14 ms·

How to Lead Your Team When the House Is on Fire

400 points by kiyanwang 2y ago

candiddevmike 2y ago
> One major pitfall to avoid is letting an "us vs. them" mentality take hold on the team. Naturally, the stress of painful decisions can erode trust in leadership and other departments, but reinforcing a negative mindset will hurt you more than the temporary warm camaraderie you'll enjoy by joining the chorus of cynics. Then proceeds to encourage managers to gaslight folks into believing leadership is fine in the next paragraph. In my experience, during this "wartime" the author discusses, management knows the ship may be sinking/is sinking and are making their way towards the lifeboats. They still need to be seen as doing something though, so they string along the ICs hoping they can keep being "productive" even though management is completely checked out, and a lot of the ICs will be laid off or not survive the upcoming aquihire/turn down.
- lumost 2y ago
  on average, everyone will follow the path of maximum reward/lowest risk. Management has a job to do, but is aware that they may lack any choice or path to success. They still have a job to do in e.g. allocating engineers work, managing performance, promotions, and morale... so they do it, meanwhile they may also be looking for the exit. As an IC, never believe a manager at face value - they will promote you if it's good for them, they will pacify your concerns as it's what they are paid for, and they will fire you if its good for them. This is the nature of the relationship.
  - Spivak 2y ago
    Wild, I would literally never work for a company where I had this kind of relationship with my direct manager. My direct manager should be in my corner and on my side always. They will get me the highest pay, highest title, best perks, lowest amount of stress and work, most time off, best benefits they can and anything they ask me to do is in service of that. If I find out that my direct manager is the one gating a raise or promotion from me I'll just quit. I had one manager like this after an acquisition, he literally threw his head back laughing when I said I was up for a promotion and raise (documented prior to the acquisition) and said a number which was what everyone at $ex_company with that title made. He said no, and that he was the one who got to decide if I get a promotion— I quit less than a month later for an actually good manger. They pay had better be incredible to make playing those kinds of political games worth having your soul drained.
    - Aeolun 2y ago
      > They pay had better be incredible to make playing those kinds of political games worth having your soul drained. In my experience, pay increases linearly with soul drainage. As I started working for larger and larger companies the amount of nonsense and pay increase by the same order. Responsibility decreases by the same magnitude, so while I was responsible for the whole IT operation/decisions of a small company for the lowest pay I ever had, I’d now be able to coast for half a year without anyone really noticing. BigCo is fucking weird.
    - marcinzm 2y ago
      > Wild, I would literally never work for a company where I had this kind of relationship with my direct manager. My direct manager should be in my corner and on my side always. They will get me the highest pay, highest title, best perks, lowest amount of stress and work, most time off, best benefits they can and anything they ask me to do is in service of that. If I find out that my direct manager is the one gating a raise or promotion from me I'll just quit. Nothing is infinite and managers are both people and have their own constraints. In my experience, expecting otherwise will just select for either managers who work really hard but fail to get you much (due to lack of political skills), or those that are very good liars that say they're helping you but never do (and you never realize otherwise).
- Simon_ORourke 2y ago
  Absolutely this - management will do whatever it takes to help management get through whatever problem they currently have, and if that's outright lying to IC's, or stringing them along for a few months they will do that, and not even regret it for an instant. A really solid engineer I know was working with a failing mobile payments company, got an offer somewhere else and like a fool took it to his manager, who matched the new offer and the guy accepted... for 2 months until the company went bankrupt and he was back at square one looking for a job.
talkingtab 2y ago
In my opinion there is a strong disconnect between the title and the advice. If in fact your house is on fire, there is a decision tree you can follow that goes something like this. 1. Are you or others in immediate danger? If so, get out and help others get out. 2. If not, then determine if someone addressing the fire. One would expect that higher ups are aware of the fire, but this is not always the case. Sometimes the higher ups are not aware. Sometimes they are too busy saving themselves to address the fire. 3. If someone is addressing the fire is there a way you can assist? I do not mean to be snarky in this- there are real people who work for real companies that are not doing well. If you are a manager, your team's well being should be high on your list.
- Simon_ORourke 2y ago
  > 1. Are you or others in immediate danger? If so, get out and help others get out. Wanting to help folks out is great, but if there's one role going in some related company, and there's a few on your team who are going to be out of work, then I don't think there's going to be too many advertising the job posting to others.
  - ryanmcbride 2y ago
    it's really common for people to form groups after a layoff to help each other get hired.
johnea 2y ago
Pull the fire alarm and evacuate the building? Or, just stop using over-bloviated metaphors for first world marketing creating fictional scheduling crises. Not making you dev schedule is not a "fire", much less a "war". Maybe try getting outside once in awhile and clearing your head of this make believe bullshit...
- TheAdamist 2y ago
  I was hoping it was actually a treatise on leadership by a firefighter. But expecting it not to be.
- agent327 2y ago
  The whole point is convincing developers that they are in a 'war' and that making the ultimate sacrifice (i.e. giving up their life just so the delivery date can be made) is acceptable, even heroic. It's a vile way to treat people.
- AllegedAlec 2y ago
  As someone working for defense it's hilarious how civilians use this kind of wording without any real understanding of what it means. The constant use of the term in the Phoenix Project bugs the hell out of me too. It's yet another attempt for software enginerds and managerial bullshitters to make themselves feel more important than they are, because god forbid they say it like it is and just call it "how to lead a team when the cushy years stop"
wrs 2y ago
I have a shelf full of histories of British science and engineering during WW2, so I feel like I have some remote idea of what being an engineer in an actual “wartime mode” is like. Think about, e.g., working in the lab trying to improve radar to be able to stop the daily bombing raids. It’s hard to imagine “wartime mode” as being an appropriate metaphor for any US company, other than as a sort of fantasy role play. I normally hate sports metaphors, but as an alternative to war, framing a tough business situation as “fourth down and 10” or whatever is a lot healthier way to think about it.
- ddejohn 2y ago
  The phrase "in the trenches" is used often, too. Always grosses me out.
- deleted 2y ago
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- bitwize 2y ago
  If you're 4th and 10, that's when you cut your losses and attempt to kick a field goal so you can at least score something before the ball changes hands. (My wife took me to a Saints game for my birthday, so I'm actually learning stuff about the game as she is actually played.) I guess the equivalent in a software shop would be adjust expectations way lower and focus on what's achievable without running the team ragged and risking getting nothing done, postponing loftier goals until the team/business is in a better position to address them.
  - jameshart 2y ago
    The football metaphor for ‘war mode’ really might be switching to playing defense. 4th and ten was last quarter. Right now, we don’t have possession and we’re trying to minimize the risk of conceding points. And maybe that means that now is the time for your star playmaking quarterback and receivers to be on the bench planning the play for when the pendulum swings back, and some different players should be center stage. Or maybe metaphors are just metaphors.
- willturman 2y ago
unit149 2y ago
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debacle 2y ago
> Decentralize decision-making authority as much as possible. Remove barriers in their way, slash approval layers, attack dependencies. This is awful advice. You can only operate in this mode for at best 2-3 months before your entire SDLC grinds to a halt because it's been the wild west in github. > Bias heavily toward action - it's better to decide and be wrong sometimes than to paralyze the team with analysis. This is...more awful advice. My startup has gone through COVID and the financial slowdown and the only reason we've succeeded is because we never stop measuring. The very next paragraph after "decentralize everything and communicate heavily" is "allow your team to focus and centralize administrative duties." And the the NEXT paragraph is "work closely with your team and even write some code." This entire blog post is all over the place. It reads like each paragraph was written by a different person with completely different experiences. If you want to manage your team while the house is on fire, don't change anything. Communicate clearly, ensure that the culture and philosophy of the team bend when necessary but don't break, and work on alleviating the real problem. One of: lack of product market fit, burning cash like it's going out of style, or no clear path to profitability or the next raise. Your engineering team is probably not the problem if your startup is failing.
- herval 2y ago
  > You can only operate in this mode for at best 2-3 months before your entire SDLC grinds to a halt because it's been the wild west in github FB is operating that way with tens of thousands of engineers. More approval layers don’t necessarily mean more order, but it always means slower processes
  - debacle 2y ago
    Facebook has a very thorough code review process, and their product is heavily data driven. They've even productized their code review process internally, and that product is also data driven.
    - herval 2y ago
      The code review process is quite literally “you need a stamp from anyone because of some regulations we follow”. Definitely nothing thorough.
drekipus 2y ago
That actually reminds me of a great story, for when I had to do exactly what the title is suggesting.. back when I worked at Amazon as a software engineer, the CRAZIEST thing happened to me. Here’s the story… I was working from home with my girlfriend (at the time), when suddenly I get an urgent ping from my coworker: “Our service is experiencing a SEV 2! We need all hands on deck!” Uh oh, our team’s application has gone down! However, as I scrambled to figure out how to fix the issue, I smelled something burning from another room and heard a fire alarm go off. “Will! There’s a fire! Help!” I heard my girlfriend shout. Now I was stuck in a conundrum — restore a critical Amazon service, or put out the fire in my apartment? It was at that time I remembered Amazon’s famous leadership principle “Customer Obsession”. There are customers who depend on my team’s application — I can’t let them down! So I ignored the fire and my girlfriend’s pleas, and started debugging the production issue. But all of a sudden, the smoke in my apartment cleared and the fire alarm fell silent. My girlfriend walked into the room, and to my astonishment, peeled off a wig and revealed herself to be Jeff Bezos himself! “I’m proud of you for being obsessed with our customers,” he said, and gave me a $5 Amazon gift card. He then leaped out of my window and hopped into a waiting Amazon Prime delivery van that quickly peeled away. Even though I no longer work at Amazon, I’m so grateful for these experiences that taught me lessons I’ll never forget. Agree?
- deleted 2y ago
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- langcss 2y ago
  And that day, I was told I passed the Amazon interview and was offered a job as a L4 Software Engineer.
- oulu2006 2y ago
  not really a classic anecdote
trhway 2y ago
At the top we have 2 management posts - this and MrBeast. One is very specific and another is typical management bs-bingo.
Abismith 2y ago
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dakiol 2y ago
It all feels like theatre. Been working in many companies in “war mode” and they all think that in order to become profitable (none of them were) you need to push the most “important” features out of the door asap, otherwise your competitors will eat you alive. It’s a lie. Executives and VPs and all those folks that earn 5x what a normal engineer earns, don’t really care about the company they work for. All they care about is to keep receiving the big pay checks until the ship sinks. Obviously you cannot just mandate “normal mode”, otherwise it wouldn’t look as if everyone is doing their best to keep the company afloat. I hope in 10 years or so, we’ll see “wartime software engineering” with the same eyes we see today Agile and Scrum masters: snake oil.
- imetatroll 2y ago
  Where do you work that you get to avoid agile, scrum, and war mode? I'm jealous. Then again I've always just been stuck working for startups my entire career. I have a family and desperately need something more stable.
  - Aeolun 2y ago
    Are BigCos any more stable in the US? At least in a startup they probably actually need you because you already know their system. Overseas BigCo means permanent contracts and being very hard to let go, but that doesn’t seem to be the case in the US (e.g. Elon Musk Twitter).
    - mlhpdx 2y ago
      Jobs at big companies are less stable and end with less notice than at small ones, at least in my experience. In a small company, particularly one with engaged and transparent leadership, everyone knows what’s working and what isn’t and about how long the latter can be endured. At a large company the vast majority of jobs are susceptible to the whims and whispers of a few (who likely aren’t engaged and feel they can’t be transparent). Obviously this is just one person’s opinion.
    - ThrowawayR2 2y ago
benreesman 2y ago
Wartime software is a disaster unless you mean it, and should be treated with extreme caution even if you do. Wartime is an in house propaganda shop running posters that say Carthago Delenda Est, mid-level product managers discreetly but reliably dispensing Adderal, Ritalin, and Modafinil, open disdain for people who leave the office two days in a row, and paying enough that your people are just in a meaningful sense smarter than anyone else. Every company gets to pull that maybe once, so it has to count. And it’s a hell of a place and time to see. But if you’re not going the whole way, you’re far better off doing reliably good engineering in a repeatable way and poorly served by analogies to war.
neilv 2y ago
> "Perfection is the enemy of done" [...] It's important to note that these wartime actions will probably increase tech debt in your code. With the emphasis on velocity over quality, architectural compromises and maintenance shortcuts are often taken. All those years of ZIRP investment scams, and sprint theatre, the industry generally wasn't doing "quality" (and, on average, wasn't capable of quality), so we were already posturing about "getting it done"... Don't you need to tell a lot of people something *different* than before? Maybe, when you have to deliver and can't afford huge mess-ups and delays and inefficient boondoggles, and people can't job-hop fast enough to escape their roosting chickens, what you actually need is *smart, aligned people*? Not to give people permission to flail around incompetently, and make huge messes, pretty much just like before, but now rationalize it as "Getting It Done: Wartime Edition". > [...] due to the current job market you have more luxury now than a few years ago. Consider allowing 2-3 candidates to pass through all rounds, and choose the best fit from them. If that's what you need to hire smart, aligned people, then OK. If it's just most of the same techbro flakiness, now dressed up as "Wartime", then not OK.
0xbadcafebee 2y ago
The "Wartime Software" concept is bogus, and this article casually tosses out that you should have a high-performing team, which companies spend years trying to achieve and still not doing it. How do you lead your team when the house is on fire? However the hell you can. I'm sure a firefighter can chime in here and tell you that if you aren't trained for firefighting, you sure as hell won't learn how to do it right when the roof is caving in on you.
getnormality 2y ago
> For EMs, wartime means leading low-morale teams through ambiguity, hard constraints, frequently changing goals, and intense pressure to perform. Why the assumption that goals are frequently changing? If you're making something that's actually valuable and not just looking good by surfing trends, I would think that the virtue would lie in having a clear vision and sticking to it.
- SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
  There's a lot of virtue in that, and managers prefer that just as much as engineers do. But sometimes it's as the article says: "Your organization might not have the luxury of years of runway, and the environment you're operating in is rapidly changing". If you've got a big customer making 20% of your revenue who's threatening to jump ship (not an uncommon scenario for small to medium sized companies), you simply have to deliver whatever they want as fast as you can and worry about your vision later.
  - ang_cire 2y ago
    Either your product is at its core useful, or its not. If the environment is rapidly changing, either your product is still relevant, and you should be focusing on stability, or it's no longer useful and it's too late to change that. > If you've got a big customer making 20% of your revenue who's threatening to jump ship (not an uncommon scenario for small to medium sized companies), you simply have to deliver whatever they want as fast as you can and worry about your vision later. But that's one new requirement (or set of), not a changing environment. If that customer is changing their requirements as they go, so that you're constantly shifting focus, you need to either pin them down to one goal, or cut them loose and deal with the fallout. They don't see or care about the "war mode" they've created, and placating them will just invite more demands, and you can't keep it up forever. The one time I've seen a "war mode" succeed was making a change that was a precondition for acquisition, when a set of requirements was laid out in the acquisition offer. It couldn't be altered once it was accepted, so the "war mode" had a fixed goal and deadline. Apart from something like that, it's just going to result in a spiral.
neilv 2y ago
> Identify on-the-job learning opportunities, like giving someone the chance to lead an incident response or a high-visibility project. Critical mistakes can still be catastrophic, but because of the fast-changing nature of wartime work, it's easier to process smaller errors with a healthy learning mindset. I don't understand how wartime makes this easier. Pre-wartime, you could've also had short-turnaround tasks, and the realities of generous funding of nonviable businesses mean you'd have more luxury to rollback dropped balls. Seems like wartime means that you have to be more responsive and successfully.
dsr_ 2y ago
When the house is on fire, you lead people OUT OF THE HOUSE. Then you get help. Then, if you can do it without putting yourself back in danger, you look for opportunities to help out. If you don't know this, you failed childhood. Now, on to the metaphor: emergencies don't last forever. If your emergency is lasting indefinitely, it's not an emergency and the house is not on fire. It is quite possible that you are being manipulated. If emergencies keep happening, senior management has a big problem, and it's up to them to fix it.
neverartful 2y ago
Funny because the last place I worked it was as if senior management were playing The Roof Is On Fire song non-stop through everybody's speakers. You know the song, "We don't need no water, let the MFer burn!"
rqtwteye 2y ago
I think leading in "wartime" is way easier than leading in peacetime. When you are in full panic mode with a clear goal, a lot of decisions are very clear and easy to make. And everybody knows you can't scrutinize every little thing. You take a risk and see if it works out. In peacetime you have more time, goals are not that clear. So a lot of people suddenly have different opinions and they must somehow be negotiated. There is a huge risk of a bureaucracy to de developing that can't be constrained. It's the same in politics. Wartime leaders like Churchill get a lot of credit but I think it's much harder to keep things running halfways efficiently when things are going well.
- thr0waway001 2y ago
  Well said. Nobody is willing to take risks and change things up when things are going well. I've found myself warning the people I work with that we need to do things to stabilize the core of our software and infrastructure. When things are going well it's hard to get buy-in and the time to do any necessary, and sometimes radical changes. And you probably may say at this point: "well if things are going well why would you do anything radical?" but I generally mean well as in not falling apart, but not ideal, as in every week we keep seeing the same issues reported in our day-to-day. Cause eventually, it only takes something else to go wrong to expose major issues and vulnerabilities with the operation. Nevertheless, when shit goes sideways, as it usually tends to happen especially when you don't slow down and maintain enough, people then just want you to fix the problem, and do whatever it takes, including those aforementioned risky things you were proposing to avoid the shitty times to begin with.
  - romanows 2y ago
    I just got back from watching the movie Casa Bonita Mi Amor, about the South Park guys buying a beloved Denver restaurant and refurbishing it. Costs ballooned from an estimated $6 million to $30+ million because it had been owned by a company that deferred maintenance for 30 years. Not sure if the business types would see this as a cautionary tale or as validation for coasting, though. The company that ran it into the ground probably extracted a ridiculous amount of profit...
- 2y ago
deleted 2y ago
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hitekker 2y ago
Speaking as an engineering manager, this is wish-fulfillment. According to his own LinkedIn, the author has never been a first-level engineering manager. His blog is accordingly heavy on cliches and mostly free of actual work experience. Taken at face value, the article is a recipe for burning out first-level managers, while the building is burning down. It neglects to focus on stopping the fire, because the author would rather his reports hustle around the fire instead.
- Wurdan 2y ago
  I'm also an engineering manager, currently working in a department that feels on fire, and I think there is good wisdom in the article. The part about not fostering a "us vs them" mentality was good food for thought, as I do find it tempting to build short term camaraderie. When faced with big picture issues that can't be changed (believe me, they can't) it's easy to reach for a "We all know that these exec decisions don't make sense, but we can still do right for each other among this BS" type of conversation. But it's worth thinking about what that will do for the long term motivation of that team member at the company.
  - 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
    It sounds like you are trying to rationalize a toxic environment. Most of us don't actually have to stay at a company that is on fire. Plenty of companies (and managers) will try to convince us to stay at a company that "feels" on fire. That's what I hate about this "wartime software" bullshit. Like, if you enjoy being at war, cool, go at it. But if you don't want to feel horrible, find a different job. There is no prize to win for being a hero. Just a life of pain from an entity that will drop you as soon as is convenient.
    - Wurdan 2y ago
      Rationalise - maybe. Romanticise - definitely not. If people want to leave I wouldn't blame them at all, and will happily write them a reference. But there's no point in me optimising for that decision, I need to optimise for the scenario where they want to stay. I can say that I'm staying because I hunted for this job last year through the "winter of tech" and that nearly broke me as much as this toxic workplace does. So I have reasons not to jump ship, and I can't imagine I'm the only one. So for anyone reporting to me who would also rather not leave, I should do what I can to reduce the shittiness for them as much as possible.
xeyownt 2y ago
Simple: tell them to follow the fire exit signs.
niedbalski 2y ago
Building businesses out of debt, starting with negative balance and when approaching out of money, asking employees for a last minute war time mode. That’s plain terrible business practice, don’t work there.
- veunes 2y ago
  It’s best to avoid working in such environments but this can, to some extent, give a boost to development
gherkinnn 2y ago
Why can't these wartime analogies go away? You're building just another CRUD. Nothing is at stake. Stop pretending you're a warrior. You're not. It's just pathetic.
codeduck 2y ago
This entire blog post assumes agency that you, the EM or Team lead, rarely have in an organisation that is on a "wartime" footing. It's cosplay. Real wartime footing: 1. Direction and technical decisions are driven by priorities of board-level members and often arrive in email form late on Friday evening. The entire organisation is expected to pivot immediately. A new senior leadership team member starts scheduling daily read-outs on project progress, and half the organisation spends the weekend frantically hallucinating project plans into Google Sheets. 2. Engineering staff react with dull-eyed disbelief on Monday; they knew this was coming, because the same thing happened a month ago, and six weeks before that. 3. Emails come from HR that there are are new, even-more-labyrinthine approval processes for expenses, and shrinking budgets for anything not directly related to whatever the projet du jour, which will be fed enough to make it look like it's succeeding until the next Friday evening email kills it. 4. There is wide-spread burn-out across Engineering teams, and people are reduced to reactive, sarcastic automatons. 5. A creeping understanding seizes the better engineers that things cannot improve; they sign articles of Armistice, pretend to comply, and start interviewing elsewhere. 6. An email arrives on Friday night... > Focus on the positive aspects of the job that can be taken for granted, like the opportunity to work on cutting-edge challenges, the company's still existing perks and benefits, the amazing team you have, the chance to work with a modern tech stack, or how your product is helping its users. Showing your team how you appreciate what's still good can help with morale. If HN supported gifs, there'd be several in this spot.
- xwolfi 2y ago
  Are you sitting behind me ?
  - codeduck 2y ago
    I like your cologne today.
- everdrive 2y ago
  This is painfully accurate. I'm not sure how companies fall prey to these problems, but they seem to be incredibly hierarchical. What I means specifically is that the lower level employees and mid-level managers seem almost rabid to praise, cater to, and and be swept up by the useless whims of nearly anyone in the executive suite. It's sickening, and not because of the impacts on work. Why do so many grown adults act so pathetically servile to someone who is in a higher rung in a company? These executives don't have better ideas inherently, and due to being so far removed from the real work, are often a misinformed distraction. No one seems to think that an executive would want to be told that they are wrong, or misinformed, or missing the point. But, a worthwhile executive would want to hear exactly that. They would want to know if their ideas were actually going to disrupt work, make the firm worse off, etc. And I know what you're thinking: many executives are self-interested, and just want to see their ideas implemented, company health be damned. Yes, that's true. But then why does anyone give them the time of day? If an executive is nakedly self-interested they should be sidelined as aggressively as possible, both to neuter them and also to protect the company.
jillesvangurp 2y ago
I've been leading a small, bootstrapped startup for the last four years. The team is a lot smaller these days than we were before. But we're not dead yet and I still enjoy working on our product. Things are actually looking pretty good at this point and we have some perspective on revenue growth and even team growth. Being bootstrapped means we can set our own pace. The thing with fire fighting is that you 1) need to recognize that you are doing it. 2) put a stop to it. Firefighting simply doesn't work. You have a 100 fires to put out and you put out 1 or 2. The house will still burn down. And you will be too stressed to do a good job at what little you are still actually doing. So you'll cause a few more fires in the process. Firefighting leads to more fire fighting. Also the constant context switching actually means you are less productive. In terms of people management (including yourself), fire fighting is not sustainable for very long. It just makes people miserable, stresses them out, and eventually they leave, get burned out, etc. And that includes yourself. You have a breaking point and you want to stay on the right side of it. In my case, if I step out the company dies. It's that simple. So, I use my weekends to recover, not to work my ass off. Coming in well rested on Monday is more important than getting whatever done on a Sunday. So, take the tough decisions you need to make (who gets to stay, which things to cut, etc.) and then stabilize at whatever level is sustainable. De-prioritize the things that won't get done anyway. Stop pretending that you are even doing them. Ruthlessly prioritize what needs doing and filter that list by do-ability and then by available resources and then by short term priority. Smaller teams mean things actually get easier. Less need for meetings, less conflicts, etc. I'd run this thing differently if I had a ten person team. But I just don't. So a lot of management is just me freeing up time so I can actually do things myself.
veunes 2y ago
As a leader, your ability to stay calm is a fundamental one! It can directly impacts your team's confidence and effectiveness. By remaining steady, you set a tone of control and clarity that can help guide your team through chaos.
bfrog 2y ago
No thanks? If the company is downtrending, and I as an engineer see options available... without a clear path of moving up and forward in the current company, I'll be looking. That's it. Objectively its the best thing to do as an individual, and we all know no company shows loyalty anymore. Your job is always one penny pincher away from being cut or shipped off to a low cost employment center, e.g. India.
LikeBeans 2y ago
I think the main issue is consolidation in many industries. Companies get big and keep getting richer and bigger. They gobble up smaller companies to grow and often competitors too. They milk the industries dry and stiffle innovation. You get these poor run and bloated organizations as a result.
la64710 2y ago
Except the point around forgetting some of the long term improvement projects the rest are true anytime.
Animats 2y ago
If you're building drones in Ukraine, you're in war mode. If your business required zero interest rates, you're not in war mode. You're in stupid mode. It was never a successful business. (See WeWork, etc.) Get out.
davidashe 2y ago
Never a bad time to remind yourself of what is at stake in a literal war, versus a company in survival mode. Literal war: Many human lives - both combatant and non-combatant - and the future prosperity or collapse of all societies involved Company in survival mode: for most employees, their income level this year. Describing the operation of a software business as "Wartime" is nonsense.

400 points by kiyanwang 2y ago

> One major pitfall to avoid is letting an "us vs. them" mentality take hold on the team. Naturally, the stress of painful decisions can erode trust in leadership and other departments, but reinforcing a negative mindset will hurt you more than the temporary warm camaraderie you'll enjoy by joining the chorus of cynics. Then proceeds to encourage managers to gaslight folks into believing leadership is fine in the next paragraph. In my experience, during this "wartime" the author discusses, management knows the ship may be sinking/is sinking and are making their way towards the lifeboats. They still need to be seen as doing something though, so they string along the ICs hoping they can keep being "productive" even though management is completely checked out, and a lot of the ICs will be laid off or not survive the upcoming aquihire/turn down.

lumost 2y ago
on average, everyone will follow the path of maximum reward/lowest risk. Management has a job to do, but is aware that they may lack any choice or path to success. They still have a job to do in e.g. allocating engineers work, managing performance, promotions, and morale... so they do it, meanwhile they may also be looking for the exit. As an IC, never believe a manager at face value - they will promote you if it's good for them, they will pacify your concerns as it's what they are paid for, and they will fire you if its good for them. This is the nature of the relationship.
- Spivak 2y ago
  Wild, I would literally never work for a company where I had this kind of relationship with my direct manager. My direct manager should be in my corner and on my side always. They will get me the highest pay, highest title, best perks, lowest amount of stress and work, most time off, best benefits they can and anything they ask me to do is in service of that. If I find out that my direct manager is the one gating a raise or promotion from me I'll just quit. I had one manager like this after an acquisition, he literally threw his head back laughing when I said I was up for a promotion and raise (documented prior to the acquisition) and said a number which was what everyone at $ex_company with that title made. He said no, and that he was the one who got to decide if I get a promotion— I quit less than a month later for an actually good manger. They pay had better be incredible to make playing those kinds of political games worth having your soul drained.
  - Aeolun 2y ago
    > They pay had better be incredible to make playing those kinds of political games worth having your soul drained. In my experience, pay increases linearly with soul drainage. As I started working for larger and larger companies the amount of nonsense and pay increase by the same order. Responsibility decreases by the same magnitude, so while I was responsible for the whole IT operation/decisions of a small company for the lowest pay I ever had, I’d now be able to coast for half a year without anyone really noticing. BigCo is fucking weird.
  - marcinzm 2y ago
    > Wild, I would literally never work for a company where I had this kind of relationship with my direct manager. My direct manager should be in my corner and on my side always. They will get me the highest pay, highest title, best perks, lowest amount of stress and work, most time off, best benefits they can and anything they ask me to do is in service of that. If I find out that my direct manager is the one gating a raise or promotion from me I'll just quit. Nothing is infinite and managers are both people and have their own constraints. In my experience, expecting otherwise will just select for either managers who work really hard but fail to get you much (due to lack of political skills), or those that are very good liars that say they're helping you but never do (and you never realize otherwise).
Simon_ORourke 2y ago
Absolutely this - management will do whatever it takes to help management get through whatever problem they currently have, and if that's outright lying to IC's, or stringing them along for a few months they will do that, and not even regret it for an instant. A really solid engineer I know was working with a failing mobile payments company, got an offer somewhere else and like a fool took it to his manager, who matched the new offer and the guy accepted... for 2 months until the company went bankrupt and he was back at square one looking for a job.

talkingtab 2y ago

In my opinion there is a strong disconnect between the title and the advice. If in fact your house is on fire, there is a decision tree you can follow that goes something like this. 1. Are you or others in immediate danger? If so, get out and help others get out. 2. If not, then determine if someone addressing the fire. One would expect that higher ups are aware of the fire, but this is not always the case. Sometimes the higher ups are not aware. Sometimes they are too busy saving themselves to address the fire. 3. If someone is addressing the fire is there a way you can assist? I do not mean to be snarky in this- there are real people who work for real companies that are not doing well. If you are a manager, your team's well being should be high on your list.

Simon_ORourke 2y ago
> 1. Are you or others in immediate danger? If so, get out and help others get out. Wanting to help folks out is great, but if there's one role going in some related company, and there's a few on your team who are going to be out of work, then I don't think there's going to be too many advertising the job posting to others.
- ryanmcbride 2y ago
  it's really common for people to form groups after a layoff to help each other get hired.

johnea 2y ago

Pull the fire alarm and evacuate the building? Or, just stop using over-bloviated metaphors for first world marketing creating fictional scheduling crises. Not making you dev schedule is not a "fire", much less a "war". Maybe try getting outside once in awhile and clearing your head of this make believe bullshit...

TheAdamist 2y ago
I was hoping it was actually a treatise on leadership by a firefighter. But expecting it not to be.
agent327 2y ago
The whole point is convincing developers that they are in a 'war' and that making the ultimate sacrifice (i.e. giving up their life just so the delivery date can be made) is acceptable, even heroic. It's a vile way to treat people.
AllegedAlec 2y ago
As someone working for defense it's hilarious how civilians use this kind of wording without any real understanding of what it means. The constant use of the term in the Phoenix Project bugs the hell out of me too. It's yet another attempt for software enginerds and managerial bullshitters to make themselves feel more important than they are, because god forbid they say it like it is and just call it "how to lead a team when the cushy years stop"

wrs 2y ago

I have a shelf full of histories of British science and engineering during WW2, so I feel like I have some remote idea of what being an engineer in an actual “wartime mode” is like. Think about, e.g., working in the lab trying to improve radar to be able to stop the daily bombing raids. It’s hard to imagine “wartime mode” as being an appropriate metaphor for any US company, other than as a sort of fantasy role play. I normally hate sports metaphors, but as an alternative to war, framing a tough business situation as “fourth down and 10” or whatever is a lot healthier way to think about it.

ddejohn 2y ago
The phrase "in the trenches" is used often, too. Always grosses me out.
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bitwize 2y ago
If you're 4th and 10, that's when you cut your losses and attempt to kick a field goal so you can at least score something before the ball changes hands. (My wife took me to a Saints game for my birthday, so I'm actually learning stuff about the game as she is actually played.) I guess the equivalent in a software shop would be adjust expectations way lower and focus on what's achievable without running the team ragged and risking getting nothing done, postponing loftier goals until the team/business is in a better position to address them.
- jameshart 2y ago
  The football metaphor for ‘war mode’ really might be switching to playing defense. 4th and ten was last quarter. Right now, we don’t have possession and we’re trying to minimize the risk of conceding points. And maybe that means that now is the time for your star playmaking quarterback and receivers to be on the bench planning the play for when the pendulum swings back, and some different players should be center stage. Or maybe metaphors are just metaphors.
willturman 2y ago

unit149 2y ago

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debacle 2y ago

> Decentralize decision-making authority as much as possible. Remove barriers in their way, slash approval layers, attack dependencies. This is awful advice. You can only operate in this mode for at best 2-3 months before your entire SDLC grinds to a halt because it's been the wild west in github. > Bias heavily toward action - it's better to decide and be wrong sometimes than to paralyze the team with analysis. This is...more awful advice. My startup has gone through COVID and the financial slowdown and the only reason we've succeeded is because we never stop measuring. The very next paragraph after "decentralize everything and communicate heavily" is "allow your team to focus and centralize administrative duties." And the the NEXT paragraph is "work closely with your team and even write some code." This entire blog post is all over the place. It reads like each paragraph was written by a different person with completely different experiences. If you want to manage your team while the house is on fire, don't change anything. Communicate clearly, ensure that the culture and philosophy of the team bend when necessary but don't break, and work on alleviating the real problem. One of: lack of product market fit, burning cash like it's going out of style, or no clear path to profitability or the next raise. Your engineering team is probably not the problem if your startup is failing.

herval 2y ago
> You can only operate in this mode for at best 2-3 months before your entire SDLC grinds to a halt because it's been the wild west in github FB is operating that way with tens of thousands of engineers. More approval layers don’t necessarily mean more order, but it always means slower processes
- debacle 2y ago
  Facebook has a very thorough code review process, and their product is heavily data driven. They've even productized their code review process internally, and that product is also data driven.
  - herval 2y ago
    The code review process is quite literally “you need a stamp from anyone because of some regulations we follow”. Definitely nothing thorough.

drekipus 2y ago

That actually reminds me of a great story, for when I had to do exactly what the title is suggesting.. back when I worked at Amazon as a software engineer, the CRAZIEST thing happened to me. Here’s the story… I was working from home with my girlfriend (at the time), when suddenly I get an urgent ping from my coworker: “Our service is experiencing a SEV 2! We need all hands on deck!” Uh oh, our team’s application has gone down! However, as I scrambled to figure out how to fix the issue, I smelled something burning from another room and heard a fire alarm go off. “Will! There’s a fire! Help!” I heard my girlfriend shout. Now I was stuck in a conundrum — restore a critical Amazon service, or put out the fire in my apartment? It was at that time I remembered Amazon’s famous leadership principle “Customer Obsession”. There are customers who depend on my team’s application — I can’t let them down! So I ignored the fire and my girlfriend’s pleas, and started debugging the production issue. But all of a sudden, the smoke in my apartment cleared and the fire alarm fell silent. My girlfriend walked into the room, and to my astonishment, peeled off a wig and revealed herself to be Jeff Bezos himself! “I’m proud of you for being obsessed with our customers,” he said, and gave me a $5 Amazon gift card. He then leaped out of my window and hopped into a waiting Amazon Prime delivery van that quickly peeled away. Even though I no longer work at Amazon, I’m so grateful for these experiences that taught me lessons I’ll never forget. Agree?

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langcss 2y ago
And that day, I was told I passed the Amazon interview and was offered a job as a L4 Software Engineer.
oulu2006 2y ago
not really a classic anecdote

trhway 2y ago

At the top we have 2 management posts - this and MrBeast. One is very specific and another is typical management bs-bingo.

Abismith 2y ago

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dakiol 2y ago

It all feels like theatre. Been working in many companies in “war mode” and they all think that in order to become profitable (none of them were) you need to push the most “important” features out of the door asap, otherwise your competitors will eat you alive. It’s a lie. Executives and VPs and all those folks that earn 5x what a normal engineer earns, don’t really care about the company they work for. All they care about is to keep receiving the big pay checks until the ship sinks. Obviously you cannot just mandate “normal mode”, otherwise it wouldn’t look as if everyone is doing their best to keep the company afloat. I hope in 10 years or so, we’ll see “wartime software engineering” with the same eyes we see today Agile and Scrum masters: snake oil.

imetatroll 2y ago
Where do you work that you get to avoid agile, scrum, and war mode? I'm jealous. Then again I've always just been stuck working for startups my entire career. I have a family and desperately need something more stable.
- Aeolun 2y ago
  Are BigCos any more stable in the US? At least in a startup they probably actually need you because you already know their system. Overseas BigCo means permanent contracts and being very hard to let go, but that doesn’t seem to be the case in the US (e.g. Elon Musk Twitter).
  - mlhpdx 2y ago
    Jobs at big companies are less stable and end with less notice than at small ones, at least in my experience. In a small company, particularly one with engaged and transparent leadership, everyone knows what’s working and what isn’t and about how long the latter can be endured. At a large company the vast majority of jobs are susceptible to the whims and whispers of a few (who likely aren’t engaged and feel they can’t be transparent). Obviously this is just one person’s opinion.
  - ThrowawayR2 2y ago

benreesman 2y ago

Wartime software is a disaster unless you mean it, and should be treated with extreme caution even if you do. Wartime is an in house propaganda shop running posters that say Carthago Delenda Est, mid-level product managers discreetly but reliably dispensing Adderal, Ritalin, and Modafinil, open disdain for people who leave the office two days in a row, and paying enough that your people are just in a meaningful sense smarter than anyone else. Every company gets to pull that maybe once, so it has to count. And it’s a hell of a place and time to see. But if you’re not going the whole way, you’re far better off doing reliably good engineering in a repeatable way and poorly served by analogies to war.

neilv 2y ago

> "Perfection is the enemy of done" [...] It's important to note that these wartime actions will probably increase tech debt in your code. With the emphasis on velocity over quality, architectural compromises and maintenance shortcuts are often taken. All those years of ZIRP investment scams, and sprint theatre, the industry generally wasn't doing "quality" (and, on average, wasn't capable of quality), so we were already posturing about "getting it done"... Don't you need to tell a lot of people something *different* than before? Maybe, when you have to deliver and can't afford huge mess-ups and delays and inefficient boondoggles, and people can't job-hop fast enough to escape their roosting chickens, what you actually need is *smart, aligned people*? Not to give people permission to flail around incompetently, and make huge messes, pretty much just like before, but now rationalize it as "Getting It Done: Wartime Edition". > [...] due to the current job market you have more luxury now than a few years ago. Consider allowing 2-3 candidates to pass through all rounds, and choose the best fit from them. If that's what you need to hire smart, aligned people, then OK. If it's just most of the same techbro flakiness, now dressed up as "Wartime", then not OK.

0xbadcafebee 2y ago

The "Wartime Software" concept is bogus, and this article casually tosses out that you should have a high-performing team, which companies spend years trying to achieve and still not doing it. How do you lead your team when the house is on fire? However the hell you can. I'm sure a firefighter can chime in here and tell you that if you aren't trained for firefighting, you sure as hell won't learn how to do it right when the roof is caving in on you.

getnormality 2y ago

> For EMs, wartime means leading low-morale teams through ambiguity, hard constraints, frequently changing goals, and intense pressure to perform. Why the assumption that goals are frequently changing? If you're making something that's actually valuable and not just looking good by surfing trends, I would think that the virtue would lie in having a clear vision and sticking to it.

SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
There's a lot of virtue in that, and managers prefer that just as much as engineers do. But sometimes it's as the article says: "Your organization might not have the luxury of years of runway, and the environment you're operating in is rapidly changing". If you've got a big customer making 20% of your revenue who's threatening to jump ship (not an uncommon scenario for small to medium sized companies), you simply have to deliver whatever they want as fast as you can and worry about your vision later.
- ang_cire 2y ago
  Either your product is at its core useful, or its not. If the environment is rapidly changing, either your product is still relevant, and you should be focusing on stability, or it's no longer useful and it's too late to change that. > If you've got a big customer making 20% of your revenue who's threatening to jump ship (not an uncommon scenario for small to medium sized companies), you simply have to deliver whatever they want as fast as you can and worry about your vision later. But that's one new requirement (or set of), not a changing environment. If that customer is changing their requirements as they go, so that you're constantly shifting focus, you need to either pin them down to one goal, or cut them loose and deal with the fallout. They don't see or care about the "war mode" they've created, and placating them will just invite more demands, and you can't keep it up forever. The one time I've seen a "war mode" succeed was making a change that was a precondition for acquisition, when a set of requirements was laid out in the acquisition offer. It couldn't be altered once it was accepted, so the "war mode" had a fixed goal and deadline. Apart from something like that, it's just going to result in a spiral.

neilv 2y ago

> Identify on-the-job learning opportunities, like giving someone the chance to lead an incident response or a high-visibility project. Critical mistakes can still be catastrophic, but because of the fast-changing nature of wartime work, it's easier to process smaller errors with a healthy learning mindset. I don't understand how wartime makes this easier. Pre-wartime, you could've also had short-turnaround tasks, and the realities of generous funding of nonviable businesses mean you'd have more luxury to rollback dropped balls. Seems like wartime means that you have to be more responsive and successfully.

dsr_ 2y ago

When the house is on fire, you lead people OUT OF THE HOUSE. Then you get help. Then, if you can do it without putting yourself back in danger, you look for opportunities to help out. If you don't know this, you failed childhood. Now, on to the metaphor: emergencies don't last forever. If your emergency is lasting indefinitely, it's not an emergency and the house is not on fire. It is quite possible that you are being manipulated. If emergencies keep happening, senior management has a big problem, and it's up to them to fix it.

neverartful 2y ago

Funny because the last place I worked it was as if senior management were playing The Roof Is On Fire song non-stop through everybody's speakers. You know the song, "We don't need no water, let the MFer burn!"

rqtwteye 2y ago

I think leading in "wartime" is way easier than leading in peacetime. When you are in full panic mode with a clear goal, a lot of decisions are very clear and easy to make. And everybody knows you can't scrutinize every little thing. You take a risk and see if it works out. In peacetime you have more time, goals are not that clear. So a lot of people suddenly have different opinions and they must somehow be negotiated. There is a huge risk of a bureaucracy to de developing that can't be constrained. It's the same in politics. Wartime leaders like Churchill get a lot of credit but I think it's much harder to keep things running halfways efficiently when things are going well.

thr0waway001 2y ago
Well said. Nobody is willing to take risks and change things up when things are going well. I've found myself warning the people I work with that we need to do things to stabilize the core of our software and infrastructure. When things are going well it's hard to get buy-in and the time to do any necessary, and sometimes radical changes. And you probably may say at this point: "well if things are going well why would you do anything radical?" but I generally mean well as in not falling apart, but not ideal, as in every week we keep seeing the same issues reported in our day-to-day. Cause eventually, it only takes something else to go wrong to expose major issues and vulnerabilities with the operation. Nevertheless, when shit goes sideways, as it usually tends to happen especially when you don't slow down and maintain enough, people then just want you to fix the problem, and do whatever it takes, including those aforementioned risky things you were proposing to avoid the shitty times to begin with.
- romanows 2y ago
  I just got back from watching the movie Casa Bonita Mi Amor, about the South Park guys buying a beloved Denver restaurant and refurbishing it. Costs ballooned from an estimated $6 million to $30+ million because it had been owned by a company that deferred maintenance for 30 years. Not sure if the business types would see this as a cautionary tale or as validation for coasting, though. The company that ran it into the ground probably extracted a ridiculous amount of profit...
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hitekker 2y ago

Speaking as an engineering manager, this is wish-fulfillment. According to his own LinkedIn, the author has never been a first-level engineering manager. His blog is accordingly heavy on cliches and mostly free of actual work experience. Taken at face value, the article is a recipe for burning out first-level managers, while the building is burning down. It neglects to focus on stopping the fire, because the author would rather his reports hustle around the fire instead.

Wurdan 2y ago
I'm also an engineering manager, currently working in a department that feels on fire, and I think there is good wisdom in the article. The part about not fostering a "us vs them" mentality was good food for thought, as I do find it tempting to build short term camaraderie. When faced with big picture issues that can't be changed (believe me, they can't) it's easy to reach for a "We all know that these exec decisions don't make sense, but we can still do right for each other among this BS" type of conversation. But it's worth thinking about what that will do for the long term motivation of that team member at the company.
- 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
  It sounds like you are trying to rationalize a toxic environment. Most of us don't actually have to stay at a company that is on fire. Plenty of companies (and managers) will try to convince us to stay at a company that "feels" on fire. That's what I hate about this "wartime software" bullshit. Like, if you enjoy being at war, cool, go at it. But if you don't want to feel horrible, find a different job. There is no prize to win for being a hero. Just a life of pain from an entity that will drop you as soon as is convenient.
  - Wurdan 2y ago
    Rationalise - maybe. Romanticise - definitely not. If people want to leave I wouldn't blame them at all, and will happily write them a reference. But there's no point in me optimising for that decision, I need to optimise for the scenario where they want to stay. I can say that I'm staying because I hunted for this job last year through the "winter of tech" and that nearly broke me as much as this toxic workplace does. So I have reasons not to jump ship, and I can't imagine I'm the only one. So for anyone reporting to me who would also rather not leave, I should do what I can to reduce the shittiness for them as much as possible.

xeyownt 2y ago

Simple: tell them to follow the fire exit signs.

niedbalski 2y ago

Building businesses out of debt, starting with negative balance and when approaching out of money, asking employees for a last minute war time mode. That’s plain terrible business practice, don’t work there.

veunes 2y ago
It’s best to avoid working in such environments but this can, to some extent, give a boost to development

gherkinnn 2y ago

Why can't these wartime analogies go away? You're building just another CRUD. Nothing is at stake. Stop pretending you're a warrior. You're not. It's just pathetic.

codeduck 2y ago

This entire blog post assumes agency that you, the EM or Team lead, rarely have in an organisation that is on a "wartime" footing. It's cosplay. Real wartime footing: 1. Direction and technical decisions are driven by priorities of board-level members and often arrive in email form late on Friday evening. The entire organisation is expected to pivot immediately. A new senior leadership team member starts scheduling daily read-outs on project progress, and half the organisation spends the weekend frantically hallucinating project plans into Google Sheets. 2. Engineering staff react with dull-eyed disbelief on Monday; they knew this was coming, because the same thing happened a month ago, and six weeks before that. 3. Emails come from HR that there are are new, even-more-labyrinthine approval processes for expenses, and shrinking budgets for anything not directly related to whatever the projet du jour, which will be fed enough to make it look like it's succeeding until the next Friday evening email kills it. 4. There is wide-spread burn-out across Engineering teams, and people are reduced to reactive, sarcastic automatons. 5. A creeping understanding seizes the better engineers that things cannot improve; they sign articles of Armistice, pretend to comply, and start interviewing elsewhere. 6. An email arrives on Friday night... > Focus on the positive aspects of the job that can be taken for granted, like the opportunity to work on cutting-edge challenges, the company's still existing perks and benefits, the amazing team you have, the chance to work with a modern tech stack, or how your product is helping its users. Showing your team how you appreciate what's still good can help with morale. If HN supported gifs, there'd be several in this spot.

xwolfi 2y ago
Are you sitting behind me ?
- codeduck 2y ago
  I like your cologne today.
everdrive 2y ago
This is painfully accurate. I'm not sure how companies fall prey to these problems, but they seem to be incredibly hierarchical. What I means specifically is that the lower level employees and mid-level managers seem almost rabid to praise, cater to, and and be swept up by the useless whims of nearly anyone in the executive suite. It's sickening, and not because of the impacts on work. Why do so many grown adults act so pathetically servile to someone who is in a higher rung in a company? These executives don't have better ideas inherently, and due to being so far removed from the real work, are often a misinformed distraction. No one seems to think that an executive would want to be told that they are wrong, or misinformed, or missing the point. But, a worthwhile executive would want to hear exactly that. They would want to know if their ideas were actually going to disrupt work, make the firm worse off, etc. And I know what you're thinking: many executives are self-interested, and just want to see their ideas implemented, company health be damned. Yes, that's true. But then why does anyone give them the time of day? If an executive is nakedly self-interested they should be sidelined as aggressively as possible, both to neuter them and also to protect the company.

jillesvangurp 2y ago

I've been leading a small, bootstrapped startup for the last four years. The team is a lot smaller these days than we were before. But we're not dead yet and I still enjoy working on our product. Things are actually looking pretty good at this point and we have some perspective on revenue growth and even team growth. Being bootstrapped means we can set our own pace. The thing with fire fighting is that you 1) need to recognize that you are doing it. 2) put a stop to it. Firefighting simply doesn't work. You have a 100 fires to put out and you put out 1 or 2. The house will still burn down. And you will be too stressed to do a good job at what little you are still actually doing. So you'll cause a few more fires in the process. Firefighting leads to more fire fighting. Also the constant context switching actually means you are less productive. In terms of people management (including yourself), fire fighting is not sustainable for very long. It just makes people miserable, stresses them out, and eventually they leave, get burned out, etc. And that includes yourself. You have a breaking point and you want to stay on the right side of it. In my case, if I step out the company dies. It's that simple. So, I use my weekends to recover, not to work my ass off. Coming in well rested on Monday is more important than getting whatever done on a Sunday. So, take the tough decisions you need to make (who gets to stay, which things to cut, etc.) and then stabilize at whatever level is sustainable. De-prioritize the things that won't get done anyway. Stop pretending that you are even doing them. Ruthlessly prioritize what needs doing and filter that list by do-ability and then by available resources and then by short term priority. Smaller teams mean things actually get easier. Less need for meetings, less conflicts, etc. I'd run this thing differently if I had a ten person team. But I just don't. So a lot of management is just me freeing up time so I can actually do things myself.

veunes 2y ago

As a leader, your ability to stay calm is a fundamental one! It can directly impacts your team's confidence and effectiveness. By remaining steady, you set a tone of control and clarity that can help guide your team through chaos.

bfrog 2y ago

No thanks? If the company is downtrending, and I as an engineer see options available... without a clear path of moving up and forward in the current company, I'll be looking. That's it. Objectively its the best thing to do as an individual, and we all know no company shows loyalty anymore. Your job is always one penny pincher away from being cut or shipped off to a low cost employment center, e.g. India.

LikeBeans 2y ago

I think the main issue is consolidation in many industries. Companies get big and keep getting richer and bigger. They gobble up smaller companies to grow and often competitors too. They milk the industries dry and stiffle innovation. You get these poor run and bloated organizations as a result.

la64710 2y ago

Except the point around forgetting some of the long term improvement projects the rest are true anytime.

Animats 2y ago

If you're building drones in Ukraine, you're in war mode. If your business required zero interest rates, you're not in war mode. You're in stupid mode. It was never a successful business. (See WeWork, etc.) Get out.

davidashe 2y ago

Never a bad time to remind yourself of what is at stake in a literal war, versus a company in survival mode. Literal war: Many human lives - both combatant and non-combatant - and the future prosperity or collapse of all societies involved Company in survival mode: for most employees, their income level this year. Describing the operation of a software business as "Wartime" is nonsense.