7 ms·

Do: - LOC matter? - Do PRs? - Do Tokens? I’ve never looked up a KPI to figure out who the best engineer is. It’s always obvious to everyone who the best eng

Do: - LOC matter? - Do PRs? - Do Tokens? I’ve never looked up a KPI to figure out who the best engineer is. It’s always obvious to everyone who the best engineer is Natural leaders inspire. They don’t need KPIs

unified101 28d ago
Great for a small startup. Now do this for 1000 people team.
- fragmede 28d ago
  naively, isn't that how you end up with a pyramid structure with layers of management? You have an engineering manager managing a dozen or whatever is the right number that they are able to identify the high output engineers, and then they report that up the line to a director and a VP and then the SVP and the CTO and then the CEO.
  - unified101 28d ago
    follow through with that logic, understand how these people would coordinate, and you'll understand KPIs and why you can't just rely on "leaders inspire".
    - fragmede 28d ago
      ELI5, please. I'm not good at the people stuff.
      - unified101 28d ago
        Not ELI5-able (by me atleast)! It's essentially MBA level, or generally organization building as a topic. Pickup any of the classic management books (Andy grove's high output management). They can probably give an idea of how you measure performance in lage organizations.
        oliculipolicula 24d ago
        [It goes without saying that I'm neither an expert at people, nor an MBA. But let me _try_ to unpack you for PP like _I_ am 10 or 15. Looks like I should be interested in what both of you would say in response, so it might be worthwhile to think as I write] In general there's a sort of arms race between Technical Direction Setters (TDS) and Arbitrarily Omniscient expert Consultants (AOC) But this is _not_ the race that both of you (& I) seem to be concerned about The tech exhaust is a KPI of, for, and by, like PP says, "these people": middle managers whose job is to shepherd AOC-- whom, btw, could well be made of silicon. These middle managers most likely do not "inspire people", even if they have the capability or potential to. If they did they wouldnt _need_ these KPIs. Are they TDS? They could be, but it's _not_ their job. The responsible ones, though, realise that they need to hit those KPIs in order to be good TDS (absent of native ability to not overly indulge in "inspiring people", which is rare in any org, and rarer in large ones) Does this help? Did I manage to capture some essence of the logic?

unified101 28d ago

Great for a small startup. Now do this for 1000 people team.

fragmede 28d ago
naively, isn't that how you end up with a pyramid structure with layers of management? You have an engineering manager managing a dozen or whatever is the right number that they are able to identify the high output engineers, and then they report that up the line to a director and a VP and then the SVP and the CTO and then the CEO.
- unified101 28d ago
  follow through with that logic, understand how these people would coordinate, and you'll understand KPIs and why you can't just rely on "leaders inspire".
  - fragmede 28d ago
    ELI5, please. I'm not good at the people stuff.
    - unified101 28d ago
      Not ELI5-able (by me atleast)! It's essentially MBA level, or generally organization building as a topic. Pickup any of the classic management books (Andy grove's high output management). They can probably give an idea of how you measure performance in lage organizations.
      - oliculipolicula 24d ago
        [It goes without saying that I'm neither an expert at people, nor an MBA. But let me _try_ to unpack you for PP like _I_ am 10 or 15. Looks like I should be interested in what both of you would say in response, so it might be worthwhile to think as I write] In general there's a sort of arms race between Technical Direction Setters (TDS) and Arbitrarily Omniscient expert Consultants (AOC) But this is _not_ the race that both of you (& I) seem to be concerned about The tech exhaust is a KPI of, for, and by, like PP says, "these people": middle managers whose job is to shepherd AOC-- whom, btw, could well be made of silicon. These middle managers most likely do not "inspire people", even if they have the capability or potential to. If they did they wouldnt _need_ these KPIs. Are they TDS? They could be, but it's _not_ their job. The responsible ones, though, realise that they need to hit those KPIs in order to be good TDS (absent of native ability to not overly indulge in "inspiring people", which is rare in any org, and rarer in large ones) Does this help? Did I manage to capture some essence of the logic?