Comment by bluGill

> You mean the 2-week delivery cycle into an automated CI/CD? Good lord I hope they don't have a useless scrum master too.

If you can automation that job good for you. However some people work in a regulated industry where not getting FDA/FAA and their equivalent for every other country in the world before shipping software means someone will go to prison.

> I'm curious what input the manager has into this besides reading through a list of engineer curated items.

They better have a lot. You might call it product owner (in scrumm), or some other title. Every project I've never worked on has more great ideas than they can invest in today and so you need to figure out what the priority is. It better not be only engineering that has input to this - marketing (a very different skill from engineering) needs to have input, as does finance...

> Tim seems to be handling that. [training]

It is normal to handle more than one management task. I doubt Tim is handling harassment training. This is the main job of HR (not making sure people are paid as you seem to think)

> Hey Tim can you id the asshole? How comfortable are you hiring/firing?

probably not. As one manager of mine told me, he always knew long before the team if someone would work out. The team is close, knows that person is nice (most people are nice), and seems to be smart. If you are the first to notice someone isn't getting up to speed quick enough you are the "asshole" that needs to be removed from the team, an outside manager will be much quicker because they are removed from personal contact with the person in question.