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A lot of people have talked about the issues with this post, but I wanted to call out one specific thing: The first engineer I talk to doesn't even attempt

A lot of people have talked about the issues with this post, but I wanted to call out one specific thing: The first engineer I talk to doesn't even attempt to answer my question but redirects me to their manager. Ok, that's odd, I think, but whatever. This is definitely not odd. The whole point of managers is that they're there to protect their engineers from getting off track with every random request that comes up. I understand that it may feel bureaucratic, but as an engineer, someone who insists on talking to me directly without going through my manager is always going to mark themselves as someone who doesn't respect my time and doesn't understand that they're not the center of my universe. This feels like a rant of someone who isn't willing to put themselves in the shoes of the other team and understand the real complexity of deploying and maintaining large infrastructure systems over long periods of time. Any "small option" that the deploy team adds today is most likely going to be an option that they're still maintaining 5, 10 years down the line. As the saying goes—"an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure". In the best case, taking a few days to get the requirements right up front is (hopefully!) going to save months and months of cumulative man-hours down the road for maintaining the system later, or making future changes. In your case, if I understand right, your work got approved within *two days*—hardly an onerous wait time. I'll admit that the "for compliance reasons, you can't see our codebase" thing is kind of odd, and it would strike me as a bit of a red flag, but I'll also admit that, personally, if I was in that manager's shoes, I wouldn't want you anywhere near my codebase either. Just purely based on the way that you treat other engineers' time as worthless & fail to consider the possibility that the business has broader priorities that extend outside of your own personal tasks.

guynamedloren 5y ago
You raise a fair point here - good managers protect their employees’ time, however in this case, the the task was not a “personal task” but rather an initiative handed down from the parent company, without giving OP the proper resources and guidance to complete the task. If that’s the case (and having found myself in that position many times, it likely is), this a failing of the parent company. I’d expect those managing the integration to assign point people, both technical and managerial, to assist with OP’s task, schedule introduction meetings and communicate expectations to both teams. That’s not too much to ask. It sounds like OP was left to navigate the situation on their own.
- nightpool 5y ago
  Based on the description given in the OP, I don't think we have enough information to conclude whether the OP was given the right amount of resources to complete their task or not. While the "migrate to the new deploy infrastructure" might be the most important task from the OPs perspective, there's nothing there to indicate to me that it's a particularly important task from the broader businesses perspective. Indeed, I wouldn't be surprised if this expectation was already communicated to the engineer by their manager, which is why they're here posting about it. Of course, it's entirely possible that you're right, and if this was a more important issue I definitely agree with you that it needs to have a dedicated resource assigned from the deploy team and it needs to be scheduled into their roadmap somehow. Ultimately we're just all speculating based on the small details the OP gave us. However, I think my core point still stands—even if OP is right to feel that the deploy team is making the wrong decision in general about prioritization, they need to at least consider that the deploy team has other, competing priorities that they're juggling, and that the actual change might be more complicated in "at scale" (code review, QA, interaction with other options, documentation, long-term maintenance, etc) then OP is willing to believe.
mavelikara 5y ago
> This feels like a rant that comes from someone who doesn't have a lot of experience deploying and maintaining complex systems over long periods of time. Agree. Also: > Finally, after many rounds of arguing about why this needs to be done in the first place (ahem: you told us to migrate to your platform, and it literally does not work for our app) If migrating the app to the new platform is a priority, why not escalate up the startup's leadership chain to get it prioritized higher in the infrastructure team's roadmap? Looks like the startup was poorly run, with no clear escalation paths, and employees unaware that such mechanisms exist in companies (and find it odd when they notice another engineer do it).
- nightpool 5y ago
  Honestly, I kind of regret the sentence that you quoted. Whether the OP is correct about the complexity of the change or whether the deploy team is right to be protective over it is is really missing the point—the point is that the OP needs to have more humility and understanding for the perspective of the other team when navigating these processes. EDIT: I felt bad enough that I went and edited that sentence, in case anyone reading this later is confused.
- CRConrad 5y ago
  > Looks like the startup was poorly run, with no clear escalation paths, and employees unaware that such mechanisms exist in companies (and find it odd when they notice another engineer do it). Might be appropriate for a startup?
Mezzie 5y ago
> The whole point of managers is that they're there to protect their engineers from getting off track with every random request that comes up. I understand that it may feel bureaucratic, but as an engineer, someone who insists on talking to me directly without going through my manager is always going to mark themselves as someone who doesn't respect my time and doesn't understand that they're not the center of my universe. Yes. I don't have a manager at the moment, so I have to field these requests myself and my productivity has tanked.

guynamedloren 5y ago

You raise a fair point here - good managers protect their employees’ time, however in this case, the the task was not a “personal task” but rather an initiative handed down from the parent company, without giving OP the proper resources and guidance to complete the task. If that’s the case (and having found myself in that position many times, it likely is), this a failing of the parent company. I’d expect those managing the integration to assign point people, both technical and managerial, to assist with OP’s task, schedule introduction meetings and communicate expectations to both teams. That’s not too much to ask. It sounds like OP was left to navigate the situation on their own.

nightpool 5y ago
Based on the description given in the OP, I don't think we have enough information to conclude whether the OP was given the right amount of resources to complete their task or not. While the "migrate to the new deploy infrastructure" might be the most important task from the OPs perspective, there's nothing there to indicate to me that it's a particularly important task from the broader businesses perspective. Indeed, I wouldn't be surprised if this expectation was already communicated to the engineer by their manager, which is why they're here posting about it. Of course, it's entirely possible that you're right, and if this was a more important issue I definitely agree with you that it needs to have a dedicated resource assigned from the deploy team and it needs to be scheduled into their roadmap somehow. Ultimately we're just all speculating based on the small details the OP gave us. However, I think my core point still stands—even if OP is right to feel that the deploy team is making the wrong decision in general about prioritization, they need to at least consider that the deploy team has other, competing priorities that they're juggling, and that the actual change might be more complicated in "at scale" (code review, QA, interaction with other options, documentation, long-term maintenance, etc) then OP is willing to believe.

mavelikara 5y ago

> This feels like a rant that comes from someone who doesn't have a lot of experience deploying and maintaining complex systems over long periods of time. Agree. Also: > Finally, after many rounds of arguing about why this needs to be done in the first place (ahem: you told us to migrate to your platform, and it literally does not work for our app) If migrating the app to the new platform is a priority, why not escalate up the startup's leadership chain to get it prioritized higher in the infrastructure team's roadmap? Looks like the startup was poorly run, with no clear escalation paths, and employees unaware that such mechanisms exist in companies (and find it odd when they notice another engineer do it).

nightpool 5y ago
Honestly, I kind of regret the sentence that you quoted. Whether the OP is correct about the complexity of the change or whether the deploy team is right to be protective over it is is really missing the point—the point is that the OP needs to have more humility and understanding for the perspective of the other team when navigating these processes. EDIT: I felt bad enough that I went and edited that sentence, in case anyone reading this later is confused.
CRConrad 5y ago
> Looks like the startup was poorly run, with no clear escalation paths, and employees unaware that such mechanisms exist in companies (and find it odd when they notice another engineer do it). Might be appropriate for a startup?

Mezzie 5y ago

> The whole point of managers is that they're there to protect their engineers from getting off track with every random request that comes up. I understand that it may feel bureaucratic, but as an engineer, someone who insists on talking to me directly without going through my manager is always going to mark themselves as someone who doesn't respect my time and doesn't understand that they're not the center of my universe. Yes. I don't have a manager at the moment, so I have to field these requests myself and my productivity has tanked.