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That seems excessively cynical (and self-excusing). The reality is it’s incredibly hard to measure engineering work even in the best case scenario, never mind s
by ethanbond 3y ago
That seems excessively cynical (and self-excusing). The reality is it’s incredibly hard to measure engineering work even in the best case scenario, never mind something as abstract as software and in as opaque an environment as a modern remote/hybrid workplace.
Seems more likely they’re relying on bad heuristics because it’s hard to do much else?
- Chyzwar 3y agoI never got this explanation. In all teams I was so far, it was clear to everyone on what is individuals performance. It is just managers were pretending not to see, as it would involve them making hard decisions/work. My working theory that, in most medium to large companies most management people are not interested in success/financials of company as they are mostly salaried. Actual success of a project is secondary to fraternizing with the right people.
- ethanbond 3y agoOkay so your theory is that managers know who would be good to promote, but they literally pretend not to and simply choose someone they’d like to hang out with instead?
- bluefirebrand 3y agoSounded more like like they choose who their bosses like so they don't have to do as much convincing, to me
- yungporko 3y agoi have witnessed exactly this first hand
- Loggias 3y ago[dead]
- The_Colonel 3y agoYour "extremely clear" is subjective and not measurable, which will become a problem esp. when trying to compare across individual teams.
- Chyzwar 3y agoWhy do you need to compare across teams? Management often create an elaborate once a year process with peer feedback to justify the lack of action. Even then, nobody will write truly negative feedback. If you are manager of a team, you see individuals output in the form of PRs, bugs, tickets and team activity. Instead of wasting time on one to one, managers should just review people work. What I often see is a combination of: 1. It is human nature to promote people that you like. People that play the game will gradually get influence and be promoted even if every project they did was total disaster. 2. Underperforming developers are promoted to underperforming managers. This save managers from firing a person and keep team output constant without need to hire another competent developer. 3. Driving organisation change and pushing others to do better is a career suicide. You will be universally disliked as you will highlight other people incompetence and force them to work and make risky decisions. 4. People base salary is not based on performance, there is just no incentive to do well. Main reason why startups are successful is size and stock options distributed to employees.
- The_Colonel 3y ago> Why do you need to compare across teams? Line managers of individual teams usually can't promote people. They can recommend someone for promotion and vouch for them. Usually an organization has some quota for promotions. How do you distribute it? One promotion per team? But what if the teams are of different quality (for various reasons). The best dev in one team can be worse than an "average" dev in another team. You don't want to penalize the excellent dev just because they are part of an elite team.