5 ms·

Incompetent management is a plague on the industry. And the cause of it is that programmers are relatively low status. In so many businesses, there are "busin

by MCRed 12y ago

Incompetent management is a plague on the industry. And the cause of it is that programmers are relatively low status. In so many businesses, there are "business guys" who end up managing the engineering staff-- at one level or another, but too often it's the direct manager role--and these business guys are incompetent at engineering. When you don't know whether a direct report is doing good or not because you don't understand what their doing, by definition you cannot manage them. What are you going to do? Listen to the other programmers opinion of their code? It immediately becomes political. The real tragedy is, learning business is not hard. Any programmer can do it. Biz guys can't learn programming-- despite all the "everyone should be a programmer" initiatives-- even easier is managing development teams. When you've got 10 years experience as a senior engineer, you should be promoted, and working on becoming an engineering manager. Engineering managers can develop code. Right now this role is called "lead engineer" but they have no people management responsibilities. This is something we, as engineers need to change. So long as the "people managers" are biz guys who don't understand engineering (and naturally are often hostile to it) good engineers are going to get fired, and our entire profession will continue to slip lower and lower in status.

rdtsc 12y ago
When you interview ask how many people with MBAs and no programming experience you'll be working under. That is a good heuristic for future pain and frustration. Managers who are good engineers don't always manage well. Managers who have never been engineers are usually worse. > When you don't know whether a direct report is doing good or not because you don't understand what their doing, by definition you cannot manage them Especially middle managers, if they are not the owner and have their own managers on top of them, who also don't know how engineering works, there will be trouble. Because they are stuck in the middle. They have to please the ones on the top, without understanding how the programming actually works. So they'll make promises then turn around to you and tell you to work 70 hour weeks. > So long as the "people managers" are biz guys who don't understand engineering It is hard. The more time they spend managing and coordinating the less time they spend writing code. The less time they spend writing code the further they move from understanding what is involved. They just forget, or practices and tools change. Besides leadership is the key. That is as much learned as it is just a personality trait. It ties into how they relate socially to others, how they solve social and political problems. It requires empathy, but also harshness and coldness at times. I can be learned by I wouldn't discount it too trivial.
- MCRed 12y ago
  Oh, I think it's ok if the manager, with an engineering background, spends a lot of time managing and not a lot of time writing code. They may be further away from understanding the details of the product, but that's ok. I experienced this personally when I architected a product, the team grew and the product grew and before long there were modules that I had never worked on. I don't think the manager of engineers needs to be as strong as the other engineers on the team, but they have to understand engineering on a fundamental level, and be able to look at code code and comprehend it, even if they don't know the whole product, or all the details.
- rralian 12y ago
  > When you interview ask how many people with MBAs and no programming experience you'll be working under. If someone asked that, I would probably consider that a red flag, that they are mistrustful of "business types" and probably difficult to work with.
  - rdtsc 12y ago
    There are other less direct ways to pose the question.
    - johnny_utah 12y ago
      It's easy enough to skip the question altogether and do a quick google search on the people with whom you would be working.
    - codeonfire 12y ago
      Why even ask it. My method is find the org chart depth with log_1.5(company size). Then divide that number by 1/2 execs, 1/2 managers. Guess the roles then go look at random people on linked-in. You can get a good feel for how the company is internally based on that.
  - jasonlotito 12y ago
    > I would probably consider that a red flag I would not. I would assume they want to work under people with experience in their field and learn from them. The thing about your advice (and mine, and most all interview advice) is that it's mostly useless. It's only beneficial to people interviewing you, and if it's beneficial to them, it's bad for you. After all, if they would ask that question, but they know not to, they are still that person you would mistrust. The reality is, people should ask these types of questions. If you wouldn't hire them because of that question, it's likely the would not enjoy working at your company.
marssaxman 12y ago
I'm not sure what you mean by "slip lower and lower in status". The software industry has worked pretty much the way you describe as long as I've been a part of it, and I haven't noticed any sort of diminution of status for software engineers. If anything, the trends go the other way: the industry has embraced the idea of a non-management career development track for engineers. Big companies like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon have very well established high-level engineering roles which do not involve people-management, precisely so that they can allow engineers to continue developing as engineers.
- kelnos 12y ago
  I think he means within an organization, not in the industry as a whole. I've noticed this, too. When a company is small and engineer-heavy, the engineers generally have a lot of autonomy and influence over the what and how of the product. As the company grows and layers of management are added, the "leaf node" engineers lose a lot of influence, and their opinions on what the company should be building tend to be less regarded, and often ignored.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
  "Software engineers are low status" is a thing I've seen start to pop up a lot more recently, the reasoning seems to be, basically, 'field's full of nerds and society is run by jocks', and is often used as an apology for why women don't go into computer science.
rcoder 12y ago
While I agree with the basic tenet that experienced developers make better direct managers for other developers, I strongly disagree that "any programmer can do it", or that "biz guys can't learn programming", much less the assertion that "business" is somehow trivially easy compared to coding. Doing a good job as a manager is hard. You need to triangulate between a lot of disparate opinions and viewpoints, negotiate compromises, and help your team develop and advance without hurting the larger group's goals. It takes empathy, good communication, and the ability to squelch your own opinion when circumstances call for it. None of those attributes are universal in engineers. In fact, just about everything in a startup is hard: sales, recruiting, design, marketing, etc. Pretending otherwise or asserting that only engineers have something special to contribute is IMHO toxic and short-sighted.
- crusso 12y ago
  "toxic" is such a great word in this context. I've seen this kind of disrespect for other parts of the organization take down a small company that was otherwise performing just fine.
- badloginagain 12y ago
  I think this is a really good insight, a lot of the problems people in this thread have complained about can be attributed to bad managers. Balancing business requirements and technical requirements is a difficult thing to do, all the while ensuring everyone feels special/validated/acknowledged. Parsing out what each camp feels is the most important thing to do, and translating that to something each camp can understand is one of those critical management skills that is hard to teach. Every programmer needs to know management- even if to just manage oneself. But the better you can communicate the reality of of your technical requirements, the better the business unit will be able to prioritize their requirements. It shouldn't be us vs. them.
- voidhorse 12y ago
  Yup. Both you and the op of this thread are correct. Managers not knowing enough about the field they manage can cause problems. In the same way employees not knowing enough about managing can also cause problems. Essentially, if either side views itself in some way superior than the other (the manager usually views his job as more important in the grander scheme, and naturally is in a position of control and thus thinks himself superior, the employee views himself as the one who actually knows how/is doing the work and thus views himself as superior) problems can and probably (at some point) will occur. Respect for all the different fields that go into making a company work is a very necessary thing to keep everything running smoothly--this way the company is only battling what the world throws at it/unavoidable risks and problems that occur--not itself.
crusso 12y ago
The real tragedy is, learning business is not hard. Any programmer can do it. As a person who's switched back and forth between the technical person, the manager, and the business developer - I can tell you that all of the roles in the company take skill to do properly.
- rday 12y ago
  I agree. All the roles are hard to master. Why have I, in the past 5 years, learned a tremendous amount about markets, equity, accounting, law, pricing, and I don't even know what else. But the business masters (all of them) I've been working with still can't update a webpage? Just one person's experience, I know. But it's still funny to me.
  - crusso 12y ago
    I'm with you both in the fact that I started from engineering and learned about many other disciplines as I went along. Also, I'd agree that most other disciplines don't bother to learn engineering/programming. When you're an engineer, the ugly truth is that to increase your salary and opportunities, you normally need to branch out and learn other things like management and sales. When you're a good salesperson, you can reach great heights financially without worrying about how to update a web page.
- meowface 12y ago
  You're right, but it's no doubt much easier for an engineer to learn business and sales than for a business person to become good at programming and write production code daily.
  - crusso 12y ago
    Learning a little programming isn't any harder than learning something about management or sales - it's just that most people don't bother to do it. My mom was 60 when she started learning HTML and javascript. She does just fine updating web pages, forms, etc. for her quilting and singing groups. I have a lot of respect for good engineers, good managers, and good salespeople. Saying that one discipline is harder than the other is like saying that being a good violin player is any harder than being a good piano player.
pbiggar 12y ago
It sounds like you're implying that GitHub has "incompetent management" where "people mananger are biz guys who don't understand engineering". However, Zach doesn't appear to say any of these things, so it seems a pretty unfair implication to make.
joshuahutt 12y ago
I think two things you are overlooking is (1) not all engineers want to manage others, and (2) not everyone who "learns business" can be a good manager. Forcing engineering people into management roles after they have accrued a certain amount of experience is not the answer.

by MCRed 12y ago

rdtsc 12y ago

When you interview ask how many people with MBAs and no programming experience you'll be working under. That is a good heuristic for future pain and frustration. Managers who are good engineers don't always manage well. Managers who have never been engineers are usually worse. > When you don't know whether a direct report is doing good or not because you don't understand what their doing, by definition you cannot manage them Especially middle managers, if they are not the owner and have their own managers on top of them, who also don't know how engineering works, there will be trouble. Because they are stuck in the middle. They have to please the ones on the top, without understanding how the programming actually works. So they'll make promises then turn around to you and tell you to work 70 hour weeks. > So long as the "people managers" are biz guys who don't understand engineering It is hard. The more time they spend managing and coordinating the less time they spend writing code. The less time they spend writing code the further they move from understanding what is involved. They just forget, or practices and tools change. Besides leadership is the key. That is as much learned as it is just a personality trait. It ties into how they relate socially to others, how they solve social and political problems. It requires empathy, but also harshness and coldness at times. I can be learned by I wouldn't discount it too trivial.

MCRed 12y ago
Oh, I think it's ok if the manager, with an engineering background, spends a lot of time managing and not a lot of time writing code. They may be further away from understanding the details of the product, but that's ok. I experienced this personally when I architected a product, the team grew and the product grew and before long there were modules that I had never worked on. I don't think the manager of engineers needs to be as strong as the other engineers on the team, but they have to understand engineering on a fundamental level, and be able to look at code code and comprehend it, even if they don't know the whole product, or all the details.
rralian 12y ago
> When you interview ask how many people with MBAs and no programming experience you'll be working under. If someone asked that, I would probably consider that a red flag, that they are mistrustful of "business types" and probably difficult to work with.
- rdtsc 12y ago
  There are other less direct ways to pose the question.
  - johnny_utah 12y ago
    It's easy enough to skip the question altogether and do a quick google search on the people with whom you would be working.
  - codeonfire 12y ago
    Why even ask it. My method is find the org chart depth with log_1.5(company size). Then divide that number by 1/2 execs, 1/2 managers. Guess the roles then go look at random people on linked-in. You can get a good feel for how the company is internally based on that.
- jasonlotito 12y ago
  > I would probably consider that a red flag I would not. I would assume they want to work under people with experience in their field and learn from them. The thing about your advice (and mine, and most all interview advice) is that it's mostly useless. It's only beneficial to people interviewing you, and if it's beneficial to them, it's bad for you. After all, if they would ask that question, but they know not to, they are still that person you would mistrust. The reality is, people should ask these types of questions. If you wouldn't hire them because of that question, it's likely the would not enjoy working at your company.

marssaxman 12y ago

I'm not sure what you mean by "slip lower and lower in status". The software industry has worked pretty much the way you describe as long as I've been a part of it, and I haven't noticed any sort of diminution of status for software engineers. If anything, the trends go the other way: the industry has embraced the idea of a non-management career development track for engineers. Big companies like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon have very well established high-level engineering roles which do not involve people-management, precisely so that they can allow engineers to continue developing as engineers.

kelnos 12y ago
I think he means within an organization, not in the industry as a whole. I've noticed this, too. When a company is small and engineer-heavy, the engineers generally have a lot of autonomy and influence over the what and how of the product. As the company grows and layers of management are added, the "leaf node" engineers lose a lot of influence, and their opinions on what the company should be building tend to be less regarded, and often ignored.
GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
"Software engineers are low status" is a thing I've seen start to pop up a lot more recently, the reasoning seems to be, basically, 'field's full of nerds and society is run by jocks', and is often used as an apology for why women don't go into computer science.

rcoder 12y ago

While I agree with the basic tenet that experienced developers make better direct managers for other developers, I strongly disagree that "any programmer can do it", or that "biz guys can't learn programming", much less the assertion that "business" is somehow trivially easy compared to coding. Doing a good job as a manager is hard. You need to triangulate between a lot of disparate opinions and viewpoints, negotiate compromises, and help your team develop and advance without hurting the larger group's goals. It takes empathy, good communication, and the ability to squelch your own opinion when circumstances call for it. None of those attributes are universal in engineers. In fact, just about everything in a startup is hard: sales, recruiting, design, marketing, etc. Pretending otherwise or asserting that only engineers have something special to contribute is IMHO toxic and short-sighted.

crusso 12y ago
"toxic" is such a great word in this context. I've seen this kind of disrespect for other parts of the organization take down a small company that was otherwise performing just fine.
badloginagain 12y ago
I think this is a really good insight, a lot of the problems people in this thread have complained about can be attributed to bad managers. Balancing business requirements and technical requirements is a difficult thing to do, all the while ensuring everyone feels special/validated/acknowledged. Parsing out what each camp feels is the most important thing to do, and translating that to something each camp can understand is one of those critical management skills that is hard to teach. Every programmer needs to know management- even if to just manage oneself. But the better you can communicate the reality of of your technical requirements, the better the business unit will be able to prioritize their requirements. It shouldn't be us vs. them.
voidhorse 12y ago
Yup. Both you and the op of this thread are correct. Managers not knowing enough about the field they manage can cause problems. In the same way employees not knowing enough about managing can also cause problems. Essentially, if either side views itself in some way superior than the other (the manager usually views his job as more important in the grander scheme, and naturally is in a position of control and thus thinks himself superior, the employee views himself as the one who actually knows how/is doing the work and thus views himself as superior) problems can and probably (at some point) will occur. Respect for all the different fields that go into making a company work is a very necessary thing to keep everything running smoothly--this way the company is only battling what the world throws at it/unavoidable risks and problems that occur--not itself.

crusso 12y ago

The real tragedy is, learning business is not hard. Any programmer can do it. As a person who's switched back and forth between the technical person, the manager, and the business developer - I can tell you that all of the roles in the company take skill to do properly.

rday 12y ago
I agree. All the roles are hard to master. Why have I, in the past 5 years, learned a tremendous amount about markets, equity, accounting, law, pricing, and I don't even know what else. But the business masters (all of them) I've been working with still can't update a webpage? Just one person's experience, I know. But it's still funny to me.
- crusso 12y ago
  I'm with you both in the fact that I started from engineering and learned about many other disciplines as I went along. Also, I'd agree that most other disciplines don't bother to learn engineering/programming. When you're an engineer, the ugly truth is that to increase your salary and opportunities, you normally need to branch out and learn other things like management and sales. When you're a good salesperson, you can reach great heights financially without worrying about how to update a web page.
meowface 12y ago
You're right, but it's no doubt much easier for an engineer to learn business and sales than for a business person to become good at programming and write production code daily.
- crusso 12y ago
  Learning a little programming isn't any harder than learning something about management or sales - it's just that most people don't bother to do it. My mom was 60 when she started learning HTML and javascript. She does just fine updating web pages, forms, etc. for her quilting and singing groups. I have a lot of respect for good engineers, good managers, and good salespeople. Saying that one discipline is harder than the other is like saying that being a good violin player is any harder than being a good piano player.

pbiggar 12y ago

It sounds like you're implying that GitHub has "incompetent management" where "people mananger are biz guys who don't understand engineering". However, Zach doesn't appear to say any of these things, so it seems a pretty unfair implication to make.

joshuahutt 12y ago

I think two things you are overlooking is (1) not all engineers want to manage others, and (2) not everyone who "learns business" can be a good manager. Forcing engineering people into management roles after they have accrued a certain amount of experience is not the answer.