Engineering Managers will also begin to code again [1]
[1] https://twitter.com/TitterTakeover/status/162873730347973836...
[1] https://twitter.com/TitterTakeover/status/162873730347973836...
9/10 people who wants to be a manager are awful as software engineers and they know this is the only way they can stay in the game. Out of those who do become engineering managers it seems all they do is talk a bunch of nonsense and add tremendous levels of roadblocks because they suck at understanding the actual technical problems and I’ll be honest. They’re usually awful at understanding business needs too.
Get rid of eng managers.
Put in a team lead and a few people. If your teams are 20 people or something dumb just fire everyone and start over.
You don’t need battalions when the leaders aren’t even soldiers.
Just have fire teams where everyone is a soldier that reports to their team lead. These teams report to a director who is the battalion commander.
Managers should be rare. And they should be actually good at their job.
People don’t quit jobs they quit shitty terrible managers.
Yes there are awful engineering managers just as there are great ones who are force multipliers for their teams. I've known great engineering managers who were great engineers who naturally became an interface for their teams and some who weren't very technical but were great people managers that got great outcomes for individuals and teams.
Org design, culture, complexity, needs determine the necessity of an engineering management function. Do orgs and engineering management functions become dysfunctional? Yes. Can this be resolved by just eliminating the management layer? Hardly.
I know what I'm saying, and out of a dozen plus managers I've worked with over just the last 6 years (re-orgs because they have way too much time on their hands) only 2 have been excellent, and 1 somewhat all right. It isn't my fault that even with terrible engineering managers, I managed to never get below the max rating on any performance review. I know what I know, and I'm good at it.
The bigger companies get, the worse quality of talent that comes in. Most late stage+ employees are there to rest, vest, and cruise. Don't be naive.
The worst part of this is the more and more levels of management that get put in. People start coming in who have spotty technical understandings, but talk a whole lot that sways people who only need a high level understanding of what is going on. Imo this is due to people who cannot operate efficiently nor in a lean manner. Everything needs to be overly complex for them, to prove they’re something.
Again, I'm giving my experience as a competent engineer and I at one point managed 4 people for a few months before I stopped because I was leaving meetings that were a waste of fucking time with other managers. Literally people stroking each other's ego in a passive aggressive way instead of talking business and ensuring their teams succeed. Not to mention the ways they talked about their reports and literal games on how promotions work.
I am super passionate about removing the unnecessary complexity bloat and drama that bad management leads to.
>The bigger companies get, the worse quality of talent that comes in. Most late stage+ employees are there to rest, vest, and cruise. Don't be naive.
Straw-manning much? I don't see any part of my original argument making a point to the contrary or even addressing the notion of org size.
But I'll bite -> An alternative way of looking at this dynamic in large tech orgs is, that the org sets up a game where people who play the game well can succeed (interview well, do what looks good on impact resumes and against perf rubrics ) without contributing much to the success of the org.
Blame the game not the player, the rest and vesters are resting and vesting because they are achieving optimal utility within the interview/perf/promo game the org has setup, hence dysfunctional orgs.
It's not that flat organisations/startup aren't dysfunctional or that large orgs always end up being dysfunctional but I agree with you that larger engineering orgs often tend to be dysfunctional in many similar ways.
I think it's because you said the following:
> ... what reads like a junior engineer's half baked rant on the uselessness of engineering managers.
I agree the person you're replying to is ranting a bit, but that comes across as saying "you're wrong because you don't have enough experience".
I felt it was justified after you called their opinion a "junior's" rant.
You dispelled them as giving a rant that denotes inexperience. They gave their experience as a counter.
As for the game, I’m all in. I love the game and it’s fun. I’m super competitive and have no problem going back to lobby after a bad game to find a new lobby. I’m playing ranked/hardcore/we it’s called, not single player or un ranked. I’m not a gamer so idk the terms.
As for the late stagers it’s just my observation. It’s what I have observed and they definitely spend more time doing the same things. Usually because they’re doing anything but the work. They have nothing to lose nor any tangible stake.
At small scale there’s no ego. Software engineers answer support queries and help with sales. The goal is to turn your shares from a penny or less to $100.
At late stage is when all the middle management bloat comes in.
You add more and more levels where the level above just wants high level updates. Then managers have associate, manager, sr manager levels. Then you have director, associate director, etc. each level is a sad reminder of what could have been possible. People are more concerned with becoming managers instead of contributing. It’s why many companies become stagnant imo.
Personally I’m done working at companies bigger than 5k people. I was already feeling the pain at like 2-3k people. I can’t imagine working somewhere with 50k plus people. Sounds like hell.
This is one of the most irrational things I’ve ever read on here so congratulations I guess. The people in the team are not the ones to blame if the teams are too big, you are (if you are in charge). Therefore if you actually want to fix the problem, the person you need to fire before starting over is yourself.
And yes. Fire all the management who caused shit to get that bad. I 100% stand by that.
If you actually are sincere about fixing things, actually finding the causes is very important.
At some point you have to just rip it out and put a new one in.
I’m personally fine just leaving and getting a new job if things get wack. Unless I can get to senior leadership level I can’t do much when the culture is already so ingrained. That’s why you need an Elon or someone like that with guts to just come in and fire people.
There are a lot of poor, mediocre or bad devs as well as bad managers. The solution to these problems is not to arbitrarily get rid of most of the practitioners.
There is frequently a lack of humility and self awareness in dev culture I'm afraid to say. It was one of the things that made me leave the profession.
It’s also immediately clear when a dev is bad, but managers will weasel out of their responsibility and blame the devs, despite constantly changing requirements, asking for the impossible, not providing the necessary information and resources, etc. a dev doesn’t sabotage a manager’s work like that.
Most managers also aren’t professionally qualified for their position. An education in accounting doesn’t make somebody a manager, just like computer science doesn’t make a dev a team leader.
the director level (it could be multiple people) receive leadership objectives for the quarter or year. Their only job is to take their resources/battalion and divvy the work up into small atomic fire teams. Obviously there are many players from UX product QA devops etc. There is a directive, and everyone needs to be on board to WORK.
The team lead is in charge of ensuring the eng work gets done. There might be product or other folks, they’re specialists on the team like a marksman or medic or automatic weapons specialist. This is a tech company we are taking about, the output is a product backed by technology.
They need to be strong technically and take their team to the finish line. They don’t need to waste their time with 1:1 where they can’t remember the last session or making up stupid stories and wasting time in meetings. Just do the work. The team lead is the best engineer on the team and the rest of the team just does their job.
Maybe incentive structure could be set up where the entire team is rewarded for completion. If people don’t feel it’s fair they can leave, but when things work out the reward would be 100s of thousands of dollars for everyone. If you just need bodies to throw at some low hanging problem outsource that work. Otherwise focus on execution.
Like imagine trying to take a building with many doors and floors from an enemy. You want each team nimble enough to move independently of each other while working together via the team leads talking to each other. They lead their teams towards their objective of taking the building.
Engineering managers would just be dead weight. They’re not in the building and don’t have line of sight. They are far away (rarely have I seen eng managers code or get their hands dirty) and because of this cause confusion and disarray. They get information that gets lost in translation or some hero noob on the team wants to try their own plan and the manager gives them time to try it out. Good luck taking that building.
Just keep the work lean, and keep focused on work.
Like so many managers allow their teams to waste time and effort with “finding the right process” or bullshit meetings. Just focus on taking that building.
You've got middle managers (directors) who link teams with leadership priorities. You've got line managers (tech leads) who are in charge of ensuring that work gets done.
I’ve been at places where there was Associate Manager, Manager, Sr Manager, Group Manager, Director, Senior Director, VP, SVP.
That is insane imo. Anyone below director is useless, and the director should just report to the VP or CTO.
My point is that managers should be rare. And teams should be small.
I’m not taking career or technical advice from an associate/manager because they’re usually the worst ICs and overall lowest performers in like 80% or more of the time. This is how they struggle to stay in the game. You have probably heard many people who are the best IC say they don’t want to manage.
They then get managed by the worst people. And they just leave like that when they can’t take their managers BS anymore.
You ever gotten feedback like “you need to speak more in meetings” from one of these low tier managers? All they do is waste everyone’s time in useless meetings. I’m there to work, not pretend I’m smart by making dumb diagrams and writing/sharing 20 page documents on things that have nothing to do with the job. You see these people come out of the woodwork during late stage. And that’s when most of the beat engineers leave and you have commodity tier folks running the show.
It’s just facts. I’m giving my perspective. And it’s frustrating that I have to keep changing jobs because management is always the weak link. People missing deadlines, people putting effort into things that don’t matter, just talking/wasting time.
Cool. Advocating for fewer layers of managers is very different than what you proposed in your original post, which included the phrase "Get rid of eng managers."
> I’m not taking career or technical advice from an associate/manager because they’re usually the worst ICs and overall lowest performers in like 80% or more of the time. This is how they struggle to stay in the game. You have probably heard many people who are the best IC say they don’t want to manage.
But you will. They'll just be called a Tech Lead and they'll have manager responsibilities.
And back when the first 1-5 billion dollar valuation was created we moved fast and operated in small teams. Since going public and hiring like 5x as many people our valuation has only gone up like 1-2x. I strongly believe that the end game folks are not very good at their jobs and love wasting time coming up with process and spending money on events.
Again I know why this happens. I’m just saying I wish it wasn’t this way. Appearances and perception.. so dumb.
Oh well time to find my next exit hopefully because I love that thrill of building and solving customer problems.
My managers are very good. They act somewhat in-between a coach and a secretary, and never muddle in technical details that they don’t understand. They try doing small-chunked tasks that don’t fit a developer’s schedule.
Nobody hurt me because for me at least, I’ve gotten every job I’ve applied to. For example I got bored of my last company and my manager, applied to four companies and got each job, then just picked the one that paid most.
I don’t like dealing with incompetent people. It’s that simple. I’m not a bottom feeder lmao.
What's the difference between a team lead and a manager?