4 ms·

Age has little to do with it, it's more a combination of maturity, professionalism, intellect and talent. These things are correlated with age, but not as stron

by mwfunk 10y ago

Age has little to do with it, it's more a combination of maturity, professionalism, intellect and talent. These things are correlated with age, but not as strongly as one might think. I've worked with 22-year old developers who had all of these qualities, and developers with 22 years of professional experience who didn't. It does tend to go the other way though. Even the best ones probably wouldn't flourish in a flat org though- that's not a knock against the developers, more the unsuitability of most software tasks to such a structure (or lack of it). On the other hand, I think there's a very strong correlation between people who think they would flourish in a flat org and people who wouldn't do well in one. The only people who might do all right are those who would join a flat org with great skepticism and trepidation, because they would be paranoid enough about things going off the rails that they would obsess over making sure that their own goals are set appropriately as well as the people around them. If you get rid of managers, essentially everyone becomes a manager of sorts and they need to really embrace the role to make it work.

pm90 10y ago
> If you get rid of managers, essentially everyone becomes a manager of sorts and they need to really embrace the role to make it work. This. In my years of working in Software, I've dealt with managers, both good and bad. The best ones have without a doubt been those who took care that I had to attend as few meetings as possible, that my requirements for work were met, who were open to genuine conversation about my performance.
- rpeden 10y ago
  In the corporate world, I've worked in both accounting and software development, and what you wrote describes good manager in both fields. Although I don't have much evidence (yet, but I'm doing some research), I suspect that the qualities that make up good managers (and bad ones) is fairly similar from one field to the next.

by mwfunk 10y ago

pm90 10y ago

> If you get rid of managers, essentially everyone becomes a manager of sorts and they need to really embrace the role to make it work. This. In my years of working in Software, I've dealt with managers, both good and bad. The best ones have without a doubt been those who took care that I had to attend as few meetings as possible, that my requirements for work were met, who were open to genuine conversation about my performance.

rpeden 10y ago
In the corporate world, I've worked in both accounting and software development, and what you wrote describes good manager in both fields. Although I don't have much evidence (yet, but I'm doing some research), I suspect that the qualities that make up good managers (and bad ones) is fairly similar from one field to the next.