[sdoering]

> unless you work at a 10 person company, the CTO has less context than you about reality “on the ground.”

From my experience people "on the ground" often miss out on the strategic long term goals.

Neither my take on it, nor the author's approach will be the silver bullet. Both are too extreme. And might appeal to different audiences on paper but not survive reality imho.

[Negitivefrags]

This is the result of the "Us vs Them" mentality that so many developers have these days and boils down to a lack of trust.

If your CTO lacks context about your reality on the ground, then tell them the context. How else can they readjust what the priorities are? If you tell them and they refuse to adjust your priority then it's probably you that lacks context about what the goals actually are.

If you still disagree with that, then it's because you don't trust your CTO. If you don't trust your CTO then you should leave and find a better one.

If you have worked in a few places and have never trusted the CTO anywhere you have worked, perhaps you need to sit down and take a hard look at your yourself rather than others.

[fartcannon]

I think its the power dynamic. Not everyone can just leave jobs. If people don't trust their CTOs, bosses, CEOs, that is mostly the bosses fault and on them to fix. Requiring the person who can be at-will fired to also manage upwards is pretty much a fail state.

[malfist]

Not managing upwards is how you wind up in a fail state. Business, teamwork and employment isn't a zero sum game. Everyone is working together to achieve something. Helping your boss understand why something shouldn't be done/prioritized/cancelled is paramount to being efficient.

If you think you can never tell your boss no because you'll be fired, you're not going to have a good employment story.

[marssaxman]

It's the boss' responsibility to make it safe to say "no". You can't expect the more vulnerable party in the relationship to take the initial risk when there is a power imbalance.

[malfist]

If your stance is that the weaker party can take no risk because they're the weaker party then you'll always be a victim.

Work _with_ your boss, not against them. You have more agency than you realize.

[marssaxman]

Spoken with the cheerful idealism of a person who has always had a safety net.

My stance is that you cannot pretend the power dynamic does not exist. Boss can fire worker, worker cannot fire boss. Consquences of getting fired range from irritating to life-threatening, depending on worker's resources. Consequences of having to fire someone... not such a problem. You ignore that reality at your peril.

If the boss wants workers who can say "no", the boss has to create an environment where people don't have to fear the consequences of doing so.

[fartcannon]

Its about how _much_ information you give your boss. And when. When the power balance is even, the flow of information can be, too. But given the relationship of employment, it can never be. So its still on the employers/the powerful.

If you give it away for free, theyre not going to voluntarily pay you.

[Aeolun]

There’s very few situations in which dropping a feature that was previously ‘highest priority’ midway through makes sense.

More likely, you finish up fighting the latest fire and someone will suddenly remember the thing that is now ‘very late and behind schedule’.

[jimbob45]

Why would you ever give a developer a task without ensuring they understand your strategic long-term goals? That sounds like a sure-fire way to end up with a product that doesn’t match your vision.

[sokoloff]

There’s plenty of work (possibly a majority of it) in the industry that can be of the form “take a ticket, do the ticket, close the ticket”. Someone in the cascade has to understand the strategy and product vision to ensure you get a good overall outcome, but it doesn’t have to be the 22 year old SWE-1.

[XorNot]

My benchmark for this being wrong is that military briefings don't do this if they don't have to.

The gold standard for a military briefing is that it includes a high level overview of the global, regional and local situation before getting into specific orders and this was adopted because small unit doctrine depends on unit commanders having enough context to make informed independent actions in lieu of direct chains of command being available.

Everytime I've watched a ticket languish in any organisation, it's always because people don't feel a need to give context. They think they understand what they're asking for, it doesn't match reality and then the back and forth culminating in a bunch of calls and finally someone explaining the goal happens.

[sdoering]

I wasn't in the military and my knowledge stems only from others' personal accounts and what I read about it.

I agree for the need of context. Because only then can the operative understand why it is important what they are doing and in case of decisions to be made on the ground either decide or clarify with the org structure.

I know that unit commanders are being (ideally) briefed like you described. But how does this context trickle down to their people? Does the military have a means to ensure the passing down of relevant and qualitativ information?

Because that is what I personally see as a problem more often than not. The information is lost at the lower rungs of the ladder.

[afarrell]

By believing that the goals are already clear.

By believing you don’t need to repeat yourself about what the goals are.

[warlog]

Tell my manager (the CTO) that.

[a1445c8b]

> From my experience people "on the ground" often miss out on the strategic long term goals.

This has been my experience too, having been an engineer for the past 3 decades and to this day.

And even if the CTO does a great job of communicating strategy, we on the ground tend to get lost in the weeds just because of the nature of our work.

I think outright saying “no” because we don’t think it’s hight priority is a dangerous move that makes the team a target for future performance reviews.

We should, instead, find a common ground and sell our priorities rather than impose them.

[underwater]

Explaining and communicating the strategic goals is the job of the CTO. They're adults, they can deal with being told "no". And changing priorities due to strategic shifts shouldn't be happening frequently.