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> The best engineers and managers are great at adding value, getting the most out of the people around them, and helping the team see around corners even when t

> The best engineers and managers are great at adding value, getting the most out of the people around them, and helping the team see around corners even when they’re not there. People keep repeating this dangerous advice. The truth is actual value is created by few people: new tech, new features, new markets. It usually starts off as an experiment, a hackathon etc and grows from there. The rest of the people exist to provide fodder but growth comes from surprisingly few people even in large organizations. Try and see what the business needs and create step improvement features / tech / markets. You will feel happy. Too many people like the author is focused on just managing, being "thought leaders" and other nonsense. This is my problem with AI till the time we get AGI. Someone has to do the work. Someone had to write Redis before Ofer Bengal swooped in. Someone has to create the transformer model, someone has to write the original articles to train these models on. The whole cottage industry around work is a festering wound at this point.

molsongolden 3y ago
This take and the quoted section don’t seem at odds. A great manager is a blocker and enabler for the “people creating the actual value”. The manager adds value, gets the most out of, helps the team, by protecting the builders’ time, maintaining clear prioritization, watching for bumps in the road and mitigating risks as they arise. If you are hacking on whatever future greatness but are unable to say no to one-off requests (whether due to power within the org or personal communication style) then you’ll never complete your project. Various people will put tasks on your plate, there’s always more to do, someone up the chain will inevitably come up with a new flavor of the week. The manager who tells those people you are fully allocated and working on your top priority is the only reason you’ll complete your groundbreaking work (in most companies).
abwizz 3y ago
> The whole cottage industry around work is a festering wound at this point. and (we?) the internet natives are most prone to this assessment as growing up in a world of free ideas (foss) wrecks any connection between work and reward.

molsongolden 3y ago

This take and the quoted section don’t seem at odds. A great manager is a blocker and enabler for the “people creating the actual value”. The manager adds value, gets the most out of, helps the team, by protecting the builders’ time, maintaining clear prioritization, watching for bumps in the road and mitigating risks as they arise. If you are hacking on whatever future greatness but are unable to say no to one-off requests (whether due to power within the org or personal communication style) then you’ll never complete your project. Various people will put tasks on your plate, there’s always more to do, someone up the chain will inevitably come up with a new flavor of the week. The manager who tells those people you are fully allocated and working on your top priority is the only reason you’ll complete your groundbreaking work (in most companies).

abwizz 3y ago

> The whole cottage industry around work is a festering wound at this point. and (we?) the internet natives are most prone to this assessment as growing up in a world of free ideas (foss) wrecks any connection between work and reward.