3 ms·

Sometimes the real deliverable is a happy team

by glouwbug 11mo ago

bluGill 11mo ago
Only to the extent that a happy team delivers something of value. Teams can be happy doing things that will drive the company bankrupt. there is only so much unhappiness they can stand
- khaled_ismaeel 11mo ago
  If value can only be delivered by making a group of people miserable then maybe the definition of "value" is fundamentally wrong, like it was/is in the case of slavery.
  - latency-guy2 11mo ago
    Why misrepresent what someone else said to make your point?
  - mjr00 11mo ago
    Even outside the context of capitalism, society only functions when people perform unpleasant tasks which provide value. Nobody has fun collecting garbage, but it has to be done. Nobody finds happiness in digging graves, but it has to be done. Nobody is overjoyed at the prospect of telling a person they have a terminal illness, but it has to be done. So no, I don't really buy the idea that a team which is "forced" to work on boring, but profitable tasks for a business instead of getting to rewrite core infrastructure in Rust as a fun and interesting intellectual exercise is equivalent to slavery.
    - BigGreenJorts 11mo ago
      > Nobody has fun collecting garbage, but it has to be done. Nobody finds happiness in digging graves, but it has to be done. Nobody is overjoyed at the prospect of telling a person they have a terminal illness, but it has to be done. but we find ways to make the jobs of people who perform these tasks less horrific. We makes trucks that reduce the physical toll and increase the cleanliness of garbage pickup, we combine the digging of graves with the maintenance and beautification once they have been buried, sometimes you have to tell someone they have a terminal illness, but the majority of the time you are helping someone get their condition into remission. I think the critical balance that management has to achieve between "having a happy team" and "having a productive team" is finding ways to keep morale up so that employees don't lose their minds and quit or reduce performance doing the miserable stuff.
  - ratmeadow 11mo ago
    So I'm guessing most people are downvoting this as a knee jerk reaction to the comparison with slavery, but I think the core point is quite valid. At some point, if people are unhappy working towards some goal, you gotta re-evaluate if the goal is worthy. I consistently meet people in other industries who really enjoy their job, whereas in tech, most of the people I know consider their job to be one of the lowlights of their life. And I don't think it's a stretch to say many, many tech jobs are not serving a worthy goal. So it's disappointing to see people who can't look past "but business value bro", as if we got where we are because capitalism is some holy, inevitable universal law.
  - bluGill 11mo ago
    I wasn't referring to slavery. There are a number of cases where people are unhappy with their job, but go down the road to a competitor and everyone is happy. The industry/product are essentially the same, yet the happiness level is very different.
- ozim 11mo ago
  Not fun part is when team delivers good valuable stuff but market isn’t there.
  - sokoloff 11mo ago
    What valuable stuff was delivered if the market isn’t there?
    - oasisaimlessly 11mo ago
      Whatever the sales department failed to create a market for.
    - ozim 11mo ago
      It is always possible that dev team did all the code right, good product and still marketing failed or sales didn’t execute for plethora of reasons.
      - sokoloff 11mo ago
        It may have been “good”, but I don’t see how it was “valuable”. (I also think this is fairly common.)
        ozim 11mo ago
        Like OpenAI is losing money on each user - isn’t it valuable or is it? If they close tomorrow because of lack of new funding would you say whatever they created wasn’t valuable?
        sokoloff 11mo ago
        Are you suggesting/implying that OpenAI lacks product-market fit? I think they found a market for their product, making what they did valuable. That can still lose money for a time, and even maybe run out of money, but what they have is valuable to my mind.
- jjk166 11mo ago
  If the incentives of the team (team happiness) and the company (delivery of something of value) are misaligned, that's a much higher level failure. Either the engineering manager has been handed the wrong team or assigned the wrong task to accomplish. Setting high level goals for the engineering managers and allocating resources for them to achieve those goals is the entire purpose of senior leadership.

Sometimes the real deliverable is a happy team

Only to the extent that a happy team delivers something of value. Teams can be happy doing things that will drive the company bankrupt. there is only so much unhappiness they can stand

khaled_ismaeel 11mo ago
If value can only be delivered by making a group of people miserable then maybe the definition of "value" is fundamentally wrong, like it was/is in the case of slavery.
- latency-guy2 11mo ago
  Why misrepresent what someone else said to make your point?
- mjr00 11mo ago
  Even outside the context of capitalism, society only functions when people perform unpleasant tasks which provide value. Nobody has fun collecting garbage, but it has to be done. Nobody finds happiness in digging graves, but it has to be done. Nobody is overjoyed at the prospect of telling a person they have a terminal illness, but it has to be done. So no, I don't really buy the idea that a team which is "forced" to work on boring, but profitable tasks for a business instead of getting to rewrite core infrastructure in Rust as a fun and interesting intellectual exercise is equivalent to slavery.
  - BigGreenJorts 11mo ago
    > Nobody has fun collecting garbage, but it has to be done. Nobody finds happiness in digging graves, but it has to be done. Nobody is overjoyed at the prospect of telling a person they have a terminal illness, but it has to be done. but we find ways to make the jobs of people who perform these tasks less horrific. We makes trucks that reduce the physical toll and increase the cleanliness of garbage pickup, we combine the digging of graves with the maintenance and beautification once they have been buried, sometimes you have to tell someone they have a terminal illness, but the majority of the time you are helping someone get their condition into remission. I think the critical balance that management has to achieve between "having a happy team" and "having a productive team" is finding ways to keep morale up so that employees don't lose their minds and quit or reduce performance doing the miserable stuff.
- ratmeadow 11mo ago
  So I'm guessing most people are downvoting this as a knee jerk reaction to the comparison with slavery, but I think the core point is quite valid. At some point, if people are unhappy working towards some goal, you gotta re-evaluate if the goal is worthy. I consistently meet people in other industries who really enjoy their job, whereas in tech, most of the people I know consider their job to be one of the lowlights of their life. And I don't think it's a stretch to say many, many tech jobs are not serving a worthy goal. So it's disappointing to see people who can't look past "but business value bro", as if we got where we are because capitalism is some holy, inevitable universal law.
- bluGill 11mo ago
  I wasn't referring to slavery. There are a number of cases where people are unhappy with their job, but go down the road to a competitor and everyone is happy. The industry/product are essentially the same, yet the happiness level is very different.
ozim 11mo ago
Not fun part is when team delivers good valuable stuff but market isn’t there.
- sokoloff 11mo ago
  What valuable stuff was delivered if the market isn’t there?
  - oasisaimlessly 11mo ago
    Whatever the sales department failed to create a market for.
  - ozim 11mo ago
    It is always possible that dev team did all the code right, good product and still marketing failed or sales didn’t execute for plethora of reasons.
    - sokoloff 11mo ago
      It may have been “good”, but I don’t see how it was “valuable”. (I also think this is fairly common.)
      - ozim 11mo ago
        Like OpenAI is losing money on each user - isn’t it valuable or is it? If they close tomorrow because of lack of new funding would you say whatever they created wasn’t valuable?
        sokoloff 11mo ago
        Are you suggesting/implying that OpenAI lacks product-market fit? I think they found a market for their product, making what they did valuable. That can still lose money for a time, and even maybe run out of money, but what they have is valuable to my mind.
jjk166 11mo ago
If the incentives of the team (team happiness) and the company (delivery of something of value) are misaligned, that's a much higher level failure. Either the engineering manager has been handed the wrong team or assigned the wrong task to accomplish. Setting high level goals for the engineering managers and allocating resources for them to achieve those goals is the entire purpose of senior leadership.