8 ms·

I don't disagree with the article, but after working in big tech, two HN startups, a couple unicorns and others, in two continents, I don't really find this too

by whstl 1y ago

I don't disagree with the article, but after working in big tech, two HN startups, a couple unicorns and others, in two continents, I don't really find this too actionable. In the last ten years (and even in the 20-people HN startups), the day to day work of engineers has become so incredibly specialised and divorced from the needs of decision-makers and the customers that there is almost nothing I can do to influence whether someone views me as doing my job or not. Mainly because of the presence of Product Managers that insert themselves between engineers and the rest of the company. I'm always interested in delivering value, but the fight necessary to actually do so has become stressful. It's no longer a collaboration, all my contributions must be filtered through the ego of the person speaking to decision-makers. In fact, the only time I was actually satisfied with my work in the last 5 years (as opposed to my paycheck) was when I was acting as interim Product Manager for 9 months. Unsurprisingly, me and my team managed to deliver three projects that other teams tried and failed several times. Most of that was accomplished by communicating with stakeholders and actually figuring out what they needed, rather than endlessly "trying to put my own spin" on it. So yeah, I'm gonna keep delivering whatever is asked, getting the blame for bugs and not getting the credit for features. At least the pay is alright. I'm constantly searching for the place where I can actually fully contribute, though.

_fat_santa 1y ago
> At least the pay is alright. I don't know why but this part of your comment really stuck out to me. I have a whole different take on getting stuff done specifically at big tech companies, mainly that being "stagnant" is not such a bad thing at a place like Google or MS. Say you're like an L-whatever at one of these big tech companies and you bring home say $300k/yr. You don't live in a HCOL so the pay is astronomical compared to anywhere else and even if you work on the same boring project for 10 years there, you can still say you spent 10 years working at MS or Google and that would get you red carpet treatment just about anywhere. I'm sure this would bug a go-getter and would certainty bug a younger version of me, but if you're that kind of person you're most likely trying to work at a smaller company where you get more say and sway. And to add a bit more to this it's not like I don't care, it's just what I care about has changed over the years. When I was younger I was concerned with climbing the ladder and getting prompted. Now that I'm older I care way more about my family and friends than I do my company. If I was at one of these big tech companies and someone told me I was stagnant and would never get prompted I would just tell them so what. I bring home $300k for my family and I have a good work life balance (most likely). And do I really give a damn about the initiatives of some corporate behemoth, no and to be totally blunt the only thing I like about them is the paycheck and what it does for the rest of my life (all the free shit at the office is just a bonus).
- pydry 1y ago
  That sounds great if you can ride that into retirement but if you get laid off and you start having to justify your existence again in the job market I dont think "I took home $300k for doing nothing and then got laid off" is a great sell.
  - _fat_santa 1y ago
    But that's kinda the beauty of it. If you get laid off from one of these places the next place doesn't know that you took 300k home to do jack, all they know is you worked for a super prestigious company for 10 years and you can plausibly make up the rest about what you actually did there.
    - yawgmoth 1y ago
      > you can plausibly make up the rest about what you actually did there. I would never do this, and if you would do this I wouldn't want to work with you. Maybe I'm a sucker, but I sleep alright.
      - chausen 1y ago
        What about actually accomplishing some things over 10 years while maintaining good work life balance?
        whstl 1y ago
        That's the dream, but it requires either luck (to fall into a great company) or burning of political capital (plus luck).
      - dbalatero 1y ago
        It's not like the parent would have accomplished nothing in the 10 years. I think they are just talking about framing it in language palatable to the interviewer across the table.
theK 1y ago
So, fire the Product Managers?
- whstl 1y ago
  Or at least hold them accountable for failing to get things done and communicating badly with developers. Which is something that I'm yet to see. In previous companies, as an engineering manager, I had to burn a huge amount of political capital to steer my team in the right direction, several times. My people (engineers) want to achieve their goals and create value, and the higher-ups want working software making money. I don't see why this has become so hard to achieve.
  - lazide 1y ago
    Because it’s easier to create chaos for some people than it is to actually do what they are supposed to do.
  - switch007 1y ago
    How do the evade accountability so often and so deeply? It's bizarre.
    - whstl 1y ago
      By shielding decision-makers/customers and engineers. To give an example of when I had to burn political capital: I had to "skip rank" a few times and go directly to CEOs. They are appreciative when you provide concrete facts, such as "I worked for two weeks on the redesign of this page that zero people use and I'm frankly tired of this bullshit".
      - lazystar 1y ago
        CEO's and VP's and customers appreciate this type of work, but YMMV. Speaking from experience, you'll be surrounded by more enemies in your day-to-day when the side effect of your customer obsession negatively impacts the KPI's that are used to stack rank your direct management chain against other teams and managers. it is quite kafkaesque to be treated as the black sheep after you save $10m a year for the org, then get a pay decrease + meets expectations 8 months later.
devrandoom 1y ago
Also bear in mind that you're slowly strolling on the road to burnout.
- whstl 1y ago
  Definitely. It took me years to realize it but I became kind of a magnet for dysfunctional organizations. Apart from the current one and the previous YC startup, it was just bloated places that barely shipped anything.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
deadbabe 1y ago
So you’re saying the only time you were satisfied with your work is when you took the role of a product manager who stepped in between the engineers and the rest of the company and had all their contributions filtered through your ego? Yea, that sounds pretty satisfying…
- phkahler 1y ago
  >> Unsurprisingly, me and my team managed to deliver three projects that other teams tried and failed several times. Not sure how important delivery was to the company, but it's nice when your personal goals match those of the company.
- whstl 1y ago
  No. Keep in mind that: - I didn't step in between engineers and the company. I am an engineer. - I didn't step in between my team and the decision makers. It wasn't me who "invented" the requirements, nor it was me who said the projects were complete. - It was the only time in the last few years where I could actually follow the advice in this article and ship things people need. Because I could TALK with people. - My entire team got salary increases all across the board. - Everyone has an ego, and everyone has a personality. But nobody in a team should get to put "more" of their personality over the others. We had brand guidelines and accessibility requirements, but other than that we decided things together.
  - peterldowns 1y ago
    Based. Nice work!
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
codingbot3000 1y ago
Out of curiosity: Why didn't you continue being product manager?
- sharkweek 1y ago
  I read the comment and had the same question! I did this myself and ended up with a really satisfying 4ish years as a PM. That being said while I was perhaps fairly cynical about why PMs needed to exist before trying the role myself, after being in the role for an extended period of time, fully understand why the role exists now. Of course there can be bad PMs, a good/great one is super worth it.
  - whstl 1y ago
    We probably agree with each other! I'm not really cynical, and even before I wasn't! I just think it's a role that's way too critical, and a bad PM can do a lot of damage.
- whstl 1y ago
  Good question. Mostly politics, I guess? The CTO was about to be fired, so I had nobody to fight for me. The Chief of Product didn't like the optics of a non-PM being more successful than a PM in delivering work. (EDIT: As I said, I delivered from start-to-finish 3 projects that other teams had considered "impossible", mostly because of bad specifications and overengineering, often caused by PM miscommunication. The PMs of other teams REALLY took the blame here: one was fired and sued by the company before I joined, and the other confessed to me he was "asked to leave") As for why I don't change careers, I'm an Engineering Manager and I made twice as much money than a senior PM at my previous organization. I still long for a position where I can be both technical, product and business minded. But I guess the only job where I can do that is as a founder.
  - johnnyanmac 1y ago
    >The Chief of Product didn't like the optics of a non-PM being more successful than a PM in delivering work. Its crabs all the way down: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality That is one big reason I want to remain an IC for my career. There's slightly less ego to deal with and usually more passion among people compared to management. That passion is pretty much the main thing keeping me in this career.
aprdm 1y ago
This really depends on the company. There are many companies where eng has way more weight than PM. And that eng aren't so divorced from customers. Even big tech.
- whstl 1y ago
  I kinda keep hoping to get into one of those but so far only tiny startups are like this. Maybe I should go back to big tech.
  - aprdm 1y ago
    Yeah I should go one step deeper, on big tech, it also depends a lot on the org inside the company sometimes.
malthaus 1y ago
communication is probably the most important skillset in any organisation and 9 months of interim work is not sufficient enough for you to realize it. so this reads like any other salty engineer who thinks he's smarter than everyone in the org, business people are useless and if only he would yield decision power, all issues would be solved immediately. but guess what, it's usually not true and that mindset is usually not good to collaborate with either.
- whstl 1y ago
  I guess actually delivering work according to specifications and making both stakeholders and customer's lives easier is never gonna be good enough for the peanut gallery. And it's not about having "decision power", whatever that means. I was there to collaborate, listen, document, communicate down and deliver. And I did. I got my raise, my team got raises, projects were completed, management was happy, customers are using it to this day. I wanted to be in control of my career and my output like the article describes. For nine months, I was. Everything else is bullshit rationalization.
conrs 1y ago
I've had a very hard time with the Product Manager discipline. From the books and podcasts like Lenny's, it all makes perfect sense, but it seems like in practice it is as you described - they've inserted themselves in between and often don't represent either side well. It's lead me to develop product management skills myself, which are honestly incredibly useful in avoiding wasted effort. But it does make me wonder whether the dichotomy is worth it or if product management should be part of a senior engineer's skillset.
- yks 1y ago
  any concise introduction into those skills you could recommend?
  - conrs 1y ago
    I forgot to follow up here, so apologies for the delay. Honestly, concise is a challenge here. Here is a lot of words, and they barely scratch the surface, but just in case they might be helpful: - Embracing the idea of a manual valuable process is a great one - as engineers we often want to start by automating and/or building, and dive right in - only to realize later we either didn't understand the product, or our stakeholder didn't and now wants changes once they've seen what it does. (Deeper dives here: "Escaping the Build Trap"[1], "The Minimalist Entrepreneur"[2] - Understanding negotiation is extremely helpful as you are often operating under constraints, and need to get those across to your stakeholders such that you can both move forward together. Negotiation is basically about aligning two stakeholders with different goals and arriving at an arrangement they can both live with. (Highly recommend "Negotiate without Fear"[3]) - Another excellent concept surrounds the theory of constraints and getting good at recognizing bottlenecks, and subordinating all other processes to them. Essentially, if work is piling up somewhere, look at where it is coming from, and attempt to re-route those efforts to something productive (the bottleneck moves the same speed regardless of how much work is piled up in front of it). The classic book on this matter is "The Goal"[4] but a fun retelling more oriented around an IT department is "The Phoenix Project"[5]. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Escaping-Build-Trap-Effective-Management/dp/149197379X https://www.amazon.com/Escaping-Build-Trap-Effective-Managem... [2] https://www.amazon.com/Minimalist-Entrepreneur-Great-Founders-More/dp/0593192397 https://www.amazon.com/Minimalist-Entrepreneur-Great-Founder... [3] https://www.amazon.com/Negotiate-without-Fear-Strategies-Maximize/dp/1119719097 https://www.amazon.com/Negotiate-without-Fear-Strategies-Max... [4] https://www.amazon.com/Goal-Process-Ongoing-Improvement/dp/0884271951 https://www.amazon.com/Goal-Process-Ongoing-Improvement/dp/0... [5] https://www.amazon.com/Phoenix-Project-DevOps-Helping-Business/dp/0988262592 https://www.amazon.com/Phoenix-Project-DevOps-Helping-Busine...
PaulHoule 1y ago
Behind any web application that works there is a gardener.

by whstl 1y ago

_fat_santa 1y ago

> At least the pay is alright. I don't know why but this part of your comment really stuck out to me. I have a whole different take on getting stuff done specifically at big tech companies, mainly that being "stagnant" is not such a bad thing at a place like Google or MS. Say you're like an L-whatever at one of these big tech companies and you bring home say $300k/yr. You don't live in a HCOL so the pay is astronomical compared to anywhere else and even if you work on the same boring project for 10 years there, you can still say you spent 10 years working at MS or Google and that would get you red carpet treatment just about anywhere. I'm sure this would bug a go-getter and would certainty bug a younger version of me, but if you're that kind of person you're most likely trying to work at a smaller company where you get more say and sway. And to add a bit more to this it's not like I don't care, it's just what I care about has changed over the years. When I was younger I was concerned with climbing the ladder and getting prompted. Now that I'm older I care way more about my family and friends than I do my company. If I was at one of these big tech companies and someone told me I was stagnant and would never get prompted I would just tell them so what. I bring home $300k for my family and I have a good work life balance (most likely). And do I really give a damn about the initiatives of some corporate behemoth, no and to be totally blunt the only thing I like about them is the paycheck and what it does for the rest of my life (all the free shit at the office is just a bonus).

pydry 1y ago
That sounds great if you can ride that into retirement but if you get laid off and you start having to justify your existence again in the job market I dont think "I took home $300k for doing nothing and then got laid off" is a great sell.
- _fat_santa 1y ago
  But that's kinda the beauty of it. If you get laid off from one of these places the next place doesn't know that you took 300k home to do jack, all they know is you worked for a super prestigious company for 10 years and you can plausibly make up the rest about what you actually did there.
  - yawgmoth 1y ago
    > you can plausibly make up the rest about what you actually did there. I would never do this, and if you would do this I wouldn't want to work with you. Maybe I'm a sucker, but I sleep alright.
    - chausen 1y ago
      What about actually accomplishing some things over 10 years while maintaining good work life balance?
      - whstl 1y ago
        That's the dream, but it requires either luck (to fall into a great company) or burning of political capital (plus luck).
    - dbalatero 1y ago
      It's not like the parent would have accomplished nothing in the 10 years. I think they are just talking about framing it in language palatable to the interviewer across the table.

theK 1y ago

So, fire the Product Managers?

whstl 1y ago
Or at least hold them accountable for failing to get things done and communicating badly with developers. Which is something that I'm yet to see. In previous companies, as an engineering manager, I had to burn a huge amount of political capital to steer my team in the right direction, several times. My people (engineers) want to achieve their goals and create value, and the higher-ups want working software making money. I don't see why this has become so hard to achieve.
- lazide 1y ago
  Because it’s easier to create chaos for some people than it is to actually do what they are supposed to do.
- switch007 1y ago
  How do the evade accountability so often and so deeply? It's bizarre.
  - whstl 1y ago
    By shielding decision-makers/customers and engineers. To give an example of when I had to burn political capital: I had to "skip rank" a few times and go directly to CEOs. They are appreciative when you provide concrete facts, such as "I worked for two weeks on the redesign of this page that zero people use and I'm frankly tired of this bullshit".
    - lazystar 1y ago
      CEO's and VP's and customers appreciate this type of work, but YMMV. Speaking from experience, you'll be surrounded by more enemies in your day-to-day when the side effect of your customer obsession negatively impacts the KPI's that are used to stack rank your direct management chain against other teams and managers. it is quite kafkaesque to be treated as the black sheep after you save $10m a year for the org, then get a pay decrease + meets expectations 8 months later.

devrandoom 1y ago

Also bear in mind that you're slowly strolling on the road to burnout.

whstl 1y ago
Definitely. It took me years to realize it but I became kind of a magnet for dysfunctional organizations. Apart from the current one and the previous YC startup, it was just bloated places that barely shipped anything.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

deadbabe 1y ago

So you’re saying the only time you were satisfied with your work is when you took the role of a product manager who stepped in between the engineers and the rest of the company and had all their contributions filtered through your ego? Yea, that sounds pretty satisfying…

phkahler 1y ago
>> Unsurprisingly, me and my team managed to deliver three projects that other teams tried and failed several times. Not sure how important delivery was to the company, but it's nice when your personal goals match those of the company.
whstl 1y ago
No. Keep in mind that: - I didn't step in between engineers and the company. I am an engineer. - I didn't step in between my team and the decision makers. It wasn't me who "invented" the requirements, nor it was me who said the projects were complete. - It was the only time in the last few years where I could actually follow the advice in this article and ship things people need. Because I could TALK with people. - My entire team got salary increases all across the board. - Everyone has an ego, and everyone has a personality. But nobody in a team should get to put "more" of their personality over the others. We had brand guidelines and accessibility requirements, but other than that we decided things together.
- peterldowns 1y ago
  Based. Nice work!
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

codingbot3000 1y ago

Out of curiosity: Why didn't you continue being product manager?

sharkweek 1y ago
I read the comment and had the same question! I did this myself and ended up with a really satisfying 4ish years as a PM. That being said while I was perhaps fairly cynical about why PMs needed to exist before trying the role myself, after being in the role for an extended period of time, fully understand why the role exists now. Of course there can be bad PMs, a good/great one is super worth it.
- whstl 1y ago
  We probably agree with each other! I'm not really cynical, and even before I wasn't! I just think it's a role that's way too critical, and a bad PM can do a lot of damage.
whstl 1y ago
Good question. Mostly politics, I guess? The CTO was about to be fired, so I had nobody to fight for me. The Chief of Product didn't like the optics of a non-PM being more successful than a PM in delivering work. (EDIT: As I said, I delivered from start-to-finish 3 projects that other teams had considered "impossible", mostly because of bad specifications and overengineering, often caused by PM miscommunication. The PMs of other teams REALLY took the blame here: one was fired and sued by the company before I joined, and the other confessed to me he was "asked to leave") As for why I don't change careers, I'm an Engineering Manager and I made twice as much money than a senior PM at my previous organization. I still long for a position where I can be both technical, product and business minded. But I guess the only job where I can do that is as a founder.
- johnnyanmac 1y ago
  >The Chief of Product didn't like the optics of a non-PM being more successful than a PM in delivering work. Its crabs all the way down: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality That is one big reason I want to remain an IC for my career. There's slightly less ego to deal with and usually more passion among people compared to management. That passion is pretty much the main thing keeping me in this career.

aprdm 1y ago

This really depends on the company. There are many companies where eng has way more weight than PM. And that eng aren't so divorced from customers. Even big tech.

whstl 1y ago
I kinda keep hoping to get into one of those but so far only tiny startups are like this. Maybe I should go back to big tech.
- aprdm 1y ago
  Yeah I should go one step deeper, on big tech, it also depends a lot on the org inside the company sometimes.

malthaus 1y ago

communication is probably the most important skillset in any organisation and 9 months of interim work is not sufficient enough for you to realize it. so this reads like any other salty engineer who thinks he's smarter than everyone in the org, business people are useless and if only he would yield decision power, all issues would be solved immediately. but guess what, it's usually not true and that mindset is usually not good to collaborate with either.

whstl 1y ago
I guess actually delivering work according to specifications and making both stakeholders and customer's lives easier is never gonna be good enough for the peanut gallery. And it's not about having "decision power", whatever that means. I was there to collaborate, listen, document, communicate down and deliver. And I did. I got my raise, my team got raises, projects were completed, management was happy, customers are using it to this day. I wanted to be in control of my career and my output like the article describes. For nine months, I was. Everything else is bullshit rationalization.

conrs 1y ago

I've had a very hard time with the Product Manager discipline. From the books and podcasts like Lenny's, it all makes perfect sense, but it seems like in practice it is as you described - they've inserted themselves in between and often don't represent either side well. It's lead me to develop product management skills myself, which are honestly incredibly useful in avoiding wasted effort. But it does make me wonder whether the dichotomy is worth it or if product management should be part of a senior engineer's skillset.

yks 1y ago
any concise introduction into those skills you could recommend?
- conrs 1y ago
  I forgot to follow up here, so apologies for the delay. Honestly, concise is a challenge here. Here is a lot of words, and they barely scratch the surface, but just in case they might be helpful: - Embracing the idea of a manual valuable process is a great one - as engineers we often want to start by automating and/or building, and dive right in - only to realize later we either didn't understand the product, or our stakeholder didn't and now wants changes once they've seen what it does. (Deeper dives here: "Escaping the Build Trap"[1], "The Minimalist Entrepreneur"[2] - Understanding negotiation is extremely helpful as you are often operating under constraints, and need to get those across to your stakeholders such that you can both move forward together. Negotiation is basically about aligning two stakeholders with different goals and arriving at an arrangement they can both live with. (Highly recommend "Negotiate without Fear"[3]) - Another excellent concept surrounds the theory of constraints and getting good at recognizing bottlenecks, and subordinating all other processes to them. Essentially, if work is piling up somewhere, look at where it is coming from, and attempt to re-route those efforts to something productive (the bottleneck moves the same speed regardless of how much work is piled up in front of it). The classic book on this matter is "The Goal"[4] but a fun retelling more oriented around an IT department is "The Phoenix Project"[5]. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Escaping-Build-Trap-Effective-Management/dp/149197379X https://www.amazon.com/Escaping-Build-Trap-Effective-Managem... [2] https://www.amazon.com/Minimalist-Entrepreneur-Great-Founders-More/dp/0593192397 https://www.amazon.com/Minimalist-Entrepreneur-Great-Founder... [3] https://www.amazon.com/Negotiate-without-Fear-Strategies-Maximize/dp/1119719097 https://www.amazon.com/Negotiate-without-Fear-Strategies-Max... [4] https://www.amazon.com/Goal-Process-Ongoing-Improvement/dp/0884271951 https://www.amazon.com/Goal-Process-Ongoing-Improvement/dp/0... [5] https://www.amazon.com/Phoenix-Project-DevOps-Helping-Business/dp/0988262592 https://www.amazon.com/Phoenix-Project-DevOps-Helping-Busine...

PaulHoule 1y ago

Behind any web application that works there is a gardener.