5 ms·

In my experience a culture of urgency has been the most reliable indicator of a mismanaged or toxic workplace.

by alxmng 3y ago

rubicon33 3y ago
And yet, I think all us engineers know that time matters immensely for the business. There has to be some balance struck, otherwise some engineers will build crystal castles that never ship or take months for relatively simple features.
- SkyPuncher 3y ago
  Urgency is different that shipping small and often. Best team I ever worked on consistently shipped at a very high pace without needing a false sense of urgency. We worked hard upfront to cut scope and ship only features we thought were valuable.
  - marginalia_nu 3y ago
    I think urgency is a management foot gun more than anything else. I've had bosses where everything was always on fire and extremely urgent and needed to be done the day before yesterday. The result is that you don't take what they're saying seriously, and when something actually is extremely urgent, you're like "yeah I'll do that next week when I'm finished with all the other urgent tasks you've given me" Beyond that, constant panic mode is also incredibly shortsighted and a recipe for crippling technical debt down the line.
    - makerdiety 3y ago
      Yeah, we can use that World War Two general's (Patton?) important-urgent matrix. Any object (a task to get done eventually) gets assigned a vector of two components: important and urgent. Things that are both important and urgent will be in one corner of the geometric graph visual thingy. Things that are the complete opposite type of that both important and urgent object type are in the opposite corner, which is the corner of the not important and not urgent. The other two corners (important but not urgent and urgent but not important) beget the need for a measuring system, to make the whole model useful. Maybe encase the vectors in a Gaussian distribution where each object's vector's components are scaled, measuring, representative, or simply numerical values? Like, for example, for a new task to do, add a new object whose vector is 0.5 important and 0.1 urgent. I don't know what mathematics and analyses this setup will imply. So any mathematician or numbers nerd is invited to help further develop this abstraction.
  - rubicon33 3y ago
    Great point!
- financltravsty 3y ago
  Does it? Does it really? Excuse my facetiousness, but I don't think time matters at all for businesses. I don't think I've ever been in a spot where time really mattered. It's always been about people's perception of time mattering. And by people I mean upper management. Realistically, if you axed everyone except counsel from the executive team, your business would survive. If you have paying customers, they will continue paying for the product, regardless of whether X or Y feature that customer research (and championed by some goon) says is a !MUST HAVE! The only time time matters is in startups, where you will run out of money until you can find a sucker to give you more (whether that be VCs or customers!).
  - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
    you've never worked for a small to midsized company then.
    - financltravsty 3y ago
      I have. And never has the urgency been warranted in retrospect. It's always been a reflection of the anxieties and worries of the CEO/president/whoever is in charge, than it has been reality. It's an unchecked personality disorder at that point; and I want no part of it.
      - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
        business people need to be able to make decisions and they do that based upon timelines. If you're a small to midsized company these decisions have larger effects on the overall health of the company. I've seen too many instances of technical people abusing business ignorance of technical details. Most of _my_ experience has been business people trying really hard to work with the technical groups, but the technical groups just don't want to be held to any timelines whatsoever. You can't have that in the business world. That doesn't mean all deadlines are hard, but if there isn't some timeline then business decisions may as well be made by throwing darts at the wall.
  - flappyeagle 3y ago
- Wazzymandias 3y ago
  It depends on the definition of "relatively simple features" Mismanaged startups can have a lot of technical debt as a result of pivots, shifting priorities, weak engineering and an emphasis on being feature factories. As a result you can get to a point where even a relatively simple feature takes months because of massive technical debt. Shipping early and often while giving engineers the space to tackle debt is important. Good hiring pipeline for competent product focused engineers can help mitigate building castles in the sky. That and/or having a good CTO.
ac50hz 3y ago
That’s my experience too.
koliber 3y ago
I've worked with toxic teams and I've worked with productive teams. There can be an overlap, but one does not indicate the other. Working with respectful like-minded highly-motivated and capable people and building things quickly is the opposite of a toxic workplace.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- tikhonj 3y ago
  There's a massive difference between "productive" and "urgent". I've worked on teams that were constantly in a hurry, I've worked on teams that got a lot done, and there's been basically no overlap between the two.
- mason55 3y ago
  I think the key, as it is in most cases, is the "why". Sometimes there really are urgent deadlines that you really need to hit. Imagine you're building an app for the Super Bowl - if you miss that date then the entire thing is a waste. Other times the deadlines are made up or self-inflicted. Understanding the difference and communicating which is which are one of the things that make a good manager/exec. If you're constantly telling the team "this feature needs to be done yesterday" you'll lose their trust very quickly. If you're good about saying "this thing is important and we can forget the rest" or "I know we don't do this much but this date is really important for <good reason X>" then you really build trust with the team. Most engineers are smart enough to understand when dates are bullshit and when they aren't. If you push a lot of bullshit dates then you won't get the good effort when you really need it. If you don't trust the team to work hard without bullshit dates then you should find a new team.

In my experience a culture of urgency has been the most reliable indicator of a mismanaged or toxic workplace.

by alxmng 3y ago

In my experience a culture of urgency has been the most reliable indicator of a mismanaged or toxic workplace.

And yet, I think all us engineers know that time matters immensely for the business. There has to be some balance struck, otherwise some engineers will build crystal castles that never ship or take months for relatively simple features.

SkyPuncher 3y ago
Urgency is different that shipping small and often. Best team I ever worked on consistently shipped at a very high pace without needing a false sense of urgency. We worked hard upfront to cut scope and ship only features we thought were valuable.
- marginalia_nu 3y ago
  I think urgency is a management foot gun more than anything else. I've had bosses where everything was always on fire and extremely urgent and needed to be done the day before yesterday. The result is that you don't take what they're saying seriously, and when something actually is extremely urgent, you're like "yeah I'll do that next week when I'm finished with all the other urgent tasks you've given me" Beyond that, constant panic mode is also incredibly shortsighted and a recipe for crippling technical debt down the line.
  - makerdiety 3y ago
    Yeah, we can use that World War Two general's (Patton?) important-urgent matrix. Any object (a task to get done eventually) gets assigned a vector of two components: important and urgent. Things that are both important and urgent will be in one corner of the geometric graph visual thingy. Things that are the complete opposite type of that both important and urgent object type are in the opposite corner, which is the corner of the not important and not urgent. The other two corners (important but not urgent and urgent but not important) beget the need for a measuring system, to make the whole model useful. Maybe encase the vectors in a Gaussian distribution where each object's vector's components are scaled, measuring, representative, or simply numerical values? Like, for example, for a new task to do, add a new object whose vector is 0.5 important and 0.1 urgent. I don't know what mathematics and analyses this setup will imply. So any mathematician or numbers nerd is invited to help further develop this abstraction.
- rubicon33 3y ago
  Great point!
financltravsty 3y ago
Does it? Does it really? Excuse my facetiousness, but I don't think time matters at all for businesses. I don't think I've ever been in a spot where time really mattered. It's always been about people's perception of time mattering. And by people I mean upper management. Realistically, if you axed everyone except counsel from the executive team, your business would survive. If you have paying customers, they will continue paying for the product, regardless of whether X or Y feature that customer research (and championed by some goon) says is a !MUST HAVE! The only time time matters is in startups, where you will run out of money until you can find a sucker to give you more (whether that be VCs or customers!).
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
  you've never worked for a small to midsized company then.
  - financltravsty 3y ago
    I have. And never has the urgency been warranted in retrospect. It's always been a reflection of the anxieties and worries of the CEO/president/whoever is in charge, than it has been reality. It's an unchecked personality disorder at that point; and I want no part of it.
    - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
      business people need to be able to make decisions and they do that based upon timelines. If you're a small to midsized company these decisions have larger effects on the overall health of the company. I've seen too many instances of technical people abusing business ignorance of technical details. Most of _my_ experience has been business people trying really hard to work with the technical groups, but the technical groups just don't want to be held to any timelines whatsoever. You can't have that in the business world. That doesn't mean all deadlines are hard, but if there isn't some timeline then business decisions may as well be made by throwing darts at the wall.
- flappyeagle 3y ago
Wazzymandias 3y ago
It depends on the definition of "relatively simple features" Mismanaged startups can have a lot of technical debt as a result of pivots, shifting priorities, weak engineering and an emphasis on being feature factories. As a result you can get to a point where even a relatively simple feature takes months because of massive technical debt. Shipping early and often while giving engineers the space to tackle debt is important. Good hiring pipeline for competent product focused engineers can help mitigate building castles in the sky. That and/or having a good CTO.

ac50hz 3y ago

That’s my experience too.

koliber 3y ago

I've worked with toxic teams and I've worked with productive teams. There can be an overlap, but one does not indicate the other. Working with respectful like-minded highly-motivated and capable people and building things quickly is the opposite of a toxic workplace.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
tikhonj 3y ago
There's a massive difference between "productive" and "urgent". I've worked on teams that were constantly in a hurry, I've worked on teams that got a lot done, and there's been basically no overlap between the two.
mason55 3y ago
I think the key, as it is in most cases, is the "why". Sometimes there really are urgent deadlines that you really need to hit. Imagine you're building an app for the Super Bowl - if you miss that date then the entire thing is a waste. Other times the deadlines are made up or self-inflicted. Understanding the difference and communicating which is which are one of the things that make a good manager/exec. If you're constantly telling the team "this feature needs to be done yesterday" you'll lose their trust very quickly. If you're good about saying "this thing is important and we can forget the rest" or "I know we don't do this much but this date is really important for <good reason X>" then you really build trust with the team. Most engineers are smart enough to understand when dates are bullshit and when they aren't. If you push a lot of bullshit dates then you won't get the good effort when you really need it. If you don't trust the team to work hard without bullshit dates then you should find a new team.