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These aren't anti-patterns. These are the realities of people being people and not cogs - people have desires and goals that extend beyond the realm of "Make th
by debacle 12y ago
These aren't anti-patterns. These are the realities of people being people and not cogs - people have desires and goals that extend beyond the realm of "Make this for me fast and don't screw up."
> Titles should be a reflection of the impact already achieved through hard work, not a license granted by a benevolent management.
I don't even really know what this means. It implies that titles are laurels without responsibility. I think what it really means is that titles are a tool for management to hold on a stick in front of employees.
> Leadership is something earned by gaining the respect of your peers through execution
I would say this has not been the case in any company I have worked at with more than 10 employees. I have never worked in an environment where at least one coworker (or manager) wasn't more qualified and deserving of leadership than someone above them. In fact, to the contrary, I have observed poor leadership as the greatest mitigable contributor to failure.
This article, in my opinion, is a bunch of feel-good management bullshit about workaholics and culture fit. The reality is that society produces a lot of bright, young, wide-eyed engineers and then browbeats them into doing really immensely boring things. The reality is that work is called work because it's not play, and you need to be sympathetic with your employees (because everyone wants to solve hard problems, be respected and admired, do cool things, make fat stacks, etc) but also guide them in balancing their personal desires with the responsibility to their salaried employment.
Every one of the behaviors that Eric outlines are natural behaviors. The job of a manager is to channel those desires into positive business outcomes, not sift through stacks of resumes for drones.
- scott_s 12y agoI don't even really know what this means. It implies that titles are laurels without responsibility. I think what it really means is that titles are a tool for management to hold on a stick in front of employees. I understood it to be something different. If someone gets the title "Senior Engineer", that means they have been acting like a senior engineer. The alternative would be not acting like a senior engineer until promoted to Senior Engineer. This is part of the author's larger point: your title does not limit your contributions. You don't need permission (a title) to act a certain way. Titles, then, are an acknowledgement, not a license.
- vonmoltke 12y agoNot at my last employer. Titles were frequently used as a reason to increase or discount the value of opinions or authority on matters. You didn't get the moral authority to act like a senior engineer until promoted to such. The only real exception to this was when the person with the title was The Outsider. Being a defense contractor, we had many long-running programs and people fairly regularly spent a decade or more on a single program. Among other things this led ti cliques of "old-timers" on programs who would be automatically suspicious of high-level people from outside who were brought in to "help".
- spacecowboy_lon 12y agoAnd very common and a lot stronger in some cultures than others. I suspect that some recent SV hiring trends will have incresed this tendancy - this could cause problems as a comapny coudl turn into a civil serivce orgaiastion but with out the flexability that has developed over the centurys in the british civil service Charlie Stoss's descriptions of the laundy are only a slight exageration and he only worked in local govenment :-)
- scott_s 12y agoI am not stating "this is how it is, everywhere." I am stating "this is how the author thinks it is at his company."
- king_jester 12y ago> This is part of the author's larger point: your title does not limit your contributions. You don't need permission (a title) to act a certain way. Titles, then, are an acknowledgement, not a license. While it's true you can do whatever you want, titling generally functions as a way to control or punish the output of a worker. I have seen folks with lesser titles do something that a manager doesn't agree with and then been censured for it being outside of their job duties. I have seen people with high titles be chided for doing small work that someone felt was below them. I have seen managers become untouchable by anyone below them because the manager title became a shield against any other non-manager's criticism or input. Titles service to reinforce the employee hierarchy that most business utilize. All the usual problems with that hierarchy are expressed through titles.