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"...She treats engineers as commodities in a way that is dehumanising, reassigning people against their will in ways that have no relationship to their skill se
by asim 3y ago
"...She treats engineers as commodities in a way that is dehumanising, reassigning people against their will in ways that have no relationship to their skill set..."
You know, I remember a time I said, management just think of engineers as a resource and refer to us as such. But when the word "dehumanising" is used it strikes me a lot clearer. When this disconnected occurs between different layers of the same corporation people just become a resource, they are no longer humans , they are a means to an end, and that end doesn't even serve the purpose of the company but the merits of that individual. I really wish developers had a way to empower themselves out of this hellscape.
- jhaenchen 3y agoIt's called a union. This is what will always happen as long as the employees do not collectively bargain. Their strength in numbers is completely neutered by a lack of organization.
- teaearlgraycold 3y agoEngineers at Google are referred to as “headcount”. Managers fight each other for headcount. When someone leaves they are lamented for their net loss of .67 headcount (right now you only get one hire for 3 attritions).
- devnullbrain 3y agoDoes that mean managers are incentivised not to let go of underperformers?
- andromeduck 3y agoThat's "durable savings" for ya.
- teaearlgraycold 3y agoYes absolutely. I was explicitly told I could get away with doing nothing for 12 months before I’d get fired. I decided to quit instead.
- devnullbrain 3y agoEither I've read a blog post you've written before or this is a common occurrence.
- teaearlgraycold 3y agoYeah my blog post hit the front page.
- VirusNewbie 3y agoYES! One of the reasons I much prefer the netflix model of firing quickly and being able to get a headcount. You do have some slackers at google who are able to hang on for long periods of time because their manager knows the project they're in charge of isn't a priority anymore, so the backfill will go to more exciting/new projects. So these managers will let people slack. Most of the people I work with at Google work fairly hard in cloud (nothing crazy like I've heard about AWS) but you run into slackers on occasion.
- VirusNewbie 3y agoNot true, my team gets 1 for 1.
- sidcool 3y agoI still feel it's not professional to name the manager. Hixie could very well have just said "my manager", and many people would have understood.