It's a good exercise to mentally go around the a meeting room and think about what each person wants from it. Given Rands' job, he obviously starts thinking about it earlier, and for longer, but even a few minutes while everyone's settling in and chit-chatting can make a difference in how you participate.
but in this case, specifically. who are these career people thinking about orgs and their movement in years?
especially in a job economy where employees are expected to be laid off despite "staggering profits". It feels completely orthogonal to the environment I exist in.
is there room for lifers in big orgs? without getting the boot or worrying about the boot?
I would like to move on but also given the current climate that seems ludicrous.
People I talk to in similar places are in the same boat. Hiring is frozen, there's not enough people to manage everything we have, and everyone remaining is hanging on for dear life.
But I also found the article really unsatisfying. The idea that middle management should spend enormous amounts of time building relationships because other middle managers got vibes that one day it might be useful is insane. I think the article represents the worst of big, slow tech bureaucracies.
Replacing middle management with AI would not work, but using AI to avoid managers needing to have all these meetings would probably work really well. The idea that there's some AI system that has access to all the documents/email/task management systems at the company is a good one, and it could identify situations (like the one in the article) where two projects on opposite ends of the organization are colliding.
Instead of two middle managers needing to do 1:1s with no clear need for years because other middle managers got vibes that they should could be replaced by an AI system that uncovered situations like the ones mentioned in the article.
This wouldnt replace middle managers, but it might help them do their jobs better.
* You're an engineer with 3-6 years of experience in a primarily IC role
* Maybe you've done some tech lead stuff, but you've never actively worked in engineering management.
* You feel that management (and HR for some reason?) is constantly in the way of you getting stuff done, and that your life would be easier if you could simply decline every meeting and only communicate through pull requests.
Humor me, please. I'll explain after.
The right work just doesn't get done without staff engineers and architect types having frequent conversations & meetings as well as constant code reviewing. Or long-term ICs effectively doing this role without the title and expectations/responsibilities (raises hand). You can identify these people because they ask questions relentlessly. Always well-considered ones, but even the ones that might make them look stupid in a meeting.
Coding is a small percentage of the work but also just as important. That's the sweet spot. The "non-stop meetings/socializing" people and the "headphones on & grind PRs" types are both two extremes of behavior that are boat-anchors in any organization and will bring productivity/customer-impact to a screeching halt if it goes unchecked for long enough.
And it's _always_ those stupid-seeming questions that uncover showstopping problems that would have bit you if left ignored.
Edit: Not to greenlight anything Palantir is doing, but in my opinion the FDE/FDSE model is probably everyone's near-future if your company is B2B. You can't be an "ignore meetings" type of person and do that.