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The senior engineer death spiral

285 points · 150 comments · nsavage

  1. BatchJob · · focus · HN ↗
    The scenario laid out is pretty dated. Most scrum shops would not permit this level of backstory anymore. Admittedly I have seen this happen in the old days but it wasnt usually very impactful. It was in places where people had too much time on their hands and not much supervision.

    Also there isnt much above senior/lead engineer these days, there is no straight line career progression above that. You can try to get into architecture but thats mostly paperwork, or management which is mostly dealing with people.

    If you want to call your own shots as an engineer the world is your oyster, start your own company and build it. There is not much worth "being in charge of" in corporate dev shops that I can see or would want to be a part of. Most of it is retread, make work including FAANG.

    1. dpark · · focus · HN ↗
      > Most scrum shops would not permit this level of backstory anymore … not much supervision

      If someone needs close supervision to ensure they don’t get stuck like this and spiral, they probably aren’t ready to be a senior engineer.

      1. Viliam1234 · · focus · HN ↗
        The agile sweatshops will give you as much supervision as they can regardless of whether you need it or not.
        1. dpark · · focus · HN ↗
          I suspect a lot of management have been sold on scrum because they see it as a way to micromanage employees rather than manage change.
          1. Viliam1234 · · focus · HN ↗
            If you take Scrum, and...

            * remove the retrospective

            * remove the planning poker

            * extend the "stand-up" meetings to take an hour (with no standing, of course)

            * and instead of developers synchronizing with each other you make it about developers reporting their daily progress to the manager

            * redefine the role of "scrum master" from someone who takes care about the Scrum rituals, to the traditional manager

            * remove the product owner and demo

            * and a few more changes like this

            ...you have turned Scrum into something that the managers really like!

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