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I was going to go from being an influential person that directly reported to the CEO, CTO, and CMO to reporting to one person with his own agenda: the CDS (Chie

I was going to go from being an influential person that directly reported to the CEO, CTO, and CMO to reporting to one person with his own agenda: the CDS (Chief Data Scientist). Here is what is going to happen next: He is going to get his own ideas about what I should work on, his own theories as to how to make the company grow faster, and his own vision as to what I should make. Prior to that it was obvious to everyone that I was killing it. I made the company a million dollars in my first month just by writing a custom classifier for adword optimization (this was back before some of this stuff was automated or startup-ified). But when he takes over what is going to happen next? He is going to take credit for his "idea" because he set me on the "path" to solving the problem or making more money. Fuck that noise, it's parasitism and par for the course for management.

dasil003 13y ago
Well this is why great engineers should opt more for startups—because you get the opportunity to move the needle directly and everyone can see it. But I don't think that means management is parasitic. The fact is that at a certain size all organizations need management, and a good manager helps you be productive. Whether you are recognized for that or whether credit gets usurped by your manager is a separate question.
- MadManE 13y ago
  The problem is that for most cases, management IS parasitic. It's only the edge cases with those great managers where they aren't.
  - dasil003 13y ago
    It's very easy to say that, but is it true? I am not so sure. Around here it's easy to piss on managers because we all have horror stories, but on the same token a lot of developers have no idea what it takes to organize and direct a large organization, so it's really no different than a suit ignorantly asking "What is so hard about programming? They just type a bit of text then hit a big red deploy button." As a CTO I have a foot in both camps, and I have to say there's a lot about management that developers don't know. In fact, my best management is never even known by my staff, they simply deal with a metric ton less bullshit due to a thankless move on my part—ignorance is bliss. Granted, it's probably easier for NNPMs to hang around an organization than NNPPs by virtue of tangibility, but I've seen enough NNPPs to know that programming is far from the transparent, egalitarian utopia that tech folks wish for.
    - RyanZAG 13y ago
      > In fact, my best management is never even known by my staff, they simply deal with a metric ton less bullshit due to a thankless move on my part—ignorance is bliss. You should try to keep your staff in the loop. Hiding things just means that you end up with a far bigger mess when you aren't able to shield them from it. If you keep your staff in the loop from day 1, it becomes far easier to deal with problems later. Because they won't even be problems then, just challenges that everyone knows about.
      - dasil003 13y ago
        That's awfully presumptuous of you since you have no idea what I'm talking about.
    - codeonfire 13y ago
      This is the quintessential management tactic, FUD it up. "Are you sure managers are playing games and trying to manipulate things?" The answer is yes, there ae hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars in compensation in play, of course managers are going to play games, steal credit, whatever it takes to stay employed and keep the money flowing.
      - dasil003 13y ago
        What are you talking about? This is not FUD, I'm telling you something that you seem to know nothing about, so maybe you should sit down and listen for a minute. Why makes you axiomatically claim "of course" managers are going to be sociopaths? That is not a given at all. There are good actors and bad actors on all sides. Do you think there aren't developers who play games to protect their turf and do the minimum to get by while collecting a paycheck from a business that they contribute nothing meaningful to?
- jimbokun 13y ago
  "Whether you are recognized for that or whether credit gets usurped by your manager is a separate question." Seems pretty tightly coupled to me. Losing individual contributors capable of implementing million dollar AdWord campaigns, for example, is going to have a big impact on the manager's team's productivity. So I think recognition and productivity are very tightly coupled.
avenger123 13y ago
This is wonderful insight and mostly true. The other major factor is that you are no longer in control of the message. I hate being in situations where it becomes a game of relay. The message always in some form gets mangled or in the worst case misconstrued when it goes from me to someone else and then the actual stakeholders. In your case you pretty much lose a lot of power since you can't just pop in to the relevant stakeholders without going through your new gatekeeper.
gaius 13y ago
CIO, fine, but someone who calls themselves, or is happy to be known as "Chief Data Scientist" is going to be insufferable.
ska 13y ago
It could have been a mistake on their part, but actual "parasitism" is pretty rare in practice. It's a shame if you haven't experienced good technical management yet. It is typical for a company to outgrow its early hires capability to manage that growth well; approx 50 people is a fundamental transition for most. This is difficult, often painful, and is likely to go more smoothly by adding relevant experience and maturity to the team. When the dust settles it's a different company and, if done well, capable of much more than it was.
robbiemitchell 13y ago
Management (beyond "team lead") is a fundamental shift away from being primarily a "build things" person to a "help everyone build things better" person. It's not just an advancement down a killer contributor path--it's a different path altogether. It comes with the shift in perspective that helping everyone on the team do better dwarfs your ability to do things yourself. You also take on the task of making sure everyone's individual skills and aspirations line up with the company's, that teams are developing well in parallel toward a unified vision, and so much more. Do you really want that job? If what fired you up most was your ability to kill it as an individual contributor, why not stay in that role and help hire someone else to take on the management side?
- nilkn 13y ago
  It sounds like he was worried that in the best case the manager would (perhaps unintentionally) get credit for his killer work and in the worst case the manager would actually hamper his work by trying to control him too much. It sounds somewhat petty, but I can sympathize because the company I work for is going through a similar transition and I've seen the strains that even a single extra manager can have on communication. If the CTO is the one who approves your raises, and now the CTO's opinion of you is not shaped by you but by reports of you created by an intermediate third-party, a lot of somewhat complex interacting variables just got introduced into the equation. If you start out at the bottom of a huge company like Google, you get used to that from the beginning. If you join a company with <=25 people and watch it grow, then you can really feel the transition sometimes.
ScottBurson 13y ago
Did you discuss your concerns with the CxOs? They're certainly valid, and the scenario you describe is a fairly likely outcome, but it might not have been inevitable. I know that if I were hired into a position like that I would make a point of acknowledging the contributions of those who had been there already. (It wouldn't stop me from being vocal about things I thought could be done better -- I would consider that my job -- but I certainly wouldn't try to take all the credit for what was already working well.) And after all, it sounds like you were to be involved in the interview process. You would have had an opportunity to help select a candidate you could work with. Maybe it still wouldn't have worked out, but it just seems unfortunate to me that you didn't even give it a try. Of course there could have been other factors you haven't mentioned.
- 3pt14159 13y ago
  I didn't really need to discuss it with the CxOs, because they'd insisted on a hierarchal company structure, while I wanted something more valve-like. Don't get me wrong, I really appreciated my time there and the people there are all really nice, in fact the company I founded recently is with two former FreshBookers, but I just want more freedom than people are usually willing to give me.
secabeen 13y ago
It's not necessarily true that a boss is going to take credit for your idea. The best managers pass credit for success down completely and block criticism by taking responsibility for errors. Certainly, many bosses don't act this way, but the good ones do.
eevilspock 13y ago
> Fuck that noise, it's parasitism The irony is that you work in advertising which itself is parasitism.

dasil003 13y ago

Well this is why great engineers should opt more for startups—because you get the opportunity to move the needle directly and everyone can see it. But I don't think that means management is parasitic. The fact is that at a certain size all organizations need management, and a good manager helps you be productive. Whether you are recognized for that or whether credit gets usurped by your manager is a separate question.

MadManE 13y ago
The problem is that for most cases, management IS parasitic. It's only the edge cases with those great managers where they aren't.
- dasil003 13y ago
  It's very easy to say that, but is it true? I am not so sure. Around here it's easy to piss on managers because we all have horror stories, but on the same token a lot of developers have no idea what it takes to organize and direct a large organization, so it's really no different than a suit ignorantly asking "What is so hard about programming? They just type a bit of text then hit a big red deploy button." As a CTO I have a foot in both camps, and I have to say there's a lot about management that developers don't know. In fact, my best management is never even known by my staff, they simply deal with a metric ton less bullshit due to a thankless move on my part—ignorance is bliss. Granted, it's probably easier for NNPMs to hang around an organization than NNPPs by virtue of tangibility, but I've seen enough NNPPs to know that programming is far from the transparent, egalitarian utopia that tech folks wish for.
  - RyanZAG 13y ago
    > In fact, my best management is never even known by my staff, they simply deal with a metric ton less bullshit due to a thankless move on my part—ignorance is bliss. You should try to keep your staff in the loop. Hiding things just means that you end up with a far bigger mess when you aren't able to shield them from it. If you keep your staff in the loop from day 1, it becomes far easier to deal with problems later. Because they won't even be problems then, just challenges that everyone knows about.
    - dasil003 13y ago
      That's awfully presumptuous of you since you have no idea what I'm talking about.
  - codeonfire 13y ago
    This is the quintessential management tactic, FUD it up. "Are you sure managers are playing games and trying to manipulate things?" The answer is yes, there ae hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars in compensation in play, of course managers are going to play games, steal credit, whatever it takes to stay employed and keep the money flowing.
    - dasil003 13y ago
      What are you talking about? This is not FUD, I'm telling you something that you seem to know nothing about, so maybe you should sit down and listen for a minute. Why makes you axiomatically claim "of course" managers are going to be sociopaths? That is not a given at all. There are good actors and bad actors on all sides. Do you think there aren't developers who play games to protect their turf and do the minimum to get by while collecting a paycheck from a business that they contribute nothing meaningful to?
jimbokun 13y ago
"Whether you are recognized for that or whether credit gets usurped by your manager is a separate question." Seems pretty tightly coupled to me. Losing individual contributors capable of implementing million dollar AdWord campaigns, for example, is going to have a big impact on the manager's team's productivity. So I think recognition and productivity are very tightly coupled.

avenger123 13y ago

This is wonderful insight and mostly true. The other major factor is that you are no longer in control of the message. I hate being in situations where it becomes a game of relay. The message always in some form gets mangled or in the worst case misconstrued when it goes from me to someone else and then the actual stakeholders. In your case you pretty much lose a lot of power since you can't just pop in to the relevant stakeholders without going through your new gatekeeper.

gaius 13y ago

CIO, fine, but someone who calls themselves, or is happy to be known as "Chief Data Scientist" is going to be insufferable.

ska 13y ago

It could have been a mistake on their part, but actual "parasitism" is pretty rare in practice. It's a shame if you haven't experienced good technical management yet. It is typical for a company to outgrow its early hires capability to manage that growth well; approx 50 people is a fundamental transition for most. This is difficult, often painful, and is likely to go more smoothly by adding relevant experience and maturity to the team. When the dust settles it's a different company and, if done well, capable of much more than it was.

robbiemitchell 13y ago

Management (beyond "team lead") is a fundamental shift away from being primarily a "build things" person to a "help everyone build things better" person. It's not just an advancement down a killer contributor path--it's a different path altogether. It comes with the shift in perspective that helping everyone on the team do better dwarfs your ability to do things yourself. You also take on the task of making sure everyone's individual skills and aspirations line up with the company's, that teams are developing well in parallel toward a unified vision, and so much more. Do you really want that job? If what fired you up most was your ability to kill it as an individual contributor, why not stay in that role and help hire someone else to take on the management side?

nilkn 13y ago
It sounds like he was worried that in the best case the manager would (perhaps unintentionally) get credit for his killer work and in the worst case the manager would actually hamper his work by trying to control him too much. It sounds somewhat petty, but I can sympathize because the company I work for is going through a similar transition and I've seen the strains that even a single extra manager can have on communication. If the CTO is the one who approves your raises, and now the CTO's opinion of you is not shaped by you but by reports of you created by an intermediate third-party, a lot of somewhat complex interacting variables just got introduced into the equation. If you start out at the bottom of a huge company like Google, you get used to that from the beginning. If you join a company with <=25 people and watch it grow, then you can really feel the transition sometimes.

ScottBurson 13y ago

Did you discuss your concerns with the CxOs? They're certainly valid, and the scenario you describe is a fairly likely outcome, but it might not have been inevitable. I know that if I were hired into a position like that I would make a point of acknowledging the contributions of those who had been there already. (It wouldn't stop me from being vocal about things I thought could be done better -- I would consider that my job -- but I certainly wouldn't try to take all the credit for what was already working well.) And after all, it sounds like you were to be involved in the interview process. You would have had an opportunity to help select a candidate you could work with. Maybe it still wouldn't have worked out, but it just seems unfortunate to me that you didn't even give it a try. Of course there could have been other factors you haven't mentioned.

3pt14159 13y ago
I didn't really need to discuss it with the CxOs, because they'd insisted on a hierarchal company structure, while I wanted something more valve-like. Don't get me wrong, I really appreciated my time there and the people there are all really nice, in fact the company I founded recently is with two former FreshBookers, but I just want more freedom than people are usually willing to give me.

secabeen 13y ago

It's not necessarily true that a boss is going to take credit for your idea. The best managers pass credit for success down completely and block criticism by taking responsibility for errors. Certainly, many bosses don't act this way, but the good ones do.

eevilspock 13y ago

> Fuck that noise, it's parasitism The irony is that you work in advertising which itself is parasitism.