[DrDroop]

This is the reason why I am trying to move away from being a software engineer. I don't like to complain but it is honestly degrading how SE are treated in some places. I've been on teams with 4 project managers/analysts and 3 developers. They will expect you to do all the real hard work while they sit in meetings all day making UI mockups and architecture diagrams. There is just no way in winning this.

[threeseed]

> They will expect you to do all the real hard work while they sit in meetings all day making UI mockups and architecture diagrams

You could also look at this the other way.

They are the ones doing the real hard work i.e. making tough decisions, dealing with stakeholders, incomplete and poorly conceived requirements whilst you just get to build what's written down on a page.

Everyone plays their role in companies and assume they are the indispensable ones.

[DrDroop]

I think the point of the article was that to be valuable as an engineer you have to do things like "making tough decisions, dealing with stakeholders, incomplete and poorly conceived requirements". My problem is that a lot of people have your attitude and pretend that they are doing me a favour by having this being written down all the while limiting the actual design space for a problem, and in the same breath patronise me on what teamwork is really like.

[pavlov]

If you want to do that work, have you looked for ways you could get involved?

Or if it’s the case that you’re actually doing that work behind the scenes because the output from the PMs isn’t very useful, have you looked for ways to make your contribution more visible?

[sanitycheck]

Oh, how I laughed.

Mostly they just pass those things on to the developers to deal with. Then we have to figure out how to bypass them and communicate with the stakeholders ourselves to figure out what the real requirements are and what we can build which solves their problem and yet is still broadly recognisable as the specified deliverable.

After that, coding it is easy.

[Danjoe4]

Yes PM roles seem to be exploding at certain companies and it's a bad thing for developers. There's not enough engineers to meet demand so just hire more PMs seems to be the strategy.

[bazoom42]

What is degrading about that? Would you rather sit in meetings than develop?

[DrDroop]

I would like to work in a place where communication is a two way thing.

[Danjoe4]

It's a culture issue. Some PMs get the impression that they're higher up in the hierarchy; they start delegating instead of negotiating with the devs. Really they're just around because upper management prefers talking to them instead of the pseudo autistic engineers.