for what's right even at personal cost. A bunch of people wasting years of their life, not to mention all the resources, is a tragedy worth avoiding. Of course, the wisdom of taking the person risk is a continuum. In some cases it is and in some it isn't. But.. To omit the ethical angle entirely seems like a bad take…

> it's more ethical to stand up for what's right even at personal cost. Employment is a business transaction not a transaction based on ethics viewpoints

that's the attitude of an unethical person, yes

(also that of a "non-ethical" person, like an animal or a person with no agency in the matter, if you want to make the distinction. I'm not sure we should but I guess it's an interesting question)

Re: Why senior engineers let bad projects fail

#89

Post by ajkjk »

recursive wrote: post #37
ajkjk wrote: post #4

Letting it die is the self-serving, career-optimizing, amoral take. But it's more ethical to stand up for what's right even at personal cost. A bunch of people wasting years of their life, not to mention all the resources, is a tragedy worth avoiding. Of course, the wisdom of taking the person risk is a continuum. In some cases it is and in some it isn't. But.. To omit the ethical angle entirely seems like a bad take…

I don't understand this point of view. Most of the people aren't wasting their time. They're getting paid for the effort. The business is taking a risk, and pays people to realize their vision. Some visions are bad. Getting personally attached and emotionally invested in work you get paid for is a risk too. There's nothing wrong with that. But there's also nothing wrong putting your time in and churning out requireme…

of course they're wasting their time. a year of work deleted? all you have to show for it is money? you could have money AND something to be proud of. what a waste it was, to do something pointless for a year when you could have done something important.

not to say that there aren't experiments worth running. but in my experience (and in the example in the OP's article), the experiment often isn't even worth running. Intelligent people knew from the jump that it was a bad idea. No experiment necessary. Just pointless waste, enabled by hubris and apathy.

Re: Why senior engineers let bad projects fail

#90

Post by shermantanktop »

mystraline wrote: post #55

Ive done exactly this. Upper management agreed to geoIP blocking of the app, without consulting engineering. Why this matters is that GeoIP blocking is at best a whack-a-mole with constantly updating lists and probabilistic blocklists. And is easy to route around with VPNs. The verbiage they approved was "geoblocking", not "best effort of geoblocking". Clients expected 100% success rate. When that didn't work, manage…

I wonder if they really learned that, at least in a durable way. They probably learned "oh this geoblock thing isn't as simple as we thought." But consultation is dilution of decision-making power, and that's what upper management lives for.
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