> I think this over focus lately on communication in engineering is making work suck more. This is how politic players dominate and technical work doesn't matter as much as how you sell impact, real or not.
Yes, tech companies have become more about ladders, optics, proxy metrics, performance review than about building, experimenting, leading with technical skill.
This happens because tech got infected with corpo MBA-style practices. Obviously, not a thriving environment for innovators. Great environment for corporate leeches who themselves can't do anything but want to tell "others" what they should be doing.
It's also a great environment for skilled technical people who don't mind speaking to another human being in person every now and then.
The idea that you are either an MBA-type "politic player" with zero technical skills whatsoever, or someone doing the "real work" who is super technical but starts fopsweating at the idea of having to present their work or write something that isn't code doesn't really line up with my experience.
A sizable percentage of my managers have written code while being managers. A sizable percentage of my programming coworkers have had MBAs.
The two extremes do not last very long in any healthy organization.
I hate to break it to you, but you get to write software because you work for a company that needs to generate revenue in order to pay your salary, pay the bills, and give a dividend to its shareholders. That is why "corpo MBA" people exist.
Inconveniently for some software types, the world doesn't and shouldn't revolve around software development.
Hopefully we can just get away from "MBA types" vs. "software types" altogether.
You should be well rounded. Managers with MBAs who work for tech companies should be able to have technical conversations, and be able to share their opinions with technical people without sounding like imbeciles. Software engineers should be able to understand and discuss business considerations without sounding like it is beneath them, or similarly sounding like they think the money just appears in the bank account magically.
The healthiest organizations promote this multidisciplinary approach, they invest in their employees to help make it happen, and most importantly and perhaps most controversially, if you're not well rounded and knowledgable about all aspects of the business it is extremely career-limiting beyond the lowest levels of management or whatever the terminal IC role is in the org.
> Hopefully we can just get away from "MBA types" vs. "software types" altogether.
Sounds great. Except.. if you're advocating for "charisma" in the first place, then that's probably not really the goal and definitely not the effect that you'll see. Hence the various cranky/skeptical/cynical comments in this thread. There's plenty of charisma in tech already, and it's usually associated with fraudsters like SBF.
> I hate to break it to you, but you get to write software because you work for a company that needs to generate revenue in order to pay your salary, pay the bills, and give a dividend to its shareholders. That is why "corpo MBA" people exist.
No one's blaming MBA. In fact, if the corpo MBA people actually focused on - generate revenue in order to pay your salary, pay the bills, and give a dividend to its shareholders - that'd be great. Use some skill to generate these.
But corpo MBAs spend an enormous amount of time in ladder-climbing, promos, hirings, firings, reorgs - all of which are orthogonal to the points you described earlier: generate revenue in order to pay your salary, pay the bills, and give a dividend to its shareholders.
TL;DR corpo MBA are not doing what is required of them. Instead, they are sucking on innovators with corpo policies - leading to the original post.
I hate to break it to you, but unless you design a business exactly exquisitely perfect the first time AND trap its employees in amber so they never want to leave, get promoted, or age and retire, then a large part of running it properly is "promos, hirings, firings, and reorgs."
Making the machine run better and more efficiently is how they generate revenue in order to pay your salary, pay the bills, and give a dividend to the shareholders. It's the test automation of the business world.
> I hate to break it to you, but unless you design a business exactly exquisitely perfect the first time AND trap its employees in amber so they never want to leave, get promoted, or age and retire, then a large part of running it properly is "promos, hirings, firings, and reorgs."
This is exactly corpo MBA-style which is orthogonal to innovation. By stating this statement, you just contradicted your own point earlier about why corpo MBAs are needed.
I hate to break it to you - you ARE the typical corpo MBA who will shift goalposts to justify your own position - and it is very evident to anyone engaging in a discussion with you.
Yes, tech companies have become more about ladders, optics, proxy metrics, performance review than about building, experimenting, leading with technical skill.
This happens because tech got infected with corpo MBA-style practices. Obviously, not a thriving environment for innovators. Great environment for corporate leeches who themselves can't do anything but want to tell "others" what they should be doing.