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Some of what you say about management is true. But if you really want to fully understand then you need to keep following that trail of incentives. Your bosses

by zaphar 6y ago

Some of what you say about management is true. But if you really want to fully understand then you need to keep following that trail of incentives. Your bosses boss doesn't optimize for those metrics "just because". There are reasons and persuading them requires understanding those reasons. A company has only so much revenue. Wasting that revenue in the best case reduces profits. In the worst case it kills the company. Changing a perverse incentive requires understanding whether it is actually perverse or not and then proposing a compelling alternative that results in better results for the company.

tremon 6y ago
Changing a perverse incentive requires understanding whether it is actually perverse or not and then proposing a compelling alternative that results in better results for the company. While that's true, considering those incentives and changing them if necessary is part of my boss's job, not mine. My job is only to report the misaligned incentives I perceive to my boss. If my boss isn't able to make me understand his decisions, that's my cue to find a new boss. And I concede, those bosses are rare. I've only had two in twenty years of employment. It takes time to recognize the qualities you need in a boss to perform well. I know myself well enough in that department to actively look for those qualities. Even to the point where I prefer a less challenging job under the right boss than the perfect job under the wrong leadership.
pdimitar 6y ago
I am sure that what you say is very true for not a small amount of businesses. My issue is mostly with my profession -- programming. Sometimes we are so micromanaged and our time is so sliced and diced that all of this short-term thinking easily gets 5x more expensive on a short time frame anywhere from 3 to 6 months. This has been observed numerous times yet IT managers seem to want to never learn. It's OK to try and save money. But saving money short-term in order to have a huge expense down the line is just being irresponsible from those managers.
- hallway_monitor 6y ago
  Having led a team for about a year now let me tell you it's not easy. You are always trying to balance many priorities and even with over a decade of coding experience, it's not always obvious which refactorings or tech debt stories or architectural changes are worth prioritizing now, which can wait till later, and which are engineer pipe dreams that I need to gently but firmly kill as quickly as possible. I have had similar managers to what was described above, in those types of organizations. It may be a lost cause but it may be an opportunity to work on your influence skills; being able to explain and sell your solution is perhaps even more important than coming up with it in the first place.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - tacitusarc 6y ago
    This is really difficult. Perhaps the best thing is to track the proposed technical debt stories, and do not discard them when they are rejected. Instead, also keep track of how much pain is hit that can be associated back to that particular technical debt. 3 years into major project, my team finally got prioritized to work on and improvement that will take us a couple weeks, that we were not able to work on previously because we could not justify its value. But for the past 3 years the organization has lived with pain that this would have resolved. So now we can justify it. And the thing is, it's not like we didn't know 3 years ago when we said we wanted to make this happen but things are going to be terrible if we were not able to prioritize it but in many organizations it's not good enough to just say how bad things will be. People need to actually have felt the pain. Honestly, I think that's okay on its face. My bigger issue is that frequently there is no or very little trust around engineers who predict what the major problems will be an advocate for them and then it's not like when they're proven right management now listens to them the next time. I think that's the real problem.
    - kclay 6y ago
      In these cases wouldn't it have been to work on it slowly as a "side project" outside of the team normal priorities? I always tell my team if they can fit it in and not hinder the current sprint by all means go ahead and do it on the side. I know this goes against the normal and people want to attach "right now " value (hours it took reflected on check) but going beyond the call can also give you leverage when your yearly review comes up for example.
marcosdumay 6y ago
> Your bosses boss doesn't optimize for those metrics "just because". Your bosses optimize for those metrics because it's the one they can communicate higher up on the short time they can get higher ups attention. If it were because the metric was any good, there wouldn't be so many cases of companies bankrupted by technical and cultural debits pilling up.
- pdimitar 6y ago
  > Your bosses optimize for those metrics because it's the one they can communicate higher up on the short time they can get higher ups attention. That's their problem and not mine, is it? A good manager doesn't just reflect the lightning bolt to their underlings. They absorb part of the shock and process / transform what they will transfer down below. If they aren't doing that then they aren't managers; they are uneducated opportunists in suits. > If it were because the metric was any good, there wouldn't be so many cases of companies bankrupted by technical and cultural debits pilling up. Really well articulated, kudos.
alisonatwork 6y ago
I agree that often there are good business reasons for killing projects, and plenty of so-called technical debt is actually just the result of pragmatic decision-making. Imo developers should get used to maintaining that stuff, because that's a huge part of the job in most profitable companies. But there is also a flip-side where I see the opposite happen - especially in startups and VC-funded companies. These companies can take massive losses while at the same time investing huge amounts into elaborate solutions that appear to primarily exist for the purpose of creating impressive bullet points on the resumes of careerist employees. In these companies, even in management, the work seems to be driven by everyone trying to maximize the impact of their own, personal "tour of duty", then making a profitable exit. These incentives are not the same as those of people working at more legacy/boring companies.
- pdimitar 6y ago
  > These companies can take massive losses while at the same time investing huge amounts into elaborate solutions that appear to primarily exist for the purpose of creating impressive bullet points on the resumes of careerist employees. Yep, that's one of the things I had in mind when I said "perverse incentives".
bobthepanda 6y ago
It also takes time to turn a big ship, and by the time one realizes one needs to make the turn it may be too late. To extend this to non-tech examples, failing big companies, like Sears, do not disappear overnight; the decline was in full view for over a decade but ultimately the ship could not be turned. With tech the problem may be even worse; Uber still has not turned a net profit, but with tech investors like to throw money at losing businesses. Some turn around, but that's not guaranteed.

by zaphar 6y ago

tremon 6y ago

Changing a perverse incentive requires understanding whether it is actually perverse or not and then proposing a compelling alternative that results in better results for the company. While that's true, considering those incentives and changing them if necessary is part of my boss's job, not mine. My job is only to report the misaligned incentives I perceive to my boss. If my boss isn't able to make me understand his decisions, that's my cue to find a new boss. And I concede, those bosses are rare. I've only had two in twenty years of employment. It takes time to recognize the qualities you need in a boss to perform well. I know myself well enough in that department to actively look for those qualities. Even to the point where I prefer a less challenging job under the right boss than the perfect job under the wrong leadership.

pdimitar 6y ago

I am sure that what you say is very true for not a small amount of businesses. My issue is mostly with my profession -- programming. Sometimes we are so micromanaged and our time is so sliced and diced that all of this short-term thinking easily gets 5x more expensive on a short time frame anywhere from 3 to 6 months. This has been observed numerous times yet IT managers seem to want to never learn. It's OK to try and save money. But saving money short-term in order to have a huge expense down the line is just being irresponsible from those managers.

hallway_monitor 6y ago
Having led a team for about a year now let me tell you it's not easy. You are always trying to balance many priorities and even with over a decade of coding experience, it's not always obvious which refactorings or tech debt stories or architectural changes are worth prioritizing now, which can wait till later, and which are engineer pipe dreams that I need to gently but firmly kill as quickly as possible. I have had similar managers to what was described above, in those types of organizations. It may be a lost cause but it may be an opportunity to work on your influence skills; being able to explain and sell your solution is perhaps even more important than coming up with it in the first place.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- tacitusarc 6y ago
  This is really difficult. Perhaps the best thing is to track the proposed technical debt stories, and do not discard them when they are rejected. Instead, also keep track of how much pain is hit that can be associated back to that particular technical debt. 3 years into major project, my team finally got prioritized to work on and improvement that will take us a couple weeks, that we were not able to work on previously because we could not justify its value. But for the past 3 years the organization has lived with pain that this would have resolved. So now we can justify it. And the thing is, it's not like we didn't know 3 years ago when we said we wanted to make this happen but things are going to be terrible if we were not able to prioritize it but in many organizations it's not good enough to just say how bad things will be. People need to actually have felt the pain. Honestly, I think that's okay on its face. My bigger issue is that frequently there is no or very little trust around engineers who predict what the major problems will be an advocate for them and then it's not like when they're proven right management now listens to them the next time. I think that's the real problem.
  - kclay 6y ago
    In these cases wouldn't it have been to work on it slowly as a "side project" outside of the team normal priorities? I always tell my team if they can fit it in and not hinder the current sprint by all means go ahead and do it on the side. I know this goes against the normal and people want to attach "right now " value (hours it took reflected on check) but going beyond the call can also give you leverage when your yearly review comes up for example.

marcosdumay 6y ago

> Your bosses boss doesn't optimize for those metrics "just because". Your bosses optimize for those metrics because it's the one they can communicate higher up on the short time they can get higher ups attention. If it were because the metric was any good, there wouldn't be so many cases of companies bankrupted by technical and cultural debits pilling up.

pdimitar 6y ago
> Your bosses optimize for those metrics because it's the one they can communicate higher up on the short time they can get higher ups attention. That's their problem and not mine, is it? A good manager doesn't just reflect the lightning bolt to their underlings. They absorb part of the shock and process / transform what they will transfer down below. If they aren't doing that then they aren't managers; they are uneducated opportunists in suits. > If it were because the metric was any good, there wouldn't be so many cases of companies bankrupted by technical and cultural debits pilling up. Really well articulated, kudos.

alisonatwork 6y ago

I agree that often there are good business reasons for killing projects, and plenty of so-called technical debt is actually just the result of pragmatic decision-making. Imo developers should get used to maintaining that stuff, because that's a huge part of the job in most profitable companies. But there is also a flip-side where I see the opposite happen - especially in startups and VC-funded companies. These companies can take massive losses while at the same time investing huge amounts into elaborate solutions that appear to primarily exist for the purpose of creating impressive bullet points on the resumes of careerist employees. In these companies, even in management, the work seems to be driven by everyone trying to maximize the impact of their own, personal "tour of duty", then making a profitable exit. These incentives are not the same as those of people working at more legacy/boring companies.

pdimitar 6y ago
> These companies can take massive losses while at the same time investing huge amounts into elaborate solutions that appear to primarily exist for the purpose of creating impressive bullet points on the resumes of careerist employees. Yep, that's one of the things I had in mind when I said "perverse incentives".

bobthepanda 6y ago

It also takes time to turn a big ship, and by the time one realizes one needs to make the turn it may be too late. To extend this to non-tech examples, failing big companies, like Sears, do not disappear overnight; the decline was in full view for over a decade but ultimately the ship could not be turned. With tech the problem may be even worse; Uber still has not turned a net profit, but with tech investors like to throw money at losing businesses. Some turn around, but that's not guaranteed.