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> As a worker, my focus is on generating value. Either I produce revenue or reduce risk and liability. For managers, this is a distant secondary concern, they a
by bicx 4y ago
> As a worker, my focus is on generating value. Either I produce revenue or reduce risk and liability. For managers, this is a distant secondary concern, they are worried of what their boss might think and how they will appear in the management team and what the risk to them (not the company) would be if their reports fail or decide to leave.
Honestly that description of a manager’s motivation (how they are seen by others who control their fate) is one that many engineers also adopt. In my experience, managers are actually focused on what you described for a worker (ensure the team generates value via revenue or reduced risk), while most engineers are typically focused on the quality of their craft.
- Aeolun 4y agoI think for engineers the difference is that they (good ones anyway) don’t think so much about what other engineers might think, but rather about what future them will think when encountering the same thing again in two years.
- _8j50 4y agoI used to be like that years ago but as you get more experience you start thinking about why you get paid so you can get paid more and/or keep your job. Which means the "quality" of my work is only meaningful if that in some way (even indirect) benefits my employer. There's a lot of fun things I can do, I use to take weeks writing something in C because I like the language and it is fast where there is already a python module that lets me do that in 20 lines. But when it comes to work, the slower python code is ideal because less technical burden and the speed benefit of C is marginal, it provides no competitive advantage in those specific scenarios. I am not one but I believe staff and principal SWEs start thinking more like this for comparison. (I am not a developer).