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One mismatch I often see between engineers and management. Engineers: "I must not be doing the best I can, because I'm not keeping up with work. Gotta work fast

One mismatch I often see between engineers and management. Engineers: "I must not be doing the best I can, because I'm not keeping up with work. Gotta work faster, gotta do better." Managers: "engineers are professionals with strong opinions who will always tell me when/if they need anything to help them get their work done. Right? If they aren't saying anything, it's their own fault, right? They're adults, right?" Unfortunately many engineers (and humans generally) can't easily recognize and articulate what they need. One theory of mine is that we assign senior-sounding roles in this industry too readily. "Senior engineer" sounds like they would know how to handle this, but while they might be great at programming, they often have little experience recognizing their own limitations, asking for help/resources, and understanding that this level of self-awareness and focus on outcomes would make them look better, not worse. If I was to give one piece of advice to an engineer in a similar position: you will always look more mature and professional if you evaluate your situation and explain what sort of help you need, than if you silently keep burning yourself out while the quality keeps slipping. If you're management and you actually reprimand them for asking for help, you will have trouble retaining engineers. It would be justifiable for them to look for work elsewhere on these grounds.

SkyPuncher 4y ago
I'll put a simpler, more likely explanation. It's dangerous to complain about being overworked. It puts hard barriers on your limits.
- hakunin 4y ago
  I assume you're explaining the fear, because the opposite is true. You'd be lifting a barrier. The barrier is you doing all the legwork while having all the institutional knowledge. Business cannot afford you doing the legwork, you need to be mentoring and delegating.
  - imilk 4y ago
    Completely agree. If you never say that you are at capacity you become the dumping ground for work that other people should be doing.
- jim-jim-jim 4y ago
  It doesn't have to be a complaint. Just put a higher fibonacci on your work or whatever. Don't see how it's a problem if you're honest from the get go.
Mc91 4y ago
> One theory of mine is that we assign senior-sounding roles in this industry too readily. Some large companies, particularly non-technical companies have to pay a certain amount of money to get people of a certain skill level, say a level below senior. However the company management does not want to pay market rates for that level, that salary only goes to "senior" people. So people with a skill level below senior are put on work that fits for a level below senior, but are given the senior title, because within the company, that is the title that matches up with the market rate for those people.
- whstl 4y ago
  Not only that, but seniority is also often used as a bargaining chip. Having the title in your CV means something for future employers, so employees want it and companies give it willy-nilly as a very cheap perk. No need to say that this causes more problems than it solves.
  - realjhol 4y ago
    > No need to say that this causes more problems than it solves. As Senior executive vice principle king of engineering in charge of ensuring our product has enough blue LEDs in it, I don't know what you're talking about
    - germinalphrase 4y ago
      So you’re the one keeping me up at night…
  - ghaff 4y ago
    It's funny that, more often that not, in tech roles (but not a developer) I've mostly never used a title that was my actual HR title (which more than once shifted without me even knowing about it until I logged into the system for some reason or other). Yet some areas of tech, which prides itself on lack of gatekeeping, seems almost bank-like in its obsession with job levels. (To be clear, I'm not talking making up "Senior Vice President" but just something less HR-like than my actual title.)
quickthrower2 4y ago
More like: Managers: according to this metric he isn’t working hard enough let’s pull him into a room, ply some pressure, see if we can get him to shape up. Engineer: my boss has explicitly been pulling me up for how long it takes to do task so I need to start cutting corners, stop helping others and work longer hours to keep paying my bills.
brianmcc 4y ago
This rings very true. I wonder if a quick nudge in the right direction could be a standing 1-to-1 agenda, to provide a low bar opportunity for such requests. E.g. - what's going well - what's not going so well - how would you rate the current pace, where 1 is too slow/boring, and 5 is red-lining and we should review things? Forgive the clumsy/rushed example, but point #3 is about an opportunity to say "actually we're about 4 or 4.5 and it might be worth looking at what's happening". All the above assumes a good manager that can be trusted and can make a difference, of course.
nitwit005 4y ago
If the story is accurate, all they had to do to figure things out was to ask an engineer. Two people independently gave the same feedback. Probably the reason the team had everyone quit was because management was dysfunctional.
germinalphrase 4y ago
"engineers are professionals with strong opinions who will always tell me when/if they need anything to help them get their work done. Right? If they aren't saying anything, it's their own fault, right? They're adults, right?" There can a cultural block here based on popular conceptions of “leadership” vs “caregiving” which maps against “strong”/“soft” & “male”/“female” in clearly counterproductive ways. Edit: I am interested in counter arguments here from downvoters. I am a pretty typical typical Midwestern guy with traditionally ‘macho’ interests/hobbies, but I’ve seen the above pattern play out repeatedly.
- DiggyJohnson 4y ago
  This seems like quite a stretch. I don't think we should eschew these aspects of a competent engineer just because it may be possible to relate them to the current gender discourse.
  - germinalphrase 4y ago
    Fair enough. My comment was directed toward the manager rather than the engineer - though I could have left out “male”/“female” without impacting my point.
JustSomeNobody 4y ago
> Managers: "engineers are professionals with strong opinions who will always tell me when/if they need anything to help them get their work done. Right? If they aren't saying anything, it's their own fault, right? They're adults, right?" Managers manage and bosses react. Some (management) people are great managers. The rest are bosses.

SkyPuncher 4y ago

I'll put a simpler, more likely explanation. It's dangerous to complain about being overworked. It puts hard barriers on your limits.

hakunin 4y ago
I assume you're explaining the fear, because the opposite is true. You'd be lifting a barrier. The barrier is you doing all the legwork while having all the institutional knowledge. Business cannot afford you doing the legwork, you need to be mentoring and delegating.
- imilk 4y ago
  Completely agree. If you never say that you are at capacity you become the dumping ground for work that other people should be doing.
jim-jim-jim 4y ago
It doesn't have to be a complaint. Just put a higher fibonacci on your work or whatever. Don't see how it's a problem if you're honest from the get go.

Mc91 4y ago

> One theory of mine is that we assign senior-sounding roles in this industry too readily. Some large companies, particularly non-technical companies have to pay a certain amount of money to get people of a certain skill level, say a level below senior. However the company management does not want to pay market rates for that level, that salary only goes to "senior" people. So people with a skill level below senior are put on work that fits for a level below senior, but are given the senior title, because within the company, that is the title that matches up with the market rate for those people.

whstl 4y ago
Not only that, but seniority is also often used as a bargaining chip. Having the title in your CV means something for future employers, so employees want it and companies give it willy-nilly as a very cheap perk. No need to say that this causes more problems than it solves.
- realjhol 4y ago
  > No need to say that this causes more problems than it solves. As Senior executive vice principle king of engineering in charge of ensuring our product has enough blue LEDs in it, I don't know what you're talking about
  - germinalphrase 4y ago
    So you’re the one keeping me up at night…
- ghaff 4y ago
  It's funny that, more often that not, in tech roles (but not a developer) I've mostly never used a title that was my actual HR title (which more than once shifted without me even knowing about it until I logged into the system for some reason or other). Yet some areas of tech, which prides itself on lack of gatekeeping, seems almost bank-like in its obsession with job levels. (To be clear, I'm not talking making up "Senior Vice President" but just something less HR-like than my actual title.)

quickthrower2 4y ago

More like: Managers: according to this metric he isn’t working hard enough let’s pull him into a room, ply some pressure, see if we can get him to shape up. Engineer: my boss has explicitly been pulling me up for how long it takes to do task so I need to start cutting corners, stop helping others and work longer hours to keep paying my bills.

brianmcc 4y ago

This rings very true. I wonder if a quick nudge in the right direction could be a standing 1-to-1 agenda, to provide a low bar opportunity for such requests. E.g. - what's going well - what's not going so well - how would you rate the current pace, where 1 is too slow/boring, and 5 is red-lining and we should review things? Forgive the clumsy/rushed example, but point #3 is about an opportunity to say "actually we're about 4 or 4.5 and it might be worth looking at what's happening". All the above assumes a good manager that can be trusted and can make a difference, of course.

nitwit005 4y ago

If the story is accurate, all they had to do to figure things out was to ask an engineer. Two people independently gave the same feedback. Probably the reason the team had everyone quit was because management was dysfunctional.

germinalphrase 4y ago

"engineers are professionals with strong opinions who will always tell me when/if they need anything to help them get their work done. Right? If they aren't saying anything, it's their own fault, right? They're adults, right?" There can a cultural block here based on popular conceptions of “leadership” vs “caregiving” which maps against “strong”/“soft” & “male”/“female” in clearly counterproductive ways. Edit: I am interested in counter arguments here from downvoters. I am a pretty typical typical Midwestern guy with traditionally ‘macho’ interests/hobbies, but I’ve seen the above pattern play out repeatedly.

DiggyJohnson 4y ago
This seems like quite a stretch. I don't think we should eschew these aspects of a competent engineer just because it may be possible to relate them to the current gender discourse.
- germinalphrase 4y ago
  Fair enough. My comment was directed toward the manager rather than the engineer - though I could have left out “male”/“female” without impacting my point.

JustSomeNobody 4y ago

> Managers: "engineers are professionals with strong opinions who will always tell me when/if they need anything to help them get their work done. Right? If they aren't saying anything, it's their own fault, right? They're adults, right?" Managers manage and bosses react. Some (management) people are great managers. The rest are bosses.