3 ms·

Oof to this link in the post https://www.brex.com/journal/operate-at-all-levels https://www.brex.com/journal/operate-at-all-levels What a terrible culture, du

by shmatt 3y ago

Oof to this link in the post https://www.brex.com/journal/operate-at-all-levels https://www.brex.com/journal/operate-at-all-levels What a terrible culture, dunking on people management, calling it meaningless And no, I don't want the Director of AI to explain react component rendering to me, it sounds like they are grooming a generation of super-micromanaging executives. Maybe the CTO was kicked out after he failed to complete 3 back to back leetcode hards

bsilvereagle 3y ago
> it sounds like they are grooming a generation of super-micromanaging executives My read from the linked example was the Director built a tool outside of the critical path that was a quality of life (performance) improvement. This is a prime example of code that leaders should be writing - the team isn’t blocked by them, they can put it down at any time, they maintain familiarity with the tools and codebase (both the good and the bad), and if it lands then the team is uplifted.
- shmatt 3y ago
  A leader should know how to influence his org within a 3 minute conversation to do this. The fact he stopped his Director of AI work to do this means their org is broken - or worse they have no influence over it
encoderer 3y ago
Disagree. this is a founder pushing back against having a leadership caste that can’t actually do the work to drive the business forward themselves.
nurettin 3y ago
This is not even cynicism, it's just grasping at straws.
homefree 3y ago
It depends - I mostly agree with that blog post. If a leader doesn't understand the underlying role (at least somewhat) - they can't reason about it. The best people managers I had were good at that skill and took it seriously, but also had a technical understanding of the role. I think it's relatively common for bad people to get hired to these management roles because the skill can be harder to evaluate than straight engineering. Hire enough of this kind of person and your company dies. It's also why managers get a bad reputation generally - good managers/team leads are excellent, bad ones are neutral at best.
- shmatt 3y ago
  Can you imagine Ilya Sutskever being fired because his frontend code wasn't up to par
  - helicalmix 3y ago
    This is a silly example, because Ilya's umbrella isn't front-end code. To answer your question though, yes, if Ilya was Head of UX Engineering and his front-end code wasn't up to par, he should be fired.
madmaxmcfly 3y ago
Where do you read that people management is meaningless? I only read that people management alone isn't the most productive way for anyone to operate
justin66 3y ago
Yeesh. That looks almost satirical.
DecentRecruiter 3y ago
This is another example of companies using every opportunity possible to wedge "AI" into their product. AI visibility is key to gaining investor confidence (funding boom for anything AI this past year combined with funding drought for anything non-AI).

by shmatt 3y ago

bsilvereagle 3y ago

> it sounds like they are grooming a generation of super-micromanaging executives My read from the linked example was the Director built a tool outside of the critical path that was a quality of life (performance) improvement. This is a prime example of code that leaders should be writing - the team isn’t blocked by them, they can put it down at any time, they maintain familiarity with the tools and codebase (both the good and the bad), and if it lands then the team is uplifted.

shmatt 3y ago
A leader should know how to influence his org within a 3 minute conversation to do this. The fact he stopped his Director of AI work to do this means their org is broken - or worse they have no influence over it

encoderer 3y ago

Disagree. this is a founder pushing back against having a leadership caste that can’t actually do the work to drive the business forward themselves.

nurettin 3y ago

This is not even cynicism, it's just grasping at straws.

homefree 3y ago

It depends - I mostly agree with that blog post. If a leader doesn't understand the underlying role (at least somewhat) - they can't reason about it. The best people managers I had were good at that skill and took it seriously, but also had a technical understanding of the role. I think it's relatively common for bad people to get hired to these management roles because the skill can be harder to evaluate than straight engineering. Hire enough of this kind of person and your company dies. It's also why managers get a bad reputation generally - good managers/team leads are excellent, bad ones are neutral at best.

shmatt 3y ago
Can you imagine Ilya Sutskever being fired because his frontend code wasn't up to par
- helicalmix 3y ago
  This is a silly example, because Ilya's umbrella isn't front-end code. To answer your question though, yes, if Ilya was Head of UX Engineering and his front-end code wasn't up to par, he should be fired.

madmaxmcfly 3y ago

Where do you read that people management is meaningless? I only read that people management alone isn't the most productive way for anyone to operate

justin66 3y ago

Yeesh. That looks almost satirical.

DecentRecruiter 3y ago

This is another example of companies using every opportunity possible to wedge "AI" into their product. AI visibility is key to gaining investor confidence (funding boom for anything AI this past year combined with funding drought for anything non-AI).