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There has never been a meritocracy in tech, only the illusion of it. 80%+ of any job is about being well-liked, by peers but especially by the upper echelons. 2

There has never been a meritocracy in tech, only the illusion of it. 80%+ of any job is about being well-liked, by peers but especially by the upper echelons. 20% is the upper limit of actual job function expected to be performed. If you're faking it well enough to pass the surface inspection and you're well-liked, your job is very secure. The issue is that, compared to other industries, it's really hard to find people with that 20% in tech, so business people are forced to let political and image ignoramuses (sometimes ignorant to the point of failing to perform basic hygiene) into the club, and forced to try to stuff them in the attic or some other dark corner of the office where they won't ugly things up too much. Many developers naively interpret this as a ruling meritocracy. The reality is that the business types resent having to do this, and a horrible technology worker with some image consciousness will easily destroy his better-qualified peers. I'm familiar with a case of a person who can't even code getting himself elevated to a technical directorship with architectural and high-level direction responsibilities through such tactics. He appears to code by merging branches in the GitHub interface, by making vacuous technical-sounding comments in meetings with executives, by occasionally having someone come "pair" with him and committing the changes they make together at his workstation, etc., but if you locked him alone in a room with a blank text editor and said "Write something that does this", he wouldn't be able to do it. And the executives believe in him wholeheartedly and are currently working to install him as the company's sole technical authority. All significant decisions would have to get his approval, despite his being literally the worst technician in the company. All of his decisions up to this point have been politically motivated, aimed at coalescing power within his group and blocking outsiders who may want to contribute. He was able to get there because he dresses well, he adopted the executive's interests and chitchats with them about these, he walks around the office telling jokes and smiling at people, and generally being what would be considered personable and diplomatic, whereas the other technical people go to their desks, hunker down, and spend their day trying to get some real work done. Which strategy wins in the long run?

maxxxxx 9y ago
I have seen similar guys as "senior architect". They speak well, are nice, sit in a lot of meetings, make nice Visio charts, use words like "integration pattern" but you never get anything real out of them.
- savrajsingh 9y ago
  There are so many people out there like this, it's maddening. So many people that don't actually DO anything other than create work for others and create an illusion of 'management'...
  - temp246810 9y ago
    Meh - there are just as many people making the same accusation you are as to render it useless. I read countless anecdotes on HN and hear many more in person of people with just the shittiest managers, of people who rarely see "competent" engineering organizations, of people who have "never" seen a competent project manager, that it really is a wonder we have any profitable companies at all. In reality, if you don't understand the value someone is providing them, you should make an effort to understand what they might be doing before making claims like the ones you're making.
    - maxxxxx 9y ago
      I hear what you are saying. Before declaring someone is useless you definitely should make sure to understand what they are doing. On the other hand, I am pretty convinced that there is a sizeable number of people in companies who create a lot of busywork "managing" things. The project I am on has 3 developers (as far as I can tell) and probably more than 10 business analysts, project managers, architects and other managers putting their name on it. I have tried to understand what they are all doing but from what I can tell there are two managers who actually help the project and the other ones write reports to each other, call a lot of meetings but don't really contribute. They just regurgitate what the few active people are doing.
      - temp246810 9y ago
        I'm 32 and work as a PM at a Big Hip Tech Co. in the bay area. Once I was on a team with 2 QA analysts, 1 Eng Manager, myself as PM, 3 BA's (that I did not want), and 3 developers, and one platform architect. All this plus 1 director overseeing our tiny team. Not to mention the 1-2 BA's I worked with whenever I worked on something that impacted another team. During my 1:1 with said director, I once lashed out - I hadn't slept well in 4 days and I simply sounded off. I literally said everything that's been said in this thread: everything from why the fuck do we have so many people, give me 5 engineers and fire everyone else, to all you care about is the headcount that reports to you. Luckily, I was a top performer, and while this tarnished my reputation with this director, I was able to smooth things over over the course of a few months. This director explained to me that I was no longer at a start up. That this team should be resilient - that anyone should be able to take 2-3 weeks off at a time without interrupting the work. That they didn't want us working pedal to the metal 100% of the time. That it was ok that it was slow, and that I shouldn't be so self-conscious or hard on myself if I wasn't always working my fingers to the bone. Now, I still thought we had way too much fat. Some of those BA's had no business being on a technical team, even as BA's and we should have traded in the architect and dev manager for an extra QA and developer. But what that conversation did was bring me back down to earth. So much of what we view as right and wrong is personal preference. While I still disagreed with the amount of waste, it removed the chip on my shoulder and now I simply make sure to join teams that I like. That's more of a ramble, but gives you some context as to where I was coming from.

maxxxxx 9y ago

I have seen similar guys as "senior architect". They speak well, are nice, sit in a lot of meetings, make nice Visio charts, use words like "integration pattern" but you never get anything real out of them.

savrajsingh 9y ago
There are so many people out there like this, it's maddening. So many people that don't actually DO anything other than create work for others and create an illusion of 'management'...
- temp246810 9y ago
  Meh - there are just as many people making the same accusation you are as to render it useless. I read countless anecdotes on HN and hear many more in person of people with just the shittiest managers, of people who rarely see "competent" engineering organizations, of people who have "never" seen a competent project manager, that it really is a wonder we have any profitable companies at all. In reality, if you don't understand the value someone is providing them, you should make an effort to understand what they might be doing before making claims like the ones you're making.
  - maxxxxx 9y ago
    I hear what you are saying. Before declaring someone is useless you definitely should make sure to understand what they are doing. On the other hand, I am pretty convinced that there is a sizeable number of people in companies who create a lot of busywork "managing" things. The project I am on has 3 developers (as far as I can tell) and probably more than 10 business analysts, project managers, architects and other managers putting their name on it. I have tried to understand what they are all doing but from what I can tell there are two managers who actually help the project and the other ones write reports to each other, call a lot of meetings but don't really contribute. They just regurgitate what the few active people are doing.
    - temp246810 9y ago
      I'm 32 and work as a PM at a Big Hip Tech Co. in the bay area. Once I was on a team with 2 QA analysts, 1 Eng Manager, myself as PM, 3 BA's (that I did not want), and 3 developers, and one platform architect. All this plus 1 director overseeing our tiny team. Not to mention the 1-2 BA's I worked with whenever I worked on something that impacted another team. During my 1:1 with said director, I once lashed out - I hadn't slept well in 4 days and I simply sounded off. I literally said everything that's been said in this thread: everything from why the fuck do we have so many people, give me 5 engineers and fire everyone else, to all you care about is the headcount that reports to you. Luckily, I was a top performer, and while this tarnished my reputation with this director, I was able to smooth things over over the course of a few months. This director explained to me that I was no longer at a start up. That this team should be resilient - that anyone should be able to take 2-3 weeks off at a time without interrupting the work. That they didn't want us working pedal to the metal 100% of the time. That it was ok that it was slow, and that I shouldn't be so self-conscious or hard on myself if I wasn't always working my fingers to the bone. Now, I still thought we had way too much fat. Some of those BA's had no business being on a technical team, even as BA's and we should have traded in the architect and dev manager for an extra QA and developer. But what that conversation did was bring me back down to earth. So much of what we view as right and wrong is personal preference. While I still disagreed with the amount of waste, it removed the chip on my shoulder and now I simply make sure to join teams that I like. That's more of a ramble, but gives you some context as to where I was coming from.