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There is a management principle here that the tech world doesn't seem to have internalised yet. It is linked to the basic problem that we can't measure programm
by roenxi 2y ago
There is a management principle here that the tech world doesn't seem to have internalised yet. It is linked to the basic problem that we can't measure programmer productivity.
Software tends to be modularised based on a company's management structure. What the components do tends to reflect the manager. When the manager changes, the software either starts to change too or succumbs to bitrot. It is pretty normal for tech companies to start listing after the original founders move on - even a company like Google or Microsoft with money and technically strong individual employees starts to mean regress as new managers come in who have a different and murkier vision than the founders.
With luck the transition can be from excellence to a different form of excellence, but the basic strategy people seem to have that management is to be encoded in the org structure and bureaucratic processes doesn't seem to work at preserving high-performing tech companies. It depends on specific people in key leadership positions. Because if they get swapped out there is no way to measure the productivity change less effective managers foist on developers until the company has notably mean regressed years later.
I'd bet something like this happened here. A team lead or someone was swapped out and replaced with someone who thought differently.
- julik 2y agoOr, what happens sometimes, a "team lead or someone" was replaced with a pack of freshly appointed team leads, with nobody being positioned to "break ties" with them and with an explicit ban on any sane engineering guidance "because we don't want to depend on one person". Then those team leads would try to drive their teams and efforts in alignment with the ways they saw familiar or acceptable, and with zero interest for the "big picture" - they would be focused on the survival of their position and their team only. Fiefdoms would emerge, and every little such fiefdom would be pulling the rug its way. With disastrous consequences for all of security, end user convenience, stability, resilience and malleability of the system.
- deltaburnt 2y agoThe zero interest in big picture and fiefdoms hits home pretty hard. Even if a subgroup wants to put emphasis on the big picture that's just one more set of hands on the rug. Suddenly you're spending more time arguing and fighting political battles instead of building great stuff. You can win some battles, but you have to have amazing persistence to not burn out or retreat to your subgroup mentality after a while. I really don't care if I disagree with top level technical leadership. Having no technical leadership is even worse.