3 ms·

If coding is beneath you, working in software is beyond you. If you are a people person and love helping people so much, go work as a social worker, no? Manag

If coding is beneath you, working in software is beyond you. If you are a people person and love helping people so much, go work as a social worker, no? Managers are employees same as ICs. An IC can have more impact than a manager. http://programming-motherfucker.com/ http://programming-motherfucker.com/

KaiserPro 4y ago
> If coding is beneath you, working in software is beyond you. maybe the problem you are trying to solve isn't code. > ICs do not need managers, managers need ICs. Given the level of infantilisation at meta, and big tech in general, I think this is clearly not the case. "self management" (ie bottoms up management) stopped working at meta many many years ago. > Some managers have negative productivity. So do a lot of ICs "I'm rewriting x in NEW_LANGUAGE because its faster" & "just read the code, that's where all the answers are" & "no you're doing it wrong, just re-write this major system to make it do something completely different because I've not taken the time to listen to your problem" Meta is a massive pile of "not invented here" tech debt, that was half arsed for impacc and then abandoned. Most of that is IC ill disciplined "oh but I'm BORED I'm going to make a new x". Don't get me wrong. I've had some complete bellends of managers, but that's not a function of them being a manager, that's a function of no training and ineffective performance management. Writing code is easy, Writing good code is not so easy Reusing other people's code is hard Making an entire company reuse code is fucking difficult. Getting prima-donnas to document code so that other people can use it quickly, super fucking difficult. Managing programmers so they don't start gnawing at the furniture, rebuild everything every six months, wank over the interns and getting them produce a viable product, one that they can't/don't/wont use is top level hard. It's something I don't want to do.
- 29athrowaway 4y ago
  I edited it as you replied, but sure. If you think developers are prima donnas wait until you hear about managers. Compared to developers, many of them fit much more into the prima donna description. Most managers don't document anything and when they do, it is of low quality and goes unmaintained quickly. Most managers out there are redundant and have no idea about what leadership is. They just get an orgasm each time they say no and conflate that with being a true leader. The reason hackathons produce amazing results is because it is what happens when managers get out of the way for 1 day: improvement driven by builders that care about the product, not office politics. https://youtu.be/fj0hpsJvrko https://youtu.be/fj0hpsJvrko
  - KaiserPro 4y ago
    > wait until you hear about managers. You're assuming that I've never really worked anywhere with managers, good or otherwise. > Most managers don't document anything yup, and they are insufferable dicks for not doing it. But, in big companies you need to have presence, so managers that are successful tend to have a documented paper trail of "their" successes. Whether its useful documentation is very much another matter. > Most managers out there are redundant and have no idea about what leadership is. There are two issues here, lets do leadership first. Yes, leadership is not taught properly, and that annoys me greatly. Leadership can be taught, and its not to challenging to do. But on the flip side, leadership isn't just about keeping people happy, its about taking hard decisions and getting people to understand what they need to do. Again, there are lots of bad examples out there. Now as for redundant, if that was really the case, and that most manager are redundant, then surely they are ripe for "cost savings"? After all capitalism is mostly ruthless when it comes to staff costs. The problem is that good managers increase productivity. However what "good" is can depend on where you sit on the hierarchy. If your CEO/CTO only talks to managers, then your manager controls the information flow. this is a company culture thing, and is closely coupled to how managers are expected react. > The reason hackathons produce amazing results is because[..] ...of exposure bias. There are loads of ideas in hackathons, and lots of them are shite. But! the ones you remember are good, thus there appears to be a great signal to noise ratio. I've organised and participated in loads, they are good fun. But you can't run a company permanently in hackathon mode.
    - 29athrowaway 4y ago
      It is another aspect of cargo cult and checklist driven leadership.

KaiserPro 4y ago

> If coding is beneath you, working in software is beyond you. maybe the problem you are trying to solve isn't code. > ICs do not need managers, managers need ICs. Given the level of infantilisation at meta, and big tech in general, I think this is clearly not the case. "self management" (ie bottoms up management) stopped working at meta many many years ago. > Some managers have negative productivity. So do a lot of ICs "I'm rewriting x in NEW_LANGUAGE because its faster" & "just read the code, that's where all the answers are" & "no you're doing it wrong, just re-write this major system to make it do something completely different because I've not taken the time to listen to your problem" Meta is a massive pile of "not invented here" tech debt, that was half arsed for impacc and then abandoned. Most of that is IC ill disciplined "oh but I'm BORED I'm going to make a new x". Don't get me wrong. I've had some complete bellends of managers, but that's not a function of them being a manager, that's a function of no training and ineffective performance management. Writing code is easy, Writing good code is not so easy Reusing other people's code is hard Making an entire company reuse code is fucking difficult. Getting prima-donnas to document code so that other people can use it quickly, super fucking difficult. Managing programmers so they don't start gnawing at the furniture, rebuild everything every six months, wank over the interns and getting them produce a viable product, one that they can't/don't/wont use is top level hard. It's something I don't want to do.

29athrowaway 4y ago
I edited it as you replied, but sure. If you think developers are prima donnas wait until you hear about managers. Compared to developers, many of them fit much more into the prima donna description. Most managers don't document anything and when they do, it is of low quality and goes unmaintained quickly. Most managers out there are redundant and have no idea about what leadership is. They just get an orgasm each time they say no and conflate that with being a true leader. The reason hackathons produce amazing results is because it is what happens when managers get out of the way for 1 day: improvement driven by builders that care about the product, not office politics. https://youtu.be/fj0hpsJvrko https://youtu.be/fj0hpsJvrko
- KaiserPro 4y ago
  > wait until you hear about managers. You're assuming that I've never really worked anywhere with managers, good or otherwise. > Most managers don't document anything yup, and they are insufferable dicks for not doing it. But, in big companies you need to have presence, so managers that are successful tend to have a documented paper trail of "their" successes. Whether its useful documentation is very much another matter. > Most managers out there are redundant and have no idea about what leadership is. There are two issues here, lets do leadership first. Yes, leadership is not taught properly, and that annoys me greatly. Leadership can be taught, and its not to challenging to do. But on the flip side, leadership isn't just about keeping people happy, its about taking hard decisions and getting people to understand what they need to do. Again, there are lots of bad examples out there. Now as for redundant, if that was really the case, and that most manager are redundant, then surely they are ripe for "cost savings"? After all capitalism is mostly ruthless when it comes to staff costs. The problem is that good managers increase productivity. However what "good" is can depend on where you sit on the hierarchy. If your CEO/CTO only talks to managers, then your manager controls the information flow. this is a company culture thing, and is closely coupled to how managers are expected react. > The reason hackathons produce amazing results is because[..] ...of exposure bias. There are loads of ideas in hackathons, and lots of them are shite. But! the ones you remember are good, thus there appears to be a great signal to noise ratio. I've organised and participated in loads, they are good fun. But you can't run a company permanently in hackathon mode.
  - 29athrowaway 4y ago
    It is another aspect of cargo cult and checklist driven leadership.