16 ms·

This is rather true in practice, but I find it tremendously depressing. I have found that the executive path is actually the one that most of the scumbags take

This is rather true in practice, but I find it tremendously depressing. I have found that the executive path is actually the one that most of the scumbags take, it is the one that attracts the most people, and those people are usually not likable, they're salespeople that sell themselves all day. The third group, the one that actually creates value, is accurately represented as not as successful both in terms of money and prestige. I think this is a damn shame, and we should be striving to stop that. This is a good painting of how bad things are today, but instead of "tricks to game the system" i wish it layed out a path of how to build an industry that doesn't attract all those ambitious selfish (executives) people.

mwseibel 9y ago
Thanks for the note - I’m going to think about this.
- untilHellbanned 9y ago
  Isn't just distributing the wealth more evenly?
- btilly 9y ago
  Here is a twist on this to think about. Careers are made or broken on whether you get to be an idea person or an implementer. If you're an idea person you get the lion's share of the credit for anything that goes right, and can always blame your failures on the implementor. Plus ideas are easier to come up with than implementations. If you're an implementor you work hard, and then don't get much of the credit. But without implementors you simply don't have a product.
  - srtjstjsj 9y ago
    Can you implement your own ideas?
    - btilly 9y ago
      Sometimes. But if everyone simply does what they think best, the result does not add up to a sensible whole. Therefore there is a necessary tradeoff between doing what you think is a good idea, and doing what someone else in the organization thinks is a good idea.
  - Iv 9y ago
    I think it all boils down to playing the blame game. It takes time to do so and implementing an idea takes a lot of time. Having an idea is the easiest thing ever. I can have five ideas before lunch with time to spate on blaming the people who will actually implement them for the past failures of my "great ideas with poor implementation" But engineers/implementers who get into politics have a huge advantage: they can produce proofs, especially in tech. Nothing is more scary for an executive type than an engineer who refuses to be bullied into accepting the blame.
    - KKKKkkkk1 9y ago
      But it really depends on how healthy your corporate culture is. I would say that in 90% of the companies, "technically correct" is just not good enough.
      - Iv 9y ago
        Technically correct is not enough in a sane culture either. But the business side of thing is not complicated, it is opaque. Be technically right, hunt the information that will make you correct business-wise. And you will be able to make a much stronger claim in the blame game that the guy who is just business-right.
      - btilly 9y ago
        To be fair, the first and last line of defense for most tech people is to retreat into technical detail and present an apparently irrefutable argument that nobody understands. It is impossible from the outside to tell whether this is just the tech person being defensive and they are full of BS, or whether the tech person is right. So people eventually default to assuming BS.
  - enjo 9y ago
    Is any of that true? Are ideas really that easy? Also these people aren't being paid for ideas. They're being paid for vision and the ability to guide that vision through to completion. I've met FAR more competent implementers in my life than I have product owners. You seem (and others) seem to be arguing that there is some sort of market inefficiency here, but I don't see that. And I say that as an implementer.
    - graycat 9y ago
      A common remark from VCs, e.g., John Doerr at KPCB (e.g., quoted at AVC.com) is that "Ideas are easy and plentiful. Execution is hard and everything." Well, bad ideas are easy and plentiful, and then execution is hard and everything. But good ideas are hard, and then execution is routine. By an "idea" Doerr meant just some short, off-hand statement, say, at a party or over the family Sunday dinner table, some summary might tell a neighbor over a back fence. A good idea, however, may come with a stack of solid background research on the market, the problem to be solved, and a really good solution, say, the first good or a much better solution, with good barriers to entry, etc. Here's an approach: Pick a problem that so far is solved at best poorly but where the first good solution will be close to a must have for enough people and revenue per person to make a successful business. Then find a good solution. The solution might have secret sauce which was needed to solve the problem (why the problem wasn't solved 10 years ago) and that can also be a big barrier to entry. It would help a lot to exploit current, comparatively dirt cheap, computing. If you write all your own code, then likely you don't need co-founders. Venture capital won't much help because by the time you have enough for the VCs to write you a check, you will already have enough in traction that you can monetize to have enough revenue that you no longer need, want, or will accept their check, BoD, term sheet, vesting of what you already own 100% of, etc. The checkbooks of the VCs were important when a Web site startup needed to spend big bucks with Sun Micro Systems, Oracle, Cisco, etc., but those days are over. Now the prices for such things are WAY down and the checkbooks of the VCs much less important.
    - dgreensp 9y ago
      At one level, “idea person” is a misunderstanding of the founder’s role; founders must execute, all day long. It’s not just the programmmers who “implement,” either. At another level, I’ll admit that most founders I’ve worked for have excelled more at promoting their ideas, raising money, and hiring talent — top talent, no small feat! — than product ownership. In this case, the lieutenants who make the gears mesh and not jam are the heroes to me.
  - mseebach 9y ago
    Careers are fraught in any organisation that systematically allows individuals to take credit/blame for team efforts. That said, I've met quite a few implementers that seem to believe that because it's their hands on the keyboard, no other activity warrants credit, all the way down to the guy who thinks that he commands "respect" (in the gang-sense) because he can shut down the Exchange server.
    - btilly 9y ago
      Can you name me an organization where individuals (particularly near the top) do not wind up with credit/blame for team efforts?
  - eikenberry 9y ago
    Calling them an idea person is, I think, unfair. The idea is the simple part. It is taking this idea to market, getting people to implement it, that is not easy. I'm not saying the implementors deserve the level of credit they get, but reducing the organizers to simple 'idea person' is somewhat disingenuous.
    - gps372 9y ago
      Yep, that is the selling part right there! It is one thing to take an idea to market when you are selling for companies like IBM, Accenture, Google, etc. But when you have to sell the same idea on your own, that takes real skill and hard-work!
  - sidlls 9y ago
    Competent product development is much more than "having ideas." It's not just a room full of under-educated monkeys in business suits generating random "ideas", mindlessly picking A/B test results or throwing darts at a wall. There's this caricature version of what they do that developers seem to have that just doesn't match reality. I wish my fellow developers would take some initiative to truly understand what product, sales and marketing actually do.
- herewego 9y ago
  These paths are not mutually exclusive, which should probably be noted in the article as well. I know many who have done some combination of them, myself included.
dceddia 9y ago
There's a good book I read recently called Developer Hegemony, and I think you might like it. It breaks down the archetypes within companies, talks about what it takes to succeed as an employee or an executive, and then discusses an alternative route that we software engineers might be able to take. Here's a blog about the book [0] and the book itself [1]. [0]: https://www.daedtech.com/developer-hegemony-the-crazy-idea-that-software-developers-should-run-software-development/ https://www.daedtech.com/developer-hegemony-the-crazy-idea-t... [1]: https://leanpub.com/developerhegemony https://leanpub.com/developerhegemony
- lliamander 9y ago
  Hah! didn't see your post before I submitted mine :)
ivanjovanovic 9y ago
I overall agree with your sentiment. I would though not agree fully about where you assume value is created. Usually, developers / middle managers do not create value. Mostly they are implementing ideas of others and in these ideas is most of value concentrated. I would say they deliver value but don't create most of it.
- ryandrake 9y ago
  It's a good philosophical question: A company creates a great product. What person actually created the value? The product visionary who thought of the idea? The developer who implemented it? The manager who approved the budget allowing the work to happen in the first place?
  - speby 9y ago
    You're implicitly making a common mistake confusing value creation and value capture. Yes, it is true that developers writing the software for Google's search engine and Gmail and other products, particularly the early developers who were writing core functionality before it even existed yet, are creating value. But are/were they capturing the full value created? In general, no. To the extent they "captured value" only came in the form of salary/benefits/etc. So they captured some, to be sure. In highly successful companies who create hugely successful products that create tons of value, the actual capture of that value is absolutely not shared equally. This is in part because the risk was not shared equally. Just as in successful companies, unsuccessful companies that ship a product that does not do well or fails completely, the developers who created it still captured a salary along the way. The investors and others who put in money or time and energy for little or not pay (in exchange for equity) were the ones with the most risk. Bottom line... everyone involved in company-building and product-building create value along the way but value capture is generally concentrated for very good reasons.
    - s73ver_ 9y ago
      They're concentrated for reasons. It's highly debatable whether those reasons are "good". We all take risk. I could find myself working for a company that doesn't make it, or just decides to fire me at a moment's notice. Losing my job and not being able to find another one means I might not be able to feed and house my family. That's real risk. On the other hand, most investors are pretty well off, and can weather a few startups failing. They're likely not going to get to the point where they don't know if they can continue to house their family for the next few months.
hkmurakami 9y ago
The "scumbags" you describe are the ones that exhibit a strong "need for power" as described by McClelland. Engineers tend to have stronger "need for achievement", eschewing the power grab. But organizations today and perhaps in the past have always rewarded those who attain the power. Perversely, if you want a place where achievement (ie doing the work, building things) is rewarded properly, you need someone with that mindset to suck it up and win the power game.
lliamander 9y ago
> The third group, the one that actually creates value, is accurately represented as not as successful both in terms of money and prestige. I think this is a damn shame, and we should be striving to stop that. You may like Eric Dietrich's book Developer Hegemony[1]. He talks about both why the third group is less successful and how people within that group can potentially improve their situation within the current system. > I have found that the executive path is actually the one that most of the scumbags take, it is the one that attracts the most people, and those people are usually not likable, they're salespeople that sell themselves all day. I've seen the sliminess as well, but regardless of how ethical you are, in order to be successful in any domain you must be prepared to defend your interests (which people might perceive as "scumbag" behavior) and convince others that you have something of value to offer them (i.e. "selling"). I think it is possible (though difficult) to be both successful and moral, but success isn't everything. I think certainly possible to have a fulfilling life and not be successful. But (and I'm not claiming this applies to you) I would caution people in general against getting stuck in the rut of telling themselves that they value things other than success and at the same time resenting those who are successful. [1] https://www.daedtech.com/developer-hegemony-the-crazy-idea-that-software-developers-should-run-software-development/ https://www.daedtech.com/developer-hegemony-the-crazy-idea-t...
- i_cant_speel 9y ago
  > He talks about both why the third group is less successful and how people within that group can potentially improve their situation within the current system. Are you able to provide a cliff note or two about why they are less successful and how to improve their situations?
  - lliamander 9y ago
    Why are line level engineers less successful? In short, the Gervais Principle[1]: "Sociopaths, in their own best interests, knowingly promote over-performing losers into middle-management, groom under-performing losers into sociopaths, and leave the average bare-minimum-effort losers to fend for themselves." What to do about it? These things: * recognize that as software professionals we own the means of production * learn the business side of software * form partnerships with other developers such that the distinctions between worker and owner, suit and techie, no longer exists * shift focus away from developing software according to a spec, and towards being a provider of overall business efficiency (often achieved through software). Note that this is focused primarily towards developers working in the IT cost-centers of (generally non-technology) businesses. [1] https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
deleted 9y ago
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sidlls 9y ago
I have a different (admittedly controversial) take, having been on the "tech ladder" for some time now (as a Senior SWE and Lead Engineer): most individual contributors overestimate how much value they actually provide, especially in the Bay Area. That isn't to say we're not under-appreciated and under-compensated (we are both). But realistically much of the time work we do is easily done by literally thousands of other people just as well. The same just isn't true of product development, sales and marketing. Any one of those three teams, staffed well, will account for well more than the value of the entire engineering organization. Mostly this is a self-inflicted problem. Especially in the Bay Area, where developers tend to value CS ability signaling rather than the ability to work well with product teams and the ability to engage in practical engineering. There's too much focus by developers on shallow things, like fad-following the latest frameworks, on pseudo-intellectualism or technology-purism (e.g. "coding is doing math", code "elegance", whether/how FP is just so much better than anything else, etc.), and trivia like programming language choice.
- vvanders 9y ago
  Everything you listed is just a multiplier on if the technology actually works. If you have a sucky multiplier of course your product won't do well but if it isn't technically executed right you still have a zero.
  - sidlls 9y ago
    It isn't binary: value is created by all parties involved. It's just, in my opinion, that if we normalize the value created to be 1 for the product team, then engineering's value is less than 1, and sales and marketing is (more often) greater than or equal to 1, most of the time. Exceptions exist. But they're not normal, by definition.
    - ddustin 9y ago
      An engineer's value can be exponential and can even go well beyond their own lifespan. Sales and marketing impact is immediate and falls off over time while engineering's impact is slow and can speed up over time.
deleted 9y ago
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gbarc888 9y ago
I agree with you. The third group is also the first people to get laid off and thrown away when there is an economic downturn.
- ageek123 9y ago
  Actually execs have less job security than the third group. The execs' value is largely tied to their existing employer (vs. having transferable skills like the third group), and they are very vulnerable to random reorgs within the company, so it is not uncommon for them to be fired and not be able to find something comparable somewhere else.
  - alien_at_work 9y ago
    I'd say the salary more than compensates for this.
- laythea 9y ago
  No, that would be contractors :)
loceng 9y ago
You have to change the way money/funding is acquired, otherwise the pressure structure and hierarchy for will lead to this. This system would fall apart - in a positive way - if we have a good quality of life with Universal Basic Income. People could then work on projects without requiring an external source of funding, and so then the best projects/platforms/systems could evolve over 5, 10, even 20 years - without pressure from VCs wanting any return at all. VCs have limited attention and those who are best at being loudest are likely to capture that available attention - similarly some people try to win arguments by being louder and making more noise than others.
Asooka 9y ago
> I wish it layed out a path of how to build an industry that doesn't attract all those ambitious selfish (executives) people Given that ten thousand years of human history have utterly failed to produce any system at any point in time where the value-makers are rewarded over the salespeople, I don't think any such system can be made. At least executive positions aren't quite at the level of a winner-takes-all competition and you have a plausible chance of making it to that level.
comments_db 9y ago
Yes, yes and yes. Logged in after a long time to up vote on this. I think it takes 2-3 years for people to "get it." As you have mentioned it is indeed depressing. On the flip side, 40% of the employees are slacking off, another 40% is tinkering with their ideas (thereby not giving 100% to their employers), and the remaining 20% are still in that 2-3 years of getting it. It's not surprising that most startups and companies prey on these youngsters of the trade. p.s. That was rather negative response. May be it's the ecosystem and how things are. p.p.s. Good post and stuffs like this should be taught in CS schools.
Xeoncross 9y ago
> I find it tremendously depressing It's worth noting that this is simply in the "Tech Industry" which is much different than a "Good Life", "Adventure Quest", "[religion] walk", or any other form of purpose/success-based ranking.
flachsechs 9y ago
a good small business/early startup is basically #1 and #3, and none of #2. unfortunately, it is a _whole_ lot more work and a _whole_ lot more stress, and is thus the road less traveled.
pg_is_a_butt 9y ago
hitler had ideas about a solution, but there are enough selfish people to stop any such attempt. you're all idiots.
unabst 9y ago
> the one that actually creates value No. We all create value. Businesses, when running smoothly, are like a well oiled machine. Nothing is redundant. Garbage is collected. Businesses is cutthroat industries cannot afford to be redundant. I always wondered why all cars had 4 wheels. Turns out, the 3 wheeled car is horrible (see Top Gear), a 5 wheeled car is pointless, and a 2 wheeled car is a motorcycle. But when you're a kid, compact jet propulsion or anti-gravity doesn't seem so difficult. But that's also why you're a kid. I started a business thinking everyone can be their own executive, worker, and entrepreneur. They could handle their own responsibilities, manage their work, and do that work. Unfortunately, we had to go through a lot of them. Utopia wasn't working, but they were also miserable. It wasn't what they wanted, expected, or enjoyed. They all loved the idea though, including myself. Fast forward five years, and my car has 4 wheels. I am the "founder". I decide where the business should go, lay out the work that needs to be done, and hand it over. The "executive" is then responsible for that work getting done. They hand it over to the "employees" in a way that is efficient and accountable. The third group just needs to accomplish the tasks they promised to do for the money they agreed on. I'll see your scumbag executive and raise you my wrench throwing employee and delusional founder -- that would be me. I'd like to think 4 years ago, but who the hell knows. If you wish to manage responsibilities, join the managers. If you wish to drive the ship, join the founders. And this is your correct career path. An employee who believes they are better than the founder or executive is already holding a wrench.
- f2f 9y ago
  There are/were six-wheeled cars that got shut out because of market forces unrelated to how well they ran in competition. Google Tyrrell's Formula 1 Six Wheeler
  - unabst 9y ago
    Yes, there are always exceptions. The point is, what works works, and if you're forced to make things work, before you know it, you'll find yourself looking awfully similar to those in a similar situation. There is a reason why these business structures are so common. They work.
CalChris 9y ago
I think you might bundle Founders in as super-employees. Executives place themselves above Employees but then won’t take the risks that Founders do.
thesash 9y ago
This is actually a pretty good reason to move from group 3 to group 1. If your goal is to be part of group 3, but are unable to find an organization with a healthy culture, then there may be an opportunity to build your own.
- alien_at_work 9y ago
  Then you end up with the "grassroots politician" problem: you go in to fix a problem but realize the money is just too good (now that you're the one getting it) to change the system.
  - thesash 9y ago
    Are you motivated by money in this situation?
    - alien_at_work 9y ago
      Or the power or whatever. All I know is it seems to always turn out this way. The current generation can't be the first ones to ever want to change this, yet the system is as it is. This is my suspicion of why that remains the case.
jv22222 9y ago
> the executive path is actually the one that most of the scumbags take Hmm. Personally, I have tried to take all three paths. I find it creates the largest amount of potential. Employee Hat: Develop stuff for the day job. Founder Hat: Bootstrap by night and learn what it's like to be an owner. Executive Hat: Work up the ladder by wearing the employee hat and bring what you learn as an owner/bootstrapper back to the day job.
rdiddly 9y ago
If engineers desire money and prestige (like executives), then the first question is "how are they different from the so-called scumbags who desire money and prestige?" The more you want money & prestige, the more you share a key characteristic with those people. But let's leave that aside for the moment. On a practical level, if engineers are to achieve money and prestige, then they'll have to (and here come several different ways of saying the same thing): - sell themselves - play a power game - play politics - ask for money & prestige, in all the different ways including dressing and speaking in a way that signals to money-and-prestige-bestowing people that you should get money and prestige And they will have to concentrate on this and get good at it, apply the tactics & techniques, and succeed. That's how executive scumbags do it. This takes a fair amount of time and effort, so you'll have to spend a lot of your time on it. Nobody is giving away money for free without even being asked. And nobody cares about raising engineers' salaries as much as engineers do, so it's unlikely you'll find anyone to do it on your behalf. You either ask for it until it happens (selling something, selling yourself) or you say "well heck I wanted to be an ENGINEER" and spend your time doing engineering, and don't worry what's in the other guy's pocket. Screw him, he probably has an ulcer and his wife's a harpy!
throw2016 9y ago
This is a popular perspective among some technical folks but it's a bit insular. You could tar employees with some tag, there must be space to separate good and bad executives. A lot of technical folks seem to have very little understanding or even interest in what for instance marketing and sales do. There are generalizations and often anecdotal knowledge that passes for understanding. Developing software is just one small part of the process of creating value. Software does does sell itself. Creating demand and getting customers is incredibly difficult, expensive and unpredictable. If your target is advertisers based on users then acquiring users and advertisers is equally challenging. As a thought experiment, get the best technical team and develop a product. Now after it is done, then what, how to do make money, how do you sell it or get users?
madeofpalk 9y ago
How many multiples of the average salary does a SV tech worker earn?
nexus2045 9y ago
I'm relatively new to the workforce so take this with a grain of salt, but I think this is a false dichotomy. People who are less agreeable, more assertive will make more money because they negotiate more on their own behalf. The poster child for these people, especially from the dev's point of view, is that of a brogrammer/scumbag/dick stereotype, and by definition they make more noise than the kind and also competent engineer. You could also say that humankind is still stuck in an evolutionary stage where in most places, being dominant is the best signal of "value". In a Tim Ferriss podcast, Ray Dalio actually mentions that disagreements at Bridgewater can take on different forms, because some people are less suitable for verbal, thinking-on-their-feet sort of debates, and might be better suited for long form (like Hacker News threads) debates.
natural219 9y ago
Paul Graham literally built YCombinator's legacy off the backs of tearing down "pointy-haired bosses" and offering an alternative path to MBA executive leadership, which is the surest sign your industry has stopped innovating and has been fully converted into a cash cow for financial institutions.
sshumaker 9y ago
Plenty of scumbags take the founder route too. :) And I've met many engineers in my career who would fit the jerk description as well. Having operated in all three roles, all are incredibly valuable. Great leaders enable their teams to be more than the sum of their individual members (employees). But I would opine that the leadership roles come with significantly more risk, which is at least partially responsible for the money / prestige.
saimiam 9y ago
>the one that actually creates value What value is value if it can't be sold? Yes, there's intrinsic value in doing things because they need to be done but most of the work done in offices around the world derives its meaning from its worth to a buyer. This being so(?), is the employee necessarily worth more, as you seem to imply, just because they are mashing away on tools rather than engaging with buyers or regulators, strategizing, and scheming?
DannyBee 9y ago
unfortunately, it seems feelings are a bit raw in this thread (a lot of people seem to have had a lot of bad experiences, and don't feel appreciated, which definitely sucks). But i'd guess i'd say as a member of the likely scumbag group, i feel like you aren't really trying to see the multiple perspectives here. As someone else said, we all create value. It's rare successful companies can afford to keep people around who don't. It's much more likely "they don't create value in ways that you value", or value that you see. I think one of the things definitely holding you back here is the inability to see it from these other perspectives. You are telling yourself you understand people's motivations and goals (you think they are ambitious and trying to sell themselves to get ahead), but i don't think you really understand the perspective, just your story of it. And you definitely, even in these few sentences, have a clear bias and story about a ton of people. " i wish it layed out a path of how to build an industry that doesn't attract all those ambitious selfish (executives) people" I think you need to question your assumptions a lot here. You are assuming that such an industry could exist, or that it would be successful. You are assuming (as mentioned above) that your group is the only one that creates value. If that was really true, do you really believe the other groups would still exist? Why wouldn't someone, in each industry, already have made a successful company that doesn't have those roles, and because they produce much more value, taken over? I could believe you don't value what they do, but like the author, i don't believe that deserves the judgement you seem to. Assuming your definition of value is the right one, or better than others, is not a good place to start a real discussion from. I think you would do well to rely less on personality stereotyping and more on understanding if you want to get to the place you desire (where the ambitious, selfish people you see, aren't causing you the annoyance they apparently do)
goatherders 9y ago
I actually find "founder" is the route most scumbags take. Most of the ones I encounter take credit for other people's work and contribute little value. They also do a great job spending other people's money. Next would be Employees. Jeez, those guys are the worst. Always thinking the ship will sink without them. If only the executives would listen to them the company would be on the right path. Get off your high horse. You look foolish to all of us executives.
- abpavel 9y ago
  >> If only the executives would listen to them the company would be on the right path. Founder is an employee, whose executives wouldn't listen to them. I can see how it could be easier for you to "tune out", but from the Wozniak's mouse to Nokia smartphone presentations, your smirk is actually exactly correct: Employees make or break the firm. The ship will sink without them. Executives do not sufficiently listen to their employees.
clairity 9y ago
seibel's definition of executives included this tidbit: "politics are usually as important, if not more so", and that seems to be the sticky bit. the premise underlying your lament is that we should distribute compensation based on direct contribution to the product. but we simply don't distribute value that way. first of all, how would we accurately, objectively and differentially assign contribution for the success of a business to the contributing members? i'd guesstimate that an average US company might distribute value this way: owners 45%, executives 20%, employees 35%. you seem to be alluding to a distribution close to executives & owners 0%, employees 100%. are either of those correct? what would be the fair way to do it? you'd have to answer that before you can figure out how to get there. and as distasteful as it may be, the way we seem to assign value _is_ political. we assign it based on an ability to take credit and argue for a larger share. we assign it for cultural values, like bravado and charisma. we don't really assign it for economic contribution, like commission for direct sales or compensation for risk, no matter how much that appeals to our rational economic minds. the distribution of value is exactly based on the political skill which you lament. how do we change that? well, that's like asking how do we upend the currently accepted social hierarchy. and that's a big question.
quadcore 9y ago
I've thought about that quite a lot lately. Here is the strongest explanation of why things are like that and why it's gonna be very difficult to change. For at least a million year, you would have improved your chances of survival by sticking with a physically stronger mate than you are. This guy can beat the wolf when you cant, and maybe more importantly here, he may be able to beat the other tribal chiefs when you cant. Guess how bad people stick to this habit even today. They literally have a brain forged to command them to do that. In practice what happen is that people will confirmation-biased you, they either gonna find out everything you do well, or everything you do badly depending on how badass you are. They will fill forms and say: "look, here are the reasons why we promoted him". From what I've seen, even at Amazon which is a big geniuses recruiter - and therefore should be able to crack this problem - (amazon also have a form "reasons not to promote" which, if you're following, is kinda smart but mostly wishful thinking), people get promoted mostly based on the following leadership principle: the guy who's most likely to beat the wolf is gonna be promoted. I've experienced it first hand. There is a light in the tunnel though. From my observations, I can tell that Amazon, for example, is able to recruit based on skills. Note that at this point, the social bonds aren't made yet which is why it works. This might also explains why you go up the ladder more easily by getting recruited - aka move diagonally. So the best thoughts I've been able to come up with is that, somehow, promotion should try to be like recruitment. Both intuitively and counter-intuitively, I think people should get promoted by people who don't know them, by some sort of recruitment process because we know we can fix that one. In any ways, I guess there is a fantastic startup to be made here.
deleted 9y ago
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eksemplar 9y ago
It depends, in modern digitization there is plenty of room for mangers who started out on the productive end. It does require extra education, organizational understanding and people skills, but the sales bit isn't really a plus outside of contract management. Most sales people in IT are employees.
kungito 9y ago
I think that as with everything in nature, it's not about the silver bullet. Sure, the employees create "something" because they are told to but if not for founders vision and executives execution they may not produce any actual value. You need all 3 to go from vision to reality.

mwseibel 9y ago

Thanks for the note - I’m going to think about this.

untilHellbanned 9y ago
Isn't just distributing the wealth more evenly?
btilly 9y ago
Here is a twist on this to think about. Careers are made or broken on whether you get to be an idea person or an implementer. If you're an idea person you get the lion's share of the credit for anything that goes right, and can always blame your failures on the implementor. Plus ideas are easier to come up with than implementations. If you're an implementor you work hard, and then don't get much of the credit. But without implementors you simply don't have a product.
- srtjstjsj 9y ago
  Can you implement your own ideas?
  - btilly 9y ago
    Sometimes. But if everyone simply does what they think best, the result does not add up to a sensible whole. Therefore there is a necessary tradeoff between doing what you think is a good idea, and doing what someone else in the organization thinks is a good idea.
- Iv 9y ago
  I think it all boils down to playing the blame game. It takes time to do so and implementing an idea takes a lot of time. Having an idea is the easiest thing ever. I can have five ideas before lunch with time to spate on blaming the people who will actually implement them for the past failures of my "great ideas with poor implementation" But engineers/implementers who get into politics have a huge advantage: they can produce proofs, especially in tech. Nothing is more scary for an executive type than an engineer who refuses to be bullied into accepting the blame.
  - KKKKkkkk1 9y ago
    But it really depends on how healthy your corporate culture is. I would say that in 90% of the companies, "technically correct" is just not good enough.
    - Iv 9y ago
      Technically correct is not enough in a sane culture either. But the business side of thing is not complicated, it is opaque. Be technically right, hunt the information that will make you correct business-wise. And you will be able to make a much stronger claim in the blame game that the guy who is just business-right.
    - btilly 9y ago
      To be fair, the first and last line of defense for most tech people is to retreat into technical detail and present an apparently irrefutable argument that nobody understands. It is impossible from the outside to tell whether this is just the tech person being defensive and they are full of BS, or whether the tech person is right. So people eventually default to assuming BS.
- enjo 9y ago
  Is any of that true? Are ideas really that easy? Also these people aren't being paid for ideas. They're being paid for vision and the ability to guide that vision through to completion. I've met FAR more competent implementers in my life than I have product owners. You seem (and others) seem to be arguing that there is some sort of market inefficiency here, but I don't see that. And I say that as an implementer.
  - graycat 9y ago
    A common remark from VCs, e.g., John Doerr at KPCB (e.g., quoted at AVC.com) is that "Ideas are easy and plentiful. Execution is hard and everything." Well, bad ideas are easy and plentiful, and then execution is hard and everything. But good ideas are hard, and then execution is routine. By an "idea" Doerr meant just some short, off-hand statement, say, at a party or over the family Sunday dinner table, some summary might tell a neighbor over a back fence. A good idea, however, may come with a stack of solid background research on the market, the problem to be solved, and a really good solution, say, the first good or a much better solution, with good barriers to entry, etc. Here's an approach: Pick a problem that so far is solved at best poorly but where the first good solution will be close to a must have for enough people and revenue per person to make a successful business. Then find a good solution. The solution might have secret sauce which was needed to solve the problem (why the problem wasn't solved 10 years ago) and that can also be a big barrier to entry. It would help a lot to exploit current, comparatively dirt cheap, computing. If you write all your own code, then likely you don't need co-founders. Venture capital won't much help because by the time you have enough for the VCs to write you a check, you will already have enough in traction that you can monetize to have enough revenue that you no longer need, want, or will accept their check, BoD, term sheet, vesting of what you already own 100% of, etc. The checkbooks of the VCs were important when a Web site startup needed to spend big bucks with Sun Micro Systems, Oracle, Cisco, etc., but those days are over. Now the prices for such things are WAY down and the checkbooks of the VCs much less important.
  - dgreensp 9y ago
    At one level, “idea person” is a misunderstanding of the founder’s role; founders must execute, all day long. It’s not just the programmmers who “implement,” either. At another level, I’ll admit that most founders I’ve worked for have excelled more at promoting their ideas, raising money, and hiring talent — top talent, no small feat! — than product ownership. In this case, the lieutenants who make the gears mesh and not jam are the heroes to me.
- mseebach 9y ago
  Careers are fraught in any organisation that systematically allows individuals to take credit/blame for team efforts. That said, I've met quite a few implementers that seem to believe that because it's their hands on the keyboard, no other activity warrants credit, all the way down to the guy who thinks that he commands "respect" (in the gang-sense) because he can shut down the Exchange server.
  - btilly 9y ago
    Can you name me an organization where individuals (particularly near the top) do not wind up with credit/blame for team efforts?
- eikenberry 9y ago
  Calling them an idea person is, I think, unfair. The idea is the simple part. It is taking this idea to market, getting people to implement it, that is not easy. I'm not saying the implementors deserve the level of credit they get, but reducing the organizers to simple 'idea person' is somewhat disingenuous.
  - gps372 9y ago
    Yep, that is the selling part right there! It is one thing to take an idea to market when you are selling for companies like IBM, Accenture, Google, etc. But when you have to sell the same idea on your own, that takes real skill and hard-work!
- sidlls 9y ago
  Competent product development is much more than "having ideas." It's not just a room full of under-educated monkeys in business suits generating random "ideas", mindlessly picking A/B test results or throwing darts at a wall. There's this caricature version of what they do that developers seem to have that just doesn't match reality. I wish my fellow developers would take some initiative to truly understand what product, sales and marketing actually do.
herewego 9y ago
These paths are not mutually exclusive, which should probably be noted in the article as well. I know many who have done some combination of them, myself included.

dceddia 9y ago

There's a good book I read recently called Developer Hegemony, and I think you might like it. It breaks down the archetypes within companies, talks about what it takes to succeed as an employee or an executive, and then discusses an alternative route that we software engineers might be able to take. Here's a blog about the book [0] and the book itself [1]. [0]: https://www.daedtech.com/developer-hegemony-the-crazy-idea-that-software-developers-should-run-software-development/ https://www.daedtech.com/developer-hegemony-the-crazy-idea-t... [1]: https://leanpub.com/developerhegemony https://leanpub.com/developerhegemony

lliamander 9y ago
Hah! didn't see your post before I submitted mine :)

ivanjovanovic 9y ago

I overall agree with your sentiment. I would though not agree fully about where you assume value is created. Usually, developers / middle managers do not create value. Mostly they are implementing ideas of others and in these ideas is most of value concentrated. I would say they deliver value but don't create most of it.

ryandrake 9y ago
It's a good philosophical question: A company creates a great product. What person actually created the value? The product visionary who thought of the idea? The developer who implemented it? The manager who approved the budget allowing the work to happen in the first place?
- speby 9y ago
  You're implicitly making a common mistake confusing value creation and value capture. Yes, it is true that developers writing the software for Google's search engine and Gmail and other products, particularly the early developers who were writing core functionality before it even existed yet, are creating value. But are/were they capturing the full value created? In general, no. To the extent they "captured value" only came in the form of salary/benefits/etc. So they captured some, to be sure. In highly successful companies who create hugely successful products that create tons of value, the actual capture of that value is absolutely not shared equally. This is in part because the risk was not shared equally. Just as in successful companies, unsuccessful companies that ship a product that does not do well or fails completely, the developers who created it still captured a salary along the way. The investors and others who put in money or time and energy for little or not pay (in exchange for equity) were the ones with the most risk. Bottom line... everyone involved in company-building and product-building create value along the way but value capture is generally concentrated for very good reasons.
  - s73ver_ 9y ago
    They're concentrated for reasons. It's highly debatable whether those reasons are "good". We all take risk. I could find myself working for a company that doesn't make it, or just decides to fire me at a moment's notice. Losing my job and not being able to find another one means I might not be able to feed and house my family. That's real risk. On the other hand, most investors are pretty well off, and can weather a few startups failing. They're likely not going to get to the point where they don't know if they can continue to house their family for the next few months.

hkmurakami 9y ago

The "scumbags" you describe are the ones that exhibit a strong "need for power" as described by McClelland. Engineers tend to have stronger "need for achievement", eschewing the power grab. But organizations today and perhaps in the past have always rewarded those who attain the power. Perversely, if you want a place where achievement (ie doing the work, building things) is rewarded properly, you need someone with that mindset to suck it up and win the power game.

lliamander 9y ago

> The third group, the one that actually creates value, is accurately represented as not as successful both in terms of money and prestige. I think this is a damn shame, and we should be striving to stop that. You may like Eric Dietrich's book Developer Hegemony[1]. He talks about both why the third group is less successful and how people within that group can potentially improve their situation within the current system. > I have found that the executive path is actually the one that most of the scumbags take, it is the one that attracts the most people, and those people are usually not likable, they're salespeople that sell themselves all day. I've seen the sliminess as well, but regardless of how ethical you are, in order to be successful in any domain you must be prepared to defend your interests (which people might perceive as "scumbag" behavior) and convince others that you have something of value to offer them (i.e. "selling"). I think it is possible (though difficult) to be both successful and moral, but success isn't everything. I think certainly possible to have a fulfilling life and not be successful. But (and I'm not claiming this applies to you) I would caution people in general against getting stuck in the rut of telling themselves that they value things other than success and at the same time resenting those who are successful. [1] https://www.daedtech.com/developer-hegemony-the-crazy-idea-that-software-developers-should-run-software-development/ https://www.daedtech.com/developer-hegemony-the-crazy-idea-t...

i_cant_speel 9y ago
> He talks about both why the third group is less successful and how people within that group can potentially improve their situation within the current system. Are you able to provide a cliff note or two about why they are less successful and how to improve their situations?
- lliamander 9y ago
  Why are line level engineers less successful? In short, the Gervais Principle[1]: "Sociopaths, in their own best interests, knowingly promote over-performing losers into middle-management, groom under-performing losers into sociopaths, and leave the average bare-minimum-effort losers to fend for themselves." What to do about it? These things: * recognize that as software professionals we own the means of production * learn the business side of software * form partnerships with other developers such that the distinctions between worker and owner, suit and techie, no longer exists * shift focus away from developing software according to a spec, and towards being a provider of overall business efficiency (often achieved through software). Note that this is focused primarily towards developers working in the IT cost-centers of (generally non-technology) businesses. [1] https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

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sidlls 9y ago

I have a different (admittedly controversial) take, having been on the "tech ladder" for some time now (as a Senior SWE and Lead Engineer): most individual contributors overestimate how much value they actually provide, especially in the Bay Area. That isn't to say we're not under-appreciated and under-compensated (we are both). But realistically much of the time work we do is easily done by literally thousands of other people just as well. The same just isn't true of product development, sales and marketing. Any one of those three teams, staffed well, will account for well more than the value of the entire engineering organization. Mostly this is a self-inflicted problem. Especially in the Bay Area, where developers tend to value CS ability signaling rather than the ability to work well with product teams and the ability to engage in practical engineering. There's too much focus by developers on shallow things, like fad-following the latest frameworks, on pseudo-intellectualism or technology-purism (e.g. "coding is doing math", code "elegance", whether/how FP is just so much better than anything else, etc.), and trivia like programming language choice.

vvanders 9y ago
Everything you listed is just a multiplier on if the technology actually works. If you have a sucky multiplier of course your product won't do well but if it isn't technically executed right you still have a zero.
- sidlls 9y ago
  It isn't binary: value is created by all parties involved. It's just, in my opinion, that if we normalize the value created to be 1 for the product team, then engineering's value is less than 1, and sales and marketing is (more often) greater than or equal to 1, most of the time. Exceptions exist. But they're not normal, by definition.
  - ddustin 9y ago
    An engineer's value can be exponential and can even go well beyond their own lifespan. Sales and marketing impact is immediate and falls off over time while engineering's impact is slow and can speed up over time.

deleted 9y ago

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gbarc888 9y ago

I agree with you. The third group is also the first people to get laid off and thrown away when there is an economic downturn.

ageek123 9y ago
Actually execs have less job security than the third group. The execs' value is largely tied to their existing employer (vs. having transferable skills like the third group), and they are very vulnerable to random reorgs within the company, so it is not uncommon for them to be fired and not be able to find something comparable somewhere else.
- alien_at_work 9y ago
  I'd say the salary more than compensates for this.
laythea 9y ago
No, that would be contractors :)

loceng 9y ago

You have to change the way money/funding is acquired, otherwise the pressure structure and hierarchy for will lead to this. This system would fall apart - in a positive way - if we have a good quality of life with Universal Basic Income. People could then work on projects without requiring an external source of funding, and so then the best projects/platforms/systems could evolve over 5, 10, even 20 years - without pressure from VCs wanting any return at all. VCs have limited attention and those who are best at being loudest are likely to capture that available attention - similarly some people try to win arguments by being louder and making more noise than others.

Asooka 9y ago

> I wish it layed out a path of how to build an industry that doesn't attract all those ambitious selfish (executives) people Given that ten thousand years of human history have utterly failed to produce any system at any point in time where the value-makers are rewarded over the salespeople, I don't think any such system can be made. At least executive positions aren't quite at the level of a winner-takes-all competition and you have a plausible chance of making it to that level.

comments_db 9y ago

Yes, yes and yes. Logged in after a long time to up vote on this. I think it takes 2-3 years for people to "get it." As you have mentioned it is indeed depressing. On the flip side, 40% of the employees are slacking off, another 40% is tinkering with their ideas (thereby not giving 100% to their employers), and the remaining 20% are still in that 2-3 years of getting it. It's not surprising that most startups and companies prey on these youngsters of the trade. p.s. That was rather negative response. May be it's the ecosystem and how things are. p.p.s. Good post and stuffs like this should be taught in CS schools.

Xeoncross 9y ago

> I find it tremendously depressing It's worth noting that this is simply in the "Tech Industry" which is much different than a "Good Life", "Adventure Quest", "[religion] walk", or any other form of purpose/success-based ranking.

flachsechs 9y ago

a good small business/early startup is basically #1 and #3, and none of #2. unfortunately, it is a _whole_ lot more work and a _whole_ lot more stress, and is thus the road less traveled.

pg_is_a_butt 9y ago

hitler had ideas about a solution, but there are enough selfish people to stop any such attempt. you're all idiots.

unabst 9y ago

> the one that actually creates value No. We all create value. Businesses, when running smoothly, are like a well oiled machine. Nothing is redundant. Garbage is collected. Businesses is cutthroat industries cannot afford to be redundant. I always wondered why all cars had 4 wheels. Turns out, the 3 wheeled car is horrible (see Top Gear), a 5 wheeled car is pointless, and a 2 wheeled car is a motorcycle. But when you're a kid, compact jet propulsion or anti-gravity doesn't seem so difficult. But that's also why you're a kid. I started a business thinking everyone can be their own executive, worker, and entrepreneur. They could handle their own responsibilities, manage their work, and do that work. Unfortunately, we had to go through a lot of them. Utopia wasn't working, but they were also miserable. It wasn't what they wanted, expected, or enjoyed. They all loved the idea though, including myself. Fast forward five years, and my car has 4 wheels. I am the "founder". I decide where the business should go, lay out the work that needs to be done, and hand it over. The "executive" is then responsible for that work getting done. They hand it over to the "employees" in a way that is efficient and accountable. The third group just needs to accomplish the tasks they promised to do for the money they agreed on. I'll see your scumbag executive and raise you my wrench throwing employee and delusional founder -- that would be me. I'd like to think 4 years ago, but who the hell knows. If you wish to manage responsibilities, join the managers. If you wish to drive the ship, join the founders. And this is your correct career path. An employee who believes they are better than the founder or executive is already holding a wrench.

f2f 9y ago
There are/were six-wheeled cars that got shut out because of market forces unrelated to how well they ran in competition. Google Tyrrell's Formula 1 Six Wheeler
- unabst 9y ago
  Yes, there are always exceptions. The point is, what works works, and if you're forced to make things work, before you know it, you'll find yourself looking awfully similar to those in a similar situation. There is a reason why these business structures are so common. They work.

CalChris 9y ago

I think you might bundle Founders in as super-employees. Executives place themselves above Employees but then won’t take the risks that Founders do.

thesash 9y ago

This is actually a pretty good reason to move from group 3 to group 1. If your goal is to be part of group 3, but are unable to find an organization with a healthy culture, then there may be an opportunity to build your own.

alien_at_work 9y ago
Then you end up with the "grassroots politician" problem: you go in to fix a problem but realize the money is just too good (now that you're the one getting it) to change the system.
- thesash 9y ago
  Are you motivated by money in this situation?
  - alien_at_work 9y ago
    Or the power or whatever. All I know is it seems to always turn out this way. The current generation can't be the first ones to ever want to change this, yet the system is as it is. This is my suspicion of why that remains the case.

jv22222 9y ago

> the executive path is actually the one that most of the scumbags take Hmm. Personally, I have tried to take all three paths. I find it creates the largest amount of potential. Employee Hat: Develop stuff for the day job. Founder Hat: Bootstrap by night and learn what it's like to be an owner. Executive Hat: Work up the ladder by wearing the employee hat and bring what you learn as an owner/bootstrapper back to the day job.

rdiddly 9y ago

If engineers desire money and prestige (like executives), then the first question is "how are they different from the so-called scumbags who desire money and prestige?" The more you want money & prestige, the more you share a key characteristic with those people. But let's leave that aside for the moment. On a practical level, if engineers are to achieve money and prestige, then they'll have to (and here come several different ways of saying the same thing): - sell themselves - play a power game - play politics - ask for money & prestige, in all the different ways including dressing and speaking in a way that signals to money-and-prestige-bestowing people that you should get money and prestige And they will have to concentrate on this and get good at it, apply the tactics & techniques, and succeed. That's how executive scumbags do it. This takes a fair amount of time and effort, so you'll have to spend a lot of your time on it. Nobody is giving away money for free without even being asked. And nobody cares about raising engineers' salaries as much as engineers do, so it's unlikely you'll find anyone to do it on your behalf. You either ask for it until it happens (selling something, selling yourself) or you say "well heck I wanted to be an ENGINEER" and spend your time doing engineering, and don't worry what's in the other guy's pocket. Screw him, he probably has an ulcer and his wife's a harpy!

throw2016 9y ago

This is a popular perspective among some technical folks but it's a bit insular. You could tar employees with some tag, there must be space to separate good and bad executives. A lot of technical folks seem to have very little understanding or even interest in what for instance marketing and sales do. There are generalizations and often anecdotal knowledge that passes for understanding. Developing software is just one small part of the process of creating value. Software does does sell itself. Creating demand and getting customers is incredibly difficult, expensive and unpredictable. If your target is advertisers based on users then acquiring users and advertisers is equally challenging. As a thought experiment, get the best technical team and develop a product. Now after it is done, then what, how to do make money, how do you sell it or get users?

madeofpalk 9y ago

How many multiples of the average salary does a SV tech worker earn?

nexus2045 9y ago

I'm relatively new to the workforce so take this with a grain of salt, but I think this is a false dichotomy. People who are less agreeable, more assertive will make more money because they negotiate more on their own behalf. The poster child for these people, especially from the dev's point of view, is that of a brogrammer/scumbag/dick stereotype, and by definition they make more noise than the kind and also competent engineer. You could also say that humankind is still stuck in an evolutionary stage where in most places, being dominant is the best signal of "value". In a Tim Ferriss podcast, Ray Dalio actually mentions that disagreements at Bridgewater can take on different forms, because some people are less suitable for verbal, thinking-on-their-feet sort of debates, and might be better suited for long form (like Hacker News threads) debates.

natural219 9y ago

Paul Graham literally built YCombinator's legacy off the backs of tearing down "pointy-haired bosses" and offering an alternative path to MBA executive leadership, which is the surest sign your industry has stopped innovating and has been fully converted into a cash cow for financial institutions.

sshumaker 9y ago

Plenty of scumbags take the founder route too. :) And I've met many engineers in my career who would fit the jerk description as well. Having operated in all three roles, all are incredibly valuable. Great leaders enable their teams to be more than the sum of their individual members (employees). But I would opine that the leadership roles come with significantly more risk, which is at least partially responsible for the money / prestige.

saimiam 9y ago

>the one that actually creates value What value is value if it can't be sold? Yes, there's intrinsic value in doing things because they need to be done but most of the work done in offices around the world derives its meaning from its worth to a buyer. This being so(?), is the employee necessarily worth more, as you seem to imply, just because they are mashing away on tools rather than engaging with buyers or regulators, strategizing, and scheming?

DannyBee 9y ago

unfortunately, it seems feelings are a bit raw in this thread (a lot of people seem to have had a lot of bad experiences, and don't feel appreciated, which definitely sucks). But i'd guess i'd say as a member of the likely scumbag group, i feel like you aren't really trying to see the multiple perspectives here. As someone else said, we all create value. It's rare successful companies can afford to keep people around who don't. It's much more likely "they don't create value in ways that you value", or value that you see. I think one of the things definitely holding you back here is the inability to see it from these other perspectives. You are telling yourself you understand people's motivations and goals (you think they are ambitious and trying to sell themselves to get ahead), but i don't think you really understand the perspective, just your story of it. And you definitely, even in these few sentences, have a clear bias and story about a ton of people. " i wish it layed out a path of how to build an industry that doesn't attract all those ambitious selfish (executives) people" I think you need to question your assumptions a lot here. You are assuming that such an industry could exist, or that it would be successful. You are assuming (as mentioned above) that your group is the only one that creates value. If that was really true, do you really believe the other groups would still exist? Why wouldn't someone, in each industry, already have made a successful company that doesn't have those roles, and because they produce much more value, taken over? I could believe you don't value what they do, but like the author, i don't believe that deserves the judgement you seem to. Assuming your definition of value is the right one, or better than others, is not a good place to start a real discussion from. I think you would do well to rely less on personality stereotyping and more on understanding if you want to get to the place you desire (where the ambitious, selfish people you see, aren't causing you the annoyance they apparently do)

goatherders 9y ago

I actually find "founder" is the route most scumbags take. Most of the ones I encounter take credit for other people's work and contribute little value. They also do a great job spending other people's money. Next would be Employees. Jeez, those guys are the worst. Always thinking the ship will sink without them. If only the executives would listen to them the company would be on the right path. Get off your high horse. You look foolish to all of us executives.

abpavel 9y ago
>> If only the executives would listen to them the company would be on the right path. Founder is an employee, whose executives wouldn't listen to them. I can see how it could be easier for you to "tune out", but from the Wozniak's mouse to Nokia smartphone presentations, your smirk is actually exactly correct: Employees make or break the firm. The ship will sink without them. Executives do not sufficiently listen to their employees.

clairity 9y ago

seibel's definition of executives included this tidbit: "politics are usually as important, if not more so", and that seems to be the sticky bit. the premise underlying your lament is that we should distribute compensation based on direct contribution to the product. but we simply don't distribute value that way. first of all, how would we accurately, objectively and differentially assign contribution for the success of a business to the contributing members? i'd guesstimate that an average US company might distribute value this way: owners 45%, executives 20%, employees 35%. you seem to be alluding to a distribution close to executives & owners 0%, employees 100%. are either of those correct? what would be the fair way to do it? you'd have to answer that before you can figure out how to get there. and as distasteful as it may be, the way we seem to assign value _is_ political. we assign it based on an ability to take credit and argue for a larger share. we assign it for cultural values, like bravado and charisma. we don't really assign it for economic contribution, like commission for direct sales or compensation for risk, no matter how much that appeals to our rational economic minds. the distribution of value is exactly based on the political skill which you lament. how do we change that? well, that's like asking how do we upend the currently accepted social hierarchy. and that's a big question.

quadcore 9y ago

I've thought about that quite a lot lately. Here is the strongest explanation of why things are like that and why it's gonna be very difficult to change. For at least a million year, you would have improved your chances of survival by sticking with a physically stronger mate than you are. This guy can beat the wolf when you cant, and maybe more importantly here, he may be able to beat the other tribal chiefs when you cant. Guess how bad people stick to this habit even today. They literally have a brain forged to command them to do that. In practice what happen is that people will confirmation-biased you, they either gonna find out everything you do well, or everything you do badly depending on how badass you are. They will fill forms and say: "look, here are the reasons why we promoted him". From what I've seen, even at Amazon which is a big geniuses recruiter - and therefore should be able to crack this problem - (amazon also have a form "reasons not to promote" which, if you're following, is kinda smart but mostly wishful thinking), people get promoted mostly based on the following leadership principle: the guy who's most likely to beat the wolf is gonna be promoted. I've experienced it first hand. There is a light in the tunnel though. From my observations, I can tell that Amazon, for example, is able to recruit based on skills. Note that at this point, the social bonds aren't made yet which is why it works. This might also explains why you go up the ladder more easily by getting recruited - aka move diagonally. So the best thoughts I've been able to come up with is that, somehow, promotion should try to be like recruitment. Both intuitively and counter-intuitively, I think people should get promoted by people who don't know them, by some sort of recruitment process because we know we can fix that one. In any ways, I guess there is a fantastic startup to be made here.

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eksemplar 9y ago

It depends, in modern digitization there is plenty of room for mangers who started out on the productive end. It does require extra education, organizational understanding and people skills, but the sales bit isn't really a plus outside of contract management. Most sales people in IT are employees.

kungito 9y ago

I think that as with everything in nature, it's not about the silver bullet. Sure, the employees create "something" because they are told to but if not for founders vision and executives execution they may not produce any actual value. You need all 3 to go from vision to reality.