[wildrhythms]

I frequently see these attempts to bypass hierarchy like this, and it never works well. The junior technical staff understand the chain of command, so when higherups break that (either intentionally or unintentionally) it creates confusion and chaos.

[clnq]

No one is saying it, but a part of the reason is that a long power distance makes it difficult for a junior to object or negotiate a request. It’s usually a plain “yes, I’ll do it”, no matter the consequences.

[closeparen]

On the other hand, the game of telephone up and down the hierarchy frequently confuses important details.

[s1gnp0st]

In that case, CC the engineering boss while discussing with the IC; otherwise what's really going on is the nontechnical is trying to hide their impact on the IC's workload from their boss.

This leaves aside for the moment that I don't think nontechnical leadership belongs in a technology company.

[Cthulhu_]

Or it's a relief because the request will get watered down and / or expanded upon the more management layers it goes through. Are those layers of management even needed? I've read some anecdotes from people working at google and co where it seems a massive management party and nothing of value is done.

[kortilla]

No, Junior technical staff are terrible at scope estimation and will commit to ridiculous things on impossible timelines without realizing it.

[phanimahesh]

I have an extreme instance where the ceo bypassed everyone to directly drive a group of sde1s. When pushed for same day deliveries and the sde1s pushed through, and everyone else were publicly humiliated for taking much longer to deliver. It resulted in weekend marathons and all nighters being a regular occurence for the group he directly took charge of, and the demands escalated to timelines needed in hours instead of days, and a mess of code. The already popular copy paste driven write once development pattern became the only means of survival to many. (code so bad that it's only written once, nobody had the confidence to modify. New, similar request? Copy paste, modify, and manually test.)

I am so glad to have escaped that, for many more reasons. Still working off that near burnout and putting off getting back to work since a few months. (burnout not due to overwork, I escaped that madness, but other dysfunctional things in the organisation.)

[MajimasEyepatch]

Almost by definition, junior engineers are incapable of distinguishing "this is the literal request from the stakeholder" and "this is what the stakeholder is actually trying to accomplish."