Kindness, tech staffing and resource allocation(redmonk.com)
redmonk.com
Kindness, tech staffing and resource allocation
https://redmonk.com/rstephens/2022/11/01/kindness-and-staffing/
108 comments
Glad you were able to get through this. The severance is especially nice.
> and was able to file for unemployment
Reminder to people that H-1b holders are not eligible for unemployment claims. They pay INTO the system but are not allowed to take out of the system
> and was able to file for unemployment
Reminder to people that H-1b holders are not eligible for unemployment claims. They pay INTO the system but are not allowed to take out of the system
Also true for small business owners.
I was once laid off from a company on a Friday but they really wanted to keep me so they told me to call back Monday to see if anything changed (very small company a long time ago). On Sunday I broke my ankle playing touch football and the doctor said I was probably eligible for disability. Called the company back on Monday, they cancelled the layoff and I went on disability for eight weeks then right back to work with them.
Curious, what do you do? I would think that you could only go on disability if you had a job that required you to walk around, which I think would be a small minority of HN commenters.
Not the parent commenter, but I was on disability as a SWE following abdominal surgery since I couldn't drive to work and working remotely wasn't allowed by my employer at the time (2006).
So despite my job having me in a chair all day, my inability to get _to_ my job required a couple of weeks on short-term disability until I got cleared to drive.
So despite my job having me in a chair all day, my inability to get _to_ my job required a couple of weeks on short-term disability until I got cleared to drive.
I've known people (programmers) who were on extended periods of disability due to lower body injuries because sitting for long periods of time caused them a lot of pain / exacerbated their disability / hindered their recovery.
Understood, but I've broken my ankle before, and I can't imagine any scenario where that would apply. Heck, tons of days I program from my bed.
< Heck, tons of days I program from my bed.
I spent a couple of years often working from bed and now deeply regret it. Us programmers are sedentary enough already. Please take care of your health and stay as active as possible so you don’t end up with chronically elevated weight, BP, cholesterol, and all the other signs of metabolic malfunction as you get older.
I spent a couple of years often working from bed and now deeply regret it. Us programmers are sedentary enough already. Please take care of your health and stay as active as possible so you don’t end up with chronically elevated weight, BP, cholesterol, and all the other signs of metabolic malfunction as you get older.
This was before the internet was widespread.
Well, I didn't own a car at the time - commuted by bus. Good enough for the doctor to sign the letter.
"It was literally the best possible scenario I can think of for getting laid off and it still fucking hurt to be let go"
Why was it hurting? You already committed to leaving.
Why was it hurting? You already committed to leaving.
A layoff is a form of social rejection.
Feelings are rarely rational.
There is nothing irrational about it being difficult having to accept your evaluation of your worth in the situation did not match theirs, even if it has no material effect on your income, etc.
The same reason that getting dumped by someone who you were about to break up with can hurt.
I had a miserable job that I absolutely hated before my career in tech. I was saving up money to last me through going to a coding bootcamp and had just sat down and calculated that I needed $X more. I got called into a meeting and laid off and given a severance check for almost exactly $X. I still cried on the way home, even though looking back objectively it was one of the best things that ever happened to me
I just got laid off from Stripe on Thursday. Our team was up to it's neck with work that needed to be done. Other teams as well we're in disparate need of more engineers. They didn't do layoffs because they had excess employees, it was because they wanted to reduce run rate in the face of uncertainty.
Sorry to hear that, best of luck looking for a new job. I hope the following comment does not come off as offensive.
Do you think that this work that had to be done was business critical? My experience while working at FAANGs is that everyone was working a lot but a sizable number of projects were vanity/promotion/keep-em-distracted projects. People imagine overstaffed companies as full of idle engineers but I've seen instances of very busy overstaffed companies working on the wrong projects (migrating to Go because, using Protobuffs for a simple eCommerce API that does not need it, creating a component library for a small internal tool that will not grow much, building your own chat system, etc).
Do you think that this work that had to be done was business critical? My experience while working at FAANGs is that everyone was working a lot but a sizable number of projects were vanity/promotion/keep-em-distracted projects. People imagine overstaffed companies as full of idle engineers but I've seen instances of very busy overstaffed companies working on the wrong projects (migrating to Go because, using Protobuffs for a simple eCommerce API that does not need it, creating a component library for a small internal tool that will not grow much, building your own chat system, etc).
While the phenomenon of promo projects is absolutely real, “not my favorite technology choice” is bad evidence that work is wasted. When you have a platform org that offers tooling and support for a golden path, it matters a lot whether you’re on it. It is actually easier to do gRPC APIs at my work than to cowboy RESTy stuff. And the golden path changes over time. Python was a supported language years ago, now Go is. So of course things are being migrated to Go, not because that’s objectively best, but because if you don’t then your Python builds and deploys on our infrastructure could stop working at any moment and no new library versions will ever be released. We also had a team operating Mattermost at one point because that team’s wages cost less than Slack.
I do think the platform org’s choices can cause a lot of low quality churn for the rest of engineering, and everybody resents having to switch out a perfectly fine dependency for somebody’s half baked promo project, but even the platform group when it does these things is trying to save itself the headcount involved in maintaining legacy. As things get leaner, support for older stuff gets worse, and we have to do even more migration work of dubious value to tread water.
If I were starting a Big Tech tomorrow I would put a lot of value on choosing a stable, long term supported tech stack and laying it out so that platform teams can iterate without distributed migration efforts. But no one ever starts a Big Tech. All that is awkward in Big Tech is due to path dependence flowing from the understandably odd choices made by tiny startups.
I do think the platform org’s choices can cause a lot of low quality churn for the rest of engineering, and everybody resents having to switch out a perfectly fine dependency for somebody’s half baked promo project, but even the platform group when it does these things is trying to save itself the headcount involved in maintaining legacy. As things get leaner, support for older stuff gets worse, and we have to do even more migration work of dubious value to tread water.
If I were starting a Big Tech tomorrow I would put a lot of value on choosing a stable, long term supported tech stack and laying it out so that platform teams can iterate without distributed migration efforts. But no one ever starts a Big Tech. All that is awkward in Big Tech is due to path dependence flowing from the understandably odd choices made by tiny startups.
The GP wasn't referring to "not my favorite technology choice", but instead for the tendency to over-engineer and invent complexity in order to maintain job security. That is, both a character flaw in an engineer as well as systemic problem in the organization that rewards the expression of that flaw.
Things certainly get overcomplicated! But when you encounter a system you think is overcomplicated, it's rarely as simple as that system's designer doing something wrong. More likely their hand was forced by context. Context and path dependence. It's an emergent phenomenon. Big companies have particular infrastructure, platforms, libraries, standards, expectations. Lots of it. Most of it reasonable when considered in its own context. But the way it interacts with any one systems designer's "simple" task can get weird.
At the benign end of the scale, you might need to use a more heavyweight tool than you'd like, because the company also has more intense problems and prefers to standardize on one tool. At the other end there's cruelty and farce. Elaborate workarounds for things that ought to be easy. Mind-bending debug sessions for what never should have been possible.
No one wants this to happen! The career incentive is to ship. We're tearing our hair out over it - honestly a big reason people have side projects is the catharsis of just doing everything the sane way. Overcomplication is a dysfunction that plagues engineering organizations. But the solutions are more subtle than "just say no" - it's about the quality of the company's platforms, degrees of NIH syndrome in the platform group, tradeoffs made between freedom and consistency in system design culture, wisdom and foresight in anticipating how different things will interact, etc.
Also underrated: at the time the company needed an X, Y was not around yet, so we adopted X. Yes everyone now agrees Y is better. We are migrating to it, but that takes time. No you can't have your own instance ahead of schedule. so you need to make do with X, even though it is worse and more complicated.
At the benign end of the scale, you might need to use a more heavyweight tool than you'd like, because the company also has more intense problems and prefers to standardize on one tool. At the other end there's cruelty and farce. Elaborate workarounds for things that ought to be easy. Mind-bending debug sessions for what never should have been possible.
No one wants this to happen! The career incentive is to ship. We're tearing our hair out over it - honestly a big reason people have side projects is the catharsis of just doing everything the sane way. Overcomplication is a dysfunction that plagues engineering organizations. But the solutions are more subtle than "just say no" - it's about the quality of the company's platforms, degrees of NIH syndrome in the platform group, tradeoffs made between freedom and consistency in system design culture, wisdom and foresight in anticipating how different things will interact, etc.
Also underrated: at the time the company needed an X, Y was not around yet, so we adopted X. Yes everyone now agrees Y is better. We are migrating to it, but that takes time. No you can't have your own instance ahead of schedule. so you need to make do with X, even though it is worse and more complicated.
There is some of that for sure but fundamental things like software dependencies change so frequently in this industry such that any code you ship has a long and unpredictable tail of maintenance work, so you end up spending a lot of your time doing things like ensuring your code doesn't call broken/deprecated APIs or migrating away from EOL'd database versions just to keep the lights on. I think we SWEs end up creating lots of work for each other.
If you think this point further though: does that make companies overstaffed or just mismanaged? Apparently cash flow supports companies to have these dev teams on staff, what if they worked on something that was a good investment of their time? Being overstaffed would mean that there was no way for companies to create more revenue by investing more in the right areas and I think this is a fallacy. The world is still so mindblowingly analog and inefficient in so many places that I don't think software is done eating the world yet.
> what if they worked on something that was a good investment of their time?
It's not always obviously true that there is such a project. Neither companies nor teams are fungible enough to make this necessarily true, at least not to the extent that ROI is expected to be higher than a smaller more focused team.
It's not always obviously true that there is such a project. Neither companies nor teams are fungible enough to make this necessarily true, at least not to the extent that ROI is expected to be higher than a smaller more focused team.
> does that make companies overstaffed or just mismanaged?
Good point. The end result is the same: inefficient allocation of resources that could pass for productivity. Weird incentives at the management level.
Good point. The end result is the same: inefficient allocation of resources that could pass for productivity. Weird incentives at the management level.
An third possibility: Management and/or engineering leadership sees real problems but is investing in them poorly. For example, resourcing multiple teams to rearchitect your backend when the real issues lie in test coverage and observability, or something like that.
The results may look similar, but they call for very different responses.
Firing productive engineers isn't going to fix managers whose vision is not aligned with business needs.
Firing productive engineers isn't going to fix managers whose vision is not aligned with business needs.
This is the part the really got to me once I started to realize that my contributions started really impact a team in a positive way, but the vast benefit of that impact was bestowed upon the manager. More annoyingly, even when the manager was poor ( and, I do not understand why, there seem to be a lot of those around ), the blame was always that of underlings. I was under clearly deluded impression that leaders gets blame and glory.
In my corporate life, I saw total of two exceptions to that rule ( now and my previous boss ).
In my corporate life, I saw total of two exceptions to that rule ( now and my previous boss ).
That's the exact opposite of what a good manager would do. They'd take the blame for things that go wrong and credit the team for everything good that was accomplished. They'd be an advocate for their team and their reports individually. I've been fortunate to work with a few of those managers and they've been the ones that have been really successful long term. Keep searching or take the management route yourself and show them. It's very rewarding!
Managers gets promoted by getting credit for accomplishments, any manager who got promoted a few times will be good at getting credit for what you do in some way or another. Some deserve the credit, others don't.
> * does that make companies overstaffed or just mismanaged?*
My guess is "undercompeted", though I'd hope there is a better word.
If an organization has a large and secure revenue stream whether is works on improving output or not, it will focus inward, on making life better for the insiders, not the customers.
My guess is "undercompeted", though I'd hope there is a better word.
If an organization has a large and secure revenue stream whether is works on improving output or not, it will focus inward, on making life better for the insiders, not the customers.
work expands to fill the person-hours allotted
I was at a Series C startup that suffered from this. The CTO was an SRE person at heart so wanted to build out our own infrastructure that could run on any platform. While this was a great idea in theory (basically everything was kubernetes and terraform) in practice it caused us to hire a ton of SRE people that were not contributing to the features that actually made us money. Not one customer cared that our entire service ran on AWS.
I think a lot of companies suffer from premature optimization. I myself even fell victim to it in one of the projects I worked on for that company by rewriting a large portion of the code instead of hacking the new feature in.
It is a hard problem to solve for. How much tech debt do I take on now to deliver customer value. I guess that is something that just comes with experience though. I have noticed that has I gain more experience I am not enamored by the new shiny framework as much anymore and focus more of my effort on delivering whatever feature is needed with the smallest change possible. Yeah this creates tech debt, but at least it keeps the lights on especially when every service seems to get rebuilt in 5-10 years anyways.
I think a lot of companies suffer from premature optimization. I myself even fell victim to it in one of the projects I worked on for that company by rewriting a large portion of the code instead of hacking the new feature in.
It is a hard problem to solve for. How much tech debt do I take on now to deliver customer value. I guess that is something that just comes with experience though. I have noticed that has I gain more experience I am not enamored by the new shiny framework as much anymore and focus more of my effort on delivering whatever feature is needed with the smallest change possible. Yeah this creates tech debt, but at least it keeps the lights on especially when every service seems to get rebuilt in 5-10 years anyways.
I wonder why FAANGs don't direct their employees to spend non-business-critical time on open source projects (dependencies etc) instead of the projects you are lamenting.
Yes
>migrating to Go because, using Protobuffs for a simple eCommerce API that does not need it
I would imagine improving throughput a fractional percentage point could have multiple millions of dollars in return for any company close to FAANG size. I fail to see how these are good examples of 'wasted' engineering effort.
Building your own chat system is a good one though, definitely seems like a vanity project.
I would imagine improving throughput a fractional percentage point could have multiple millions of dollars in return for any company close to FAANG size. I fail to see how these are good examples of 'wasted' engineering effort.
Building your own chat system is a good one though, definitely seems like a vanity project.
Agree, that’s why I specified “because” in the Go example, and “for a simple eCommerce API”. Almost all technical solutions have a place under the sun in the right context. My point is that this “right context” gets lost when the incentives are far removed from business needs and that not all overstaffed
companies are “idle”.
I think your post highlights a good point. The article talks about needing "OSS maintainers", but of course OSS isn't really a thing you sell for money (yes, I know in the broader sense people have tried business models around OSS, but nobody is paying for OpenSSL).
It's entirely an economic problem, not a "too many" or "not enough" people problem.
Sorry you got laid off. If anything, I felt like the Stripe layoffs we're a bit of a special case, because I've seen Stripe churn out tons of useful new features and functionality over the past couple years, in contrast to some of the other tech layoffs where the companies seem like they've been treading water for years.
It's entirely an economic problem, not a "too many" or "not enough" people problem.
Sorry you got laid off. If anything, I felt like the Stripe layoffs we're a bit of a special case, because I've seen Stripe churn out tons of useful new features and functionality over the past couple years, in contrast to some of the other tech layoffs where the companies seem like they've been treading water for years.
OpenSSL absolutely does get paid, but not for access to the code itself, only donations and support contracts:
https://www.openssl.org/support/
https://www.openssl.org/support/
I've hit that (inevitable, apparently) point as an "IC" with my current employer where I'm so "indispensable" that I'm a required participant in at least 8 hours of meetings a day, which means that it's more or less impossible to meet whatever low-trust gamification metrics like LOC committed or # bugs fixed have been put in place by hands-off upper management. My direct boss knows and appreciates what I do, but when Elon buys the company, he'll just be looking at a spreadsheet that I'll look terrible on BECAUSE I'm good at what I do.
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I wonder if you are at liberty to write about the type of work you were doing? Looking from a far it’s hard to see such incremental changes and I wonder how will that affect Stripes future capabilities
I lost my job at BlackBerry in spring 2014. I'm not sure how many rounds happened before that. At least a dozen. The company shed thousands and thousands of us as it entered decline.
Thankfully I had no children, no mortgage and lived well below my means. As such, it was quite possibly one of the happiest moments of my life, instead of the worst. I could only imagine how I would have felt if I just bought a house, or had a child.
I was so eager to sign the papers to move on. In retrospect, I was foolish to have stayed as long as I did. It was an amazing place to work in the early days, lots of talented colleagues I had learned much from, about work, about life, but by the end, it was a shambling zombie, decomposing before our very eyes.
We were summoned into an office with a cheerful HR person, armed with a PowerPoint presentation. A box was passed around to toss our many years worth of phones into. I'll never forget being asked, "Does everyone know why we are here?" at the very start. We did.
I wish good fortune to anyone who has lost their job in the recent layoff rounds. There is light at the end of the tunnel. Given some time and luck, you might even land in a better place (I feel blessed in that respect).
Thankfully I had no children, no mortgage and lived well below my means. As such, it was quite possibly one of the happiest moments of my life, instead of the worst. I could only imagine how I would have felt if I just bought a house, or had a child.
I was so eager to sign the papers to move on. In retrospect, I was foolish to have stayed as long as I did. It was an amazing place to work in the early days, lots of talented colleagues I had learned much from, about work, about life, but by the end, it was a shambling zombie, decomposing before our very eyes.
We were summoned into an office with a cheerful HR person, armed with a PowerPoint presentation. A box was passed around to toss our many years worth of phones into. I'll never forget being asked, "Does everyone know why we are here?" at the very start. We did.
I wish good fortune to anyone who has lost their job in the recent layoff rounds. There is light at the end of the tunnel. Given some time and luck, you might even land in a better place (I feel blessed in that respect).
Thanks for posting this anecdote. I have posted many times that too often I see HN commenters arguing that getting laid off is like the worst possible thing that can happen to someone, when this is rarely the case when you are in a growing industry like tech (note I have a very different opinion for those in shrinking industries). I think getting laid off should be thought of in the same ballpark as getting dumped by a romantic partner:
1. Obviously it is painful for the person getting dumped/fired. But long term it's probably for the best as it gives all parties the freedom to choose other options and move on.
2. There are usually signs that should allow most people to prepare long before the breakup/layoff happens. You say "I was foolish to have stayed as long as I did" - can't comment on that, but I do hope that you knew it likely that a layoff was eventually coming and you took adequate preparations (saving more, keeping your resume up-to-date, etc.) for that likely event.
1. Obviously it is painful for the person getting dumped/fired. But long term it's probably for the best as it gives all parties the freedom to choose other options and move on.
2. There are usually signs that should allow most people to prepare long before the breakup/layoff happens. You say "I was foolish to have stayed as long as I did" - can't comment on that, but I do hope that you knew it likely that a layoff was eventually coming and you took adequate preparations (saving more, keeping your resume up-to-date, etc.) for that likely event.
Oh for sure, I figured it was a very likely outcome that I would end up laid off. I just didn't know when/how. By that point, I had whittled down spending to ~30% of my net income prior to layoffs, without any tangible sacrifice (to me).
> Unpopular opinion: If you think the industry is overstaffed, you are not carrying the pager enough. The industry is disproportionately staffed.
This hits close to home. The industry is full of sales driven companies that are like a castle in the middle of a lake supported by sticks. Removing even a few of those sticks (engineers) can make the whole thing collapse.
This hits close to home. The industry is full of sales driven companies that are like a castle in the middle of a lake supported by sticks. Removing even a few of those sticks (engineers) can make the whole thing collapse.
Yeah. There's a real effect where the VCs decide a bodega is a tech company, puts it through hypergrowth based on incredible projections, hires 5000 people, looks around and says "oh my god, there's no way this business can support an organization of this size, it's just a bodega chain!"
The problem is by then it's too late. You now have systems, architecture and processes designed to be an empire, and you can't staff it like an SMB anymore.
The problem is by then it's too late. You now have systems, architecture and processes designed to be an empire, and you can't staff it like an SMB anymore.
Case in point, the former CEO of Peloton just raised 25m for a company that delivers you "beautiful, custom rugs for your home". No idea why that would need funding from tech VCs. Yet here they are with several engineering job postings https://www.ernesta.com/careers/. If your business model is custom rugs, maybe just create a shopify store and sell your rugs.
> We believe that high-quality custom design shouldn't be out of reach for consumers and we aim to address this need in the multi-billion dollar global rug industry.
This would be fantastic satire if only it wasn’t real.
This would be fantastic satire if only it wasn’t real.
Maybe they can furnish the rugs for adam nueman's new apartment/hostel thing...
Yea, maybe Google has people that can camp out on a roof to "rest and vest" like in the tv show Silicon Valley, but every startup I've ever worked for had half or a third as many developers and every other position (even sales, HR, etc.) as would be required to do the jobs properly.
Maybe it's good if the BigCo's get hit hard in a recession, so some of the startups that do stuff other than advertising can get some of those sweet, sweet "10x programmers".
I still feel very bad for all those laid off, I've been laid off 2 times in the past 3 years due to startups closing and that probably isn't the end of it for me either.
Maybe it's good if the BigCo's get hit hard in a recession, so some of the startups that do stuff other than advertising can get some of those sweet, sweet "10x programmers".
I still feel very bad for all those laid off, I've been laid off 2 times in the past 3 years due to startups closing and that probably isn't the end of it for me either.
Y'all have dedicated HR? Usually startups I work at have some underpaid "office manager" who is both HR and a mom to the entire office.
Yea, that's my point, my HR recently was the CEO, now it's the CFO, maybe tomorrow I'll be the HR person!
More often than not, the part-time HR is just plain bad and unreliable. Every small company I've worked for has had payroll and benefits issues. I've seen everything from late paychecks to benefits getting terminated because someone forgot to do something. Also, there's always on-boarding problems. At larger companies, this rarely happens because they have actual HR professionals.
The VC/Execs seem to have latched on to the idea of companies being overstaffed, and this narrative is being amplified by "tech influencers" as a way to explain layoffs. Without data to back this claim, I'm gonna treat it as just another unfounded claim.
A more plausible reason seems to simply be that companies have had their stock prices hammered, earnings fall off, and need to control costs, and for software companies, their main costs are people and infra. There is simply no need for the underperformer myth.
Stop listening to VCs! Don't throw your coworkers under the bus.
A more plausible reason seems to simply be that companies have had their stock prices hammered, earnings fall off, and need to control costs, and for software companies, their main costs are people and infra. There is simply no need for the underperformer myth.
Stop listening to VCs! Don't throw your coworkers under the bus.
> The VC/Execs seem to have latched on to the idea of companies being overstaffed, and this narrative is being amplified by "tech influencers" as a way to explain layoffs. Without data to back this claim, I'm gonna treat it as just another unfounded claim.
I hate to be "that guy", but I've been saying the same thing for a few years, based on my observation that about a third of the software engineering staff does the vast majority of the actual useful work while the rest is playing around, not infrequently making life harder for the third of actually useful people.
I don't have hard data, just anecdotal evidence.
It's probably not a binary thing though: both could be true to some degree, and details will no doubt differ per company.
I hate to be "that guy", but I've been saying the same thing for a few years, based on my observation that about a third of the software engineering staff does the vast majority of the actual useful work while the rest is playing around, not infrequently making life harder for the third of actually useful people.
I don't have hard data, just anecdotal evidence.
It's probably not a binary thing though: both could be true to some degree, and details will no doubt differ per company.
> Without data to back this claim
But, at least for a large subset of tech companies that have had layoffs, there is data to back up this claim. That is, many companies went on huge, gigantic, enormous hiring binges during the pandemic, often expecting a "new normal" in terms of overall spending on internet and other tech services.
I mean, look at Twitter employment over time: https://www.statista.com/statistics/272140/employees-of-twit... . With the layoffs they'll be not much under pre-pandemic levels. Jack Dorsey even said he hired too fast: https://twitter.com/jack/status/1588913276980633600. The same rationale was given by Patrick Collison for Stripe's layoffs: https://stripe.com/newsroom/news/ceo-patrick-collisons-email...
But, at least for a large subset of tech companies that have had layoffs, there is data to back up this claim. That is, many companies went on huge, gigantic, enormous hiring binges during the pandemic, often expecting a "new normal" in terms of overall spending on internet and other tech services.
I mean, look at Twitter employment over time: https://www.statista.com/statistics/272140/employees-of-twit... . With the layoffs they'll be not much under pre-pandemic levels. Jack Dorsey even said he hired too fast: https://twitter.com/jack/status/1588913276980633600. The same rationale was given by Patrick Collison for Stripe's layoffs: https://stripe.com/newsroom/news/ceo-patrick-collisons-email...
Earlier this year, I was the tech lead in a project where 75% of the people were short term contractors. I was one of three company employees who would actually code. The rest of them were managers or product types. I was also on call roughly one week per month.
Management wasn't keen on spending money on medium or long term projects. Instead, they would redirect resources to short term, high single sale impact, or performance critical stuff, thus no good features were added for a while and people got severely burnt.
I suspect that the misalignment in resource allocation with actual requirements, is a larger problem than overstaffing, and all derives from wrong management incentives.
Management wasn't keen on spending money on medium or long term projects. Instead, they would redirect resources to short term, high single sale impact, or performance critical stuff, thus no good features were added for a while and people got severely burnt.
I suspect that the misalignment in resource allocation with actual requirements, is a larger problem than overstaffing, and all derives from wrong management incentives.
Maybe the overstaffing is in middle-management all along...
Unfortunately, just like Congress, the people with the power to allocate, allocate to benefit themselves.
Middle Management doesn't really control the purse strings. They can certainly lobby for it and they do. In most companies budget's are allocated at the executive level to each of the departments.
They are positioned critically as information transmitters between high level and low level. As such they are conveniently situated to shape the narrative to flatter themselves, in both directions. No wonder then that so many middle managers blame their underlings and insist they would be good at their job except for the meddling engineers. So of course execs would hear this and think "middle managers deserve more money, engineers need to improve their performance so let's dangle bonuses but not raise their salaries".
I don't think blaming your underlyings is a good strategy even for the mediocre middle manager. That might make work if there is a re-org and your entire org is changed and you inherit a new one.
However, your org is typically the one that you hired, trained, and grew. So, if you are saying that you failed to make the commitments that you promised because your org sucks, then you are just telling everybody that not only did you not fail to meet your commitment you are also not good at building an org.
You can't blame your underlings, if you blame your underlings then people aren't going to think you are doing a good job. If you have any character you will take responsibility and admit that you failed. Then you will work with others to fix the issue, it's not the end of the world.
Now, if you really want to deflect blame, there are many better places to deflect it. You can blame
1. The business/sales/product/external factors ... whatever, they imposed a deadline that was unrealistic. You were brought in too late and you did the best to salvage the situation.
2. A parallel org that you had an external dependency. Bonus points if you compete for budget with this org. If you can successfully deflect blame to those yahoos in the parallel org, then maybe you'll capture some of their budget and get more head count to grow your org. Yes, you want to grow your org. This is another reason why blaming your underlings is a bad idea. Why would you get more budget to grow your org, if you've done a bad job at hiring and training your current org.
In conclusion there are a bunch of bad middle managers out there, and it might be widely thought that blaming the underlings and ICs is a good move. But it's a terrible move for both selfish and selfless reasons. Even bad managers will know that it's a terrible move.
However, your org is typically the one that you hired, trained, and grew. So, if you are saying that you failed to make the commitments that you promised because your org sucks, then you are just telling everybody that not only did you not fail to meet your commitment you are also not good at building an org.
You can't blame your underlings, if you blame your underlings then people aren't going to think you are doing a good job. If you have any character you will take responsibility and admit that you failed. Then you will work with others to fix the issue, it's not the end of the world.
Now, if you really want to deflect blame, there are many better places to deflect it. You can blame
1. The business/sales/product/external factors ... whatever, they imposed a deadline that was unrealistic. You were brought in too late and you did the best to salvage the situation.
2. A parallel org that you had an external dependency. Bonus points if you compete for budget with this org. If you can successfully deflect blame to those yahoos in the parallel org, then maybe you'll capture some of their budget and get more head count to grow your org. Yes, you want to grow your org. This is another reason why blaming your underlings is a bad idea. Why would you get more budget to grow your org, if you've done a bad job at hiring and training your current org.
In conclusion there are a bunch of bad middle managers out there, and it might be widely thought that blaming the underlings and ICs is a good move. But it's a terrible move for both selfish and selfless reasons. Even bad managers will know that it's a terrible move.
I think it's more that managers seek to maximize their career advantage by having the work done according to "their idea". Then the engineer is just a commodity resource implementing what they are told. And to the degree that this added constraint on the engineer does not fit with their experience or with what would work best (or at all), the engineer's productivity is lower. This is addressed by adding more engineers.
Here’s one way of thinking about this (not the whole picture of course):
At annual profitability of $Y per employee, you have a bar for what you need to earn from hiring your marginal next employee. The “core” business top 1% might be earning $10Y per employee, but if you can earn $1.5Y per employee for 10k new hires to spin up new product areas, you would be negligent (and fired by the board) to not do so.
This is one of the main reasons big companies tend to bloat.
I think the narrative of “most companies are overstaffed” is a bit of an over-simplification. If the goal is to maximize shareholder return in the medium-to-long-term, this is not so. If the goal is to execute the core mission, sure, but that’s a much less valuable company in most cases. And from a portfolio theory perspective, probably a less durable one too, since you don’t have a backup plan.
Now, Twitter never had $10Y per employee, so you could justifiably claim they are overextended. But I don’t think the same logic works for the MAGMA.
At annual profitability of $Y per employee, you have a bar for what you need to earn from hiring your marginal next employee. The “core” business top 1% might be earning $10Y per employee, but if you can earn $1.5Y per employee for 10k new hires to spin up new product areas, you would be negligent (and fired by the board) to not do so.
This is one of the main reasons big companies tend to bloat.
I think the narrative of “most companies are overstaffed” is a bit of an over-simplification. If the goal is to maximize shareholder return in the medium-to-long-term, this is not so. If the goal is to execute the core mission, sure, but that’s a much less valuable company in most cases. And from a portfolio theory perspective, probably a less durable one too, since you don’t have a backup plan.
Now, Twitter never had $10Y per employee, so you could justifiably claim they are overextended. But I don’t think the same logic works for the MAGMA.
I think this makes sense. Assuming MAGMA is the new FAANG, my experience inside the majority of them agrees.
Everyone knows that there is 1 or 2 golden goose teams supporting the entire rest of the company (iPhone, Facebook Ads, Google Search Ads). But smart people also know that one terrible quarter for any of those and the house of cards comes down.
So 90% of the employees are concerned year-round with goose-hunting. Maybe once or twice a decade they find one.
Everyone knows that there is 1 or 2 golden goose teams supporting the entire rest of the company (iPhone, Facebook Ads, Google Search Ads). But smart people also know that one terrible quarter for any of those and the house of cards comes down.
So 90% of the employees are concerned year-round with goose-hunting. Maybe once or twice a decade they find one.
What does it mean to be overstaffed? I think that's a real question on which we can build.
I define a skeleton crew as roughly 10% of the organization. If you cannot run your basic organization with just maintenance and basic bug fixes on 10% of your team, you have too much complexity in your system and you need to work to reduce your maintenance burden. If you need less than 10%, you have an well-architected system, or you have a very small system.
Everything else in the system is research and development. These are new features that will drive revenue, or reduce non-engineering support costs, or otherwise drive new capabilities of the business. In that sense, every successful business is over-provisioned because they are all working on business bets for more revenue.
So yes, every company can be leaner, but it will be at the expense of growth. Now, there are more subtitles in the article to address within that context. For example, it is also true that managers will keep an underperformer for longer so long as there is a net positive because they may be struggling to hire otherwise, or they may be bracing against future layoffs. (A lean, effective organization in an org that otherwise has game theory about layoffs knows that you keep people around that you're not afraid to lose. It's a terrible way to run an organization but it happens.)
It is also true that we have work to do to level up the engineering management profession, as mentioned by the article.
However, when discussing this, the key driver of employment growth is the pursuit of revenue growth and I think that's the primary lens and disconnect here.
I define a skeleton crew as roughly 10% of the organization. If you cannot run your basic organization with just maintenance and basic bug fixes on 10% of your team, you have too much complexity in your system and you need to work to reduce your maintenance burden. If you need less than 10%, you have an well-architected system, or you have a very small system.
Everything else in the system is research and development. These are new features that will drive revenue, or reduce non-engineering support costs, or otherwise drive new capabilities of the business. In that sense, every successful business is over-provisioned because they are all working on business bets for more revenue.
So yes, every company can be leaner, but it will be at the expense of growth. Now, there are more subtitles in the article to address within that context. For example, it is also true that managers will keep an underperformer for longer so long as there is a net positive because they may be struggling to hire otherwise, or they may be bracing against future layoffs. (A lean, effective organization in an org that otherwise has game theory about layoffs knows that you keep people around that you're not afraid to lose. It's a terrible way to run an organization but it happens.)
It is also true that we have work to do to level up the engineering management profession, as mentioned by the article.
However, when discussing this, the key driver of employment growth is the pursuit of revenue growth and I think that's the primary lens and disconnect here.
10% of what? Number of employees at the organization's peak? What if it's already shed 70% of its employees over several years, from its peak? Is it still 10% of that? At what minimum number of employees is it no longer 10%? Seems like a pretty arbitrary number to me.
10% as defined as the natural equilibrium for a profitable company paying market rate to its engineers.
So yes, 10% is arbitrary as anything not coming from a peer-reviewed study would be.
So yes, 10% is arbitrary as anything not coming from a peer-reviewed study would be.
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When talking about kindness, start by not referring to people as resources.
Being kind does not mean you have to put your head in the sand and ignore actual realities. Workers are a resource. They are also humans. Facts are not in conflict. An important to keep both of them in mind
I disagree. To me a resource is something the company controls, e.g. money, materials or, yes, a headcount. But no, the company does not control an individual person. Employees are free to leave and the police will not help you bring them back. Thus I think it’s sloppy to think of or refer to engineers as resources in most context, unless of course you are capable of replacing them with someone else at a moment’s notice.
Interesting position. I think of resources simply as inputs needed to make a product. You might need electricity, material, or labor.
The company doesn't control the worker anymore than they control the supplier of their electricity or materials.
If you have sold your time and labor to accompany it is their resource until you decide to stop supplying it.
I don't think anyone on either side is under the misconception that the police will hunt down Rogue workers. Who is concerned about this confusion and why?
There are lots of resources that are difficult to obtain more of and or replace. On the other hand, I don't think calling workers people instead of resources does anything to address a belief that they are fungible, if in fact they are not.
The company doesn't control the worker anymore than they control the supplier of their electricity or materials.
If you have sold your time and labor to accompany it is their resource until you decide to stop supplying it.
I don't think anyone on either side is under the misconception that the police will hunt down Rogue workers. Who is concerned about this confusion and why?
There are lots of resources that are difficult to obtain more of and or replace. On the other hand, I don't think calling workers people instead of resources does anything to address a belief that they are fungible, if in fact they are not.
> I think of resources simply as inputs needed to make a product. You might need electricity, material, or labor.
Sure, if that's a fair description of the situation then I don't have any problem with the word resource. But the word implies that this is a fair description of the situation. I think most people who do take offence with the word would also consider that description of their work degrading and incorrect. You can't write a great novel just because you have enough labor, and you can't write any innovative or interesting software either.
Sure, if that's a fair description of the situation then I don't have any problem with the word resource. But the word implies that this is a fair description of the situation. I think most people who do take offence with the word would also consider that description of their work degrading and incorrect. You can't write a great novel just because you have enough labor, and you can't write any innovative or interesting software either.
Time, money, and people are all resources that must be applied to a project.
If people feel diminished by being compared to money (capitalism yes? but fungible perhaps) or time (clearly the most important thing that any individual can allocate), then I am not sure how to comfort them.
I try to avoid using the word. It's easy enough to do. But I've never understood the objection.
If people feel diminished by being compared to money (capitalism yes? but fungible perhaps) or time (clearly the most important thing that any individual can allocate), then I am not sure how to comfort them.
I try to avoid using the word. It's easy enough to do. But I've never understood the objection.
I think that’s simply wrong. A company can be reasonably sure that they will stay in control of their money, and damn sure that time will pass. But at the end of the day they have no control over people. People are free to leave, and you can’t do much about it. So in my mind a headcount is a company resource, but a head isn’t. And that’s important to remember.
As I said, I avoid using the word because other people feel strongly about it.
I try to be a resource to the people I work with. I supply knowledge and energies for the benefit of people who are upwards, downwards, and sideways in the org chart.
I count on other people in the same directions to do the same.
This does not minimize them, or pretend that they are interchangeable.
Some resources go dry. Some are redirected. Some expire.
I think those who object to "resource" are adding some connotation to the word that does not need to be there. Resources are good and valuable things. They are not to be wasted or abused or taken for granted.
I try to be a resource to the people I work with. I supply knowledge and energies for the benefit of people who are upwards, downwards, and sideways in the org chart.
I count on other people in the same directions to do the same.
This does not minimize them, or pretend that they are interchangeable.
Some resources go dry. Some are redirected. Some expire.
I think those who object to "resource" are adding some connotation to the word that does not need to be there. Resources are good and valuable things. They are not to be wasted or abused or taken for granted.
> I think those who object to "resource" are adding some connotation to the word that does not need to be there.
I think it’s in the meaning of the word plain and simple: it implies a level of control. I think it’s fine if you have that control. But if you don’t then you’re abusing both the word and those of your coworkers that dislike it.
I think it’s also detrimental to the business. In my experience it’s not the average joe or low performer that takes offense.
I think it’s in the meaning of the word plain and simple: it implies a level of control. I think it’s fine if you have that control. But if you don’t then you’re abusing both the word and those of your coworkers that dislike it.
I think it’s also detrimental to the business. In my experience it’s not the average joe or low performer that takes offense.
I would go with "directed, valued, respected" over "controlled", for any member of set "resource".
But if you boil it down, the resource we're talking about here is an employee's time and energy, which they offer to an employer in freely-chosen and equitable exchange for compensation. Not about the employee as person.
So it's also reasonable for an employer to expect a measure of control over how that time and energy is used.
And if they need more of that time and energy, it's reasonable to think about it as a limited and valuable resource.
Again, the connotations of the word are entirely positive in my opinion. Others think differently, so I avoid the word in the human context. But it's a good word.
But if you boil it down, the resource we're talking about here is an employee's time and energy, which they offer to an employer in freely-chosen and equitable exchange for compensation. Not about the employee as person.
So it's also reasonable for an employer to expect a measure of control over how that time and energy is used.
And if they need more of that time and energy, it's reasonable to think about it as a limited and valuable resource.
Again, the connotations of the word are entirely positive in my opinion. Others think differently, so I avoid the word in the human context. But it's a good word.
This take is so strange to me that I'm having trouble groking it. I agree it implies some level of control. I also think that some level of control exists as long as workers are selling their time and labor. Calling in my resource doesn't negate the fact that they could walk away. That would simply be your source of resources drying up
If so then isn't it just the meaning of the word you have trouble groking? We agree that it's a word that equates people with things like money and materials? You have heard of the concept of objectification, "the action of degrading someone to the status of a mere object"? Why would it surprise you that people take offence when they are linguistically lumped together with objects?
I guess my trouble is understanding the mindset of people that can't separate the resource they provide to a company from their self worth and personal identity.
It just seems fragile and delusional when the basis of the relationship is objective in nature.
I love my spouse and wouldn't want them to objectify me. I don't pretend my employer pays me because of a deep appreciation of my individual character.
It just seems fragile and delusional when the basis of the relationship is objective in nature.
I love my spouse and wouldn't want them to objectify me. I don't pretend my employer pays me because of a deep appreciation of my individual character.
Resources are there to be used, and characterised entirely by their usefulness to their users.
I agree, I thought that was a bit discordant. A better title, imo, would have been "Kindness, Tech Staffing and Employee Allocation".
Sounds like some CEOs are trying to push down salaries and bonuses and convince some younger SWEs to take lowball salary offers.
At some point there may come a real crunch and recession, and things may be a bit hard for a year or two, but it won't be a "New Normal".
People need to give up on this idea that every dip in the market or whatever reflects a permanent change in condition.
At some point there may come a real crunch and recession, and things may be a bit hard for a year or two, but it won't be a "New Normal".
People need to give up on this idea that every dip in the market or whatever reflects a permanent change in condition.
Conspiracy theory: coordinated layoffs to try and depress the cost of hiring SWEs and other "tech talent" across the board.
Kindness was only mentioned in the title of the post. It's a pity, because I am pretty sensible on this topic of kindness because one of my former manager told me "you're too kind to level up in this company".
I gladly left.
I gladly left.
Kindness was definitely in the post though -- the whole point of the closing was to be kind to those facing adverse circumstances.
Writing online what people did wrong isn't unkind, it could help others avoid the same mistakes. I'm not sure the world would be better if everyone just was kind instead of trying to be helpful.
I also was told in my last job that I was way too kind.
They fired me 2 days later, one of the reasons being "you're not cutthroat enough for this business".
They fired me 2 days later, one of the reasons being "you're not cutthroat enough for this business".
I guess the proper response to that is to slap them in the face?
I think, instead, they wanted their throats slit!
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> Losing your job is awful in the best of circumstances
It can sure seem that way initially, but I know two people for whom it was the kick in the pants they needed - they started their own businesses and were much happier a year later.
Sometimes it's easier to just keep going to work every day than do what you really want to.
It can sure seem that way initially, but I know two people for whom it was the kick in the pants they needed - they started their own businesses and were much happier a year later.
Sometimes it's easier to just keep going to work every day than do what you really want to.
As ever Redmonk nails it. I agree that lots of well funded and profitable firms are over resourced, and simultaneously not focussed on the core fundamentals. I hope we can all play a part in reallocating talent to the sectors of society that need transformation the most.
Agree with the advice. If nothing else, be kind and respectful of people facing adversity.
> be kind and respectful
He seems to be calling out Twitter specifically, but is anybody really being otherwise there? I mean - I can understand (and will gleefully participate in) the schadenfreude of seeing the self-righteous Twitter censors being forced to find actual work commensurate with their marginal value to human civilization, but he seems to be talking about the rank-and-file types who carry pages and write product documentation.
He seems to be calling out Twitter specifically, but is anybody really being otherwise there? I mean - I can understand (and will gleefully participate in) the schadenfreude of seeing the self-righteous Twitter censors being forced to find actual work commensurate with their marginal value to human civilization, but he seems to be talking about the rank-and-file types who carry pages and write product documentation.
Careful, friend. Sounds like karma has its eye on you.
Funny that low performers are seen 100% as a bug and never as a feature. Future leaders need minions too right?
I think they're more seen as "buffer states" that you can quickly sacrifice on the altar of the Board of Directors to show that you're serious about cost-cutting. While not hurting your core staff at all.
> be kind
Absolutely not. I’d be neutral.
Absolutely not. I’d be neutral.
At the beginning of covid, I got laid off from a company the day after I accepted a new job at a different company. I had a meeting with my boss to put in my two weeks in the afternoon, but I woke up to an 9am meeting with our CTO where our entire team was let go. Since I got let go instead of quitting I got severance and health care for a few months and was able to file for unemployment, which allowed me to take 6 weeks in between jobs instead of the 2 I was planning.
It was literally the best possible scenario I can think of for getting laid off and it still fucking hurt to be let go.
Seriously, please remember be kind to the people going through this.