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No management needed: anti-patterns in early-stage engineering teams

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Re: No management needed: anti-patterns in early-stage engineering teams

#91

Post by tyre »

jayd16 wrote: post #15

I think its clearly false that motivation is an inherent trait. That would imply that demotivation is also inherent, which I think is even more obviously wrong.

I think by the time you are hiring people at 27 years old or whatever, there is a noticeable gap in motivation. A quarter century of lived experience (which is "inherent" to the person you're hiring) is a lot, especially at the beginning of one's life.

There are all sorts of things like depression, cynicism, past experiences, etc. that can lead to someone have a lower baseline of motivation. It's also highly contextual, which I think is what you're saying and I 100% agree with. Some people thrive in role A and would want to bang their head against a wall for 40 hours in role B. Others vice versa, others would be meh in either, etc.

Re: No management needed: anti-patterns in early-stage engineering teams

#92

Post by [deleted] »

amarant wrote: post #48
dcastm wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why fewer and fewer companies are hiring in Europe.

Are they? Do you have a source for that? My impression is that it's easier to find engineering work in Stockholm than in silicon valley atm, but I haven't measured objectively.

[deleted]

Re: No management needed: anti-patterns in early-stage engineering teams

#93

Post by joe_mamba »

amarant wrote: post #48
dcastm wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why fewer and fewer companies are hiring in Europe.

Are they? Do you have a source for that? My impression is that it's easier to find engineering work in Stockholm than in silicon valley atm, but I haven't measured objectively.

Stockholm is not representative of entire Europe same how SF isn't representative of entire NA. There's too many variables and shades of gray to give a simple answer, with closest to a correct answer being "it depends" based on where you live, how good you are and how in demand your skill set is to the demand of your local market, but the market is pretty much fucked in many high-CoL locations worldwide due to offshoring to cheaper locations and many businesses in Europe seeing orders fall.

Re: No management needed: anti-patterns in early-stage engineering teams

#94

Post by cmrdporcupine »

OhMeadhbh wrote: post #79
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #22

This is all a bit messy to read, but seems TFA recommends against 1:1s and any kind of ticket management or any eng. management all when you have 5-6 engineers and this ... insane. People need to get on the same page. You don't need to be (shouldn't be) process insane or go SCRUM or whatever to do that. But having regular organized interactions and task definitions is absolutely imperative even early on when you don'…

yeah. i think you can get away with no 1-on-1's for small teams (like 4 people) but by the time you're at 6 or 8, it's probably a good idea. i suspect the OP has reason for believing this, so rather than say "they're wrong," i would say "i'm not sure they explained their environment sufficiently to explain their conclusion." as for ticket management. JIRA is not your friend. i would rather go with a stack of post-its…

Agree about JIRA. It trends towards TPS Reports and form filling, substituting a workflow in the issue tracker for actual human processes and communication.

We just rolled out Linear, and I'm gauging how I feel about it. GitHub / GitLab issues I don't find useful. Linear seems like a middle ground. And it's nice and fast. It also doesn't seem to let PMs go apeshit with custom fields and workflows, so that's good.

I always crave for something closer to Buganizer we had internally at Google, which was just nice and minimal and not invasive. At least in its V1 form.

Re: No management needed: anti-patterns in early-stage engineering teams

#95

Post by al_borland »

tyre wrote: post #80
al_borland wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bad manager can turn a great employee into a good one. It’s really hard to go back once that happens.

I'd go further: a bad manager can turn a great engineer into a very bad one. People look up to great people, and when the strongest performers are demotivated, that spreads. Commonly in the cultures that end up this way, leadership blames / gaslights the ICs. It's toxic and honestly kind of heartbreaking.

If they are very bad, the company can let them go. If they are simple good or fine, the company lost their great engineer, and now has a seat filler that they can’t justify firing.

Re: No management needed: anti-patterns in early-stage engineering teams

#96

Post by OhMeadhbh »

burnto wrote: post #18

> Motivation is a hired trait. The only place where managers motivate people is in management books Initial motivation is the hired trait. It’s very easy to demotivate people. The trick is to not do that.

we used to say "employees don't quit jobs, they quit managers." i was very happy at Amazon until they moved me under a sub-optimal manager. i quit less than a month later. that manager got promoted. this will tell you everything you need to know about working at Amazon.

maybe they were trying to get me to quit. maybe that area's director was incompetent. maybe both.

Re: No management needed: anti-patterns in early-stage engineering teams

#97

Post by OhMeadhbh »

tyre wrote: post #86
hahahahhaah wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thw word hired is doing a lot of work. Is motivation intrinsic to a person. Or is it a person plus situation. Ot is it person, situation and reason (reason given in interview) I have been most motivated when there was an aha in the interview process. Or a "cooll!" feeling. For me usually about the end product over the tech stack. I like to work on things I like to use myself.

I think motivation is contextual. When I love the mission of the project I'm working on, I'll put everything into it. When I hit a prolonged wall of politics or poor leadership, I'm not going to operate at 100%. There's a trifecta that works well: 1. The job is what the employee wants to be doing (IC, manager, FE/BE, end product or mission, whatever). 2. It's what the company needs. (Don't let a high performer do som…

i stopped reading and upvoted this comment right after you wrote "i think motivation is contextual." i cannot agree with you more.

Re: No management needed: anti-patterns in early-stage engineering teams

#98

Post by huflungdung »

pyrale wrote: post #27

> I know several top 1% engineers in the Valley who disengage from recruiting processes when 996 or something similar is mentioned. A few years back, on this board, 996 was something people made fun of when it was reported that some Chinese companies did it [1]. And now, the strongest claim this blog can make is that some engineers in the US would disengage from recruiting? That the issue with working on saturdays is…

[dead]

Re: No management needed: anti-patterns in early-stage engineering teams

#99

Post by OhMeadhbh »

Macha wrote: post #87
trgn wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say the exact opposite. engineering is markedly being outsourced to europe.

There’s sort of a rotation going on in a lot of companies. There were companies which had Europe as the low cost location compared to America are now moving the type of work that had been done in America to Europe and what had been in Europe to India. But also companies treating European countries as high cost now and looking for new low cost countries

we also sort of effed up a while ago with changes to section 174... suddenly software devs in the states were 10%-25% more expensive. once that happened it made sense to see if moving devs to europe for situations where you have a european based product and sales team made sense.

in the states we've sort of repaired the damage of the section 174 changes, but i think they were rolled into a tax bill that sunsets in a few years. so we may see this again in 2029.

Re: No management needed: anti-patterns in early-stage engineering teams

#100

Post by tyre »

OhMeadhbh wrote: post #90
tyre wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would tell a recruiter directly that 996 is a red flag. Prior to that it was cracked (née 10x (née ninja)) engineers or sigma grindset or whatever. It's performative. If you bring people together to build something that they actually give a shit about, you'll out-perform a group of people who are grinding out of fear. And you'll _definitely_ out-perform the kinds of people who are buzzword heavy.

i agree. but. there's something in the behaviour of these unicorns that should be examined. the idea that an engineer can be a ninja, 10x or unicorn independent of the processes of their environment and working group is laughable. i have known several people who were identified as "highly productive" and they all had some individual traits like a) they were very good with individual time management, b) were not afrai…

I've been an early employee (sub 10 and 20) in two unicorns and another (a presidential campaign) that didn't have a valuation but did the equivalent. People did not work 40 hours per week, and I feel comfortable saying that the companies could not have been as successful if people had.

The common threads were:

- incredible ICs

- founders who spiked in the most important areas for that market

- a mission that everyone truly believed in

- a culture of people who deeply cared about one another but were comfortable pushing back (as you said!)

It's incredibly rare to find all of these together. I agree that management is responsible for helping others thrive, but not necessarily that they should shape the environment to fit any engineer. Some people want things (projects, challenges, roles) that don't make sense in that company's context. It's okay, especially when it's hard, to agree that this isn't the place for someone.

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