4 ms·
I think you are complecting peoples with processes. There is absolutely no reason an engineer could not influence the decision making process of a manager. The
by fsloth 5y ago
I think you are complecting peoples with processes.
There is absolutely no reason an engineer could not influence the decision making process of a manager. The manager is the one taking the responsibility for a decision, but it is a poor manager that fails to listen to their top experts and leverage their knowhow.
That's what it means to be a great engineer that gets the manager ear. It's not the engineer's job to manage, but is his job to be part of the team, and do what feels right for the team, including to tell their opinion on the matters they are a subject expert.
Processes are just scaffolding and general guidelines on top of a functional engineering organization.
An engineering organization is not a car factory.
- lifeisstillgood 5y agoThe whole reason for hierarchies (and democracies) is to avoid this "listening" crap anyhow. No matter how brilliant, or well intentioned, no CEO can listen to all views from all experts - at a certain scale this goes from 'has other work to do' and flips into 'physically impossible'. So, yes there is a reason "an engineer could not influence the decision making process of a manager. " At some scales it is impossible. And if you mean why cant he influence the manager above him - yes thats fine. But that manager has f all chance of reaching the CEO as well. At certain points companies stop acting like autonomus agents and become, some kind of lava like process - predictable and impossible to stop. maybe large firms are the problem overall
- nicoburns 5y agoThat's why they're not listening to everyone. They're listening to those who have managed to get their ear.
- andrekandre 5y agothat can lead to a lot of toxic situations and is not sustainable long term; it breaks expectations all across the board of fair arbitration that a manager/leader is supposed to do
- dv_dt 5y agoWell that’s a ceo culture responsibility to not make themselves a bottleneck. Generally this is done by delegating more decision making expectations downward.
- mtberatwork 5y agoIt sounds like you are describing a tech/project lead, which, depending on the context, can be a thankless task. The organization gets free project management/strategy out of you without any increase in compensation, title change or added authority and with the expectation to still perform all programming work of a senior engineer. It's a line that engineers need to walk carefully, otherwise you will find yourself doing two full time jobs and burnout will hit you rather quickly.
- rjsw 5y agoAnother danger is that the senior management can change without passing on the knowledge of the informal networks that were in place.