My enterprise company just nuked every team's JIRA workflow, putting them all on the same one. A program manager actually asked me in a meeting with her boss present why we even needed workflow statuses other than To Do, Doing, and Done. Maybe the problem with my having free reign in a shop where no one is advancing good working practices is that other actors are actively going around breaking things, and there's no one with the knowledge, the spine, and the authority to correct the gradual encroachment of wrong-headed garbage. Their tendency is to DE-EVOLVE, it's maddening Tbh, it's worse looking back at it and thinking about what more I could have done to avert it.
Your content is extremely good for me. Listening to you makes me realize how clueless most people are about software leadership - myself included (as a developer)
Thanks for the comment! Yeah leadership is just another learnable skill. But it’s easier to be a low skill leader for longer, and to fly under the radar. With development/contributor work, there’s more transparency so it’s more obvious if there’s a skill issue.
My current job is at a company running for 30 years. It's incredible. The complete infrastructure is one big bug fiest. There are endless amount of bugs EVERYWHERE and it comes from one sentence by the CEO for 30 years: "so it's basically already finished right?". Imagine an burning screen or even room while he says this sentence several times in different teams during the week. The backend, the frontends, the infrastructure are all filled with bugs everywhere. There is no planning, no clear rules, communication issues (foreign workers), "yes" Sayers or just "talkers", too much politics, the seniors all have worked in this company for 30 years and have seen nothing else thinking they are the goats but in reality you can only call them senior by age. They are working on this new product now for 2 years and have a roll-out to some old customers and the product is so bad (because nothing is finished(there is no definition of finished)) that the old customers try it and than quit contract and go to another contractor. This company is done!
I agree with all your points. 20 years of experience here, and i have lived each of every point you made here. One thing you mentioned, and that bothers me so much, is about you managing 3 different projects, and not having to know what's going on on each one. My last manager was handling multiple projects, and for him it was like ticking the boxes of he had done some follow up, He showed up like he was doing a good job handling multiple projects, like a great leader, whereas it was all the way around. He didn't know what he was doing, and most of the times he was bouncing questions, or other stuff. On top of that he spent the time managing up, with higher management and neglected all the work under him. I hated that attitude so much.
Thanks for the comment. Yeah that sounds like a mouthpiece leader. Unfortunately I can relate, where a good part of my day is just spent plugging my nose into everything so I can answer to the bosses about status when they have questions.
High anxiety leaders with low trust are the problem themselves. Even if you give them full transparency through Jira or another tool, they just end up bothering everyone with clarification questions when they don’t understand things. If I have to deal with these people, I tend to try and help them understand that if they want progress as fast as possible, they are the bottleneck if they’re impatient. Once a week status is plenty. There is nothing positive or actionable that comes out of giving real-time or daily status to impatient or high anxiety leaders (in my experience).
agreed 💯. In a Scrum environment I invite them to reviews and make those meetings all about stakeholder engagement. But try to protect the day to day. In my current environment it’s everything all at once all of the time.
@@FixingSoftware I really miss the late 90s when we would just have once a week status meetings on Friday. It was great, everyone go to go around and show some progress from the entire week and it was very morale building. The daily meetings were fine when only devs were there, but as soon as non-technical leaders get invited (despite the scrum guide saying that's OK) it just devolved into a nag-fest.
@HealthyDev I don’t have as fond of memories as you during that time. For me it was years of being hounded and bullied by PMs for % completes and the subsequent death marches as a result.
@@HealthyDev I experienced this during a short period, at the beginning of my career, It's still to this day my best experience, we weren't even doing weekly status, it was every 2weeks or sometimes every month. I mean what's the point of doing status and losing your devs time when just a 5min chit-chat the morning or during a break is enough... I really miss that moment, where I would just come, do work and that's it. It was amazing. And it was the period of my life were I was the most productive, I was constantly fixing issues, writing code, it was so fun.
100% agree on the #1 issue. I've been on the receiving end of the toxic behaviour, and the failure of management to do anything meaningful about it. One of them simply tried to pass it off as 'personality issues'.
I have never felt more heard from a RUclips video than this one. You nailed it! From the very first point. I would work under or alongside your leadership any day. I could write a book about the mistakes happening in my current position after an acquisition and leadership shift at my company of employment.
Appreciate the words of encouragement! Means a lot. We could write the book but would the people who NEED it actually read it? That’s a puzzle I’m thinking about all the time with the channel. Not just screaming into an echo chamber. On the flipside, I think we have more to learn from “them” about how companies actually work to operate profitably.
That last one about team dad is on point. I'm in a place now where the organization wants everyone to be best friends and it's so silly. My prior job was much more intense, but I loved that people did their job and then did their own thing. When the culture is made up of people older than fresh out of school, like ours, very few people want to hang out with work people more than they have to. The little games and stuff are just super annoying. As an engineer, I look at it as less time to get my work done. And if I don't get my work done, nobody will say "yeah, but we wasted his time doing stupid little games"
I don't care who says it, it's annoying regardless the whole "HAPPY WHATEVER DAY OF THE WEEK IT IS". Not every day is a holiday. Extreme positivity is obnoxious and comes across as fake more often than not.
this is a very rough list...and i missed some things. let me know what i missed so i can make adjustments 00:45 failure to establish psychological safety 01:58 being clueless about software development 03:51 establishing a feature factory 05:32 anxiety driven development 06:57 being expected to know everything all the time 08:46 not actually interested in leadership 09:32 no clear goals 11:35 not having a spine 15:26 not respecting the team's need to focus 18:41 being the team mom or team dad 21:42 not understanding agile to avoid the pitfalls
Interesting thanks for the share. I’ve never worked big tech. I suppose at 200k+ you can have higher expectations? Would love to hear a faang take on what EMs do.
100% true story. I almost wish it wasn’t but then again, I have a good story to tell the grandkids about the time I got fired for letting people sit down.
@@FixingSoftware It's definitely not a good job anymore, it was. But now it has been infiltrated by the managers/ceo and other bullshitter job. Software dev was fun when it was all about engineering.
What are the leadership failures you've seen on your own software development teams? What failures are you guilty of as a leader?
My enterprise company just nuked every team's JIRA workflow, putting them all on the same one. A program manager actually asked me in a meeting with her boss present why we even needed workflow statuses other than To Do, Doing, and Done. Maybe the problem with my having free reign in a shop where no one is advancing good working practices is that other actors are actively going around breaking things, and there's no one with the knowledge, the spine, and the authority to correct the gradual encroachment of wrong-headed garbage. Their tendency is to DE-EVOLVE, it's maddening
Tbh, it's worse looking back at it and thinking about what more I could have done to avert it.
Your content is extremely good for me. Listening to you makes me realize how clueless most people are about software leadership - myself included (as a developer)
Thanks for the comment! Yeah leadership is just another learnable skill. But it’s easier to be a low skill leader for longer, and to fly under the radar. With development/contributor work, there’s more transparency so it’s more obvious if there’s a skill issue.
My current job is at a company running for 30 years. It's incredible. The complete infrastructure is one big bug fiest. There are endless amount of bugs EVERYWHERE and it comes from one sentence by the CEO for 30 years: "so it's basically already finished right?".
Imagine an burning screen or even room while he says this sentence several times in different teams during the week. The backend, the frontends, the infrastructure are all filled with bugs everywhere. There is no planning, no clear rules, communication issues (foreign workers), "yes" Sayers or just "talkers", too much politics, the seniors all have worked in this company for 30 years and have seen nothing else thinking they are the goats but in reality you can only call them senior by age.
They are working on this new product now for 2 years and have a roll-out to some old customers and the product is so bad (because nothing is finished(there is no definition of finished)) that the old customers try it and than quit contract and go to another contractor.
This company is done!
Sounds like a nightmare!
I agree with all your points. 20 years of experience here, and i have lived each of every point you made here.
One thing you mentioned, and that bothers me so much, is about you managing 3 different projects, and not having to know what's going on on each one. My last manager was handling multiple projects, and for him it was like ticking the boxes of
he had done some follow up, He showed up like he was doing a good job handling multiple projects, like a great leader, whereas it was all the way around. He didn't know what he was doing, and most of the times he was bouncing questions, or other stuff. On top of that he spent the time managing up, with higher management and neglected all the work under him. I hated that attitude so much.
Thanks for the comment. Yeah that sounds like a mouthpiece leader.
Unfortunately I can relate, where a good part of my day is just spent plugging my nose into everything so I can answer to the bosses about status when they have questions.
High anxiety leaders with low trust are the problem themselves. Even if you give them full transparency through Jira or another tool, they just end up bothering everyone with clarification questions when they don’t understand things.
If I have to deal with these people, I tend to try and help them understand that if they want progress as fast as possible, they are the bottleneck if they’re impatient. Once a week status is plenty. There is nothing positive or actionable that comes out of giving real-time or daily status to impatient or high anxiety leaders (in my experience).
agreed 💯. In a Scrum environment I invite them to reviews and make those meetings all about stakeholder engagement. But try to protect the day to day. In my current environment it’s everything all at once all of the time.
@@FixingSoftware I really miss the late 90s when we would just have once a week status meetings on Friday. It was great, everyone go to go around and show some progress from the entire week and it was very morale building. The daily meetings were fine when only devs were there, but as soon as non-technical leaders get invited (despite the scrum guide saying that's OK) it just devolved into a nag-fest.
@HealthyDev I don’t have as fond of memories as you during that time. For me it was years of being hounded and bullied by PMs for % completes and the subsequent death marches as a result.
@@FixingSoftware oh for sure, there was still the % complete tracking.
@@HealthyDev I experienced this during a short period, at the beginning of my career, It's still to this day my best experience, we weren't even doing weekly status, it was every 2weeks or sometimes every month. I mean what's the point of doing status and losing your devs time when just a 5min chit-chat the morning or during a break is enough...
I really miss that moment, where I would just come, do work and that's it. It was amazing. And it was the period of my life were I was the most productive, I was constantly fixing issues, writing code, it was so fun.
100% agree on the #1 issue. I've been on the receiving end of the toxic behaviour, and the failure of management to do anything meaningful about it. One of them simply tried to pass it off as 'personality issues'.
Yep I’ve seen it too. And have also let things go on for too long.
I have never felt more heard from a RUclips video than this one. You nailed it! From the very first point. I would work under or alongside your leadership any day. I could write a book about the mistakes happening in my current position after an acquisition and leadership shift at my company of employment.
Appreciate the words of encouragement! Means a lot.
We could write the book but would the people who NEED it actually read it? That’s a puzzle I’m thinking about all the time with the channel. Not just screaming into an echo chamber.
On the flipside, I think we have more to learn from “them” about how companies actually work to operate profitably.
That last one about team dad is on point. I'm in a place now where the organization wants everyone to be best friends and it's so silly. My prior job was much more intense, but I loved that people did their job and then did their own thing. When the culture is made up of people older than fresh out of school, like ours, very few people want to hang out with work people more than they have to. The little games and stuff are just super annoying. As an engineer, I look at it as less time to get my work done. And if I don't get my work done, nobody will say "yeah, but we wasted his time doing stupid little games"
Yep. Sad thing is I was the team dad in multiple occasions 🤦♂️
Glad you made this, you totally understand software development and you are doing something to help people improve their leadership skills
Appreciate that
I don't care who says it, it's annoying regardless the whole "HAPPY WHATEVER DAY OF THE WEEK IT IS". Not every day is a holiday. Extreme positivity is obnoxious and comes across as fake more often than not.
“Toxic positivity”
I feel your pain! Hard way taught!
this is a very rough list...and i missed some things. let me know what i missed so i can make adjustments
00:45 failure to establish psychological safety
01:58 being clueless about software development
03:51 establishing a feature factory
05:32 anxiety driven development
06:57 being expected to know everything all the time
08:46 not actually interested in leadership
09:32 no clear goals
11:35 not having a spine
15:26 not respecting the team's need to focus
18:41 being the team mom or team dad
21:42 not understanding agile to avoid the pitfalls
Great thanks! Around 8:46 is “not actually interested in leadership”
@@FixingSoftware updated. thanks!
In FAANG companies, handling ambiguity is 100% developers responsibility. That is the EMs expectation.
Context - 3 years in FAANG having 7 managers.
Interesting thanks for the share. I’ve never worked big tech. I suppose at 200k+ you can have higher expectations?
Would love to hear a faang take on what EMs do.
I don't see ppl standing up 😂😂😂. My stomach hurts. Seriously?
100% true story. I almost wish it wasn’t but then again, I have a good story to tell the grandkids about the time I got fired for letting people sit down.
is software devleopment overhyped?
overhyped in what way? I think as some utopian dream job, yes it's definitely been overhyped.
@@FixingSoftware It's definitely not a good job anymore, it was. But now it has been infiltrated by the managers/ceo and other bullshitter job. Software dev was fun when it was all about engineering.
Very good takes.
Appreciate that!