6 ms·

I think this falls under the category of "Don't hate the player, hate the game." I agree with you: It totally sucks that this is the way the business world wor

by jawns 2y ago

I think this falls under the category of "Don't hate the player, hate the game." I agree with you: It totally sucks that this is the way the business world works. But if you want to work within the confines of this flawed system, you need to know how to navigate it well, and I think this post does a good job of giving you the guided tour. There is a failsafe, however. The post points out that if the project launches and users love it and it makes the company a ton of money, then upper management is going to find out about it even if you don't tell them, and they will be pleased that you have made the company a ton of money.

Scubabear68 2y ago
There’s a hero element here that so think is what irks me. The reality is, most of the time when you “ship” your software, executive management neither notices nor cares. Even if you get the “attaboy” from a manager, they will forget it 10 minutes later. You ship your software because you care about work, and maybe because you care about your users. In a big software company, shipping is not going to get you noticed unless you are literally the guy delivering gmail or google maps.
- shalmanese 2y ago
  If a ship happens in the forest and nobody at company notices, did the ship really happen? To be clear, the pathway to management noticing is not you going around the building loudly blaring that you did a thing, it's that churn went down, or ARPU went up or CAC went down or uptime went up or something management cares about. But the essential thing to also understand is that this doesn't just happen for free. Figure out what metric your ship is meant to affect, put monitoring in place and proactively notify those above you about how your ship impacted that metric. If you don't do this last step, you didn't ship.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- twelve40 2y ago
  > The reality is, most of the time when you “ship” your software, executive management neither notices nor cares your reality might be different than mine, but things that got shipped definitely get noticed because they are used as a bargaining chip for promotions, funding and for visibility of the entire team, that's one of the main concerns of a manager (unless they've checked out and are searching for another job)
trentnix 2y ago
I do hate the game. I hate it so very much.
thfuran 2y ago
>I think this falls under the category of "Don't hate the player, hate the game." The game wouldn't be happening without players.
- atty 2y ago
  Generally the game is created by external forces, not the players. If you’re an independently wealthy individual you can afford to work for pleasure. The rest of us? We like to eat and live in comfortable dwellings and take care of our families, so we play the game of pleasing our superiors in return for the money to live a comfortable existence.
  - thfuran 2y ago
    So the players are just following orders and totally blameless for any actions?
    - _carbyau_ 2y ago
      I see your reply as strawman levels of uncharitable. They never said any such thing for either of your claims and the only reason I see for your statement is that you are playing.
      - hackable_sand 2y ago
        The lack of accountability and introspection is frustrating, which is what I read from GP comment. I think it's fair to let them vent that.
  - mupuff1234 2y ago
    Then you would expect to see inversion of behavior at the higher levels, especially at big tech, when one does become independently wealthy, but that's pretty obviously not the case.
InDubioProRubio 2y ago
Not necessarily. You can have upper management chieftains, who view the rise of a "new" one- as a threat and will actively try to prevent "upstart" new sources of income, to protect the dependency on "whoever" pays the bills for decision making. You will not get a product thats not search off the ground at google. You will not launch something else then windows / now cloud at microsoft. Even if it makes money. The old chieftains domain has to wither and be in retreat first, before something new can be started with all the resources available. Its really exotic, if cross domain success is achieved. Amazon logistics and then AWS is such a example. If you look under the hood, the companies that allowed for that- are often more conglomerates, basically smallerish independent companies within a brand-trenchcoat pretending to be one large company. Youtube is also such a thing. My pet theory is, that its company internal value chains, the chieftains depend upon that allow for such things to form. Like search is advertising and needs data. And data comes from the engagement guys down the hall in the other building.
- digitallis42 2y ago
  Search is not Google's golden goose. It's Ads.
0xpgm 2y ago
There was a time, upto 10-15 years ago when tech company culture was largely anti-corporate. Now corporate-y things like playing office politics is order of the day in medium to large tech companies. My (maybe uninformed) hypothesis is that tech made so much money that it brought in the MBA and HR types who brought their corporate culture with them. Even the smaller tech companies are now mimicking big tech culture as the standard.
- itsoktocry 2y ago
  >My (maybe uninformed) hypothesis is that tech made so much money that it brought in the MBA and HR types who brought their corporate culture with them. This is some strange engineer's fantasy, that every company was ruined by "MBA types". Meanwhile, as evidenced in places in this thread, "software types" don't even understand basic business principles. They like to believe that if they were just left alone they'd churn out brilliant product, as if a large business isn't far more complex than that. Someone needs to count the beans (MBAs) and someone needs to deal with the people (HR).
solidninja 2y ago
The only winning move is not to play :)
tonyedgecombe 2y ago
>The post points out that if the project launches and users love it and it makes the company a ton of money That's when all the people like the article's author crawl out of the woodwork and start claiming responsibility for your work.
faizshah 2y ago
I have seen the opposite happen a lot though, even if a project is successful you will get numerous people coming to you asking “who approved this? Why was I not involved in the decision?” And the ballooning aftereffects are why it takes months to push a simple button. Big companies are like government bureaucracies now.
- tech_ken 2y ago
  > Big companies are like government bureaucracies now Large organizations are, by definition, bureaucracies regardless of being public or private. Big companies were bureaucracies 100 years, and they will be bureaucracies in 100 years. I never understand why people expect private enterprises to be free from the inefficiencies inherent to coordinating lots of people and things

by jawns 2y ago

Scubabear68 2y ago

There’s a hero element here that so think is what irks me. The reality is, most of the time when you “ship” your software, executive management neither notices nor cares. Even if you get the “attaboy” from a manager, they will forget it 10 minutes later. You ship your software because you care about work, and maybe because you care about your users. In a big software company, shipping is not going to get you noticed unless you are literally the guy delivering gmail or google maps.

shalmanese 2y ago
If a ship happens in the forest and nobody at company notices, did the ship really happen? To be clear, the pathway to management noticing is not you going around the building loudly blaring that you did a thing, it's that churn went down, or ARPU went up or CAC went down or uptime went up or something management cares about. But the essential thing to also understand is that this doesn't just happen for free. Figure out what metric your ship is meant to affect, put monitoring in place and proactively notify those above you about how your ship impacted that metric. If you don't do this last step, you didn't ship.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
twelve40 2y ago
> The reality is, most of the time when you “ship” your software, executive management neither notices nor cares your reality might be different than mine, but things that got shipped definitely get noticed because they are used as a bargaining chip for promotions, funding and for visibility of the entire team, that's one of the main concerns of a manager (unless they've checked out and are searching for another job)

trentnix 2y ago

I do hate the game. I hate it so very much.

thfuran 2y ago

>I think this falls under the category of "Don't hate the player, hate the game." The game wouldn't be happening without players.

atty 2y ago
Generally the game is created by external forces, not the players. If you’re an independently wealthy individual you can afford to work for pleasure. The rest of us? We like to eat and live in comfortable dwellings and take care of our families, so we play the game of pleasing our superiors in return for the money to live a comfortable existence.
- thfuran 2y ago
  So the players are just following orders and totally blameless for any actions?
  - _carbyau_ 2y ago
    I see your reply as strawman levels of uncharitable. They never said any such thing for either of your claims and the only reason I see for your statement is that you are playing.
    - hackable_sand 2y ago
      The lack of accountability and introspection is frustrating, which is what I read from GP comment. I think it's fair to let them vent that.
- mupuff1234 2y ago
  Then you would expect to see inversion of behavior at the higher levels, especially at big tech, when one does become independently wealthy, but that's pretty obviously not the case.

InDubioProRubio 2y ago

Not necessarily. You can have upper management chieftains, who view the rise of a "new" one- as a threat and will actively try to prevent "upstart" new sources of income, to protect the dependency on "whoever" pays the bills for decision making. You will not get a product thats not search off the ground at google. You will not launch something else then windows / now cloud at microsoft. Even if it makes money. The old chieftains domain has to wither and be in retreat first, before something new can be started with all the resources available. Its really exotic, if cross domain success is achieved. Amazon logistics and then AWS is such a example. If you look under the hood, the companies that allowed for that- are often more conglomerates, basically smallerish independent companies within a brand-trenchcoat pretending to be one large company. Youtube is also such a thing. My pet theory is, that its company internal value chains, the chieftains depend upon that allow for such things to form. Like search is advertising and needs data. And data comes from the engagement guys down the hall in the other building.

digitallis42 2y ago
Search is not Google's golden goose. It's Ads.

0xpgm 2y ago

There was a time, upto 10-15 years ago when tech company culture was largely anti-corporate. Now corporate-y things like playing office politics is order of the day in medium to large tech companies. My (maybe uninformed) hypothesis is that tech made so much money that it brought in the MBA and HR types who brought their corporate culture with them. Even the smaller tech companies are now mimicking big tech culture as the standard.

itsoktocry 2y ago
>My (maybe uninformed) hypothesis is that tech made so much money that it brought in the MBA and HR types who brought their corporate culture with them. This is some strange engineer's fantasy, that every company was ruined by "MBA types". Meanwhile, as evidenced in places in this thread, "software types" don't even understand basic business principles. They like to believe that if they were just left alone they'd churn out brilliant product, as if a large business isn't far more complex than that. Someone needs to count the beans (MBAs) and someone needs to deal with the people (HR).

solidninja 2y ago

The only winning move is not to play :)

tonyedgecombe 2y ago

>The post points out that if the project launches and users love it and it makes the company a ton of money That's when all the people like the article's author crawl out of the woodwork and start claiming responsibility for your work.

faizshah 2y ago

I have seen the opposite happen a lot though, even if a project is successful you will get numerous people coming to you asking “who approved this? Why was I not involved in the decision?” And the ballooning aftereffects are why it takes months to push a simple button. Big companies are like government bureaucracies now.

tech_ken 2y ago
> Big companies are like government bureaucracies now Large organizations are, by definition, bureaucracies regardless of being public or private. Big companies were bureaucracies 100 years, and they will be bureaucracies in 100 years. I never understand why people expect private enterprises to be free from the inefficiencies inherent to coordinating lots of people and things