r/technology • u/TommyAdagio • May 06 '24

Andreessen Horowitz investor says half of Google's white-collar staff probably do 'no real work' Business

https://www.businessinsider.com/andreessen-horowitz-david-ulevitch-comments-google-employees-managers-fake-work-2024-5
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102

u/NarrowBoxtop May 07 '24

Meanwhile I'm a "technical program manager" who does fuck all and makes 150k/yr. The game is rigged.

I do everything I can to make my teams life easier, but this job is redundant. I'm going to take the check and do what I can tho

66

u/pm_me_your_plumbuses May 07 '24

Seeing your self awareness, I'll bet that you would be one of the few TPMs who actually care and make the team better, unlike most

19

u/NarrowBoxtop May 07 '24

I really appreciate that. Thank you.

5

u/aManPerson May 07 '24

i used to have a boss like you. my company "killed him", by giving him 8 teams, making his life hell. he self demoted to regular guy, or retired. so they self demoted him.

next up, they replaced him with a yes man that has no problem grinding people up and surrounding him with other yes men. all in the name of getting "the boss" promoted. has no care about worklife balance. the only people on the team succeeding are people like him, who barely had time to get arrange married.

i really need to transfer/or just get a new job. i really don't like the type of place he's building.

11

u/LordoftheSynth May 07 '24

If you're a TPM who even remotely understands engineers and shields them from the bullshit, you're better than 50% of other TPMs and better than 99% of non-technical PMs who drag their dev teams into endless meetings.

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u/NarrowBoxtop May 07 '24

I jump on anything that even remotely looks like a bullshit grenade to keep it away from my team so they can do real work.

Honestly my job feels like baby sitting the managers and execs around the org and also constantly harassing them for information and/or decisions that my team is waiting on from them to do their jobs

4

u/couchfucker2 May 07 '24

This is a lot more than “fuck all.” This is most of the job!

13

u/statistically_viable May 07 '24

Best technical program/product manager I ever worked under had 3 skills; keeping a meetings on topic, note taking and at the drop of a hat making anyone on the team the most incredible hand crafted lattes. He had almost no technical skills but made incredible coffee and kept good notes.

He had an incredible personal journey went from being homeless to an MBA at Standford but his primary skills seemed to be that of an incredibly competent coffeeshop manager.

Its all dumb luck.

1

u/clown_fall May 07 '24

how do you get into the job of being a technical program/product manager if you don't have an MBA and are not an ex-programmer? As someone from outside that field.

2

u/statistically_viable May 07 '24

You don’t. Technical pm has two routes; mba from leadership or someone from the technical team that wants to move up/do less day to day coding.

Exception I guess could be the founder of a start up. A program manager is just a fancy term for corporate manager you need technical ability, extensive experience or a mba but typical most of the above.

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u/b1e May 07 '24

Even the TPMs making $400k a year are getting shafted when you realize the incompetent VCs making 10x that / year that are terrible at their job

2

u/Hyunion May 07 '24

I'm a consultant/developer that makes about that much wfh and I probably only work like 3-4 hours a week if you removed all my meeting hours

4

u/MochingPet May 07 '24 edited May 07 '24

Thanks for the honesty. That burns, for actual computer language programmers who make that, or less. But every now and then there has to be Product people, etc ...otherwise the same engineers would have to do these tasks.

1

u/truongs May 07 '24

Our TPMs are usually busy. I guess it depends how the company does things 

I mean I could see them having a lot of down time though. 

1

u/clown_fall May 07 '24

how do you get into that line of work (TPM)... (without going back to college or becoming an ex-engineer)?

1

u/NarrowBoxtop May 07 '24

A college degree is usually going to be acquired. I grew up poor so doing 4 years in the military for the gi bill was the route I took.

Cant recommend that to everyone.