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"Scrum masters" and their managers the "Agile delivery lead". Pretty sure there was somebody in charge of the AGLs under each director too. This was in additio

"Scrum masters" and their managers the "Agile delivery lead". Pretty sure there was somebody in charge of the AGLs under each director too. This was in addition to teams having product owners and an engineering manager as well at times. At times I had 3 people managing a team with 3-6 engineers. Very interesting tech culture.

cjglo 4y ago
Also a former Cap1 employee here, the 3 people managing a team of 3 engineers is quite common. My last team before leaving had 3 engineers: tech lead, me, and a junior dev. It had 4 non-engineers managing us: a product owner, a head Agile Delivery Lead, a more junior agile Delivery Lead, and our manager.
- spritefs 4y ago
  What did the agile people do?]
  - AeroNotix 4y ago
    Promote synergy, direct workflow, bring value to key stakeholders
    - krona 4y ago
      > bring value to key stakeholders Or not, in this case.
    - nkozyra 4y ago
      See who could complain about this it sounds incredibly valuable.
    - ushakov 4y ago
      So, nothing?
      - jpatt 4y ago
        Eh, steel manning the role it kind of just sounds like a TPM. When roles are crisply defined, a good TPM has been a life changer for my job satisfaction. You basically get permission to farm out a lot of the most annoying parts of the job--status update forums, timeline management, and dependency wrangling--to another person who does it full time.
        spritefs 4y ago
        Afaik all my tpm does is create outlook events and occasionally come to our standup to bitch about how we aren't doing enough jira
        shamiln 4y ago
        A reflection of your TPM, I guess
        belligeront 4y ago
        I've seen both versions of these. A good TPM is extremely valuable though, especially for work that is highly reliant on coordinating other teams. The bad version was a net negative to team productivity.
  - cinntaile 4y ago
    They're getting axed while the engineers get to stay, so not much it seems.
  - joshgachnang 4y ago
    You need that many people to properly manage Jira /s
  - richiezc 4y ago
    something something conjoined triangles of success
  - __derek__ 4y ago
    My first SDE job was in a company with a dedicated Scrum Master role, and they were basically the lubricant to make Agile/Scrum teams fit into what was essentially a waterfall environment. It's roughly a TPM in Big Tech, but without those companies as industry peers for setting comp.
    - spritefs 4y ago
      Weird that some companies have a dedicated role for that. My current gig doesn't talk about agile at all... we still have two week sprints and self directing teams and all of that, just none of the annoying buzzwords
      - __derek__ 4y ago
        That's as it should be. As soon as people start with the buzzwords, I tune out.
- feanaro 4y ago
  It doesn't sound to me like the product owner should be considered the developers' manager. Though I guess that depends on what the word "manage" means and these days it's starting to sound like it's lost all meaning.
  - SpicyLemonZest 4y ago
    What makes it a hard call is that, in an organization that's trying to be engineering-focused, the product owner typically has as much say in what work you'll be doing as the person the org chart says you report to. (They have the most relevant expertise - a "people manager" has to spend a lot of their time managing people, while the product owner's sole and full-time responsibility is understanding what work the product needs.)
  - oasisbob 4y ago
    Strong product owners controlling the workflow and prioritization of the team certainly feel like management when you're working under one.
  - MisterBastahrd 4y ago
    They shouldn't. Otherwise, there's nobody to pushback against stupid client requests. Product owners should be managing the product, not the employees. Having an employee manager to butt heads leads to a better overall product because it leads to better discussion between the devs who know the system and the product owner who is helping to flesh out requirements.
nhtsamera 4y ago
And to think, Office Space came out 24 years ago. Funny how things come full-circle. >And here's something else, Bob: I have eight different bosses right now. >I beg your pardon? >Eight bosses. >Eight? >Eight, Bob. So that means that when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That's my only real motivation, is not to be hassled. That, and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired. Cue some discussion about kids these days and "quiet quitting".
- matwood 4y ago
  > It's not that I'm lazy, I just don't care. My SO at the time didn't understand what I did at work all day until we saw that movie in the theater.
- Devasta 4y ago
  These days, Office Space is downright aspirational. His cube is so big and private, and he can push to prod without going through change management! Heaven.
coffeebeqn 4y ago
Hilarious. First line of the Agile manifesto is lost irony on these people I guess. Scrum and safe and all that nonsense is basically just a cargocult but not even a cargocult or anything useful > Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
- bdavis__ 4y ago
  "individuals and interactions" is how you make great things happen. "processes and tools" is how you make boring things happen at scale and with high quality. very few teams are willing to admit that they need to be making boring things happen. agile is not a universal tonic.
  - marcosdumay 4y ago
    The Agile manifesto is entirely about making boring things happen for loosed integrated teams. It was created by a forum of consultants that wrote CRUD for random companies. It is certainly not universal. As an example, if you want to make something great, it has absolutely no relation to your problem.
darth_avocado 4y ago
Ohh wow. I have worked in tech for over a decade now and none of this makes sense for me. Like we follow agile principles (often take the core understanding and apply it in a way that works for the team). Usually the positions you mentioned are just EMs or tech leads with added responsibilities.
saghm 4y ago
> "Scrum masters" and their managers the "Agile delivery lead". Pretty sure there was somebody in charge of the AGLs under each director too. Honestly, what bothers me the most about this is the idea that "agile delivery lead" is abbreviated "AGL". It doesn't even make it any more pronounceable compared to "ADL".
- stackbutterflow 4y ago
  "The D in AGL is for delivery".
  - saghm 4y ago
    Touche!
dopylitty 4y ago
Another variation on this I've seen is an 'agile' 'team' composed of several groups of engineers each reporting to different managers in the organization with a scrum master and product owner who reported to yet different chains of command. All of these chains of command had different and conflicting priorities as well as political wars with each other. The product "owner" knew very little about the ill-defined product they owned yet they set the team's 'official' priorities based on wish lists from the business while the engineers also got different priorities from their chain of command and the scrum master was a glorified admin assistant. The result was that no strategy existed and nothing of value was done but the engineers were still ground to a paste against the mill stones of the Jira board every two weeks. It made me miss the simpler times of having a well defined waterfall project being done by a single team of engineers with a single engineering manager and a project manager to make the gantt chart and schedule the meetings.

cjglo 4y ago

Also a former Cap1 employee here, the 3 people managing a team of 3 engineers is quite common. My last team before leaving had 3 engineers: tech lead, me, and a junior dev. It had 4 non-engineers managing us: a product owner, a head Agile Delivery Lead, a more junior agile Delivery Lead, and our manager.

spritefs 4y ago
What did the agile people do?]
- AeroNotix 4y ago
  Promote synergy, direct workflow, bring value to key stakeholders
  - krona 4y ago
    > bring value to key stakeholders Or not, in this case.
  - nkozyra 4y ago
    See who could complain about this it sounds incredibly valuable.
  - ushakov 4y ago
    So, nothing?
    - jpatt 4y ago
      Eh, steel manning the role it kind of just sounds like a TPM. When roles are crisply defined, a good TPM has been a life changer for my job satisfaction. You basically get permission to farm out a lot of the most annoying parts of the job--status update forums, timeline management, and dependency wrangling--to another person who does it full time.
      - spritefs 4y ago
        Afaik all my tpm does is create outlook events and occasionally come to our standup to bitch about how we aren't doing enough jira
        shamiln 4y ago
        A reflection of your TPM, I guess
        belligeront 4y ago
        I've seen both versions of these. A good TPM is extremely valuable though, especially for work that is highly reliant on coordinating other teams. The bad version was a net negative to team productivity.
- cinntaile 4y ago
  They're getting axed while the engineers get to stay, so not much it seems.
- joshgachnang 4y ago
  You need that many people to properly manage Jira /s
- richiezc 4y ago
  something something conjoined triangles of success
- __derek__ 4y ago
  My first SDE job was in a company with a dedicated Scrum Master role, and they were basically the lubricant to make Agile/Scrum teams fit into what was essentially a waterfall environment. It's roughly a TPM in Big Tech, but without those companies as industry peers for setting comp.
  - spritefs 4y ago
    Weird that some companies have a dedicated role for that. My current gig doesn't talk about agile at all... we still have two week sprints and self directing teams and all of that, just none of the annoying buzzwords
    - __derek__ 4y ago
      That's as it should be. As soon as people start with the buzzwords, I tune out.
feanaro 4y ago
It doesn't sound to me like the product owner should be considered the developers' manager. Though I guess that depends on what the word "manage" means and these days it's starting to sound like it's lost all meaning.
- SpicyLemonZest 4y ago
  What makes it a hard call is that, in an organization that's trying to be engineering-focused, the product owner typically has as much say in what work you'll be doing as the person the org chart says you report to. (They have the most relevant expertise - a "people manager" has to spend a lot of their time managing people, while the product owner's sole and full-time responsibility is understanding what work the product needs.)
- oasisbob 4y ago
  Strong product owners controlling the workflow and prioritization of the team certainly feel like management when you're working under one.
- MisterBastahrd 4y ago
  They shouldn't. Otherwise, there's nobody to pushback against stupid client requests. Product owners should be managing the product, not the employees. Having an employee manager to butt heads leads to a better overall product because it leads to better discussion between the devs who know the system and the product owner who is helping to flesh out requirements.

nhtsamera 4y ago

And to think, Office Space came out 24 years ago. Funny how things come full-circle. >And here's something else, Bob: I have eight different bosses right now. >I beg your pardon? >Eight bosses. >Eight? >Eight, Bob. So that means that when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That's my only real motivation, is not to be hassled. That, and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired. Cue some discussion about kids these days and "quiet quitting".

matwood 4y ago
> It's not that I'm lazy, I just don't care. My SO at the time didn't understand what I did at work all day until we saw that movie in the theater.
Devasta 4y ago
These days, Office Space is downright aspirational. His cube is so big and private, and he can push to prod without going through change management! Heaven.

coffeebeqn 4y ago

Hilarious. First line of the Agile manifesto is lost irony on these people I guess. Scrum and safe and all that nonsense is basically just a cargocult but not even a cargocult or anything useful > Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

bdavis__ 4y ago
"individuals and interactions" is how you make great things happen. "processes and tools" is how you make boring things happen at scale and with high quality. very few teams are willing to admit that they need to be making boring things happen. agile is not a universal tonic.
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  The Agile manifesto is entirely about making boring things happen for loosed integrated teams. It was created by a forum of consultants that wrote CRUD for random companies. It is certainly not universal. As an example, if you want to make something great, it has absolutely no relation to your problem.

darth_avocado 4y ago

Ohh wow. I have worked in tech for over a decade now and none of this makes sense for me. Like we follow agile principles (often take the core understanding and apply it in a way that works for the team). Usually the positions you mentioned are just EMs or tech leads with added responsibilities.

saghm 4y ago

> "Scrum masters" and their managers the "Agile delivery lead". Pretty sure there was somebody in charge of the AGLs under each director too. Honestly, what bothers me the most about this is the idea that "agile delivery lead" is abbreviated "AGL". It doesn't even make it any more pronounceable compared to "ADL".

stackbutterflow 4y ago
"The D in AGL is for delivery".
- saghm 4y ago
  Touche!

dopylitty 4y ago

Another variation on this I've seen is an 'agile' 'team' composed of several groups of engineers each reporting to different managers in the organization with a scrum master and product owner who reported to yet different chains of command. All of these chains of command had different and conflicting priorities as well as political wars with each other. The product "owner" knew very little about the ill-defined product they owned yet they set the team's 'official' priorities based on wish lists from the business while the engineers also got different priorities from their chain of command and the scrum master was a glorified admin assistant. The result was that no strategy existed and nothing of value was done but the engineers were still ground to a paste against the mill stones of the Jira board every two weeks. It made me miss the simpler times of having a well defined waterfall project being done by a single team of engineers with a single engineering manager and a project manager to make the gantt chart and schedule the meetings.