Comment by SoulMan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by SoulMan | Hacker News Reader

Very short article (which I like) and some great points that have been occupying my thought process lately.

Every other day our local newspapers mention the word "techy" to describe someone work in IT, he could be a product manager or an operations manager in facilities, just because he is in Silicon Valley of India.

The agile example is great. We enforced something which works for assembly line where things are repetitive and we know how much time it takes exactly to assemble two parts of a car. Software Development is could not be more different than this. We want iterative development yet we need to have fixed deadline.

We don't trust the developer, we hire a scrum master who in most cases just moves stories in Jira if a developer forgets to do it religiously. In that process, we (read middle management ) are happy to have stories in "done" section but have a problem with "in progress" section tough later is likely to have higher quality. Because earlier one looks good on paper.

I have seen when scrum master/co-ordinators / middle managers when getting a tech-related question from other teams or execs, they loop the engineers saying "rookie question".Really just say "I don't know anything about engineering that my team does"

Also the "IC track" for engineers? Seriously if someone works in teams that is engineering teams. Why should they be called "Individual contributor"?

IMHO, if engineers were little more disciplined we did not need middle managers or these dedicated agile coaches, scrum masters who neither has any tech skill nor has any vision, unlike the leadership / executives.

The best of developers need a different breed of managers. These managers usually stay away from their path, shields the team from bureaucracy/clients and made sure they are aligned with the business goals.

I've been a prolific developer, a designer, and a manager. At the onset of my career, I didn't really care what the designers did. I took up designs as I saw the lack of all around. I married design into development. I've designed many digital products but have always coded them right in after the initial wireframes and the pen/paper prototypes.

Until about 2010, I tend to brush aside managers as stumbling blocks and just try to get things done. Well, I started leading a lot of high calibers, high performing developers and designers. They are way better than me. That when I realize a new way of helping them move 10x faster.

I try to bridge the gap between them and C-Suite stakeholders, clients and their tech teams. I can move between design, engineering, sales, marketing, and business discussions with relative ease. I've been thanked many times for blocking the onslaught of "requests" and meetings. That's when I knew that the best of engineers and designers can benefit from highly capable managers.

Any books/blog/podcast you recommend on learning about this kind of management?

Wow. I'm not sure if this is even going to be a good suggestion. Let me try in a very personal way.

Having been a developer, designer helped a lot. I know what's going on and I can jump in. Unfortunately, I cannot jump in as much as I want to these days. Things do move fast and the best I can do is help in learning/researching a topic faster and help focus and save time.

While picking any consumption of information, I like to focus on the human side of it. I'm not trying to learn a new thing to either impress or even help them. They are way better than me when it comes to technology, frameworks etc. If I'm helping a newer or not so experienced developer or a designer, I already know how to help them without overwhelming them.

More than podcasts/audible, I read a lot (both physical and kindle). I avoid driving and take an Uber (I live in Bangalore and you know the traffic here) so I can read.

As for the few select podcasts - a16z, YCombinator, Startup School, Entrepreneur on Fire, Youpreneur, No Quit Living. I started being regular recently, so I'm still curating my choices.

Thinking like an entrepreneur really does help -- delegate, accept failures from one and all. Don't try to impress, or win anything. Try to be humble, modest and let others know that you don't know. Don't be that "Product Manager" that have never shipped a product, the "Project Manager" that has never designer/developed a project.

I hope you would be able to take some and form your own ways.

P.S. These came out recently. A lot of good ones.

25 Books Every Business Leader Needs to Read Now https://www.drift.com/blog/must-read-books/

72 Best Entrepreneurship Books of All Time https://bookauthority.org/books/best-entrepreneurship-books

The scrum masters feel 100% like a scam to me. The "work" they do is a complete joke - they basically have a couple of rigid scripted behaviours that could be performed by a bot or an intern - ask people about tickets' statuses, ask if a ticket cannot be split into smaller ones, ask people to do estimates, ask if X can help Y on task Z etc (all these questions are so basic that in general any experienced dev has already asked them themselves in their heads before coming to a standup). Also, from what I'm seeing, they "work" maybe for 1-2 hours a day. The only redeeming factor is that they usually make way less than a senior dev (at least here in Europe).

I suspect Scrum Masters will be completely purged out of the industry in the next 10-20 years, as the execs realise they provide negative value (sadly, they'll probably be replaced by some other fad role, and the same people who are scrum masters now will just retrain into that fad).

The dedicated Scrum Masters I think already started to be diminishing, in my last two jobs usually one of the engineers (not too senior or junior but should be able to communicate well) is asked to take that role along with his usual 8 story point a week coding responsibility.

But unfortunately in this case above scripted behaviour is being shown by middle management (Engineering manager with not much coding background ). This is because they are mostly under fire if there is a "Spill Over" . The engineer playing scrum master role can easily get away with it because the probably did their part in the coding front and just threaten to step down from the role. But managers don't add much to anything else in the delivery process, so they are forced to be accountable for everything. (C'mmon we all know appraisals are also pretty much scripted) .

BTW I hope they make less than senior dev. My company is not much transparent about it. I hope there is a portal to anonymously share this information. The glassdoor and payscale figures are very wide ranged to get a ballpark figure and average looks way off (I am making unusually high :D )

World class athletes are highly disciplined and motivated (there is a difference between those two words btw). Yet you won't find a single one without a coach. Why? That's your homework.

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