[jdudkeidnn]

While I agree with and appreciate the pragmatism of this, I think there’s a fundamental problem if an employee has to report their work to their manager (or employer, etc). Management that is not deeply aware of what their reports are doing is either unnecessary or incompetent.

I think this trend is mostly a result of management looking to squeeze more labor out of their reports for the same price. As soon as you make working on braggable things your reports problem, you have a lot less work to do and your reports have (more) perverse incentives to both overwork and ignore “unbraggable” work. These incentives are more aligned with contract work, not full time employment - the former usually being much pricier.

[mhss]

> Management that is not deeply aware of what their reports are doing is either unnecessary or incompetent.

I am biased as a manager, but, for context, I was a senior IC for a long time before management though. I also transitioned first being a TL/manager "deeply aware" (reviewing most PRs, coding large parts myself, etc) and then eventually as a more traditional manager.

Sometimes management can be unnecessary or incompetent, but also you're excluding the possibility of companies trying to find a reasonable organizational balance of management costs. A manager that is deeply aware or involved, is also a manager that cannot manage more than maybe 5-6 people. If you want a manager to manage more people and focus in coaching, cross-team dependencies, unclogging stuck projects, roadmap building, etc; you rarely can have a manager doing IC work still and that means they cannot be involved in every PR or conversation their team is involved. If you give autonomy to the team members to make decisions and progress, by definition you won't be involved nor "deeply aware" all the time. Your 1:1s are an opportunity to address this divergence and a brag document helps feed your 1:1 with your manager to bring them up to date.

[bastardoperator]

They're called reports for a reason, they report back to you. When you hire capable professionals, they tell you what time it is and what support they need. The entire purpose of management is to ensure success of the IC and team not to be a mind reader or micromanager.

[its-summertime]

I go to a mechanic, ask them to give my car a look at. They do so, and then give me a report of the work to be done.

[jdudkeidnn]

I’m not quite following…this would be equivalent to a manager asking a dev what work needs to be done (I think). Which is good and healthy - and requires the manager to understand the report (as well as have a record of it, so no need for a brag doc). If they’re unable to understand it, they’re not suited to evaluate that report.

Nearly every time I’ve needed work done on a car different mechanics give me different lists. It’s pretty expensive when I’m unable to evaluate those reports because I don’t understand cars.

[xboxnolifes]

Managers aren't "going to a mechanic". They are managing the entire shop. If they are managing the shop and don't know what the mechanics are doing, then they aren't doing much managing.

[bastardoperator]

I've never seen a manager, let alone a director or even VP that manages the entire shop when it comes to software.

[xboxnolifes]

The shop, in this metaphor, is one team.

[ttymck]

I strongly agree with this intuition, and I worry that we software engineers are gaslighting each other into believing otherwise.