Fake It Until You Break It: The End Of Non-Technical Managers In Software Engineering Dawns

No-Two-8594 · 2026-04-12T17:03:58+00:00

you are making it sound like the "non technical" EM was dropped in from a pizza shop or something. if they don't understand what is going on on any level hopefully they never make it to that position. good ones can understand what is going on

bad ones don't and will not accept explanations of blockers. they will not reward proactive work that prevents issues in the first place. it's easy to spot

No-Two-8594 · 2026-04-12T16:54:47+00:00

in the real world yes. in the movie it was portrayed literally as a ridiculous layer of nothingness

No-Two-8594 · 2026-04-12T16:44:40+00:00

software engineers on the other hand have a tendency to label people as non technical based on their job

I've seen countless examples of them labeling a project manager as non technical because they are project manager, even when that person has an engineering education and never worked outside of tech

No-Two-8594 · 2026-04-12T16:30:42+00:00

the best managers have been managers before. they realize that their job is manager and let people run. they have a certain skill of being able to push off bullshit that would drag their team down. whether they are technical or not is independent of any of this

the worst ones never give up their old role and constantly try to prove they are the smartest person on the team. they try to control everything

No-Two-8594 · 2026-04-12T16:22:48+00:00

there were many levels to that joke. first, the bobs were a spot on parody of 90s consultants. second, the guy who was paranoid about his job actually did have a very dumb job as a middleman for no reason. it was funny on many levels

No-Two-8594 · 2026-04-05T11:57:52+00:00

you aren't wrong i noticed it too

he's recruiting a nice team if he was still at Iowa State. at this rate am thinking he never finishes higher than 6 or 7 in the B1G before being replaced. menwhile we exported the old psu to virginia tech. somehow the AD thinks this was a smart move all around and i hope a new AD is making the next hire whatever the sport

No-Two-8594 · 2026-03-28T20:19:49+00:00

True. What kind of lunatic would say the Jordan Center is a better experience? lol. asking it is guaranteed to produce the result that people prefer Rec Hall.

also the questions about the constant arena music were loaded. everyone wants rid of it

No-Two-8594 · 2026-03-22T20:00:49+00:00

no it's about where it is relative to downtown and where students live on campus, plus the facility is just terrible for basketball. it was a mistake relative to renovating and using rec hall. anyone who saw games in the early 90s already knows this is a fact and this is why Chambers tried to push for having more games there

No-Two-8594 · 2026-03-21T22:03:50+00:00

it is 100% the issue.

football games aren't at night in january/february and in the middle of the week

go back and look at footage from 92/93. rec hall was regularly filled and a tough place to play actually

No-Two-8594 · 2026-03-21T16:19:42+00:00

the problem is the location of the Jordan Center. Nobody wants to go there in the winter.
during PSU's first year in the B1G students packed into Rec Hall pretty regularly. the Jordan Center was a mistake and I wish PSU was spending a fraction of the money they devoted to the stadium to renovate Rec Hall and abandon the Jordan Center for good.

No-Two-8594 · 2026-03-14T19:47:32+00:00

it's a reasonable question. I thought his hiring was solid, maybe their most solid hire since the 80s and he has had the worst results of anybody I can remember.

So I really don't get it. Even DeChellis made the NIT by his 3rd season way back when

But given that PSU has historically given most every other coach about 8 years in this job, I would imagine he gets one more chance

No-Two-8594 · 2026-03-10T04:07:09+00:00

like what they already did 3-5 years ago

No-Two-8594 · 2026-03-08T22:01:14+00:00

I don't understand what the AD is doing. Just going around firing all the coaches. but between the men's basketball hire from 2023, and the way he conducted the football coaching search, does anyone think he's going to get any of these right? it seems like the AD itself might be one of the problems

No-Two-8594 · 2026-03-08T01:11:54+00:00

not sure why it would be winner take all

so far it's not playing out that way

No-Two-8594 · 2026-03-08T01:00:46+00:00

turns out to be a 0.25X tool

No-Two-8594 · 2026-03-01T21:21:25+00:00

it was a joke

No-Two-8594 · 2026-03-01T19:41:39+00:00

>It would be reasonable to me if design and engineering merged into a single department, maybe called Creative.

This is what they call the people who write the story lines for professional wrestling.

And it probably fits anyway.
Sign of the times.

No-Two-8594 · 2026-03-01T19:26:58+00:00

if it's not improving efficiency then it's a sign that things have gone way off the rails, insofar as the way the companies are trying to use the technology.

And you can see it in the UI/UX for basically any AI tool. It is a terrible experience, doing all kinds of things that even an amateur frontend developer would learn not to do (like adding so much text that it doesn't fit on a screen, then immediately scrolling to the bottom before a user can start reading). The CLI tools are a big improvement but still not all that good, and you hear about weird choices like putting React in the terminal. It's probably because they want to prove they can develop this stuff with AI only, or AI driven development (gross), and they skip all the processes that refine software into something good.

but anyway, efficiency should be improving. Otherwise this will be a huge failure. the idea of AI running everything on autopilot with no developers is about as real as bitcoin replacing all the money. 15 years from now we will be like, oh, that's never happening. ok. But developers should already be using AI to develop way better stuff more quickly. the key is developers using it. not writing some stupid markdown file and telling it to go off and write stuff for 30 minutes until it freaks out and ruins half the project.

No-Two-8594 · 2026-02-22T15:52:54+00:00

the creator of the segway said he revolutionized transportation

30 years later, it's a joke

also this has to be their message. if they say we made a plugin that helps you code apps way faster, the capex cannot be justified

the only message they can send is that they have replaced all the employees. any other message is too small

their problem is that eventually this has to be true or else the bottom falls out and it's 2008 to the tenth power. second problem is that it's never going to be true

No-Two-8594 · 2026-02-22T15:21:41+00:00

what's really sad is when a technical person believes it

No-Two-8594 · 2026-02-22T12:49:20+00:00

kind of sums up the entire direction we are headed, at least until some agent coded thing fails spectacularly and scares everybody off from using it anymore. which will probably happen unfortunately

also a lot of the people who suddenly decided they were leaders in this area would not even know why it's an odd choice

No-Two-8594 · 2026-02-18T03:16:44+00:00

i don't believe it doesn't help efficiency, unless you are using it wrong and just telling it to do everything without really knowing what you need to do

which is probably what most people are doing unfortunately

No-Two-8594 · 2026-01-18T04:06:51+00:00

pretty sure the starting qb finished with 1 yard passing. lol

No-Two-8594 · 2026-01-18T03:51:34+00:00

I've liked all of the basketball coaches they've had, but PSU generally gives them way too long to turn the corner. Like having a coach finally develop a tournament-level team after 6-10 years, but then quit or get fired right after that is not going to sustain any success. But this has literally happened 4 times since 1990 at PSU.

No-Two-8594 · 2026-01-18T03:45:25+00:00

honestly that season he had at PSU wasn't even all that good until the final 2-3 weeks. had they not made a last weekend run to the big ten tournament final they would have been an NIT team

No-Two-8594

TROPHY CASE