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I worked at AOL for a year. They have a way of taking a great idea/product and completely destroying it with idiotic features that nobody wants (but some exec t
by orthecreedence 9y ago
I worked at AOL for a year. They have a way of taking a great idea/product and completely destroying it with idiotic features that nobody wants (but some exec thinks would be cool). It's probably catalyzed by their unfathomably stupid "matrix management" structure which optimizes for management bloat, confusion, and mediocrity.
- passivepinetree 9y agoCan you explain more about matrix management?
- orthecreedence 9y agoSorry, I missed your comment. If you've seen Office Space, comically it's kind of like that. I had four different direct bosses, each who were supposed to manage different aspects of what I did. What ended up happening most of the time was I had a "real" boss who would direct myself and a few other developers, and then we'd have random drop-ins of managers who had no clue what was going on and trying to change things to meet some ridiculous quota they had. Really the whole thing is set up to limit manager accountability (since managers can just point the finger at each other when something goes wrong) and increase worker frustration...it's not uncommon for two managers to tell you to do two different things.