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Like many engineers, the author of this article assumes all engineers are ethical, and perfectly suited to the assigned task. The author also assumes unlimited

by 23B1 4y ago

Like many engineers, the author of this article assumes all engineers are ethical, and perfectly suited to the assigned task. The author also assumes unlimited budgets, perfect control over a company's hiring and resource management, and a perfect understanding of the software's requirements. These are the same complaints I hear from inexperienced engineers over and over and over again – and not just engineers, but anyone primarily responsible for 'labor' vs. 'management'. The 'best engineers' empathize with the perspective of 'management,' that running a company is probabilistic, and that managers, co-workers, and other departments – like finance, recruiting, product, and marketing – are also duty bound by challenging constraints often beyond their control.

astura 4y ago
This article could be a parody with how shockingly naive it is. The purpose of work is to solve business problems, not personal amusement and self-actualization. Business problems exist in the real world and have significant constraints. Many people will be much happier if they understood this.
- legulere 4y ago
  Especially managers should know that this is not true. Business is a lot about politics and egos, and especially managers are the ones engaging in it.
- WJW 4y ago
  That is just an opinion and not a statement of fact. There are many different types of people and not all people have the same motivation. A lot of people care quite a lot about amusement and self-actualization at work. What a business owner might want does not change that. (and let's face it, there are many many business owners who care way less about business problems being solved than they care about "being the boss")
  - krapp 4y ago
    > What a business owner might want does not change that A business owner decides what the purpose of the business is, and what constitutes useful "work" within that context. If I'm hired to do x,y and z and I decide my motivation is rather to surf the web all day or spend all my time on personal projects, that doesn't change the purpose of work, it just means I'm not working.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - LadyCailin 4y ago
      Yeah, but if a business owner decides “x” is the purpose of work, and literally no one wants to do that because of the conditions that the business owner has created (especially if the conditions are tangential to x), then that is the business owner’s problem, not the employees problem.
- the_gipsy 4y ago
  There are so many actors and groups and dynamics and forces in effect in the relations that we commonly call "work", that trying to reduce it to a single purpose is laughably naïve.
- mruniverse 4y ago
  I think people would be much happier if they find amusement and self-actualization in the work they do.
- EnKopVand 4y ago
  I think the point here may be that when you’re dealing with an occupation in which the best engineers can pick and chose. Then you’re likely to lose your best engineers unless you’re exceptionally good at managing them. Especially if you introduce boundaries and restraints. I’m not sure it’s naive to view the world like the author does. I’ve worked both sides of the fence, and while I’m now back in software development I do see the appreciation for my experience with creating the most business value out of your resources that managers come with. The thing is, though, if I don’t have to work in a place with too much bureaucracy or too many constraints then I’m not going to do so. I obviously try not to be an asshole about it. I don’t follow the company dress code in the basement troll factory where they placed IT, but I do have a suit at work that I can change into whenever I leave the “cave”. Those sort of things, so naturally I’ll play a long way in regards to what management want, but I’m never going to do estimates by the hour until the job market actively forces me to do so. Which likely won’t be in our lifetime. So when/if management go down the route of treating Software Development like they treat any other department (which like you state also are under significant constraint) then the company is just very likely to lose their most talented developers very quickly. I suspect that it would be (and probably is) exactly like that in any department, it’s just easier to get away with in engineering because we’re privileged enough to be able to leave our jobs today and have another good job by tomorrow.
  - 23B1 4y ago
    > the best engineers can pick and chose Sorta. I would take a less-qualified but more personable engineer over their more capable peer any day of the week, for the aforementioned reasons: engineering isn't the only skill required – those who don't insist on managerial perfection don't actually need a lot of managing as a result. It's a positive feedback loop. Also if engineers think we don't check references and backgrounds anymore – including reputation – those days are long past. It's too much of a liability to have the 'talented asshole' as part of a team anymore. > Especially if you introduce boundaries and restraints. Boundaries and restraints are a professional reality. > So when/if management go down the route of treating Software Development like they treat any other department. It's this exceptionalism that earns engineers the reputation of being jerks, and creates a negative feedback loop. Want to be free and clear to operate without too much bureaucracy? Play the cooperation game. This is as true with engineering as it is literally any other thing that requires more than one human.
- woevdbz 4y ago
  ?? Where is there any reference to amusement or self-actualization in TFA?
  - proxyon 4y ago
    If you read between the lines what he's saying is that it doesn't matter if engineers enjoy the job.
- proxyon 4y ago
  Are you a people manager? If so, what is the turnover like on your team? I ask because the author is dead on and I've been in this industry for 10 years.
  - astura 4y ago
    If you wanna make this a competition I've been in the industry for 16 years. I'm a technical lead which does have a little bit of people management responsibilities. Turnover on my team is probably well below average, we had two developers leave for other jobs in the last year out of 15 developers and one fired for poor performance. I can't remember anyone leaving the year before. To be clear, I don't think this article is wrong per se, just obnoxiously naive and doesn't have any empathy for the real world constraints that people have to work with. It's just... uhhh... rubs me the wrong way.
    - proxyon 4y ago
      Tech leads don't have people management responsibilities. An engineering manager with your perspective would quickly find themselves without any talented developers. I did not write the OP but you're coming in with the hot take that it doesn't matter how people feel about their jobs and that is by the far least controversial part of the article and one that you're out of sync with 90% of the community on.
bloggie 4y ago
I'm not sure I would want to run a company without any gantt charts or deadlines. Management needs to know when a project becomes unmarketable or unsustainable so that project can be killed and resources moved to more viable projects. These decisions depend on variables that engineers can't see, though budgets and timelines are a few of them. Of course engineers can't take it personally when a project is killed either - some projects turn out that way. The best engineers know this. Your comment highlights well the narrow view of the subject article.
dasil003 4y ago
Maybe it's because I've always straddled the line between IC, EM and leadership roles, but in my mind engineers are managers. They are managers of software systems. The software systems are producing some economic output just as human or animal labor does in other domains or historical contexts. When you write code and deploy it to a production system, you are responsible for the behavior, cost and other implications of doing so. Although I believe managing people is generally the harder of the two overall, managing software systems is uniquely demanding of being able to zoom into deep technical details and then back out to understand the big-picture implications and where different layers of abstraction may have failed. To call oneself a senior software engineer I believe you need both the technical understanding as well as the big picture view of what business value your code produces. Many software engineers don't want to think that way; they look to the Product Manager to tell them what to build, the QA Analyst to sign off on releases, the Ops Engineer to tell them what broke, and the Engineering Manager to prioritize their time. And of course those asks do align with the job descriptions and are not wrong per se. The problem is that the SWE is in a much better position to foresee the majority of problems, and can save the company as well as their team a tremendous amount of pain by trying on different hats and thinking at a higher level. Not all company cultures make this possible, but IMHO it is the key to the highest performing teams.
- grayclhn 4y ago
  This is usually why people make the distinction between “leadership” and “management” — if you use “management” the way your comment does, you no longer have a word for someone with multiple direct reports. But yes — totally agree that “technical leadership” is 100% part of being a senior+ engineer and that almost always requires understanding the business and customers.
CipherThrowaway 4y ago
Agree re the article, disagree re labor vs management. This mentality in an org is almost always a result of mismanagement. The reason is obvious: it's a people issue and dealing with people issues is a managerial responsibility. Thinking that managers are bad in general is only a sign of inexperience because it implies someone has never worked in a place with good management before. I've seen plenty of "fuck management" types completely chill out after moving to a better workplace.
- 23B1 4y ago
  Completely agree that it's on management to foster a great place to work. I put scare quotes around 'labor' and 'management' because they're really nonsense terms. I'm a big believer of culture coming from the ground up; you can't design it, you can only help it grow with good soil, water, and food.
q-big 4y ago
> The 'best engineers' empathize with the perspective of 'management,' I deeply disagree with this argument of "empathizing": it is very often the case that if I tend to disagree with another side and nevertheless attempt to "empathize" with it, my disagreement turns into furious hate for the other side. It is in my opinion often better for the peace not to think too much about the perspective of another side that you disagree with.

by 23B1 4y ago

astura 4y ago

This article could be a parody with how shockingly naive it is. The purpose of work is to solve business problems, not personal amusement and self-actualization. Business problems exist in the real world and have significant constraints. Many people will be much happier if they understood this.

legulere 4y ago
Especially managers should know that this is not true. Business is a lot about politics and egos, and especially managers are the ones engaging in it.
WJW 4y ago
That is just an opinion and not a statement of fact. There are many different types of people and not all people have the same motivation. A lot of people care quite a lot about amusement and self-actualization at work. What a business owner might want does not change that. (and let's face it, there are many many business owners who care way less about business problems being solved than they care about "being the boss")
- krapp 4y ago
  > What a business owner might want does not change that A business owner decides what the purpose of the business is, and what constitutes useful "work" within that context. If I'm hired to do x,y and z and I decide my motivation is rather to surf the web all day or spend all my time on personal projects, that doesn't change the purpose of work, it just means I'm not working.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - LadyCailin 4y ago
    Yeah, but if a business owner decides “x” is the purpose of work, and literally no one wants to do that because of the conditions that the business owner has created (especially if the conditions are tangential to x), then that is the business owner’s problem, not the employees problem.
the_gipsy 4y ago
There are so many actors and groups and dynamics and forces in effect in the relations that we commonly call "work", that trying to reduce it to a single purpose is laughably naïve.
mruniverse 4y ago
I think people would be much happier if they find amusement and self-actualization in the work they do.
EnKopVand 4y ago
I think the point here may be that when you’re dealing with an occupation in which the best engineers can pick and chose. Then you’re likely to lose your best engineers unless you’re exceptionally good at managing them. Especially if you introduce boundaries and restraints. I’m not sure it’s naive to view the world like the author does. I’ve worked both sides of the fence, and while I’m now back in software development I do see the appreciation for my experience with creating the most business value out of your resources that managers come with. The thing is, though, if I don’t have to work in a place with too much bureaucracy or too many constraints then I’m not going to do so. I obviously try not to be an asshole about it. I don’t follow the company dress code in the basement troll factory where they placed IT, but I do have a suit at work that I can change into whenever I leave the “cave”. Those sort of things, so naturally I’ll play a long way in regards to what management want, but I’m never going to do estimates by the hour until the job market actively forces me to do so. Which likely won’t be in our lifetime. So when/if management go down the route of treating Software Development like they treat any other department (which like you state also are under significant constraint) then the company is just very likely to lose their most talented developers very quickly. I suspect that it would be (and probably is) exactly like that in any department, it’s just easier to get away with in engineering because we’re privileged enough to be able to leave our jobs today and have another good job by tomorrow.
- 23B1 4y ago
  > the best engineers can pick and chose Sorta. I would take a less-qualified but more personable engineer over their more capable peer any day of the week, for the aforementioned reasons: engineering isn't the only skill required – those who don't insist on managerial perfection don't actually need a lot of managing as a result. It's a positive feedback loop. Also if engineers think we don't check references and backgrounds anymore – including reputation – those days are long past. It's too much of a liability to have the 'talented asshole' as part of a team anymore. > Especially if you introduce boundaries and restraints. Boundaries and restraints are a professional reality. > So when/if management go down the route of treating Software Development like they treat any other department. It's this exceptionalism that earns engineers the reputation of being jerks, and creates a negative feedback loop. Want to be free and clear to operate without too much bureaucracy? Play the cooperation game. This is as true with engineering as it is literally any other thing that requires more than one human.
woevdbz 4y ago
?? Where is there any reference to amusement or self-actualization in TFA?
- proxyon 4y ago
  If you read between the lines what he's saying is that it doesn't matter if engineers enjoy the job.
proxyon 4y ago
Are you a people manager? If so, what is the turnover like on your team? I ask because the author is dead on and I've been in this industry for 10 years.
- astura 4y ago
  If you wanna make this a competition I've been in the industry for 16 years. I'm a technical lead which does have a little bit of people management responsibilities. Turnover on my team is probably well below average, we had two developers leave for other jobs in the last year out of 15 developers and one fired for poor performance. I can't remember anyone leaving the year before. To be clear, I don't think this article is wrong per se, just obnoxiously naive and doesn't have any empathy for the real world constraints that people have to work with. It's just... uhhh... rubs me the wrong way.
  - proxyon 4y ago
    Tech leads don't have people management responsibilities. An engineering manager with your perspective would quickly find themselves without any talented developers. I did not write the OP but you're coming in with the hot take that it doesn't matter how people feel about their jobs and that is by the far least controversial part of the article and one that you're out of sync with 90% of the community on.

bloggie 4y ago

I'm not sure I would want to run a company without any gantt charts or deadlines. Management needs to know when a project becomes unmarketable or unsustainable so that project can be killed and resources moved to more viable projects. These decisions depend on variables that engineers can't see, though budgets and timelines are a few of them. Of course engineers can't take it personally when a project is killed either - some projects turn out that way. The best engineers know this. Your comment highlights well the narrow view of the subject article.

dasil003 4y ago

Maybe it's because I've always straddled the line between IC, EM and leadership roles, but in my mind engineers are managers. They are managers of software systems. The software systems are producing some economic output just as human or animal labor does in other domains or historical contexts. When you write code and deploy it to a production system, you are responsible for the behavior, cost and other implications of doing so. Although I believe managing people is generally the harder of the two overall, managing software systems is uniquely demanding of being able to zoom into deep technical details and then back out to understand the big-picture implications and where different layers of abstraction may have failed. To call oneself a senior software engineer I believe you need both the technical understanding as well as the big picture view of what business value your code produces. Many software engineers don't want to think that way; they look to the Product Manager to tell them what to build, the QA Analyst to sign off on releases, the Ops Engineer to tell them what broke, and the Engineering Manager to prioritize their time. And of course those asks do align with the job descriptions and are not wrong per se. The problem is that the SWE is in a much better position to foresee the majority of problems, and can save the company as well as their team a tremendous amount of pain by trying on different hats and thinking at a higher level. Not all company cultures make this possible, but IMHO it is the key to the highest performing teams.

grayclhn 4y ago
This is usually why people make the distinction between “leadership” and “management” — if you use “management” the way your comment does, you no longer have a word for someone with multiple direct reports. But yes — totally agree that “technical leadership” is 100% part of being a senior+ engineer and that almost always requires understanding the business and customers.

CipherThrowaway 4y ago

Agree re the article, disagree re labor vs management. This mentality in an org is almost always a result of mismanagement. The reason is obvious: it's a people issue and dealing with people issues is a managerial responsibility. Thinking that managers are bad in general is only a sign of inexperience because it implies someone has never worked in a place with good management before. I've seen plenty of "fuck management" types completely chill out after moving to a better workplace.

23B1 4y ago
Completely agree that it's on management to foster a great place to work. I put scare quotes around 'labor' and 'management' because they're really nonsense terms. I'm a big believer of culture coming from the ground up; you can't design it, you can only help it grow with good soil, water, and food.

q-big 4y ago

> The 'best engineers' empathize with the perspective of 'management,' I deeply disagree with this argument of "empathizing": it is very often the case that if I tend to disagree with another side and nevertheless attempt to "empathize" with it, my disagreement turns into furious hate for the other side. It is in my opinion often better for the peace not to think too much about the perspective of another side that you disagree with.