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"Ugh, artificial deadlines are the worst. They hurt morale, productivity, and quality." But sometimes/often required to actually get things done and shipped.

"Ugh, artificial deadlines are the worst. They hurt morale, productivity, and quality." But sometimes/often required to actually get things done and shipped. On the flipside, waiting around for an engineer to overoptimize something that matters only in their head, or doing something they believe is necessary when it totally isn't...not stellar for overall team performance either. (I am speaking in general, not referring to the parent comments...)

juhanima 4y ago
Well. If you treat adults like children, they will start behaving like children. If you treat them like adults, they will be more responsible. Or then they will rob you blind. Your mileage may vary and is very much dependent on other things like the general work culture. Anyway, failing to treat people like they would deserve to be treated is the most basic managerial failure. Any manager worth their salt should have an idea how their underlings need to be treated.
- yowlingcat 4y ago
  > Or then they will rob you blind. Your mileage may vary and is very much dependent on other things like the general work culture. Seems like quite a wide variation -- so your proposed approach results in either the desired outcome or the worst case possible outcome? There's no middle ground? > Anyway, failing to treat people like they would deserve to be treated is the most basic managerial failure. Any manager worth their salt should have an idea how their underlings need to be treated. Have you managed a team before? I ask because the most basic managerial failure isn't "failing to treat people like they would deserve to be treated" but rather operating a team who delivers more value to the company than they cost, and ideally at or exceeding the level that leadership expects. That's it. That often requires the following: 1) Hiring high potential, high performance employees 2) Managing out low performance employees 3) Unlocking extra performance from employees where possible Of these three activities, it's only the third one that approaches what you've mentioned. Why haven't you mentioned the other two?
bmitc 4y ago
This overall thread is interesting because it keeps bouncing back and forth, almost literally, between it being managers or engineers who like to work on things unimportant. As an engineer who has never managed outside of interns, I find both can be equally damaging. Although, an engineer pre-accustomed to in the weeds work who has no management guiding what to work on can be the worse because they can create work for the other engineers that can have zero motivating context, other than they think it’s what needs to be done. And they will report to management all these technical details that somehow appear to bolster the need but don’t actually. I am no fan of management, but working with these types of engineers can be infuriating because you end up getting sucked into their random deep dive that is messy and full of edge cases that ultimately matters zilch. I will pretty actively communicate to management that, look, if you don’t step in we’ll be following this engineer to the ends of the earth. An example I can think of is one engineer being obsessed with making a once a year report being as optimized and performant as possible, while also being obsessed with “cleaning up” the data and fixing so-called discrepancies at the report level, making little hot fix patches everywhere, rather than working with the teams that were generating the supposedly bad data in the first place. I did everything I could to avoid working on that because it was nothing but being mired in details and things that literally no one but them cared about. These types of engineers can be black holes of productivity.

juhanima 4y ago

Well. If you treat adults like children, they will start behaving like children. If you treat them like adults, they will be more responsible. Or then they will rob you blind. Your mileage may vary and is very much dependent on other things like the general work culture. Anyway, failing to treat people like they would deserve to be treated is the most basic managerial failure. Any manager worth their salt should have an idea how their underlings need to be treated.

yowlingcat 4y ago
> Or then they will rob you blind. Your mileage may vary and is very much dependent on other things like the general work culture. Seems like quite a wide variation -- so your proposed approach results in either the desired outcome or the worst case possible outcome? There's no middle ground? > Anyway, failing to treat people like they would deserve to be treated is the most basic managerial failure. Any manager worth their salt should have an idea how their underlings need to be treated. Have you managed a team before? I ask because the most basic managerial failure isn't "failing to treat people like they would deserve to be treated" but rather operating a team who delivers more value to the company than they cost, and ideally at or exceeding the level that leadership expects. That's it. That often requires the following: 1) Hiring high potential, high performance employees 2) Managing out low performance employees 3) Unlocking extra performance from employees where possible Of these three activities, it's only the third one that approaches what you've mentioned. Why haven't you mentioned the other two?

bmitc 4y ago

This overall thread is interesting because it keeps bouncing back and forth, almost literally, between it being managers or engineers who like to work on things unimportant. As an engineer who has never managed outside of interns, I find both can be equally damaging. Although, an engineer pre-accustomed to in the weeds work who has no management guiding what to work on can be the worse because they can create work for the other engineers that can have zero motivating context, other than they think it’s what needs to be done. And they will report to management all these technical details that somehow appear to bolster the need but don’t actually. I am no fan of management, but working with these types of engineers can be infuriating because you end up getting sucked into their random deep dive that is messy and full of edge cases that ultimately matters zilch. I will pretty actively communicate to management that, look, if you don’t step in we’ll be following this engineer to the ends of the earth. An example I can think of is one engineer being obsessed with making a once a year report being as optimized and performant as possible, while also being obsessed with “cleaning up” the data and fixing so-called discrepancies at the report level, making little hot fix patches everywhere, rather than working with the teams that were generating the supposedly bad data in the first place. I did everything I could to avoid working on that because it was nothing but being mired in details and things that literally no one but them cared about. These types of engineers can be black holes of productivity.