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A fact I have always found baffling about most tech companies. You read on here: it is just tales of giga, 10x programmers...I only work at companies with suff

A fact I have always found baffling about most tech companies. You read on here: it is just tales of giga, 10x programmers...I only work at companies with sufficient technological prowess, 7 figures, I expect my workplace to be staffed with those of similar intelligence to myself, Ivy League PHds only, send me full resumes of everyone who will be on my team, I only deal with problems that are world-changing...on and on. You read financial statements: inept management, no controls, massive staff expenses, development budget is usually totally out of whack with revenue, growth in staff faster than revenue, struggle to develop new features (despite a relatively simple product), over-engineered, bloated maintenance...on and on. Financial statements don't lie (the consistency between these two stories is: most engineers are massively overpaid, they aren't good at doing useful things, many tech companies have monopoly products, they then hire lots of engineers who do nothing but bloviate about how influential they are). In the case of TWTR, comically mismanaged company. I don't know where the bloat is but Dorsey isn't someone who should be running a listed company (and has crashed and burned several times at Twitter alone). The guy who he appointed was an obvious stooge who was clearly not up to it. If nothing else, hopefully Musk will put them back on an even keel (I don't Musk is a good exec either, but this job is far simpler than Tesla so hopefully he will bring them back to an even keel).

ultimoo 5y ago
> The guy who he appointed was an obvious stooge who was clearly not up to it. Curious to know why you think so?
- skippyboxedhero 5y ago
  Because he totally mishandled the bid, his communication skills were terrible, it was an internal tech hire (I do not know the process, but was it competitive?), TWTR's board is notoriously dysfunctional (so I am guessing they just went with what Dorsey said, they were quite happy to let him run the company off a cliff...so why not let him appoint his successor), and he appears to have been on leave for a large part of 2021 (when the shit started to make contact with the fan for TWTR). But he also gave the impression consistently of someone who was in the wrong job. Communication is an important skill for a CEO, the least worrying interpretation is that he was making choices about PR with no reference to his PR people...least worrying...if PR actually was involved, that is worse.
0xB31B1B 5y ago
eh, in most cases I have seen, it is the product org that is dysfunctional, not the engineering org. The people who are paid to know how to make money are often not good at making money. That leads to poor morale, loss of trust of eng team, and the rise of bullshit work.
- morelisp 5y ago
  Bay Area / startup engineering culture is an absolute dysfunctional mess. No consequences, either you land the next funding round on promises of scaling up or just jet off to the next job before any of your decisions matter. One of the main reasons I was happy to leave.
- skippyboxedhero 5y ago
  Ah, ofc...it is someone else's job to grub for money. You just like people to give you the money...a bit like pre-Revolutionary France, someone else gets their hands dirty, gives you the money for cultural reasons. The purpose of my comment wasn't to suggest how to remedy the situation but your answer is indicative: there is no separation between money-making and non-money making (engineers' viewpoint, as with everyone else, on who is making the money tends to vary quite significantly...when it is pay discussions, they are responsible...when a product has gone wrong, I can't believe these managers did this to me), if you work at a company your job is to make money...that is where your salary is coming from, customers. The precise problem is that so many engineers are paid for specialising in arcane knowledge unrelated to any revenue or consumer demand. In my experience, companies that move this responsibility over to engineers do better (indeed, companies that don't, won't survive at all...the only reason these jobs exist is because some tech companies happen to have monopoly products and choose to overhire...if banks had a monopoly product, you would see a profusion of very over-educated people specialising in some arcane area of finance with no consumer demand but which get hired for cultural reasons). There is no-one else to blame. The distinction between product and engineering is a function of dysfunction.
zeroonetwothree 5y ago
Another interpretation is that this has nothing to do with engineers, rather organizing any large organization to do useful work is difficult because of information asymmetry and politics.
- tomrod 5y ago
  Which is defined by the manager roles (exec and production line), who hire the engineers.
- skippyboxedhero 5y ago
  So no company is well-run? We just give everyone A+ and say how impossible the whole thing is?

ultimoo 5y ago

> The guy who he appointed was an obvious stooge who was clearly not up to it. Curious to know why you think so?

skippyboxedhero 5y ago
Because he totally mishandled the bid, his communication skills were terrible, it was an internal tech hire (I do not know the process, but was it competitive?), TWTR's board is notoriously dysfunctional (so I am guessing they just went with what Dorsey said, they were quite happy to let him run the company off a cliff...so why not let him appoint his successor), and he appears to have been on leave for a large part of 2021 (when the shit started to make contact with the fan for TWTR). But he also gave the impression consistently of someone who was in the wrong job. Communication is an important skill for a CEO, the least worrying interpretation is that he was making choices about PR with no reference to his PR people...least worrying...if PR actually was involved, that is worse.

0xB31B1B 5y ago

eh, in most cases I have seen, it is the product org that is dysfunctional, not the engineering org. The people who are paid to know how to make money are often not good at making money. That leads to poor morale, loss of trust of eng team, and the rise of bullshit work.

morelisp 5y ago
Bay Area / startup engineering culture is an absolute dysfunctional mess. No consequences, either you land the next funding round on promises of scaling up or just jet off to the next job before any of your decisions matter. One of the main reasons I was happy to leave.
skippyboxedhero 5y ago
Ah, ofc...it is someone else's job to grub for money. You just like people to give you the money...a bit like pre-Revolutionary France, someone else gets their hands dirty, gives you the money for cultural reasons. The purpose of my comment wasn't to suggest how to remedy the situation but your answer is indicative: there is no separation between money-making and non-money making (engineers' viewpoint, as with everyone else, on who is making the money tends to vary quite significantly...when it is pay discussions, they are responsible...when a product has gone wrong, I can't believe these managers did this to me), if you work at a company your job is to make money...that is where your salary is coming from, customers. The precise problem is that so many engineers are paid for specialising in arcane knowledge unrelated to any revenue or consumer demand. In my experience, companies that move this responsibility over to engineers do better (indeed, companies that don't, won't survive at all...the only reason these jobs exist is because some tech companies happen to have monopoly products and choose to overhire...if banks had a monopoly product, you would see a profusion of very over-educated people specialising in some arcane area of finance with no consumer demand but which get hired for cultural reasons). There is no-one else to blame. The distinction between product and engineering is a function of dysfunction.

zeroonetwothree 5y ago

Another interpretation is that this has nothing to do with engineers, rather organizing any large organization to do useful work is difficult because of information asymmetry and politics.

tomrod 5y ago
Which is defined by the manager roles (exec and production line), who hire the engineers.
skippyboxedhero 5y ago
So no company is well-run? We just give everyone A+ and say how impossible the whole thing is?