
Why are engineers loyal to managers but not the other way around? - zippy786
I often see engineers ask should I quit this job without a notice, should I quit in the middle of the project etc.<p>Do managers also ask the same when evaluating&#x2F;firing an employee ?  I&#x27;ve seen leads&#x2F;manager ask difficult questions in interview which they can&#x27;t answer. 
After joining the company one realizes leads are lead because they are friends and not because they are good at what they do.<p>Have you seen managers shown the same care that an employee shows ? Is it the fact that people won&#x27;t trust an engineer easily ? 
I&#x27;ve seen engineers spend 5-10 years working like a horse gaining the trust and then the company fires them just like that. 
Does trust play a role in software industry today ?
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nostrademons
Most managers/entrepreneurs I know absolutely _hate_ firing & laying off
people. It's their complete least favorite part of the job.

The difference is that managers are typically under more constraints than
engineers, and then entrepreneurs are under both more constraints and more
uncertainty than managers. As an engineer, your job is to make the machines do
what your boss wants them to do. You may have many technical constraints, but
you basically have only one human constraint: what your boss is asking for.

As a manager, your job is to keep the team functioning and keep _your_ boss
happy. If your boss says that your budget has been cut by 40%, there's nothing
you can do about it, you've gotta let 40% of your people go even if you really
like them and they've shown you nothing but loyalty. If you've got a brilliant
technical contributor but he's socially abrasive and half your team's
threatening to quit if you don't get rid of him, you can fire him or you can
lose half your team.

As an entrepreneur, your job is to a.) identify why the company should exist
b.) hire the right people and c.) make sure that there's always enough cash in
the bank. And if you have to lay people off, it means _you_ fucked up. But you
do all three of these things under conditions of extreme uncertainty. Maybe
the technical rock star that shined brightly in the coding interviews is a
douchebag to women, and you have to fire him so that you don't lose every
woman on your team. Maybe you hired in anticipation of growth, so that you
don't burn out people, but then the market for your product turned out to be
much smaller than you thought. Maybe you hit a recession and your whole sector
contracts.

Remember that entrepreneurs are ultimately responsible to customers, and
_customers_ show zero loyalty. If a better product comes out, or they hit on
hard times, or they change their line of business, they have no obligation to
keep paying for your product.

Trust and loyalty absolutely play a big role in the software industry today,
but business is a lot more complex than it seems when you come out of college,
and you learn quickly that you can't always do what you want.

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zippy786
That's why it is justifiable to treat an engineer as a tool ? And since you
brought it up, let's start one on science/engineering solutions vs.
management. Obviously you think the later is harder, I disagree.

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nostrademons
Forget justifiable - no, it's not justifiable. It is _necessary_ , in many
circumstances. There are circumstances where your continued employment with a
company will lead to worse consequences _for you and everybody else there_
than if you're let go.

I also didn't say management is _harder_ than engineering, I said "more
constrained". I believe that it's harder to be a _good_ manager than a good
engineer, but it's harder to be an _average_ engineer than an _average_
manager. And that again comes from constraints: a good manager tries to do
right by everybody, while an average manager doesn't care. You have the option
of ignoring your constraints in both professions, but an engineer that ignores
his constraints won't make any progress at all, while a manager that ignores
his constraints can sometimes muddle through until all of his people quit.

~~~
zippy786
Seems like managers do things that are not justifiable and get away with it,
whereas brunt work is done by engineers. Managers can't be trusted then,
because they can get away with it ? So who is to decide if the consequence to
let someone go, block raise/bonus is not because of the need of the company
but because of the greed of managers ?

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sbaghla
In startup world, we not just care but respect engineers :)

