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Oof, this hits close to home. during my tenure as a principal engineer at a certain startup, well known and loved in these parts. Anyway I was new to engineerin
by canvascritic 3y ago
Oof, this hits close to home. during my tenure as a principal engineer at a certain startup, well known and loved in these parts. Anyway I was new to engineering leadership and this big initiative came down from above to migrate to k8s. team was excited to be done with the myriad adhoc scripts and duct tape infra. But it turned out the team was very junior, and I was green as a leader and manager. every day brought a quagmire of smaller, seemingly inconsequential tasks. i'd be midway through configuring a helm chart and someone would drop by, asking for a pairing session or help with something or another or my input on something unrelated or to sign off on some administrative document.
To make matters much worse, one week, an elm / functional programming purist in the team started making a lot of noise. they believed in sticking strictly to the core principles of elm and basically avoiding 3p dependencies like the plague. while they were generally respectful and i respected their dedication, it became another thing to juggle. trying to mediate between that guy and those more pragmatic about our deadlines was taxing.
I realized that amidst all this, my primary role of mentoring others and solving higher level engineering challenges was getting overshadowed by these micro-decisions and tasks. it was like being in the middle of a sea, trying to stay afloat, while holding onto a bundle of papers. EFT, as described here, is a term that captures this perfectly. it's so essential to be aware of it, especially in the tech world where the lines often blur between roles and responsibilities, and especially in engineering leadership. Love having a word for this now that I'm in a position to mentor people who are new to engineering leadership
- yu3zhou4 3y agoWould be great to read a longer piece about your experience. Do you have a blog? If not, maybe you consider one?
- tleilaxu 3y agoI concur! This describes my situation - and I suspect that of many others here. It’d be great to have some insight into how you navigated all this.
- quickthrower2 3y agoOof! Too down k8s initiative :-(. Definitely should be grass roots at startup based on actual problems and evaluation of the tech and alternatives.
- lucumo 3y agoIt sounds like the team actually agreed with the decision, so that part is fine. Top-down isn't necessarily always bad. It's the result that counts. Top-down decision making has different trade-offs from bottom-up, so sometimes it's the better choice. Bottom-up has more insights in details, top-down has a wider view. Bottom-up gets deeper commitment, top-down gets faster compliance. Bottom-up gets a thousand blooms blooming, top-down gets a unified vision.
- mschuster91 3y agoAt least there is some form of initiative. In most cases, grassroot efforts to refactor or clean up anything, no matter the pain, get squashed because "financials"...
- LostLetterbox2 3y agoI still think mentorship is one of the most impactful things someone can do; passing on experience can improve the velocity of someone else's learning and strengthen their contribution no matter where they land in industry. The important thing is to mentor those who show willingness to pay this investment forward. I've never been in a situation with a completely green team but hopefully when I do I can navigate the role of empowering others to navigate some of that mentoring challenge.
- atomicnumber3 3y agoDoes this startup have a certain penchant for falafel and llamas? If not, then I suppose "top down k8s directive" has happened at least twice.
- nojvek 3y agoHahahahaha. Falafel and llamas. Did they finish k8s migration?