"...on the team side, the reality of team practices that claim to be autonomous at large organizations is that supposed independence of action is frequently sustained by senior members or managers “protecting” their teams from external dependencies and taking on the work of advocacy as individual responsibility (Moe et al., 2019; Hicks, et al 2023)."
I think this is a big point with large psychological implications although software journals, alas, did not
I wonder a lot about the chronic alienation in this work: the fictions that we maintain about autonomy vs the people who make covert gambles to maintain it. This is not a value judgment -- I think there are good and bad ways for this to play out -- but it clearly exerts steep costs when we rely on individual passion to fuel it.
As I somewhat dryly wrote, "Research evidence from other specialized professions can be used to make a reasonable inference about the cost of this responsibility."
"For example, negotiating with leadership and thoughtfully resolving compromises between disparate technological solutions may be crucial to obtaining technical outcomes, yet neither recorded nor remembered later as technical solutions that an engineering manager provided. "
There are two reactions to this kind of piece: "no duh" or "I'm so glad you wrote this."
In my opinion, providing engineers with the backing they ALREADY HAVE from social science IS A WORTHWHILE THING TO DO.
"Strongly-held implicit metacognitive beliefs that success depends solely on individual engineering brilliance versus the supposed “soft skills” of collaboration and communication can exert many penalties on what skillful work is seen in a workplace.
These beliefs start early and replicate often: the persistence of such field-specific beliefs have been measured in many global contexts, STEM classrooms, and workplaces" [-a huge bank of citations]
I do not think I have it in me to sub this paper again tbh; I might put it on arxiv so y'all can have a free copy so let me know if you are interested!
Also "these beliefs start early and replicate often" is just a succinct little way to describe a MASSIVE area of work that pleasingly clicks in my brain 😎. They do! Social-psychological beliefs are so recursively networked and incredible! Our minds are so layered with social history and inferences and the archeology of our hypothesis testing!
@grimalkina would love to see it. This is more or less exactly how many accessibility orgs run, until the handful of key people protecting the work burnout and then it all falls down…
@grimalkina super interested! Dovetails with work I just submitted about how actual software team practices enact communalism, humility & care (bc teams are judged by the value they create) within an industry that promotes “hardcore” individualist myths
@grimalkina Definitely interested! I became an Engineering Manager in July last year for the first time and felt for a long time that I had stopped providing value with my work. I've started to realize my impact is bigger now, just in different ways - and this definitely put it into words in a nicer way than I had before.
@grimalkina is really like to read this paper. I don’t know if I’ll be able to understand it, but I’ll try…
My prior is some forms of team autonomy have been good in places I’ve worked.
Often because it’s let teams be more collaborative internally and externally, when this hasn’t been a property in the wider organisation.
And because it seems healthy to support a diversity of approaches to technology and maybe organisational approach, provided this doesn’t have other costs or pernicious effects.
Anyway — I’d like to read it and get some fresh perspectives! Thanks :-)
@benjohn oh yeah overall the argument isn't that autonomy doesn't produce a lot of benefits, it's that there is a high unrecognized risk when that autonomy has to be maintained by a too-few collection of individuals and the sociocognitive work it takes to play dual roles. It's kind of about a particular dynamic that creates manager and tech lead burnout
@grimalkina 👍 Right. That makes total sense and absolutely rings true from nearly everywhere I’ve worked. The leaders of effective autonomous teams have been very good at blocking shit coming from above.
@grimalkina they’re usually effective and loved by their teams. And the work the team produces is valued. But I don’t think it’s recognised that they’ve achieved that by protecting their team and its autonomy within the company.
I suspect it’s more seen that all of that is a cost of them that prevents their team being more valuable, rather than what allows their team be valuable.
@grimalkina as an engineering PM in a big open science ecosystem, I see myself in this paper and I would love to read it. (And keep its references in my back pocket)
@tsdower oh gosh there is SO SO MUCH happening in the psychology of open science that I'd love to take a whack at with some community-based research someday
@tsdower I have a different one with an example about open source communities in it that I think you'll really appreciate the citations in, so stay tuned for that one I'll probably get it out sooner than this!
@flowchainsenseisocial not sure what you mean by looking into it or what this realm means to you. Dr. @CSLee in our lab is a clinical scientist bringing some of the insights of clinical sciences to our work with software teams, but my own specialty area is applied science of learning, achievement, motivation, and adaptive resilience from an empirical quantitative/research psych background rather than a clinical.
@grimalkina
This makes me think of the sap in Office Space whose job is to “take the specs from the customers and give them to the (software) engineers.”
The movie makes him look a fool (“what would you say it is you do here”) and he may personally be ineffectual, but he’s not organizationally wrong. He also seems psychologically damaged by serving as a buffer for who knows how many years.
@grimalkina I don't understand it. (Many people won't admit that because they think they will 'lose face'.) So, on their behalf, "Advocacy" of/for what?
@woo advocacy for the individual team. Aka the team feels and perceives autonomy and might even report it in research but when you actually measure chains of decisions you discover they're not nearly as autonomous as they report (that's one of the citations)
@grimalkina I think this is a really fascinating point! I'm obsessed with the distinctions between feeling like one is being effective, being effective, and being effective but not understanding how much of that is due to other people's work. (This is what happens because I, who am deeply ambivalent about communities and groups, took up rowing, the team-est of team sports...)
@grimalkina
This sounds to me very much like the pattern we called Protective Bubble in Patterns of Agile Journeys (https://leanpub.com/agilejourneys for those that are interested).
@mlevison I have not yet posted the full paper here but I am merely thinking out loud about whether it's worth my time to do so, so no there's not a version of this you can read yet.
@grimalkina then let me offer a dose of support. The idea is interesting and deserves exploration. I would love to read a paper exploring this when you choose to write it.
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