4 ms·

> Maybe it's down to management style. The success of WFH is the demonstration that if you treat adults as such, they are going to do their job anyway thus ren

by thefz 3y ago

> Maybe it's down to management style. The success of WFH is the demonstration that if you treat adults as such, they are going to do their job anyway thus rendering an entire horde of middle managers completely useless.

komali2 3y ago
David graeber's "Bullshit Jobs" finally actualized in a way I thought people would be forced to acknowledge, but nope, the bullshit jobs were continued to be allowed to exist.
- newaccount74 3y ago
  If you think management jobs are "bullshit jobs", then I envy you: You must be working with remarkably well organised coworkers. My experience is that when managers stop doing their jobs, people start working on whatever is the most fun, stop doing boring stuff like testing if their code actually works if you leave the happy path, and ignore customer bug reports because they are too hard to reproduce right now. Then they present their super awesome new software architecture that they spent a month working on that doesn't solve any problems except implement the devs vision of a framework for inverse dependency injection or whatever they read a blog about last week.
  - Jochim 3y ago
    In my experience, managers are the ones pushing developers to skip tests, bug reports, etc. Most of them are content to simply pile on new functionality, without any concept of polish, refinement, or how allocating time for technical work can speed up the delivery of that functionality.
    - noisy_boy 3y ago
      Most of the time, this short-circuits: understanding importance of code quality/testing && willingness to allocate dedicated time to achieve code quality && having ability/position/power to withstand management's pressure on just deliveries In over twenty years of my career, the value was "true" only twice.
      - grepfru_it 3y ago
        also when that value becomes "true", pay tends to be below the average
        noisy_boy 3y ago
        fwiw, it was wayy below average for me the first time, and was wayy above average the second :)
    - bombolo 3y ago
      Depends on the manager and on the developer. I've seen "senior" developers that are very happy to skip writing tests (or write useless tests that basically just return true) even though their management was happy to allocate the time to do decent testing.
  - komali2 3y ago
    Of course I have been lucky with who I've gotten to work with, but it wasn't only that. When interviewing we'd select for people that came to the table with good product mindset, or at least seemed teachable. The whole leadership chain from CEO down needs to make sure everyone understands and works towards the company's goals. If someone isn't that's just the normal course of productivity issue resolved in the normal way. Sometimes it's because someone isn't as good and engineer as you thought and is resistant to training, sometimes it's as you say they're unfocused on the mission, either way having a layer of people whose entire job is juggling these folks feels like putting fingers in holes in the dam. That's who I mean by managers, btw. Just because someone has "manager" in their title doesn't mean they're this thing. Plenty of critical product managers I've worked with.
  - huffmsa 3y ago
    Managers shouldn't have to push testing and bug repro. That should come from your senior engineering staff
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - re-thc 3y ago
    > My experience is that when managers stop doing their jobs, people start working on whatever is the most fun If people aren't doing their jobs they should be fired - not have someone babysit them and the whole team so everyone just suffers. All that ends up happening is introduce things like broken scrum and push to show cards getting down rather than real value. Congrats. You've gone from 1 extreme to the other. No difference.
  - 908B64B197 3y ago
    > stop doing boring stuff like testing if their code actually works if you leave the happy path, and ignore customer bug reports because they are too hard to reproduce right now. It sounds like your hiring pipeline is broken if that's the behavior you observe. That's not how real Software Engineers work.
- CSMastermind 3y ago
  I recently read this book because I saw it recommended in Hackernews threads and my disappointment was immense. It is, without hyperbole, among the worst books I've ever read. It's a shame too because it has a seemingly interesting premise. Hey about 15% of people say that their jobs don't need to exist. Now roughly the same percentage believe in lizard people, bigfoot, etc. so we should maybe take self-reporting with a grain of salt but it does seem to ring true to us right? It feels like we've all seen people in jobs that don't need to exist. And by the way that's exactly what modern economic models would predict. When we say the market is efficient we don't mean that's it's 100% completely and instantly efficient. In fact innovation relies on people recognizing areas where there are marketplace inefficiencies and exploiting them. The propagation of new technologies through a market takes time and in that time there will by definition be useless jobs in places that technology has not propagated to yet. What's more the main objective of a job is not always clear. That government employee who feels like he's doing nothing might actually be doing nothing but the purpose of their job might not be to accomplish anything, it might be to make them financially dependent on the government (or maybe the government would say it's a means of economic stimulus). This is a really interesting topic and there's plenty to explore and lots of existing science to mine from economics to sociology, etc. David of course ignores all of this and uses the premise to set up a rant about anti-capitalism (without making a cogent argument for an alternative). He includes such amazing insights as, "The only reason countries have armies is because other countries have armies. If we all agreed to stop waging war we could spend that money on better things." Brilliant! Why hasn't a great philosopher thought of this before? He addresses this briefly in the book saying that the only push back he's gotten is that he's ignoring economics and that he doesn't consider that a valid argument. The problem is twofold. First, much like someone claiming they've found a perpetual motion machine, I don't need to debunk your specific version of it, I can just say, "That violates every observed law of physics, you'd better have extraordinary proof for me to consider your claim." Secondly, David makes no particular claim nor does he have any coherent theory. You can't 'disprove' his claim because he doesn't make any (or more specifically he doesn't have a central theory that can be disproven - he has an observation that broadly consistent with what we know about the world and would expect already, if surprising to some people). And his criticisms of capitalism contain so many logical fallacies and half truths that it would take a book of greater length or a youtube video on par with the classic "debunking ancient aliens" to get through them all. It's nonsense political drivel and it's disappointing that so many people here seem to consider the book profound in some way.
- sheepscreek 3y ago
  SmallCo working model and self-management doesn’t scale to BigCo. So while it may work for a 50 people to a few 100 people company, with 10-50 engineers, the model quickly breaks when you go in the 100s of developers. At that level, coordination of work between groups becomes a full-time job. As does hiring, supporting career development, etc.

by thefz 3y ago

komali2 3y ago

David graeber's "Bullshit Jobs" finally actualized in a way I thought people would be forced to acknowledge, but nope, the bullshit jobs were continued to be allowed to exist.

newaccount74 3y ago
If you think management jobs are "bullshit jobs", then I envy you: You must be working with remarkably well organised coworkers. My experience is that when managers stop doing their jobs, people start working on whatever is the most fun, stop doing boring stuff like testing if their code actually works if you leave the happy path, and ignore customer bug reports because they are too hard to reproduce right now. Then they present their super awesome new software architecture that they spent a month working on that doesn't solve any problems except implement the devs vision of a framework for inverse dependency injection or whatever they read a blog about last week.
- Jochim 3y ago
  In my experience, managers are the ones pushing developers to skip tests, bug reports, etc. Most of them are content to simply pile on new functionality, without any concept of polish, refinement, or how allocating time for technical work can speed up the delivery of that functionality.
  - noisy_boy 3y ago
    Most of the time, this short-circuits: understanding importance of code quality/testing && willingness to allocate dedicated time to achieve code quality && having ability/position/power to withstand management's pressure on just deliveries In over twenty years of my career, the value was "true" only twice.
    - grepfru_it 3y ago
      also when that value becomes "true", pay tends to be below the average
      - noisy_boy 3y ago
        fwiw, it was wayy below average for me the first time, and was wayy above average the second :)
  - bombolo 3y ago
    Depends on the manager and on the developer. I've seen "senior" developers that are very happy to skip writing tests (or write useless tests that basically just return true) even though their management was happy to allocate the time to do decent testing.
- komali2 3y ago
  Of course I have been lucky with who I've gotten to work with, but it wasn't only that. When interviewing we'd select for people that came to the table with good product mindset, or at least seemed teachable. The whole leadership chain from CEO down needs to make sure everyone understands and works towards the company's goals. If someone isn't that's just the normal course of productivity issue resolved in the normal way. Sometimes it's because someone isn't as good and engineer as you thought and is resistant to training, sometimes it's as you say they're unfocused on the mission, either way having a layer of people whose entire job is juggling these folks feels like putting fingers in holes in the dam. That's who I mean by managers, btw. Just because someone has "manager" in their title doesn't mean they're this thing. Plenty of critical product managers I've worked with.
- huffmsa 3y ago
  Managers shouldn't have to push testing and bug repro. That should come from your senior engineering staff
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- re-thc 3y ago
  > My experience is that when managers stop doing their jobs, people start working on whatever is the most fun If people aren't doing their jobs they should be fired - not have someone babysit them and the whole team so everyone just suffers. All that ends up happening is introduce things like broken scrum and push to show cards getting down rather than real value. Congrats. You've gone from 1 extreme to the other. No difference.
- 908B64B197 3y ago
  > stop doing boring stuff like testing if their code actually works if you leave the happy path, and ignore customer bug reports because they are too hard to reproduce right now. It sounds like your hiring pipeline is broken if that's the behavior you observe. That's not how real Software Engineers work.
CSMastermind 3y ago
I recently read this book because I saw it recommended in Hackernews threads and my disappointment was immense. It is, without hyperbole, among the worst books I've ever read. It's a shame too because it has a seemingly interesting premise. Hey about 15% of people say that their jobs don't need to exist. Now roughly the same percentage believe in lizard people, bigfoot, etc. so we should maybe take self-reporting with a grain of salt but it does seem to ring true to us right? It feels like we've all seen people in jobs that don't need to exist. And by the way that's exactly what modern economic models would predict. When we say the market is efficient we don't mean that's it's 100% completely and instantly efficient. In fact innovation relies on people recognizing areas where there are marketplace inefficiencies and exploiting them. The propagation of new technologies through a market takes time and in that time there will by definition be useless jobs in places that technology has not propagated to yet. What's more the main objective of a job is not always clear. That government employee who feels like he's doing nothing might actually be doing nothing but the purpose of their job might not be to accomplish anything, it might be to make them financially dependent on the government (or maybe the government would say it's a means of economic stimulus). This is a really interesting topic and there's plenty to explore and lots of existing science to mine from economics to sociology, etc. David of course ignores all of this and uses the premise to set up a rant about anti-capitalism (without making a cogent argument for an alternative). He includes such amazing insights as, "The only reason countries have armies is because other countries have armies. If we all agreed to stop waging war we could spend that money on better things." Brilliant! Why hasn't a great philosopher thought of this before? He addresses this briefly in the book saying that the only push back he's gotten is that he's ignoring economics and that he doesn't consider that a valid argument. The problem is twofold. First, much like someone claiming they've found a perpetual motion machine, I don't need to debunk your specific version of it, I can just say, "That violates every observed law of physics, you'd better have extraordinary proof for me to consider your claim." Secondly, David makes no particular claim nor does he have any coherent theory. You can't 'disprove' his claim because he doesn't make any (or more specifically he doesn't have a central theory that can be disproven - he has an observation that broadly consistent with what we know about the world and would expect already, if surprising to some people). And his criticisms of capitalism contain so many logical fallacies and half truths that it would take a book of greater length or a youtube video on par with the classic "debunking ancient aliens" to get through them all. It's nonsense political drivel and it's disappointing that so many people here seem to consider the book profound in some way.
sheepscreek 3y ago
SmallCo working model and self-management doesn’t scale to BigCo. So while it may work for a 50 people to a few 100 people company, with 10-50 engineers, the model quickly breaks when you go in the 100s of developers. At that level, coordination of work between groups becomes a full-time job. As does hiring, supporting career development, etc.