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The classic sign of weak management is asking for reports or assigning tasks they do not understand the full implications of. The classic sign of weak engineer

The classic sign of weak management is asking for reports or assigning tasks they do not understand the full implications of. The classic sign of weak engineering is saying yes to the former. When asked by weak management to do a task that is outside the scope of what can be trivially done, it is the responsibility of the worker to do one of three things (depending on technical and social context): A) Ask, "how should that be done?" This works if the manager is also technical, and is using vague tasking as a way to compensate for their own technical incompetence, push that shit right back to them. Asking this question forces them to come to grips with the realities of the scope and mechanisms of what they are asking. B) Inform them, "That will take X resources, what are your expectations?" (Where X is an immense amount of man-hours, money, old-school RuneScape GP, whatever). This is for non-technical managers and serves a similar role as (a), making them come to grips with the fact what they are asking is a major request that needs to go through the normal procedural mechanisms for such a thing, not something they can authorize off the cuff. C) Say "No". This is not possible in every organization or every social context, but organizations that want to be high-performing will make this possible. In high-performance engineering contexts, engineering will has a strong veto power over dumb bullshit that can only be overridden high up in the C-suite. Understanding how and when to exercise this veto is an important skill for engineering to develop.

ilaksh 3y ago
The reality for me in what I guess you would call "weak organizations" has been that half of the tasks are expected to be trivial, non of them really are, all of them delay previously assigned tasks without this being acknowledged by the boss, and the boss makes it clear by their tone that they have no real interest in a follow up discussion which means everything you say to them about it may be pushing you towards the door.
- nickelpro 3y ago
  Some places will just be bad, that's fine. They may survive as orgs, especially if its just one weak limb in a larger basically competent organization, or if they serve a sufficiently non-competitive niche where being efficient isn't a particularly important goal. NASA is an organization where the outside incentives prioritize a particularly high level of safety in engineering, the US Naval Nuclear program has outside incentives that force both high efficiency/readiness and high safety, my local coffee shop closes sometimes because they run out of cups. Organizations are shaped by the incentives that support them. If there's no particular reason (or, indeed, if there is any room at all to survive) for an organization to be efficient or timely, it won't be.

ilaksh 3y ago

The reality for me in what I guess you would call "weak organizations" has been that half of the tasks are expected to be trivial, non of them really are, all of them delay previously assigned tasks without this being acknowledged by the boss, and the boss makes it clear by their tone that they have no real interest in a follow up discussion which means everything you say to them about it may be pushing you towards the door.

nickelpro 3y ago
Some places will just be bad, that's fine. They may survive as orgs, especially if its just one weak limb in a larger basically competent organization, or if they serve a sufficiently non-competitive niche where being efficient isn't a particularly important goal. NASA is an organization where the outside incentives prioritize a particularly high level of safety in engineering, the US Naval Nuclear program has outside incentives that force both high efficiency/readiness and high safety, my local coffee shop closes sometimes because they run out of cups. Organizations are shaped by the incentives that support them. If there's no particular reason (or, indeed, if there is any room at all to survive) for an organization to be efficient or timely, it won't be.