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My take on the desire to regulate/manage is that some people would rather have an economy of perverse incentives than tolerate the inevitable abuses caused by l
by jknoepfler 10y ago
My take on the desire to regulate/manage is that some people would rather have an economy of perverse incentives than tolerate the inevitable abuses caused by lack of accountability. Management in the programming world feels the same way. At first, to many of us, this seems foolish and counter-productive, but then think: how does a university policy maker or a manager explain the rotten eggs (low output academics, unproductive developers) to their "boss," which might be the tax paying public or a budget strapped firm? How does a competitive university distinguish itself in a communicable/verifiable way? Could I be fired, or in the private sector sued for letting smart people fuck up unsupervised? It is difficult to trust others when the worst case outcome exposes us to catastrophic consequences.
I personally agree with the author, but I think there's serious work that could be done to mitigate or remove the incentives to manage, and I don't think those are as thin as "tell people to stop trying to control what they can't"