Engineers output must be measured | Daily #237

I don’t understand why people care so much about wording certain topics. But the low-level IQ engineers keep pushing back on the idea that they are a resource. They say stuff like ‘You shouldn’t measure our performance, engineering is complex’.

What is this bullshit?

They act like marketing, sales, logistics, customer support or any other domain is not complex. Such a disgusting ego. The best engineers I’ve worked with always give an estimate on how many hours/days a task can take. They don’t tip-toe around with ‘I thInK it cOULd tAKe thREe DaYs, BUT cOulD EAsilY be tWO wEEks. UHHhhHhHmmmm’

That screams incompetence to me. You should be the expert in your domain. Given the task is specified correctly, as an engineer you should be able to estimate it correctly.

You don’t have to be always right on the money with the estimation. But should have high consistent accuracy.

Else, how the hell do you think the upper management can manage the company? Do they have to pray every week you progress in your work, or do they actually need to measure the output against the goals?

The most basic example of this is closing customers. If one employee closes 9 customers a week, and the other employee closes 13 customers, the manager can manage expectations. The manager can estimate how long it would take to get for example 1000 customers.

How the fck can the manager estimate an engineer’s output if they keep tip-toeing around that they can’t be measured.

They have to understand that they working for a BUSINESS. A business is RESULTS-DRIVEN. This means to be results-driven, you have to know the output of all your teams and thus employees. Including thus engineers.

If the output is not against expectation, you have a chance to be replaced. If your output is higher than the rest, you should get a bonus.

I’m not saying that it is not hard to measure an engineer's output, it’s actually complex. But to dismiss it entirely just because it’s complex sounds like cowardice to me.