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I read in this article lack of experience working in different organizations and lack of understanding of complexity of organizational structure. It’s nonsense

I read in this article lack of experience working in different organizations and lack of understanding of complexity of organizational structure. It’s nonsense with a clickbait headline pretending to be revelation. Why? 1. Most organizations have EM with one or another job title and many of them function very well. It is not a problem of specific role if something goes wrong. It’s often unfit people. 2. The role of EM is the role of people manager. This role is hard to delegate to anyone else: outsiders like HR will not know people well enough, assigning it to a product or project manager will overload those roles with functions unrelated to the primary job (great product managers are leaders without authority - it doesn’t mean they should take over their cross-functional teams). Principals are not managers by definition, they are people who have chosen different type of career not willing to do anything with interpersonal stuff. People management is a scope of work big enough to have a dedicated person for a team of 4-10 people, bigger teams will need more. 3. Engineering manager is a first point of contact for the business regarding feasibility and planning topics. While engineers work, managers talk. In theory a principal engineer can be such person, but not every team can and should have someone at this level. In fact, most should not - this is the role for the teams with over 50 people and it’s an org-wide role. If you have principal or architect in a team of 10, you are doing something wrong with the career path and probably overspending.

HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
> great product managers are leaders without authority This is something that I really hadn't thought about before now. I used to work for a great product manager. He had a deep understanding of the problem space, expert-level knowledge of the technology we used and was an amazing customer advocate and pushed for us to always consider the customer first. Unfortunately, as a human being, he was kind of a Type-A asshole. And he was also the CEO. That meant that right or wrong, he would usually get his way, even if it meant changing priorities 5 times in 3 days. To his credit, he realized that he had blind spots, and he would challenge us to push back against him. But realistically, how hard are people going to push back against the guy signing their paychecks? Take away the authority he held as CEO, and I maintain that the company would have achieved far greater results.
- Tehnix 3y ago
  > even if it meant changing priorities 5 times in 3 days That kind of thing is exactly what an EM is there to stop. I’ve faced similar problems a couple of times, and it takes a lot of effort to correct the ship into a healthy Product/Engineering organization, but it can be done. There are tangible downsides to switching priorities constantly, and beyond inefficiency, team morale usually also takes a hit. Now, without an EM, whose responsibility is it to stop this? No one’s really, it doesn’t land on anyone’s plate, so you either have to hope one of your colleagues with enough organizational leverage steps up, or do it yourself.
Tehnix 3y ago
Honestly, the article lays out what I would expect the opinions of a junior or mid-level Engineer to be (it irks me quite a bit) - Clearly not aware of the difference between “an individual” and “team dynamics” - Unaware of the huge amount of organizational work that happens behind the scenes that someone needs to do (and I guarantee that you wouldn’t want to do that as an Engineer) - Unaware of how much an EM shields their team as the frontline for questions, planning, prioritization, feasibility - HR is never gonna be there to guide or mentor your Engineering career, which an EM will Even the most senior engineers need guidance, and that’s what your EM is for. The EM typically steps in to fill voids until they find qualified people to do these things. Not every Engineer is good as tech leads, nor as project managers, so it takes time to get them up-to-speed or find someone else.
- Germont 3y ago
  Thank you! You've voiced my thought exactly.

HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago

> great product managers are leaders without authority This is something that I really hadn't thought about before now. I used to work for a great product manager. He had a deep understanding of the problem space, expert-level knowledge of the technology we used and was an amazing customer advocate and pushed for us to always consider the customer first. Unfortunately, as a human being, he was kind of a Type-A asshole. And he was also the CEO. That meant that right or wrong, he would usually get his way, even if it meant changing priorities 5 times in 3 days. To his credit, he realized that he had blind spots, and he would challenge us to push back against him. But realistically, how hard are people going to push back against the guy signing their paychecks? Take away the authority he held as CEO, and I maintain that the company would have achieved far greater results.

Tehnix 3y ago
> even if it meant changing priorities 5 times in 3 days That kind of thing is exactly what an EM is there to stop. I’ve faced similar problems a couple of times, and it takes a lot of effort to correct the ship into a healthy Product/Engineering organization, but it can be done. There are tangible downsides to switching priorities constantly, and beyond inefficiency, team morale usually also takes a hit. Now, without an EM, whose responsibility is it to stop this? No one’s really, it doesn’t land on anyone’s plate, so you either have to hope one of your colleagues with enough organizational leverage steps up, or do it yourself.

Tehnix 3y ago

Honestly, the article lays out what I would expect the opinions of a junior or mid-level Engineer to be (it irks me quite a bit) - Clearly not aware of the difference between “an individual” and “team dynamics” - Unaware of the huge amount of organizational work that happens behind the scenes that someone needs to do (and I guarantee that you wouldn’t want to do that as an Engineer) - Unaware of how much an EM shields their team as the frontline for questions, planning, prioritization, feasibility - HR is never gonna be there to guide or mentor your Engineering career, which an EM will Even the most senior engineers need guidance, and that’s what your EM is for. The EM typically steps in to fill voids until they find qualified people to do these things. Not every Engineer is good as tech leads, nor as project managers, so it takes time to get them up-to-speed or find someone else.

Germont 3y ago
Thank you! You've voiced my thought exactly.