One of the most important things about great performers in any discipline is to be adaptive. This also applies to engineering managers. I think the article is correct that it identifies that fads shifted. Great people were able to both adapt to new expectations while all the while adapting their approach to individual situations and people. If you are a one-trick pony sometimes your trick is in line with fads and expectations and you will do well. Sometimes it’s not in line and you will struggle. If you are adaptive you will do well in a changing landscape.

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glouwbug 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Sometimes the real deliverable is a happy team

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bluGill 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Only to the extent that a happy team delivers something of value. Teams can be happy doing things that will drive the company bankrupt. there is only so much unhappiness they can stand

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jjk166 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If the incentives of the team (team happiness) and the company (delivery of something of value) are misaligned, that's a much higher level failure. Either the engineering manager has been handed the wrong team or assigned the wrong task to accomplish. Setting high level goals for the engineering managers and allocating resources for them to achieve those goals is the entire purpose of senior leadership.

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ozim 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Not fun part is when team delivers good valuable stuff but market isn’t there.

	▲	sokoloff 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		What valuable stuff was delivered if the market isn’t there?

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khaled_ismaeel 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If value can only be delivered by making a group of people miserable then maybe the definition of "value" is fundamentally wrong, like it was/is in the case of slavery.

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mjr00 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Even outside the context of capitalism, society only functions when people perform unpleasant tasks which provide value. Nobody has fun collecting garbage, but it has to be done. Nobody finds happiness in digging graves, but it has to be done. Nobody is overjoyed at the prospect of telling a person they have a terminal illness, but it has to be done.

So no, I don't really buy the idea that a team which is "forced" to work on boring, but profitable tasks for a business instead of getting to rewrite core infrastructure in Rust as a fun and interesting intellectual exercise is equivalent to slavery.

	▲	BigGreenJorts 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Nobody has fun collecting garbage, but it has to be done. Nobody finds happiness in digging graves, but it has to be done. Nobody is overjoyed at the prospect of telling a person they have a terminal illness, but it has to be done. but we find ways to make the jobs of people who perform these tasks less horrific. We makes trucks that reduce the physical toll and increase the cleanliness of garbage pickup, we combine the digging of graves with the maintenance and beautification once they have been buried, sometimes you have to tell someone they have a terminal illness, but the majority of the time you are helping someone get their condition into remission. I think the critical balance that management has to achieve between "having a happy team" and "having a productive team" is finding ways to keep morale up so that employees don't lose their minds and quit or reduce performance doing the miserable stuff.

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latency-guy2 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Why misrepresent what someone else said to make your point?