I always feel like these manager types have drunk deeply from the koolaid for some reason. It’s a lot of words and processes that they usually cargo culted from somewhere else. A lot of it seems to boil down to “don’t be an idiot” and “actually care about your work”. They always have this air of superiority because they’re high up on the org chart. Like CEOs who think they’re the chosen ones, when plenty of people could do it just fine. I laugh hard when people like Zuck say software devs will be replaced by AI, not realizing an AI CEO probably wouldn’t have burnt 30 billion on a terrible metaverse flop.
I appreciate that they have a programming philosophy that they want people at the company to adopt. A common problem I see at companies that don't have onboarding is that people join the team with assumptions from previous jobs but you never level set them with the company. So 12 months down the line the new guy wants to change the process and you have to repeat the same discussions about what agile means for the nth time.<p>Amazon does a good job of training new hire on the 'Amazon way'. Amazon does 6 pagers, they do design docs. Amazon does SOA. Amazon does not use relational databases. Everything has an API. Because of the 'Amazon way' and the training they do new team members understand at least some of the context and expectations.<p>Is it the best way? Probably not but no one knows what the best way is anyway. At least they have a way. Saves a lot of effort compared to every new hire relitigating the process and architecture.
I don't usually love this type of post, but this one is the exception - very valuable.<p>Just the section on how to rewrite alone communicates something incredibly valuable that grumpy-engineers like myself have great trouble getting others to understand.<p>I don't have my mind made-up on XP, I've never worked at a place that actually supported collaboration (often workers spoke different first languages, vastly different experience levels, had minimal social graces, were uncomfortable asking questions), but I think it <i>could</i> exist with great effort and would have a lot of upsides.
> We’re an inverted organization. That means that tactical decisions are made by the people who are doing the work, not managers<p>I've worked at various places where this was supposedly the system.<p>Guess who had budgets, hiring powers, went to leadership offsites? Yeah not the ICs. It usually just means the C level will smile and nod while "listening" to your feedback instead of ignoring you completely<p>Has anyone worked at a true inverted company where centuries of classical power structures are thrown out the window?<p>I feel it can never be properly implemented unless in eg a cooperative
What an amazing article on "de-FAANGing" the perverse org/incentive structure of most startup/tech places. Would love to see more of this type of leadership in the real world.
There’s a weird disconnect because on the one hand I agree you can’t measure productivity and on the other hand we all know that some engineers are vastly more productive than others. So what gives?
This was a really great read, lots of insight and things to think about.<p>But it's also depressing to see how good things could be and how poorly (IME) most orgs are run now. I know I've seen the exact 180-degree opposite of almost everything mentioned here: no team leadership or empowered people, no clear path to the next level for those interested, lack of communication, no emphasis on internal quality, overall pathological product choices (or lack thereof) and on and on. I'd kill to be part of an org that puts this much thought into everything.
> Everybody wants the best people in the business.<p>A fundamental mistaken belief.<p>Who wants to pay for the very best people when the 97,000th best person will do? Also how can you decide who the best people are when you can’t even measure their productivity?
OP is an example of how AI-generated images are usually clutter. Not only do the images not add anything meaningful to the text, and arbitrary parts of the images could be deleted or randomized without affecting the reader's understanding, most of them could be randomly shuffled without anyone noticing. (Which makes them worse then clipart/stockart: if an article swapped the 'hacker hoodie' stockart with the 'neural net brain circuit' stockart, some readers would at least briefly be confused.)
+1 for Extreme Programming. I've been a fan from the beginning when Agile was all the rage and my recommendations for XP were met with blank stares.
A great post, well worth reading. The principles in the section on 'people' are applicable to any organisation in any industry.<p>I especially liked the simple 'career ladder' example, for a) focussing on mostly on behaviour rather than knowledge, and b) for being simple to use and track progress with. (I've never seen anything like it in any of the large organisations I've worked in to date.)
> It was September 2023 and my CEO was asking me a question.
> “How are you measuring productivity?”<p>This is sort of like your girlfriend asking you "how much do you love me". Except if you answer wrong, it's still more likely that your girlfriend will stay with you than that you'll keep your VP of engineering job.
This pervasive corporate fiction tires me out so much. Everyone says they hire the best candidate, they are leaders in their area, etc. It feels very much like dystopian literature, where everyone knows the thing to be false, but is compelled to say it is true nevertheless.
This is a very nice post - not because the actual suggestions are good, but it demonstrates what a really technically sound VP looks like.<p>In most large tech companies, VP level people are so detached, delusional, and unskilled in engineering, that they end up undervaluing what engineers really do. They are unable to explain it beyond stack ranking them.<p>As an example, this post talks about how simplicity and maintenance brings value. But my VP literally fired people who did not produce new complex impact.<p>Just goes to show why so many people hate the big tech industry as employees. It is being run by charlatans who abscond from any real leadership.
Interesting, but not surprising, that <i>Agility</i> only made place 5, way behind <i>Quality</i>. It will soon be a quarter of a century since the Agile Manifesto has been published. It would be sad if we hadn't progressed since then.
> There’s more details here than I can explain today, but you can use the QR code to find a detailed article, including the documentation we use for the skills.<p>Why not just provide a clickable link given this is an article on the web?
Ah, this looks to be my favorite "non-management" bullshit game: Put stickies of words like "People" "Process" "Love" "Care" "Profitability" "Quality" and so on, pick some of those words and build a stupid story around those words. The story is usually summarized as "we'll have the best of the best people, doing best of the quality, with best of the best profitability, spreading much love".<p>What about all the words that are not picked? That's for 2 years later, when they play the same game again.<p>Here's the last but least favorite part: beat employees into memorizing those words, have them graded against these words based on entirely subjective interpretations, and reward those who are good at playing this game.<p>Some people are just story tellers, not doers.<p>Then I look at the profile of the author of this blog. Yeah, makes sense.
reminds me of a teammate who pushed for fast tests and clean code. most of us thought it slowed us down, until a big production bug hit. he pushed a fix in 15 min / his tests made it easy to find and solve. after that, we all bought in. small changes can make a huge difference.
The advice seems reasonably good but I needed to bail on the post because of the cartoons. The anime crossed with precious moments style of illustration is just too creepy and inserts a lot of doubt to me personally on the authoritativeness of the author.
Saying that you can’t measure productivity is a pseudo-truism and a cop out of doing your job.<p>How do you measure productivity = how do you decide whom to promote; how do you decide whom to fire; how do you decide how to distribute bonuses; etc.<p>If you can’t measure productivity, you can’t do your job as an engineering manager. It’s not a question that should have been asked 3 months into a job. It’s a question that should have been asked during the hiring interview.