6 ms·

IMO most engineers completely forget or don't appreciate the importance of optics, especially when working with non-technical founders or management.

klabb3 2y ago
Yes but otoh that might be more of a “I refuse to accept a culture of optics on principle” kinda situation, rather than not understanding it. I liked the post because it’s honest and doesn’t put a value judgment on things, just explains how it works. It’s up to each and everyone to act accordingly, and one of those actions is to not participate in the lunacy that often arises in the higher echelons. Many people are fine keeping their integrity, mostly left alone to code, avoiding social deception games at the expense of not being promoted out of what they fell in love with in the first place. People are just different.
- superhuzza 2y ago
  Refusing to accept a culture of optics is tantamount to not understanding optics though. The reality is that if you work on any kind of product, optics do matter - the perception of something working is often just as important as it actually working.
  - Hasu 2y ago
    It can't possibly be "just as important" - in some cases, I will accept "almost as important", but any situation where the optics are "it works" and the reality is "it doesn't work" is eventually going to come crashing down on someone's head. If it doesn't need to work, then it doesn't matter and the optics also don't matter. Of course, it might be more important for your promotion that the optics are correct, no matter what the ground reality is, and the crash could come down on someone else's head instead of yours, but in this scenario someone who is against a culture of optics rather has a point.
    - tharkun__ 2y ago
      Definitely just as important. If you shipped and nobody important enough knows, then you haven't shipped in the eyes of the most important people. I'm the first person to agree with you that it sucks that optics are important. But they are. You can definitely ship shit with great optics and get a promotion and be far away before that shit hits the fan. But if you ship the greatest thing since sliced bread and nobody notices, then you might as well not have shipped at all.
      - klabb3 2y ago
        Lots of things are popularity contests. It’s very difficult to escape when you’re in it, but they always fizzle out, leaving remarkably little behind. Your promotion at Enron has no meaning today, but at least the little string parsing library you wrote may still be in use and someone is happy about it, decades later. The point is that your impact isn’t defined by a McKinsey trained head of HR who gamified a career ladder for you, or the opinion of “important people”. In fact, what impact means depends on where and (crucially) when you measure it. Some professions have longer reward cycles than a human lifetime. Great writers, artists and thinkers are often recognized posthumously. Doesn’t mean everyone should write poems, but we shouldn’t exacerbate a culture where you’re useless if you can’t charm your closest mediocre middle manager. Life is more.
        tharkun__ 2y ago
        Oh absolutely agreed on lots of things being popularity contests. And I don't like that fact either. It's still important unfortunately. Your promotion at Enron still has meaning today because it bumped you up the career ladder early on in your career and your next job after that was a step up from that etc. 20 years of elevated salary because you climbed the career ladder early adds up to real dollars in your investment accounts. Do I like it? Absolutely not and I am trying to stay at the level I'm at right now for as long as I possibly can, because my job is not entirely a popularity contest and still has real good software engineering and actually building software that real people use and love in it. If I "climbed" any further all day every day would be a popularity contest. But I do recognize that being allowed to continue building that software requires (as in "it's important") to take part in some of these popularity contests. (talking paid work wise here - if you're OK to live in a basement doing meaningful open source work that will outlive you for the rest of your life and it makes you happy, then power to you - not most people's reality)
amonith 2y ago
"Appreciate" is a weird word. At least for me (not an English speaker) it has a positive connotation so with that in mind I sure hope nobody appreciates the importance of optics. The concept is dumb but it is important and we have to play the game to achieve anything.
- afandian 2y ago
  Appreciate has at least three entirely different meanings that I can think of. 1. To be grateful for something. 2. To fully understand something. 3. To increase in value I’m sure there are more. I read this as option 2.
  - anshulbhide 2y ago
    Correct.
  - amonith 2y ago
    Why did you read that as 2 though? Is there a context clue I'm missing or is there some grammar rule I don't know of? Honest question, I'm Polish. For me there's a huge gap between 1 and 2 so it might cause misunderstandings when used in a sentence. I despise a lot of things I fully understand and if I said I "appreciate" them - sounds weird.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - afandian 2y ago
      It's heuristics, not grammar. You usually appreciate a noun or noun phrase in a transitive sentence (X appreciates Y). Case 1: If it's something useful (e.g. 'your help', 'what you did') then it's more likely about being thankful. This use of 'appreciate' is also a social action. You say it to make someone feel good for helping. Case 2: If it's an abstract thing (e.g. 'the importance of', 'the difficulty of') then it's more likely you're talking about understanding. Usually when you talk about this usage it's because the _fact_ of understanding is important to the speech act. If someone explains the law of gravity you don't say "I appreciate that", you say "I understand that". But if you fell from a height and hurt yourself you can say "I didn't appreciate the law of gravity". Case 3: If it's intransitive and it's about money ('the car appreciated in value', 'the house appreciated in value').
dclowd9901 2y ago
Weirdly, optics have never mattered at all in small or startup companies. And they manage to do pretty well, ship a lot of product and become large companies. Maybe the problem isn’t the engineers, but the need for optics…
- tightbookkeeper 2y ago
  No organization with more than 1 person is immune from the effects of optics. If you think so, you may be blind to it.
  - tonyedgecombe 2y ago
    It definitely gets worse as the organisation grows. There isn't much room to hide in a five person company whereas it's hard to be seen in a 5000 person organisation.
- conjectures 2y ago
  Nah, I think optics can matter at startups too.
  - tonyedgecombe 2y ago
    For a lot of the ones that fail, yes.
- jimbokun 2y ago
  In that case it's the optics with the customers that matter. Which can be more rewarding to satisfy than the optics of just management. But still needs to be managed appropriately.
- brundolf 2y ago
  It's a matter of scale. "Optics" (as a separate concern) don't matter at orgs that are small enough that everyone can see everything (and/or has full trust in the people who do). Visibility and trust don't scale, hence the necessary evil of pageantry
amiljkovic 2y ago
What is optics??
- kridsdale1 2y ago
  The emotional perception of the quality of you, the worker, in the eyes of the leadership who pays you. It is distinct from your true value and contributions. It is maximized by you optimizing the visibility of things that boost reputation and minimizing the visibility of embarrassing things.
- rglynn 2y ago
  It's a term that has been adopted to sound more professional than "keeping up appearances" which is an age-old concept. It is about how things are/will be perceived by others, rather than the truth of the matter.
- jrh3 2y ago
  Perception is reality. (For better or worse.)
dsr_ 2y ago
I wear glasses, so I appreciate the importance of optics every day.

klabb3 2y ago

Yes but otoh that might be more of a “I refuse to accept a culture of optics on principle” kinda situation, rather than not understanding it. I liked the post because it’s honest and doesn’t put a value judgment on things, just explains how it works. It’s up to each and everyone to act accordingly, and one of those actions is to not participate in the lunacy that often arises in the higher echelons. Many people are fine keeping their integrity, mostly left alone to code, avoiding social deception games at the expense of not being promoted out of what they fell in love with in the first place. People are just different.

superhuzza 2y ago
Refusing to accept a culture of optics is tantamount to not understanding optics though. The reality is that if you work on any kind of product, optics do matter - the perception of something working is often just as important as it actually working.
- Hasu 2y ago
  It can't possibly be "just as important" - in some cases, I will accept "almost as important", but any situation where the optics are "it works" and the reality is "it doesn't work" is eventually going to come crashing down on someone's head. If it doesn't need to work, then it doesn't matter and the optics also don't matter. Of course, it might be more important for your promotion that the optics are correct, no matter what the ground reality is, and the crash could come down on someone else's head instead of yours, but in this scenario someone who is against a culture of optics rather has a point.
  - tharkun__ 2y ago
    Definitely just as important. If you shipped and nobody important enough knows, then you haven't shipped in the eyes of the most important people. I'm the first person to agree with you that it sucks that optics are important. But they are. You can definitely ship shit with great optics and get a promotion and be far away before that shit hits the fan. But if you ship the greatest thing since sliced bread and nobody notices, then you might as well not have shipped at all.
    - klabb3 2y ago
      Lots of things are popularity contests. It’s very difficult to escape when you’re in it, but they always fizzle out, leaving remarkably little behind. Your promotion at Enron has no meaning today, but at least the little string parsing library you wrote may still be in use and someone is happy about it, decades later. The point is that your impact isn’t defined by a McKinsey trained head of HR who gamified a career ladder for you, or the opinion of “important people”. In fact, what impact means depends on where and (crucially) when you measure it. Some professions have longer reward cycles than a human lifetime. Great writers, artists and thinkers are often recognized posthumously. Doesn’t mean everyone should write poems, but we shouldn’t exacerbate a culture where you’re useless if you can’t charm your closest mediocre middle manager. Life is more.
      - tharkun__ 2y ago
        Oh absolutely agreed on lots of things being popularity contests. And I don't like that fact either. It's still important unfortunately. Your promotion at Enron still has meaning today because it bumped you up the career ladder early on in your career and your next job after that was a step up from that etc. 20 years of elevated salary because you climbed the career ladder early adds up to real dollars in your investment accounts. Do I like it? Absolutely not and I am trying to stay at the level I'm at right now for as long as I possibly can, because my job is not entirely a popularity contest and still has real good software engineering and actually building software that real people use and love in it. If I "climbed" any further all day every day would be a popularity contest. But I do recognize that being allowed to continue building that software requires (as in "it's important") to take part in some of these popularity contests. (talking paid work wise here - if you're OK to live in a basement doing meaningful open source work that will outlive you for the rest of your life and it makes you happy, then power to you - not most people's reality)

amonith 2y ago

"Appreciate" is a weird word. At least for me (not an English speaker) it has a positive connotation so with that in mind I sure hope nobody appreciates the importance of optics. The concept is dumb but it is important and we have to play the game to achieve anything.

afandian 2y ago
Appreciate has at least three entirely different meanings that I can think of. 1. To be grateful for something. 2. To fully understand something. 3. To increase in value I’m sure there are more. I read this as option 2.
- anshulbhide 2y ago
  Correct.
- amonith 2y ago
  Why did you read that as 2 though? Is there a context clue I'm missing or is there some grammar rule I don't know of? Honest question, I'm Polish. For me there's a huge gap between 1 and 2 so it might cause misunderstandings when used in a sentence. I despise a lot of things I fully understand and if I said I "appreciate" them - sounds weird.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - afandian 2y ago
    It's heuristics, not grammar. You usually appreciate a noun or noun phrase in a transitive sentence (X appreciates Y). Case 1: If it's something useful (e.g. 'your help', 'what you did') then it's more likely about being thankful. This use of 'appreciate' is also a social action. You say it to make someone feel good for helping. Case 2: If it's an abstract thing (e.g. 'the importance of', 'the difficulty of') then it's more likely you're talking about understanding. Usually when you talk about this usage it's because the _fact_ of understanding is important to the speech act. If someone explains the law of gravity you don't say "I appreciate that", you say "I understand that". But if you fell from a height and hurt yourself you can say "I didn't appreciate the law of gravity". Case 3: If it's intransitive and it's about money ('the car appreciated in value', 'the house appreciated in value').

dclowd9901 2y ago

Weirdly, optics have never mattered at all in small or startup companies. And they manage to do pretty well, ship a lot of product and become large companies. Maybe the problem isn’t the engineers, but the need for optics…

tightbookkeeper 2y ago
No organization with more than 1 person is immune from the effects of optics. If you think so, you may be blind to it.
- tonyedgecombe 2y ago
  It definitely gets worse as the organisation grows. There isn't much room to hide in a five person company whereas it's hard to be seen in a 5000 person organisation.
conjectures 2y ago
Nah, I think optics can matter at startups too.
- tonyedgecombe 2y ago
  For a lot of the ones that fail, yes.
jimbokun 2y ago
In that case it's the optics with the customers that matter. Which can be more rewarding to satisfy than the optics of just management. But still needs to be managed appropriately.
brundolf 2y ago
It's a matter of scale. "Optics" (as a separate concern) don't matter at orgs that are small enough that everyone can see everything (and/or has full trust in the people who do). Visibility and trust don't scale, hence the necessary evil of pageantry

amiljkovic 2y ago

What is optics??

kridsdale1 2y ago
The emotional perception of the quality of you, the worker, in the eyes of the leadership who pays you. It is distinct from your true value and contributions. It is maximized by you optimizing the visibility of things that boost reputation and minimizing the visibility of embarrassing things.
rglynn 2y ago
It's a term that has been adopted to sound more professional than "keeping up appearances" which is an age-old concept. It is about how things are/will be perceived by others, rather than the truth of the matter.
jrh3 2y ago
Perception is reality. (For better or worse.)

dsr_ 2y ago

I wear glasses, so I appreciate the importance of optics every day.