7 ms·

> You have an increasing number of managers who have little to no domain knowledge After seeing this time and time again, and because I was getting older, I ma

> You have an increasing number of managers who have little to no domain knowledge After seeing this time and time again, and because I was getting older, I made a conscious decision to move into management. Be the change you want to see in the world, right? Now my output is mostly spreadsheets and powerpoint, but I enable my team to do good work as I insulate them from the bullshit. I can always get down into the trenches or work on a side project if I need to scratch that creative itch.

apples_oranges 5y ago
Yes! It's probably just a demographics thing that will even itself out in the future. I mean: People like you will become managers and there are many programmers in the younger generations to draw candidates from.
- winphone1974 5y ago
  Haha! Cause nobody every changes, loses their edge or falls out of touch with their tech roots, right? We just need to get these clueless dinosaurs out of power before the current woke kids take over!
logshipper 5y ago
I really respect that attitude. I happen to be doing a security assessment on some products (PuTTY etc) at the firm (Fortune Global 100) where I am interning. It baffled me to read a directive from management that said that we should shy away from open-source projects - I must confess that I was somewhat frustrated at the sheer ignorance in the memo but your comment allows me to see a silver-lining. I hope that one day I can rise up to management and make decisions based on greater nuance than simply saying "OSS bad and insecure".
- TimPC 5y ago
  I think the general aversion to OSS is more that there is no responsible actor. In many cases, if you integrate a third party paid solution you can file a bug on that solution with reasonable confidence it can be a priority. If you use code from another team at the company you know you can file bugs on them. If you write code yourself you have confidence in fixing it. There is a danger with integrating OSS that you have code in your stack that no one knows well enough to fix and no one is responsible for. If something breaks you might have to learn a sizeable amount of code and domain knowledge to make a fix. Filing bugs on OSS is not viewed in the same way as filing bugs on paid third party solutions as whether the bugs are a priority to an OSS solution seems more risky. Note that large amounts of OSS is used in companies, but it's generally code that developers are expected to know well enough to dive into if need be. And code that is popular enough to be well tested for bugs and known that breaking errors in the framework will get fixes. Examples would be things like Python or Node.js. As a manager a potential problem you can have is a major bug your team is responsible for that no one is qualified to fix and thus your only reasonable time estimate is unknown. Avoiding certain parts of OSS is often a precaution against this situation.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    > I think the general aversion to OSS is more that there is no responsible actor. I have filed many bug reports for paid software over the years. The bugs were fixed exactly 0% of the time. If they ever gave a reason, it was along the lines of "you are a special snowflake, nobody else has had that problem, so it isn't worth fixing". Eventually, I just stopped filing bug reports. Things aren't better with OSS, either, though I resent went bugs get closed because they're old. Our policy with D is we never close bugs, no matter how old they are, unless we fix them or no longer have users for it (like D version 1).
    - gopher_space 5y ago
      > I resent went bugs get closed because they're old I'm picturing the guy who came up with this idea sitting at his desk surrounded by unopened bills.
      - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
        well, you're wrong because of all the ideas my ADHD mind ever came up with - that wasn't one of them.
    - hyperman1 5y ago
      While I understand your lack of success with bug reports, and I thank you for your stance on (not) closing bugs, note how the average manager got what he wanted:. A proof that reasonable effort has been made, and it's not his fault. This allows survival in a politically piosonous environment. If the bug got fixed is generally not their concern, others will have to deal with it and move on. Besides, I once got Oracle to fix a bug. It took months and I basically had to spell the fix out to them, but it actually is possible.
      - OldHand2018 5y ago
        Nice job! How long did you have to wait for the new software version after the bug fix? A few months ago, one of our young devs got a PR accepted to fix a tiny little Spark bug that had been bothering us for a while. The big boss meeting was happy, plenty of virtual pats on the backs and congratulations. And then someone had to go and ask when we'd see the fix in our DataBricks cluster.
- winphone1974 5y ago
  Do you think the "clueless middle managers" the OP alludes to view themselves as such? Or are they too protecting their teams so they can get real work done? We all see ourselves as the rare exception, the one bucking the status quo and doing things differently.
politelemon 5y ago
Thank you for this. We have someone just like this who went into management for the same reason. He does an excellent job of it, I only wish everyone shared the appreciation for his powers of insulation and fighting in the devs' corner all the time. Quite often your efforts aren't visible to everyone, but it's visible to some and they're thankful for it!
myohmy 5y ago
Echoing this. Please for the love of God get your MBA. Its really, really easy. If you think weekend courses are going to be too much because you remember Engineering in college, I can tell you from experience that they won't be.
- jorts 5y ago
  Agree. Getting my MBA was way easier than my CS degree.
  - France_is_bacon 5y ago
    MBA is a walk in the park compared to CS. Seriously.
    - winphone1974 5y ago
      I did business school before comp sci, and then a MSc in CS and it got easier along the way, so you may just have gotten better at the game of school
      - epicureanideal 5y ago
        A Masters in CS is easier than the Bachelors.
- crispyambulance 5y ago
  It may be "easy" but unless you're in the right program at the right time in your life, and most importantly, have the right career trajectory, the MBA itself won't magically "open doors" into an executive suite. Certainly it's not any faster than just painstakingly climbing the career ladder.
- skt5 5y ago
  It depends on why you want to get a MBA. If it's for credibility - go to a top 10 school. If it's to learn - you might be better off learning on the job than taking weekend courses.

apples_oranges 5y ago

Yes! It's probably just a demographics thing that will even itself out in the future. I mean: People like you will become managers and there are many programmers in the younger generations to draw candidates from.

winphone1974 5y ago
Haha! Cause nobody every changes, loses their edge or falls out of touch with their tech roots, right? We just need to get these clueless dinosaurs out of power before the current woke kids take over!

logshipper 5y ago

I really respect that attitude. I happen to be doing a security assessment on some products (PuTTY etc) at the firm (Fortune Global 100) where I am interning. It baffled me to read a directive from management that said that we should shy away from open-source projects - I must confess that I was somewhat frustrated at the sheer ignorance in the memo but your comment allows me to see a silver-lining. I hope that one day I can rise up to management and make decisions based on greater nuance than simply saying "OSS bad and insecure".

TimPC 5y ago
I think the general aversion to OSS is more that there is no responsible actor. In many cases, if you integrate a third party paid solution you can file a bug on that solution with reasonable confidence it can be a priority. If you use code from another team at the company you know you can file bugs on them. If you write code yourself you have confidence in fixing it. There is a danger with integrating OSS that you have code in your stack that no one knows well enough to fix and no one is responsible for. If something breaks you might have to learn a sizeable amount of code and domain knowledge to make a fix. Filing bugs on OSS is not viewed in the same way as filing bugs on paid third party solutions as whether the bugs are a priority to an OSS solution seems more risky. Note that large amounts of OSS is used in companies, but it's generally code that developers are expected to know well enough to dive into if need be. And code that is popular enough to be well tested for bugs and known that breaking errors in the framework will get fixes. Examples would be things like Python or Node.js. As a manager a potential problem you can have is a major bug your team is responsible for that no one is qualified to fix and thus your only reasonable time estimate is unknown. Avoiding certain parts of OSS is often a precaution against this situation.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  > I think the general aversion to OSS is more that there is no responsible actor. I have filed many bug reports for paid software over the years. The bugs were fixed exactly 0% of the time. If they ever gave a reason, it was along the lines of "you are a special snowflake, nobody else has had that problem, so it isn't worth fixing". Eventually, I just stopped filing bug reports. Things aren't better with OSS, either, though I resent went bugs get closed because they're old. Our policy with D is we never close bugs, no matter how old they are, unless we fix them or no longer have users for it (like D version 1).
  - gopher_space 5y ago
    > I resent went bugs get closed because they're old I'm picturing the guy who came up with this idea sitting at his desk surrounded by unopened bills.
    - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
      well, you're wrong because of all the ideas my ADHD mind ever came up with - that wasn't one of them.
  - hyperman1 5y ago
    While I understand your lack of success with bug reports, and I thank you for your stance on (not) closing bugs, note how the average manager got what he wanted:. A proof that reasonable effort has been made, and it's not his fault. This allows survival in a politically piosonous environment. If the bug got fixed is generally not their concern, others will have to deal with it and move on. Besides, I once got Oracle to fix a bug. It took months and I basically had to spell the fix out to them, but it actually is possible.
    - OldHand2018 5y ago
      Nice job! How long did you have to wait for the new software version after the bug fix? A few months ago, one of our young devs got a PR accepted to fix a tiny little Spark bug that had been bothering us for a while. The big boss meeting was happy, plenty of virtual pats on the backs and congratulations. And then someone had to go and ask when we'd see the fix in our DataBricks cluster.
winphone1974 5y ago
Do you think the "clueless middle managers" the OP alludes to view themselves as such? Or are they too protecting their teams so they can get real work done? We all see ourselves as the rare exception, the one bucking the status quo and doing things differently.

politelemon 5y ago

Thank you for this. We have someone just like this who went into management for the same reason. He does an excellent job of it, I only wish everyone shared the appreciation for his powers of insulation and fighting in the devs' corner all the time. Quite often your efforts aren't visible to everyone, but it's visible to some and they're thankful for it!

myohmy 5y ago

Echoing this. Please for the love of God get your MBA. Its really, really easy. If you think weekend courses are going to be too much because you remember Engineering in college, I can tell you from experience that they won't be.

jorts 5y ago
Agree. Getting my MBA was way easier than my CS degree.
- France_is_bacon 5y ago
  MBA is a walk in the park compared to CS. Seriously.
  - winphone1974 5y ago
    I did business school before comp sci, and then a MSc in CS and it got easier along the way, so you may just have gotten better at the game of school
    - epicureanideal 5y ago
      A Masters in CS is easier than the Bachelors.
crispyambulance 5y ago
It may be "easy" but unless you're in the right program at the right time in your life, and most importantly, have the right career trajectory, the MBA itself won't magically "open doors" into an executive suite. Certainly it's not any faster than just painstakingly climbing the career ladder.
skt5 5y ago
It depends on why you want to get a MBA. If it's for credibility - go to a top 10 school. If it's to learn - you might be better off learning on the job than taking weekend courses.