> Skunk Works is/was one of the badassest engineering units in world history. Yes, Skunk Works is amazing. But I don't think it's fair to view their accomplish

> Skunk Works is/was one of the badassest engineering units in world history. Yes, Skunk Works is amazing. But I don't think it's fair to view their accomplishments in isolation. Skunk Works didn't have to worry about where to get money from, Lockheed provided Kelly Johnson with money and trusted him to spend in appropriately. In a normal company you have a lot of people dedicated to sales, marketing, and finance. The first two didn't apply at all to Skunk Works, and while I imagine they did have to plan and budget, I don't know to what extent they had to do controlling/taxes, etc. > The book "Skunk works" by it's former director Ben Rich contains as an epilogue a lamentation to the new way of doing things by lengthy meandering process and bureaucracy with an inflated middle management - instead of just doing things right. Yes, and is it not the least bit ironic that Skunk Works was within a company which got into its position through lengthy meandering bureaucratic processes which awarded them contracts for defense programs? > And I can tell you, it does not contain an inch of Scrum, six sigma, RUP or any of that. Please don't interpret my comment as saying "and I think the status quo in business is just fine." It's not. The current business processes we have created reward bureaucracy and paper pushing, at the expense of innovation. This being said, I also don't think the correct solution is to have engineers running everything. It would certainly help people in management to have relevant technical experience, but I studied around and work with engineers. The average engineer would fucking hate things like controlling finances, but it's necessary for the business to comply with tax regulations, etc.