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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 c

by 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.
    - whstl 1y ago
      Your reply sounds too ironic and too real at the same time. :D But you're 100% right. You have to know when to use the nuclear button. And sometimes you can't press it, which means you take a backseat and watch the company burn money for no reason. This is the point where I start agreeing with _fat_santa's post [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=_fat_santa https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=_fat_santa
- lazide 1y ago
  Usually the same way folks like Trump do it. DARVO, leverage, etc. etc.
FireBeyond 1y ago
But that can go both ways. As a PM at a previous "engineering-led" company I was on more than one occasions given a prototype that Engineering had been working on for several months (with zero Product awareness, let alone input), and told "here, shoehorn a PRD and PMF around what we already built". In this case, the failure was my PM leadership. I said "I'm not sure about this, I think we need to do more research and figure things out", and got called out for "not being a passionate advocate and evangelist for my products". So I dug in, and with many iterations, and experiments with Engineering we came to something that did have some traction... "You need to strongly hold your opinion!" (Uhhh...) "Four months ago you weren't convinced about this, now you are!" It's all about the political capital, whomever you are. Sadly.
- whstl 1y ago
  Yep exactly that. It doesn’t matter how much you work or how quantitatively successful you are, there will always be a narcissistic asshole ready to put you down for some made up reason.

by whstl 1y ago

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.
  - whstl 1y ago
    Your reply sounds too ironic and too real at the same time. :D But you're 100% right. You have to know when to use the nuclear button. And sometimes you can't press it, which means you take a backseat and watch the company burn money for no reason. This is the point where I start agreeing with _fat_santa's post [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=_fat_santa https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=_fat_santa
lazide 1y ago
Usually the same way folks like Trump do it. DARVO, leverage, etc. etc.

FireBeyond 1y ago

But that can go both ways. As a PM at a previous "engineering-led" company I was on more than one occasions given a prototype that Engineering had been working on for several months (with zero Product awareness, let alone input), and told "here, shoehorn a PRD and PMF around what we already built". In this case, the failure was my PM leadership. I said "I'm not sure about this, I think we need to do more research and figure things out", and got called out for "not being a passionate advocate and evangelist for my products". So I dug in, and with many iterations, and experiments with Engineering we came to something that did have some traction... "You need to strongly hold your opinion!" (Uhhh...) "Four months ago you weren't convinced about this, now you are!" It's all about the political capital, whomever you are. Sadly.

whstl 1y ago
Yep exactly that. It doesn’t matter how much you work or how quantitatively successful you are, there will always be a narcissistic asshole ready to put you down for some made up reason.