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Oh God. No. "Ensure that you are fulfilling the expectations of your manager" Please please do not assume your manager is any good at their job. Talk to your

Oh God. No. "Ensure that you are fulfilling the expectations of your manager" Please please do not assume your manager is any good at their job. Talk to your users. Find a way to identify them and get feedback from them. Keep your manager in the loop sure. But don't wait for requirements to come down from on high. "Every step up in job title is equivalent to living perhaps 1–2 days further into the future." No. If an organisation passes information down through the hierarchy then by the time it reaches you (it's more like 1-2 weeks if not months into the future) then it's already moved on. The US military tries hard to put decision making at the front line where it is most up to date. At the Battle of Jutland the British ships in the fleet had to radio its positions and sightings back to London, so London could update its "board" and radio to the Admiral in the fleet. This Admiral was this working on data that ships a mile or two away from him had had hours ago, but he was only just getting. This lead to an inconclusive battle. Anyway. Open information is way important.

lovich 4y ago
The military also has a peculiar behavior of punishing leadership for failures instead of promoting them or giving them a golden parachute. Telling engineers to fulfill the expectations of their managers is more of survival advice. Granted this does not hold for 1) small startups where everyone has influence on the direction of the product and bureaucracy hasn't taken hold yet, and 2) FAANGS for the most part appear to operate under military like organization and allow for IC's to make decisions without 12 levels of approval.
- lifeisstillgood 4y ago
  The US Army in WWII is known for moving and reassigning top ranking generals - failure was more a case of "you failed at amphibious landings in Pacific but now go do Air cover in Europe." But in general I feel if you want people to take risks for you, it's best that you pay them so much they stop having worries at home and just have worries at work. Executing people for failure looks like it gets results, but often it just gets results hidden
  - lovich 4y ago
    As opposed to execs getting rewarded no matter what so they can be open about their failures that they won’t resolve. There is a point to not executing people for failures so that information isn’t hidden but when “not getting paid massive amounts of compensation” is equivalent to execution I think you’re going to have the same bad behaviors.
groby_b 4y ago
Uh... Fulfilling expectations has nothing to do with making decisions on your own. I can guarantee you that no matter how good or bad their manager, if you don't meet their expectations, you are in trouble. By all means, own your local decisions, be proactive, keep your manager in the loop - AND MAKE SURE THEIR EXPECTATIONS AND YOUR WORK MATCH. That doesn't mean waiting for requirements, but that means your manager knows what you do and agrees, at least in broad strokes. Surprising your manager unpleasantly never leads to good outcomes for you. There's only one person holding power in that relationship. (Positive surprises do work, but they usually take the form of "I did what you expected, AND".) Totally agreed that the 1-2 days in the future thing is wrong. As a senior you should be at least a couple of weeks in the future, better if it's months. At the staff level, 6-12 months. At the principal level, 2-5 years. If it's just a few days between each level, a) somebody is failing at their job, and b) yes, information will be outdated by the time it reaches you.
- lowercased 4y ago
  > Surprising your manager unpleasantly never leads to good outcomes for you... Not quite 'my' manager directly, but a client's PM. They had a ... PM/PO type person who was quite insistent that we had to have feature X by date Y. Slightly aggressive, but... sure. Between that insistence (over weeks) and the date Y... that person left and a new person started. 4 days before a walk through (where new items were demonstrated to stakeholders, and company owners), I sent the completed functionality over to the new PM (he'd been there a few weeks, but obviously still... new). "looks good" he replied. I checked that he'd at least watched the video I'd sent over. Demo happens and I show the functionality, with the "this is vital to have" from the previous PM. Silence. Then "we didn't know that was being worked on". Behind the scenes I was somewhat thrown under the bus, even though I had jira tickets, paper trail, video evidence and assorted other info. "Lowercased is ... subverting the process" and I made a whole team look bad. Even though... they all had signed off on what I was delivering. But behind the scenes, new PM had told people "feature X won't happen" (i have no idea why that was said) but apparently I made a lot of people look bad, because I'd delivered something they said wasn't going to happen. So so so weird...
  - 4y ago
ClumsyPilot 4y ago
> The US military tries hard to put decision making at the front line where it is most up to date. Business leaders love to imitate the military, but isnt it ironic they are emulating the institution that has the most government involvement and central planning?
- dilyevsky 4y ago
  On the surface level it should make sense bc in war stakes are high so you’d think “survival of the fittest” would apply. In reality I’d say it’s far from being the case but it makes suits feel more important so here we go again
- devonkim 4y ago
  In terms of how it’s supposed to be structured the military is heavily centralized but that model has broken down considerably as the US has had to face far more dynamic adversaries than before. It’s a popular perception but most groups in the military branches operate a lot closer to Silicon Valley in many respects than people give them credit for.
bluGill 4y ago
> Talk to your users. Find a way to identify them and get feedback from them. Keep your manager in the loop sure. But don't wait for requirements to come down from on high. As a senior engineer that is what my manager expects me to do. In fact I'm often expected to define the requirements before working on them. Often when I get the requirements refined enough I hand them off to other engineers. Of course there is personality involved here. I pass things off before I don't enjoy the boring grunt work of putting the final polish on, but I work with people who prefer to put the polish on an already solved problem. This is a win-win as both of us avoid things we don't like. (note, putting polish on is at least 90% of the work, so I can't completely get out of that, and junior engineers never can). There are other problems that other senior engineers work on that I never touch - they are the experts not me
moralestapia 4y ago
>"Ensure that you are fulfilling the expectations of your manager" "Just tell me what to do" is like the anti-senior developer philosophy, particularly if you report to someone who is non-tech. If you're senior you should be the one setting the expectations and lay out a (working) plan to fulfill them.
lifeisstillgood 4y ago
Edit on the above: I am coming across way more negative than I planned. I just want to counter-balance the underlying assumptions that a workplace is somehow fair, or has your interests at heart. They are collectively controlling ~50% of GDP resource allocation, they are effective dictatorships for the executive "class" and perfect competition that would keep them in line is rare in most industries. Perhaps I am saying that changing the game is better for everyone than learning to play the current one well.

lovich 4y ago

The military also has a peculiar behavior of punishing leadership for failures instead of promoting them or giving them a golden parachute. Telling engineers to fulfill the expectations of their managers is more of survival advice. Granted this does not hold for 1) small startups where everyone has influence on the direction of the product and bureaucracy hasn't taken hold yet, and 2) FAANGS for the most part appear to operate under military like organization and allow for IC's to make decisions without 12 levels of approval.

lifeisstillgood 4y ago
The US Army in WWII is known for moving and reassigning top ranking generals - failure was more a case of "you failed at amphibious landings in Pacific but now go do Air cover in Europe." But in general I feel if you want people to take risks for you, it's best that you pay them so much they stop having worries at home and just have worries at work. Executing people for failure looks like it gets results, but often it just gets results hidden
- lovich 4y ago
  As opposed to execs getting rewarded no matter what so they can be open about their failures that they won’t resolve. There is a point to not executing people for failures so that information isn’t hidden but when “not getting paid massive amounts of compensation” is equivalent to execution I think you’re going to have the same bad behaviors.

groby_b 4y ago

Uh... Fulfilling expectations has nothing to do with making decisions on your own. I can guarantee you that no matter how good or bad their manager, if you don't meet their expectations, you are in trouble. By all means, own your local decisions, be proactive, keep your manager in the loop - AND MAKE SURE THEIR EXPECTATIONS AND YOUR WORK MATCH. That doesn't mean waiting for requirements, but that means your manager knows what you do and agrees, at least in broad strokes. Surprising your manager unpleasantly never leads to good outcomes for you. There's only one person holding power in that relationship. (Positive surprises do work, but they usually take the form of "I did what you expected, AND".) Totally agreed that the 1-2 days in the future thing is wrong. As a senior you should be at least a couple of weeks in the future, better if it's months. At the staff level, 6-12 months. At the principal level, 2-5 years. If it's just a few days between each level, a) somebody is failing at their job, and b) yes, information will be outdated by the time it reaches you.

lowercased 4y ago
> Surprising your manager unpleasantly never leads to good outcomes for you... Not quite 'my' manager directly, but a client's PM. They had a ... PM/PO type person who was quite insistent that we had to have feature X by date Y. Slightly aggressive, but... sure. Between that insistence (over weeks) and the date Y... that person left and a new person started. 4 days before a walk through (where new items were demonstrated to stakeholders, and company owners), I sent the completed functionality over to the new PM (he'd been there a few weeks, but obviously still... new). "looks good" he replied. I checked that he'd at least watched the video I'd sent over. Demo happens and I show the functionality, with the "this is vital to have" from the previous PM. Silence. Then "we didn't know that was being worked on". Behind the scenes I was somewhat thrown under the bus, even though I had jira tickets, paper trail, video evidence and assorted other info. "Lowercased is ... subverting the process" and I made a whole team look bad. Even though... they all had signed off on what I was delivering. But behind the scenes, new PM had told people "feature X won't happen" (i have no idea why that was said) but apparently I made a lot of people look bad, because I'd delivered something they said wasn't going to happen. So so so weird...
- 4y ago

ClumsyPilot 4y ago

> The US military tries hard to put decision making at the front line where it is most up to date. Business leaders love to imitate the military, but isnt it ironic they are emulating the institution that has the most government involvement and central planning?

dilyevsky 4y ago
On the surface level it should make sense bc in war stakes are high so you’d think “survival of the fittest” would apply. In reality I’d say it’s far from being the case but it makes suits feel more important so here we go again
devonkim 4y ago
In terms of how it’s supposed to be structured the military is heavily centralized but that model has broken down considerably as the US has had to face far more dynamic adversaries than before. It’s a popular perception but most groups in the military branches operate a lot closer to Silicon Valley in many respects than people give them credit for.

bluGill 4y ago

> Talk to your users. Find a way to identify them and get feedback from them. Keep your manager in the loop sure. But don't wait for requirements to come down from on high. As a senior engineer that is what my manager expects me to do. In fact I'm often expected to define the requirements before working on them. Often when I get the requirements refined enough I hand them off to other engineers. Of course there is personality involved here. I pass things off before I don't enjoy the boring grunt work of putting the final polish on, but I work with people who prefer to put the polish on an already solved problem. This is a win-win as both of us avoid things we don't like. (note, putting polish on is at least 90% of the work, so I can't completely get out of that, and junior engineers never can). There are other problems that other senior engineers work on that I never touch - they are the experts not me

moralestapia 4y ago

>"Ensure that you are fulfilling the expectations of your manager" "Just tell me what to do" is like the anti-senior developer philosophy, particularly if you report to someone who is non-tech. If you're senior you should be the one setting the expectations and lay out a (working) plan to fulfill them.

lifeisstillgood 4y ago

Edit on the above: I am coming across way more negative than I planned. I just want to counter-balance the underlying assumptions that a workplace is somehow fair, or has your interests at heart. They are collectively controlling ~50% of GDP resource allocation, they are effective dictatorships for the executive "class" and perfect competition that would keep them in line is rare in most industries. Perhaps I am saying that changing the game is better for everyone than learning to play the current one well.