18 karma · joined April 17, 2019
- Who has the unchecked authority to blame others for their mistakes?
- Who will take direct credit for the work of others?
- Who's going to write a bad performance review of someone they don't like that much?
It goes both ways!
In Silicon Valley, people managers can easily be a waste of time and money, and can cause unnecessary drama on your team. Think about the kind of so-called developer who would rather manage people than write code.
We still need founders, executives, directors, advisors, etc. don't get me wrong. But has anyone ever come across an engineering manager worth their salt? Why did we start deploying people managers en masse to engineering teams? I miss the holy trinity setup: Dev, designer, PM. It worked well IMO.
Our industry is shooting itself in the foot with Engineering Managers. The ones I've come across are self-obsessed, as evidenced in these cringeworthy READMEs and this article that was written.