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This opinion feels to much like a cliche. Management needs to know what’s going on, even in well run companies. You might not like giving progress reports, beca

by rp1 5y ago

This opinion feels to much like a cliche. Management needs to know what’s going on, even in well run companies. You might not like giving progress reports, because you feel like it takes time away from your job, but it’s possible that management is using the progress reports to better the company as a whole. For instance, if you’re behind schedule they can allocate more resources to your project, etc. I’m sure you have many anecdotes where management wasted peoples time. That happens often too.

bendbro 5y ago
> For instance, if you’re behind schedule they can allocate more resources to your project, etc I have never seen this happen in my entire life, nor would it be useful
solatic 5y ago
> For instance, if you’re behind schedule they can allocate more resources to your project, etc See: The Mythical Man-Month I agree that making sure that your work is observable is important, and usually Management's attention needs to be called to where the observed changes are being made. This is not the same as holding you hostage in a meeting culture where you need to sit through everyone else's reports on their progress. Instead of people taking five minutes to write out their progress report to their manager, who can then skim the progress reports and the work for a full team in fifteen to twenty minutes, instead we hold everybody hostage for thirty to sixty minutes. Typically this is a syndrome of a culture where labor is not expected to document their work, and nothing will scale without pulling senior engineers off their IC work to synchronously bring people up to speed. This necessarily reduces engineering velocity to a crawl. Nobody can speak as fast as a progress report can be read. Verbal meetings cannot be indexed or searched. All meetings should have a product - a decision, language that is agreed upon, written out, saved to a knowledge base. If you call too many meetings, it's a sign that you're not delegating authority enough.
- jackblemming 5y ago
  The original poster said resources, not necessarily human "resources". The Mythical Man Month was also not saying adding manpower to a project makes it slower, simply that it potentially could and there's limits to parallelism. Everything else mentioned rings true though.
- b112 5y ago
  The mythical man month does not apply as a default. Often in orgs, there are other employees equally versed in all aspects of the work you do, but are just currently working on another aspect of the project, or codebase. Thus, some work may be immediately taken off your plate, without you having to dedicate your own time to training, etc. Meetings suck. However they absolutely have a purpose, and really, sadly, you are never "held hostage" in a paid-for scenario.
  - solatic 5y ago
    > Often in orgs, there are other employees equally versed in all aspects of the work you do, but are just currently working on another aspect of the project, or codebase. Thus, some work may be immediately taken off your plate, without you having to dedicate your own time to training, etc. Not everybody's time is worth the same, and it's a classic organizational fallacy to treat your employees' time as having equal worth. Simply put, five minutes of a senior engineer's time is worth more than five minutes of a junior engineer's time. This is clearly obvious even if you only compare their salaries (and not the value that each worker brings to the company). If their time was worth the same amount, we wouldn't hire juniors in the first place. Thus, it's inherently unreasonable to use five minutes of a senior engineer's time to save five minutes of a junior's time. I expect juniors to struggle with something for at least a few hours before asking a senior for help. This is besides the point that, if employees are documenting their work properly, there is less need to synchronously synchronize. "I don't remember, read the documentation, that's why I wrote it."
  - BatFastard 5y ago
    Yes it does, you are not taking into account communications overhead, which as a project grows larger becomes a significant factor.
- RivieraKid 5y ago
  More resources doesn't mean more man months. It may mean assigning the most productive and expensive people to the project for example.
PicassoCTs 5y ago
This is not the 1950s, we are on a software forum on the internet. Lots of metrics can be extracted directly at source, lots of status can be extracted from auto-distilled tickets. The management situation you posted is also a bad management decision: https://blog.devgenius.io/why-adding-more-people-to-a-project-doesnt-make-it-go-faster-703f9f56eea5 https://blog.devgenius.io/why-adding-more-people-to-a-projec... But i digress, fractally, outwards, not really caring..
wallacoloo 5y ago
i think the complaint is not giving status reports, but being forced to listen to others’ seemingly irrelevant status reports.
- wpietri 5y ago
  Exactly. As well as more efficient ways of keeping people updated. Think of all the people who have to enter a ton of stuff in to Jira and then give the boss a verbal status report. And let's not forget obviating the need for status reports entirely. I've been part of teams that got solid work done without ever having to give status reports to anybody. We'd ship early and often; our "report" was frequent results.
- newsclues 5y ago
  Big meetings are more time effective and easy for a manager but worse for many workers and productivity.
- amcoastal 5y ago
  This has been a huge advantage of the WFH culture lately. I can just keep working while I listen to other people update the manager.
  - odshoifsdhfs 5y ago
    Why do this? Use that time to read or browse HN or something. Lets say one hour meetings per day. This means 8-1 = 7 hours of real work. If you work the 8 hours + the meeting, if you ever have to go back to the office, either you will have to work 9 hours to produce the same as WFH (since now you have to sit on the meeting), or drop in productivity and get scolded by a manager (you are producing 12.5% less)
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
colechristensen 5y ago
More often than not, I’ve spent about 20% of my time giving status reports or being around while others do. Very little of it has seemed like it was important or valuable for anyone and more of an exercise in most people finding something to say for the day. Reporting does have value but has become way overdone.

by rp1 5y ago

bendbro 5y ago

> For instance, if you’re behind schedule they can allocate more resources to your project, etc I have never seen this happen in my entire life, nor would it be useful

solatic 5y ago

> For instance, if you’re behind schedule they can allocate more resources to your project, etc See: The Mythical Man-Month I agree that making sure that your work is observable is important, and usually Management's attention needs to be called to where the observed changes are being made. This is not the same as holding you hostage in a meeting culture where you need to sit through everyone else's reports on their progress. Instead of people taking five minutes to write out their progress report to their manager, who can then skim the progress reports and the work for a full team in fifteen to twenty minutes, instead we hold everybody hostage for thirty to sixty minutes. Typically this is a syndrome of a culture where labor is not expected to document their work, and nothing will scale without pulling senior engineers off their IC work to synchronously bring people up to speed. This necessarily reduces engineering velocity to a crawl. Nobody can speak as fast as a progress report can be read. Verbal meetings cannot be indexed or searched. All meetings should have a product - a decision, language that is agreed upon, written out, saved to a knowledge base. If you call too many meetings, it's a sign that you're not delegating authority enough.

jackblemming 5y ago
The original poster said resources, not necessarily human "resources". The Mythical Man Month was also not saying adding manpower to a project makes it slower, simply that it potentially could and there's limits to parallelism. Everything else mentioned rings true though.
b112 5y ago
The mythical man month does not apply as a default. Often in orgs, there are other employees equally versed in all aspects of the work you do, but are just currently working on another aspect of the project, or codebase. Thus, some work may be immediately taken off your plate, without you having to dedicate your own time to training, etc. Meetings suck. However they absolutely have a purpose, and really, sadly, you are never "held hostage" in a paid-for scenario.
- solatic 5y ago
  > Often in orgs, there are other employees equally versed in all aspects of the work you do, but are just currently working on another aspect of the project, or codebase. Thus, some work may be immediately taken off your plate, without you having to dedicate your own time to training, etc. Not everybody's time is worth the same, and it's a classic organizational fallacy to treat your employees' time as having equal worth. Simply put, five minutes of a senior engineer's time is worth more than five minutes of a junior engineer's time. This is clearly obvious even if you only compare their salaries (and not the value that each worker brings to the company). If their time was worth the same amount, we wouldn't hire juniors in the first place. Thus, it's inherently unreasonable to use five minutes of a senior engineer's time to save five minutes of a junior's time. I expect juniors to struggle with something for at least a few hours before asking a senior for help. This is besides the point that, if employees are documenting their work properly, there is less need to synchronously synchronize. "I don't remember, read the documentation, that's why I wrote it."
- BatFastard 5y ago
  Yes it does, you are not taking into account communications overhead, which as a project grows larger becomes a significant factor.
RivieraKid 5y ago
More resources doesn't mean more man months. It may mean assigning the most productive and expensive people to the project for example.

PicassoCTs 5y ago

This is not the 1950s, we are on a software forum on the internet. Lots of metrics can be extracted directly at source, lots of status can be extracted from auto-distilled tickets. The management situation you posted is also a bad management decision: https://blog.devgenius.io/why-adding-more-people-to-a-project-doesnt-make-it-go-faster-703f9f56eea5 https://blog.devgenius.io/why-adding-more-people-to-a-projec... But i digress, fractally, outwards, not really caring..

wallacoloo 5y ago

i think the complaint is not giving status reports, but being forced to listen to others’ seemingly irrelevant status reports.

wpietri 5y ago
Exactly. As well as more efficient ways of keeping people updated. Think of all the people who have to enter a ton of stuff in to Jira and then give the boss a verbal status report. And let's not forget obviating the need for status reports entirely. I've been part of teams that got solid work done without ever having to give status reports to anybody. We'd ship early and often; our "report" was frequent results.
newsclues 5y ago
Big meetings are more time effective and easy for a manager but worse for many workers and productivity.
amcoastal 5y ago
This has been a huge advantage of the WFH culture lately. I can just keep working while I listen to other people update the manager.
- odshoifsdhfs 5y ago
  Why do this? Use that time to read or browse HN or something. Lets say one hour meetings per day. This means 8-1 = 7 hours of real work. If you work the 8 hours + the meeting, if you ever have to go back to the office, either you will have to work 9 hours to produce the same as WFH (since now you have to sit on the meeting), or drop in productivity and get scolded by a manager (you are producing 12.5% less)

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

colechristensen 5y ago

More often than not, I’ve spent about 20% of my time giving status reports or being around while others do. Very little of it has seemed like it was important or valuable for anyone and more of an exercise in most people finding something to say for the day. Reporting does have value but has become way overdone.