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donflamenco | 1 year ago

I would recommend the full video on Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEg8cOx7UZk

Another fascinating bit is when he describes the flat management structure NVDA has.

He, as CEO, has 58 direct reports and no scheduled one on ones. Feedback is given constantly (up and down.).

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sanderjd|1 year ago

No 1:1s sounds miserable. I don't want to give or receive feedback "constantly", I have other things to do constantly. I want to have a set periodic time where I know I will not be interrupted by my manager "sharing feedback", and will not be interrupting them with my feedback.

I suspect that in practice, relatively little feedback is being shared either up or down within such a structure, as people are busy working and never hit their set time reminding them to think through what feedback they have.

sahila|1 year ago

1:1s are okay when you're an IC and have it with your manager. The problem is the flipside is when your manager has many ICs, then it doesn't scale properly. Imagine Jensen having 58 reoccurring 1-1s!

In fact I see this with my coworkers, especially PMs, who have their schedules full of 1-1s daily. No doubt there's useful work that gets done in them _sometimes_, but I have doubts its efficiency over the long term with cross functionals. But even just focusing on 1-1s between managers/reports, I'd prefer nixing them in favor of a flatter structure, and using office hours/one-offs when needed.

Pet_Ant|1 year ago

> Feedback is given constantly (up and down.).

If you don't make time for things they rarely happen unless the people are particularly fired up about them. I don't even know who my current manager is to even reach out to. My coworkers don't unit test until reminded on the PR. I honestly forget to smoke-test until called out on it. So unless your culture is about feedback and everyone truly embodies that and is on board, it's not gonna happen.

sahila|1 year ago

Some of these seem a bit far-fetched and out of the norm. Not knowing your manager - do you even know what team you're on?

Engineering culture dictates much more strongly regarding unit and other tests than constant human feedback. It's also easy to add automated lint coverage tests to your PRs, and creating a documented process to check whether smoke-tests, etc.