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Senior Engineers Build Consensus (2019)

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Re: Senior Engineers Build Consensus (2019)

#91

Post by [deleted] »

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #40
alexashka wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't get to a better future by demanding that it have existed in the past. That doesn't make any sense. Now I'd really like to hear these 'good reasons' and what makes them 'good'. Before you list them, please try and apply them to 'why should we abandon slavery'. If your arguments work for both instances, please explain why we ever abandoned slavery, since clearly there are 'good reasons' for owning slaves, so…

A word of advice, injecting such topics needlessly distracts from the actual point you’re trying to make.

[deleted]

Re: Senior Engineers Build Consensus (2019)

#92

Post by whateveracct »

bluesnowmonkey wrote: post #87
whateveracct wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

haha i have worked at amazon, where disagree and commit is one of their laminated leadership principles except it isn't the principle is "have backbone; disagree and commit" there's checks and balances in the principle's words themself. every leader i've had who has "disagree and commit" as their guiding light has just been an autocrat. they never mention on the "have backbone" part. i had a VPE from BigCos come into…

> i thought one of his tech decisions was bad (and in reality it was politically motivated to force people out.) Let’s say you were right: It was a bad technical decision and it was politically motivated. What outcome can you expect from arguing with him on technical grounds? He knows what you’re saying is right, but he already knew that before making the decision. What you need to do is convince him not to act in ba…

this guy was VPE - there was no way to sway his autocratic decisions.

i knew he was arguing in bad faith. there was no way to win politically - he was making the decision to shape the company in his own image. so the best i could do was visibly disagree, document his various bad actor behaviors, and share my understanding with other engineers who didn't feel comfortable speaking up.

i just thought the guy was a dick so i felt like stirring the pot a bit. myself and plenty of other respected engineers left one-by-one (he didn't even announce i resigned. people were surprised. he was trying to save some face i think.)

the VPE left shortly after. people blamed the engineering turnover on him haha.

overall i feel pretty good about my short tenure there. i negotiated a nice salary bump when i joined and use it to anchor my new BigCo salary.

Re: Senior Engineers Build Consensus (2019)

#93

Post by roflc0ptic »

xyzelement wrote: post #88
BlargMcLarg wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point being, most of the time people say "build consensus", what they mean is either "let's have an endless, design by committee approach where the backend dev with no knowledge on UI decides how the UI should look rather than letting the UI designer create a few samples and iterate and everyone else giving feedback like a user would" or "we already decided this is going to happen, but for the sake of formality w…

There's a third thing they could mean: we want this to succeed in the organization which means we need to both hear people out to reflect their real needs in the plan, and that we need to communicate to them in a way that they buy in. So that it can work. In fact this is really the only way to get anything done regardless of what you call it.

Yes, this. It's funny seeing so many people being cynical about this - sure, there's plenty of ways for it go to badly, but far more importantly, there are a couple of ways it can go right.

As general commentary - if you're smart and good at identifying problems with things, use your ability to identify problems to avoid those problems, not as an excuse to avoid doing stuff. Being cynical about everything isn't a terrible strategy, as long as you remember that you need to be cynical about your own cynicism, too.

Re: Senior Engineers Build Consensus (2019)

#94

Post by AlexCoventry »

whateveracct wrote: post #10

"Build Consensus" - hah, the words of an org chart climber. I've recently joined a BigCo (as a senior+ engineer), and the culture here isn't building consensus (out of authentic building blocks) - it's a toxic "we must be consensus after every meeting." There's always a "champion" idea (but you can bring a "challenger" idea so people feel heard), there's always a need to "be in alignment" after every 45 min chunk of…

> a toxic "we must be consensus after every meeting."

What are the consequences of failure to establish consensus?

Re: Senior Engineers Build Consensus (2019)

#95

Post by andrewem »

sgtnoodle wrote: post #89
__blockcipher__ wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably you’re referring to corticosteroids which are not anabolic steroids. Or just making a tired joke, I couldn’t tell which :P

Prednisone, and it definitely altered my personality significantly. I also ordered $400 worth of RC quadcopter parts, and spent 8 hours straight sanding off and re-polishing the top surface of my eyeglass lenses to get rid of the anti-reflective coating that was cracked and pitted. In the month leading up to that, interactions at work were also giving me anxiety bordering on panic attacks, like a visceral fight-or-fl…

I knew someone who was on prednisone for 3 days. They got 6 days worth of things done in those 3 days, then spent the next 3 days of withdrawal in bed unable to do anything.

Also: this is wildly off topic, but did your 8 hours of sanding off cracked anti-reflective coating work? What equipment did you need? I had a similar issue and it never occurred to me that it might be fixable at home.

Re: Senior Engineers Build Consensus (2019)

#96

Post by tootie »

Nowado wrote: post #53
tootie wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a boss type guy and I absolutely do this intentionally but not because it's not really me setting policy as much as I'm focus group testing. I run it past peers or a few influential people who could be receptive. Get them to to think about it and give some feedback. When I bring it up to the group it's because it's been well-received and the other influencers are ready to back it. Similar to how this article expl…

What about 1) false negatives (when they receive it poorly), 2) various consequences of priming, 3) false positives (where they receive it well and everyone in main group wrongly assumes they are alone in their doubts)? You can totally run things in authoritarian manner, gathering consent in instrumental way and use outside sources (like sales) for validation. But downsides/side effects/intentional features not said…

I do lean on my own instincts. I won't just give up on an idea because someone doesn't like it. They need to convince me. I'm just open to being convinced. But I'm also just wrong sometimes anyway. It's not a science.

Re: Senior Engineers Build Consensus (2019)

#97

Post by thu2111 »

scsilver wrote: post #70
thu2111 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like an instance of a common tactic (or problem, depending on your perspective) that is especially common at software firms where management learn to work around employees' problems instead of challenging them to improve. The engineer in this case had an emotional control issue: they reacted badly to anything new, even if they had no rational reason to do so (they were fine with it later). This could have…

Is the cost of kid gloves out weight the cost of bringing in a new engineer that you don't know their failings at all. The devil you know is manageable, the devil you dont is a gamble. How much upside is in that gamble.

It's definitely related to the cost of hiring and the cost of the employees. But it can work against the employees in the long run because they learn they can get away with bad behaviour and it gets normalised. Then it's hard to genuinely improve, so acts as an invisible barrier to their career growth (or worse, doesn't, and that demotivates the others).

Re: Senior Engineers Build Consensus (2019)

#98

Post by cunac »

sgtnoodle wrote: post #89
__blockcipher__ wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably you’re referring to corticosteroids which are not anabolic steroids. Or just making a tired joke, I couldn’t tell which :P

Prednisone, and it definitely altered my personality significantly. I also ordered $400 worth of RC quadcopter parts, and spent 8 hours straight sanding off and re-polishing the top surface of my eyeglass lenses to get rid of the anti-reflective coating that was cracked and pitted. In the month leading up to that, interactions at work were also giving me anxiety bordering on panic attacks, like a visceral fight-or-fl…

wait for next software update to patch security :) , you made my day

Re: Senior Engineers Build Consensus (2019)

#99

Post by whateveracct »

AlexCoventry wrote: post #94
whateveracct wrote: post #10

"Build Consensus" - hah, the words of an org chart climber. I've recently joined a BigCo (as a senior+ engineer), and the culture here isn't building consensus (out of authentic building blocks) - it's a toxic "we must be consensus after every meeting." There's always a "champion" idea (but you can bring a "challenger" idea so people feel heard), there's always a need to "be in alignment" after every 45 min chunk of…

> a toxic "we must be consensus after every meeting." What are the consequences of failure to establish consensus?

hours of extra meetings on my calendar

Re: Senior Engineers Build Consensus (2019)

#100

Post by sgtnoodle »

whateveracct wrote: post #10

"Build Consensus" - hah, the words of an org chart climber. I've recently joined a BigCo (as a senior+ engineer), and the culture here isn't building consensus (out of authentic building blocks) - it's a toxic "we must be consensus after every meeting." There's always a "champion" idea (but you can bring a "challenger" idea so people feel heard), there's always a need to "be in alignment" after every 45 min chunk of…

I mean this constructively, but it sounds like you're rather jaded from your past experiences.

I've personally experienced 4 flavors of work environments: high stress low wisdom politics (big stakes student project); High stress high wisdom politics (SpaceX); low stress high wisdom politics (Google X); and my current project, low stress high wisdom no-politics (Zipline).

Each different environment required me to adapt my own behavior appropriately to work productively with coworkers. Notably, the only environment that consistently lead me to feeling jaded and burnt out in the long term was the low-stress BigCo environment. I see a lot of truth in what you describe about your current experiences, although I never got quite that pessimistic. If you're happy slithering around the politics and are able to find fulfillment in your personal life, good on ya. That reminds me of a coworker at SpaceX who, a month or two before getting let go, admitted to spending 8 years at a defense contractor doing crossword puzzles at his desk all day, every day.

Building consensus around long term architecture is something like 80% of my current job, and over the years while the org chart has gone from 1 layer to something like 5 layers, I've successfully remained at the bottom. The folk at the top of the org chart are completely approachable, and in a lot of ways are there to serve me, solving the problems that would otherwise prevent me from getting my work done.

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