[zallarak]

Ironically I think these types of exercises are part of the problem at major software companies; terrible efficiency and over hiring.

Because you need to “brag” to get rewarded, everyone ambitious has a list. And each list is nearly impossible for middle managers to evaluate. Someone may solve a hardcore engineering problem that has no business impact. Another person might redo some docs. Someone may create a design system version. Lots of token achievements, but not real work.

Real work should stand on its own and competent managers should be able to identify it. Mediocre managers rely on lists, so then people start showing up to work and making lists.

[mhss]

> Ironically I think these types of exercises are part of the problem at major software companies; terrible efficiency and over hiring.

They're not the problem they're a consequence of the problems.

> Because you need to “brag” to get rewarded, everyone ambitious has a list. And each list is nearly impossible for middle managers to evaluate.

This will be read mostly by your manager not a middle manager. It's up to your manager then to represent your accomplishments to middle managers and above. Good thorough middle managers will still be able to assess them though.

> Another person might redo some docs. Someone may create a design system version. Lots of token achievements, but not real work.

Competent managers can distinguish between those, if you don't have competent managers that's the problem, not the "brag doc".

> Real work should stand on its own and competent managers should be able to identify it. Mediocre managers rely on lists, so then people start showing up to work and making lists.

No because even competent managers have often a wide span at large companies and cannot be involved in the day to day details for all the work their team does and things can fall through the cracks. This would only be solvable by having first line managers have less reports or less manager overhead so they can be immersed in their team's work. I have done both, but at large companies is often not possible to be immersed in the work of all of your reports, no matter how competent you are. As mentioned in the article, even you often forget what you have done last week.

[jdudkeidnn]

> Competent managers can distinguish between those

How do you do this without deep knowledge of what your reports are doing?

[dustingetz]

how can we recognize a competent manager? serious question. (Will all the incompetent managers please raise their hand)

[tail_exchange]

If rewriting your docs and solving these hardcore engineering problems have zero impact, then you shouldn't do them in the first place. If these changes are important, then they do have impact, but the engineers may not know how to communicate it.

Learning to communicate impact is difficult, but it's a really good skill to have. Do these doc changes/engineering problems help reduce KTLO? Does it reduce on-call toil? Is it going to bring security patches? Is it going to make the system more efficient and save money? Are these frequently asked features? Do you have other people (preferably seniors) who can vouch in favour of these changes? All these things are measurable and can be communicated as impact.

There are instances where a change has 0 impact and it's still nice to have, for example, fixing a typo in the internal docs. But these changes are usually very easy to do (take less than 5 minutes), and it won't affect your other tasks. On the other hand, spending several days fixing typos everywhere may seem like a great idea, but if nobody cares about them and it does not move any needles, then you are just wasting the company's time and money. The effort you put in these no-impact changes should be a defining factor for prioritization.

[bananapub]

> everyone ambitious has a list. And each list is nearly impossible for middle managers to evaluate.

have you worked at one of the megacorps you're talking about?

everyone has a list, because their manager gets them to write one, and it's very possible for managers to evaluate them because that is their job and they are largely reviewing their direct reports while getting bollocked by their peer managers.

[closeparen]

Tech firms and their systems are enormously complex and interrelated. Most business impact doesn’t accrue neatly to one person. To the extent that it does, you have just bizarrely chosen to aggregate a large number of independent startups under one roof vs. build an actual organization with specialization or economies of scale. At best equal to the sum of its parts, when it should be greater than.

[faeriechangling]

>Mediocre managers rely on lists

They’re just a data structure… and a useful one at that… competent managers work in diverse ways. Schedules are made up of lists of information, do 10x managers not use schedules?