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For a new team that was set up in my company, there was this idea that we should have had some slack in the system, that is, a certain number of people should b
by borroka 4y ago
For a new team that was set up in my company, there was this idea that we should have had some slack in the system, that is, a certain number of people should be rotating on a sort of "bench", ready to get into action when new work came up: an absurd view of intellectual work, which I very much doubt is viable in a top company like Facebook.
As for (2), that's as true as fairy tales.
- QuercusMax 4y agoI'm not sure it's so absurd. There's always unexpected tasks that show up which can throw off a schedule. Or sick leave, vacation, etc. Things happen. I've worked as a TL on several teams before where we didn't assign any implementation work to me specifically, but I was there to jump in and help paddle the boat when folks got stuck. This worked great, because usually the sticky places were integration points between subsystems, which can be especially tough for junior engineers to navigate. As someone with the big picture I could jump in and save them tons of time. In the meantime, if I had spare cycles I'd work on tooling, test automation (and especially stubbing out and deflaking integration tests). Projects where I did this tended to have fewer bugs and hit their deadlines.
- borroka 4y agoBut the role you are describing is different. What I referring to is a team of 50 people, say, with 10 of them that are "on rotation" sitting on the bench and wait for new assignments. What happens is that 2 of them get used to the "vacation" and are not much motivated to get on a new project when the time comes, 2 disappear, 1 takes advantage of the R&R to work on tools and do some self-study, and 6 start interviewing for other companies. Horses want to run.