Comment by Draiken | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Draiken | Hacker News Reader

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I never understood this. If you can get away with "pretending to work" then either you have a bullshit job or everyone is in this bullshit rodeo together.

If I work with someone (supervising or not) I know if they are working or slacking off. And no, you don't need made up metrics or to be sitting next to them for that. If you really are in the midst of people that actually get stuff done, I should add.

On somewhat of a tangent, I'm not gonna lie: it sometimes feels like everything is a big farce in tech.

We write code for useless functionalities on mostly useless products. Product managers often don't even understand/use the product and copy competitors blindly. C-suite/founders pretend they know what they're doing but copy whatever is trending at the time (Agile, OKRs, Scrum, squads, etc). Investors give out money to people that yell the right buzzwords loud enough (and/or have the right connections). The list goes on.

The only people that really work are the ones in the lower echelons answering support tickets, keeping things running, actually committing code, etc. Everyone else sits on useless meetings adding "meeting for X" in their reports. Ironically those getting things done are the most scrutinized for "LARPing" by higher ups.

Maybe I've been really unlucky in my career but I've found this to be true in every single job.

I don't agree about the lower levels doing all the work.

People in the lower echelons usually don't understand what their product is for, how it works, who uses it or how it fits into their company's overall business strategy. They are only capable of understanding and working with a small part of the product. Because they don't see the "big picture", they often feel unmotivated and think their job is unimportant.

People who have a higher level of understanding- people who can intelligently talk about the product with stakeholders and make high-level executive decisions- these people are rare and extremely valuable, much more so than engineers and support people.

A lot of work being done at the lower levels is for done in the name of the same farcical issues pointed in the thread. We spend lots of time building absolute bullsh*t. The reality is a lot of these nonsense is fed from high-up without a good rationale.

I’m in a position of power now, and I’m constantly fighting for the idea that we should build what delivers the most value to our users. Nothing else. Any other ‘feature’ is a waste of time, effort, and money.

So I disagree. People in the trenches seem — to me at least — to have a much better grasp of the product, what it does, what it looks like, and how it’s really used. The further up you are from the trenches, the more you’re relying on reports of reports, proxy metrics, and so on; which further detach you from reality.

> People who have a higher level of understanding- people who can intelligently talk about the product

I agree with you here, those are valuable. But IME those are usually not the ones in positions of power.

I've met passionate developers that understand the issues of the product and not only the tech. Support folks that know exactly why and where the product falls short. Sales folks that deeply understand what the product doesn't offer and what it probably needs. The list goes on.

You said so yourself: these people are rare and even from a statistical point of view there will be way more people that understand the product down in the trenches compared to higher ups. Most of those at the top are hired because of previous prestige/success or more commonly: connections.

> People in the lower echelons usually don't understand what their product is for, how it works, who uses it or how it fits into their company's overall business strategy.

You've just described so many people at the top that I've seen first hand. VPs of X coming in, having zero understanding of the product (sometimes they never even used it) and making decisions that hurt everyone. Even the ones with previously successful products come in and it becomes apparent that success is not easily replicated. Survivorship bias is all too real. How many come in and try to copy/paste what worked in their previous company blindly only to fail upwards after the fact?

> I don't agree about the lower levels doing all the work.

If you want to see how right I am, all we have to do is examine the bus (or submarine?) scenario. If all managers vanished in a submarine today would the company stop? Now compare that to the same scenario with devs/support/infra/sales/etc. Yes, they do all the work.

One of the few issues the lack of management causes is regarding decision making. But not because folks are incapable of deciding, it's because they are powerless to do so. When they have that power, the company continues to move forward just fine - it might even thrive if you ask me.

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