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#2 is the biggest issue Management and non-management have different subcultures. Managers need power meetings, lunch meetings, shoulder-taps, etc. They are t
by ascotan 6y ago
#2 is the biggest issue
Management and non-management have different subcultures. Managers need power meetings, lunch meetings, shoulder-taps, etc. They are tasked with watching you and making sure everyone is on task. Non-managers don't care about in-person other than for the socializing aspect (or maybe they want to get away from the house).
I think that non-management can work effectively remote most of the time (unless u need to be doing physical labor of some sort). I'm betting that studies are going to prove this out. However, it's not clear if _management_ can effectively function remotely. Management is heavily dependent on being both seen and heard and remote platforms make this harder not easier.
Many companies have 2 subcultures, the workers want remote and the management wants in-person. I think the conversation needs to be around how to get the managers to work remotely in order to succeed. This is a mind shift in how traditional management is done and will be much slower to adopt.
- randmeerkat 6y agoI think the big problem here is that most managers add zero value and if anything negatively impact velocity. Really all that’s needed is a project manager with a light touch to help the team know what features are needed by leadership. Then the team can use their freedom of direction to prioritise features along with existing technical work to optimise the technologies being leveraged to better position the business.
- throwaway1777 6y agoThis is a ludicrous take. Read a book like high output management and learn what managers actually do and you might realize what value they should be providing.
- disgruntledphd2 6y agoBut sadly accurate if you've never worked with a good manager. Good managers are rare, and people who have never worked with one err on the side of assuming all managers are pointless wastes of space.
- sciprojguy 6y agoFormer software dev manager here. My job was split roughly into thirds - babysitting and mediating team issues, running interference to keep the executives out of my team's hair and bird-dogging HR and payroll issues. I would walk around sometimes and see if anyone needed me to expedite something or clear a blocker and I would go do it. (We were lucky in that we were working on something interesting and kind of ground-breaking so we didn't need a lot of "team building" rah rah to get everyone to work up the enthusiasm to work on a product nobody really cared about.)
- mbrodersen 6y agoMost managers are blissfully unaware how negative productive they are.
- joelbluminator 6y agoI feel the same way, it's very rare they add any value. especially the ones who aren't hands on, that's kind of highly paid secretary.