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Comment by tempfs | Hacker News Reader

The role of "Management" is supposed be the oversight and allocation of human resources and other assets towards the completion of the org's stated goals.

This is the one thing that *never* seems to happen.

What does happen consistently is that management simply gatekeeps between two major classifications of subordinates, climbers and the productive.

Making sure to 'partner' with the climbers in order to share credit for their faux accomplishments and make sure that the productives stay right where they are to keep the machine from completely exploding before that manager can move up and on.

Bad management and truly poor leadership in general is just pervasive in public and private institutions.

In GOOG, APPL, and MSFT it is 10x.

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> The role of "Management" is supposed be the oversight and allocation of human resources and other assets towards the completion of the org's stated goals.

Not really. In theory, management should be about growing your team member and maximizing the team's output. There are many ways to do so, and of course many disfunctional (sub)organizations where it is mostly about "playing the game".

Good management is hard, and indeed in many cases, doing the right thing is harder than as an IC. There is definitely some BS involved in any setup. But having a positive impact on your report's career is really a wonderful thing, that beats any project I worked on as a coder.

The term management instead of leadership gives us a clue as to why the results are not what is desired by most people.

How do I survive as a software engineer in this culture? What do I say and do to not be fired?

If you're a good engineer and good employee then you're not getting fired, but you're not getting promoted either. Welcome to being a senior engineer for the remainder of your career. Floating from one organization to the next with different levels of ineptitude above you. You pick up bigger checks and more skills. The only cost is your life.

This sounds very negative, but to be fair it's probably a lot more than the grand majority of people get for their life. Especially if the work is interesting to you.

It was designed to be negative and you're right, it could be worse.

entire blogs have been written about this, but the easiest way is to never, ever cross someone (to include embarrassing, etc) with power. that includes compromising social/team situations as well.

that means that even if the scrum lord is a complete fool, the staffing choices made by your boss are horrible, your team is the worst, and you hate node.js but have to use it, just do your tickets and keep moving. do not suggest big "improvements" or things to "think about" as they will flag you as a class of person that is a potential rival or insubordinate, which may bode horribly for you. keep engaged but lightly so: no heroism.

and trust me, if you're asking this question, you have shown you are not prepared to go toe to toe with "them" on their turf, so don't even try. you will get annihilated. as an engineer you probably aren't sensitive to how power dynamics manifest in day to day interactions - that's why you /must/ lay low and see what's up, despite any drive to do otherwise.

And if you're like me, you never follow this advice. It's probably not in your DNA. And if you're like me, you've probably never had a management position. And if you're like me, you've never seen much change take place. So maybe be more like what this person said and less like me.

I struggle with that too. What gets me is that these places are such a shitshow that it’s a net negative for everyone: it ducks for customers because they get shitty software, late. It sucks for engineers and everyone else because you’re always working quick and dirty, always in an emergency, always stressed. What kills me is that we know ways to make things better and more relaxed for everyone with little to no OT required: fix bugs before new features, automated tests, code reviews, well specced features/tickets... but nope, the moment you try and use these tools to get better outcomes at a lower human and financial cost you become public enemy number one.

I have not been able to keep a job longer than 18 months because this drives me nuts and I eventually have to quit and start somewhere else until I quit again out of frustration and exhaustion.

None of this matters to the ultimate bottom line. And we are below the bottom line.

He’s right. If the answer in your head isn’t “potentially get their wife out of a job for crossing you” you’re not ready for this.

I dunno, generally you can find different jobs. I was at a FAANG for five years, and it was incredibly good for years 1-3. Over years 4-5 it became more and more political, to the point where this kind of crap started happening.

I left, bounced around two other companies and am now back in a place that reminds me of the early days of FAANG.

If you hate what you need to do in a job, start looking for another one, and make sure that you like talking to all the people who interview you. Every time I've broken this rule, I've regretted it.

Your name says disgruntledphd. I had two PhD advisors quit on me and go to worse schools after stringing me along about working for them (ie giving me low quality projects they themselves didn’t believe in so they could make it look like they were advising me while they polished their grants and looked for jobs elsewhere).

Really? So, in order I started with two supervisors: 1) Supervisor 1 left for maternity leave

2) Supervisor 2 sued the university and ended up leaving

3) Supervisor 1 returned, got me to re-write

4) Supervisor 1 went on maternity leave again

5) Supervisor 3 (head of dept) forced me to rewrite and completely change the focus

6) Supervisor 1 returns, says nothing about change of focus

7) Supervisor 3 leaves

8) Supervisor 1 asks me to rewrite to original way

9) Supervisor 4 comes in (super helpful, especially with the stats)

10) Supervisor 4 gets heart disease, takes early retirement

11) I finally say fuck it and put in the PhD

12) Supervisor 1 says I didn't read it all, see what the examiners say

13) Examiners very sceptical I wrote the whole thing, until the actual exam

14) I get major corrections, all of which were down to my refusal to follow APA style in my tables (because it's stupid).

15) I finally graduate, three years after getting my first private sector job.

So, yeah, PhD's can be bad for everyone ;)

Ok you win. My hat off to you. Even if I include supervisor that quit on my previous PhD attempt (I worked in industry in between) and my current grantless supervisor who would have happily graduated me with a copy of his last student’s project with some numbers changes if I hadn’t put my foot down and insisted on my own project. And the fact that my school strongly discourages examiners unless the supervisor wants them.

Of the blogs that have been written, I'm a big fan of Zvi's articles on "moral mazes" https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2019/05/30/quotes-from-moral-ma...

This kind of attitude is just as unhealthy as the sociopathic management style it assumes is universal. It’s hard to hire good software engineers. You have more power to leave toxic situations than you might think.

well, they did seem to really want not to get fired - my solution wasn't really about thriving

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