Comment on Who is the enemy?
Professorozone@lemmy.world 4 days agoLook, I don’t wish to be insulting but with a comment like that, I find it hard to believe you worked in any business. While engineers maintain some level of control over product design, like making the product actually function (although I’ve even seen that thwarted by management) they do not usually have the last say in things like ergonomics, interoperability, improvements that cost extra, appearance, business development and many other design parameters.
By management I should point out that I am including anyone who is above the design engineer in the process.
I’ve seen business development guys promise customers impossible functionality because “that’s what I thought they would want.”
I’ve seen schedules created by systems engineers that could not be met if we lived in a Star Trek universe.
I’ve been in meetings where production logic was similar to; if one woman can give birth to a child in 9 months, nine women can give birth to a child in one month.
I’ve seen budgets slashed to the bone or critical people removed from projects for a host of reasons, good or bad.
In an actual example I was in a meeting where the manager of business development didn’t know what the term PC Card slot meant. When he was presented with the product design in a meeting, he asked where the PC Card slot was. So the engineer pointed out that it was internal to the unit, on the motherboard where they were always placed. He did not like this because there was no actual slot on the outside. When it was pointed out that that wasn’t really possible without completely redesigning both the motherboard and the enclosure he insisted we put a slot on the outside. When told that the PC Card slot couldn’t be reached from ANY slot on the outside of the enclosure he made us redesign the end plate to incorporate a PC Card shaped slot that served no purpose except to stroke his ego, and add a costly change to a product with existing tooling and necessitate a PC Card slot sized plug to seal the unit against moisture be designed. We, from that day forward, referred to that end cap as the vanity plate.
Yeah a good manager would do all of those things you said assuming his manager doesn’t stop him, but that’s the point, managers suck. That’s why we hate then.
espentan@lemmy.world 4 days ago
I don’t disagree with anything you’re saying.
What I wrote was based on my personal experience, managing engineers on product teams and how I approached the role as manager.
We owned the products we developed and maintained and as a team we enjoyed great autonomy, and so we were spared customers/clients asking for the ridiculous, and I can probably count on one hand (ok, maybe two hands) the times we just had to do something because corporate said so.
We always pushed for engineers’ involvement in product and feature development, planning/roadmaps, and they did indeed have great influence over the what and the how. Push back from engineers on products’ suggestions/ideas/plans were frequent, and attention was paid.
This was for a company in Norway, where perhaps top down management isn’t as prevalent as in many other places, and employees are typically encouraged to speak up and get involved. Again, in my experience.
I found that being there to support and assist my engineers, not micro managing them, gave great results in terms of team culture and work satisfaction. I made it clear that I would always have their backs as long as they didn’t intentionally fuck something up.
I fully realize this isn’t the case everywhere, nor even typical.
All said, I really enjoyed being a manager. On some level it triggered a father’s instincts in me, and I took great pride in looking after people and seeing what they were capable of building as a team.
Professorozone@lemmy.world 4 days ago
I worked for four companies in my professional career, three defense contractors and one commercial company, all in the US. But I interacted with countless others both US and international and I would have to say, your experience is definitely the exception. You should definitely be happy you had such a great experience. I find it’s difficult NOT to have pressures to cut corners or just under-design. Cost, physics or customer expectations frequently turn that pressure up.