5 ms·

It never ceases to amaze me why we give power over to those who do not themselves produce, and have no experience doing so. There are some great leaders out the

It never ceases to amaze me why we give power over to those who do not themselves produce, and have no experience doing so. There are some great leaders out there, but I find it hard to follow someone who has little domain experience. Actually, why do we view 'business' as its own separate field when it doesn't mean anything in a vacuum?

billswift 15y ago
Well businesses have to do something with people that are too incompetent to trust with doing actual work; making them managers at least limits how much they can screw up. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dilbert_principle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dilbert_principle).
- nickolai 15y ago
  I hope it stays a joke. Thats like putting a blind and deaf sailor to the rudder because you can't order him around the boat to manipulate the sails. Either position has screwage potential. Put him into some cmmi compliance group instead.
CoffeeDregs 15y ago
It never ceases to amaze me why we give power over to those who do not themselves produce Given the context, "those who do not themselves produce" means MBAs? I've got an MBA (and an MSEE) and am a CTO, and I think people think I can produce. Of course, there are useless people who graduate with every degree imaginable. MBAs happen to have graduated too many people and have gotten a bunch of focus over the past decade, so are rightly getting their ration of shit, but that's not about the notion of an MBA being useless; it's about oversupply and under-quality. Also, I assume you meant "those who did not themselves produce" because one of the most frustrating things about management is that you don't get to produce much. That sucks, but it's part of the job (I hate leaving work when my big accomplishment for the day was to talk to a bunch of co-workers, but it's my job...). Actually, why do we view 'business' as its own separate field when it doesn't mean anything in a vacuum? Because running a business is something people do and is has very specific rules, regulations, mechanics, knowledge, etc. Accounting and finance do matter (a lot) and products, people and ideas do fail because they neglect to understand these things. But business studies are cross-functional/domain: I took the "core" stuff, but I also took great classes on control system theory for business ("system dynamics"), industrial economics, strategy, technology strategy, organizational processes, finance (NPV, capital structure anyone?). These types of knowledge give you a very different (and, hopefully, more effective) perspective on what businesses are and how they operate. Computer science doesn't mean anything in a vacuum either. What if you wrote a program and you couldn't market, sell or support it?
- smugengineer69 15y ago
  What if you wrote a program and you couldn't market, sell or support it? People do this all the time, it's called open-source software and people come upon it by merit of the quality of the code. It doesn't need buzzwords, jargon, sales, and demographics numbers. It's the closest we've got to a vacuum sometimes and I'm proud of this.
  - CoffeeDregs 15y ago
    Note: I use and support open-source software. People do this all the time, it's called open-source software and people come upon it by merit of the quality of the code. Name one piece of interesting open-source software you've heard of that hasn't been marketed (e.g. they didn't write a good README and everyone "came upon it" somehow). You've also dismissed all of the activities of Business because they're done in Business, but some activities are done in almost all groups-of-people. It doesn't need buzzwords, jargon, sales, and demographics numbers. So you'd say that NodeJS, Rails, Django, etc do not have any buzzwords, jargon, sales or demographics numbers? It seems unpossible to read DHH or anything about Clojure and maintain that opinion.
    - felipemnoa 15y ago
      You are really scraping the bottom of the barrel. Instructions on how to use something, i.e. README, don't really qualify as marketing. Since it is not what is doing the marketing and it is part of the product. Word of mouth and a site announcing the product would be marketing. You do have to let somebody know about your product of course if you want them to use it but you can hardly call that marketing.
- Vivtek 15y ago
  I respect your MBA skills, but ... back in the early 90's I did a multi-year consulting gig at Eli Lilly (pharmaceuticals, if you didn't know: Prozac, among others) and they've got the MBA disease bad. The MBA disease - and this is what the article is about, obliquely - is thinking you don't need to know anything about the business itself to manage it, because business as a whole is a uniform set of actions. At Lilly this was endemic to the point that people were advised - I kid you not - to avoid learning any technical information or anything too specific about their areas, because it would harm their careers. Lilly people were discouraged from associating too much with contractors, because contractors were hired to do specific domain-knowledge things like, oh, develop key software that governed their manufacturing procedures, including generating all expiration dates for the company. (God forbid anybody at Lilly should sully themselves with learning how expiration dating works - I sure enjoyed it, though.) So you're right, business administration is an essential set of skills, but the point here is that without knowledge of the business you're administrating, you can't make valid decisions - except on the basis of short-term financial goals that ultimately result in the downfall of society. (Lilly was unreal. They don't have fountains in the courtyard, they have water features. The whole place reeks of pretentiousness. Corporate headquarters rocks, though; long, long ago, Eli Lilly himself ended up buying the whole street of old brick buildings, which are now perfectly preserved under a common roof. Architecturally fantastic! The Lilly people hate it; it's too old and has weird corners. They are all idiots.)
pnathan 15y ago
Because those of us who hack code tend to be abysmal at managing business and other people. So it's a specialization thing. Musicians are legendary for having this problem.

billswift 15y ago

Well businesses have to do something with people that are too incompetent to trust with doing actual work; making them managers at least limits how much they can screw up. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dilbert_principle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dilbert_principle).

nickolai 15y ago
I hope it stays a joke. Thats like putting a blind and deaf sailor to the rudder because you can't order him around the boat to manipulate the sails. Either position has screwage potential. Put him into some cmmi compliance group instead.

CoffeeDregs 15y ago

It never ceases to amaze me why we give power over to those who do not themselves produce Given the context, "those who do not themselves produce" means MBAs? I've got an MBA (and an MSEE) and am a CTO, and I think people think I can produce. Of course, there are useless people who graduate with every degree imaginable. MBAs happen to have graduated too many people and have gotten a bunch of focus over the past decade, so are rightly getting their ration of shit, but that's not about the notion of an MBA being useless; it's about oversupply and under-quality. Also, I assume you meant "those who did not themselves produce" because one of the most frustrating things about management is that you don't get to produce much. That sucks, but it's part of the job (I hate leaving work when my big accomplishment for the day was to talk to a bunch of co-workers, but it's my job...). Actually, why do we view 'business' as its own separate field when it doesn't mean anything in a vacuum? Because running a business is something people do and is has very specific rules, regulations, mechanics, knowledge, etc. Accounting and finance do matter (a lot) and products, people and ideas do fail because they neglect to understand these things. But business studies are cross-functional/domain: I took the "core" stuff, but I also took great classes on control system theory for business ("system dynamics"), industrial economics, strategy, technology strategy, organizational processes, finance (NPV, capital structure anyone?). These types of knowledge give you a very different (and, hopefully, more effective) perspective on what businesses are and how they operate. Computer science doesn't mean anything in a vacuum either. What if you wrote a program and you couldn't market, sell or support it?

smugengineer69 15y ago
What if you wrote a program and you couldn't market, sell or support it? People do this all the time, it's called open-source software and people come upon it by merit of the quality of the code. It doesn't need buzzwords, jargon, sales, and demographics numbers. It's the closest we've got to a vacuum sometimes and I'm proud of this.
- CoffeeDregs 15y ago
  Note: I use and support open-source software. People do this all the time, it's called open-source software and people come upon it by merit of the quality of the code. Name one piece of interesting open-source software you've heard of that hasn't been marketed (e.g. they didn't write a good README and everyone "came upon it" somehow). You've also dismissed all of the activities of Business because they're done in Business, but some activities are done in almost all groups-of-people. It doesn't need buzzwords, jargon, sales, and demographics numbers. So you'd say that NodeJS, Rails, Django, etc do not have any buzzwords, jargon, sales or demographics numbers? It seems unpossible to read DHH or anything about Clojure and maintain that opinion.
  - felipemnoa 15y ago
    You are really scraping the bottom of the barrel. Instructions on how to use something, i.e. README, don't really qualify as marketing. Since it is not what is doing the marketing and it is part of the product. Word of mouth and a site announcing the product would be marketing. You do have to let somebody know about your product of course if you want them to use it but you can hardly call that marketing.
Vivtek 15y ago
I respect your MBA skills, but ... back in the early 90's I did a multi-year consulting gig at Eli Lilly (pharmaceuticals, if you didn't know: Prozac, among others) and they've got the MBA disease bad. The MBA disease - and this is what the article is about, obliquely - is thinking you don't need to know anything about the business itself to manage it, because business as a whole is a uniform set of actions. At Lilly this was endemic to the point that people were advised - I kid you not - to avoid learning any technical information or anything too specific about their areas, because it would harm their careers. Lilly people were discouraged from associating too much with contractors, because contractors were hired to do specific domain-knowledge things like, oh, develop key software that governed their manufacturing procedures, including generating all expiration dates for the company. (God forbid anybody at Lilly should sully themselves with learning how expiration dating works - I sure enjoyed it, though.) So you're right, business administration is an essential set of skills, but the point here is that without knowledge of the business you're administrating, you can't make valid decisions - except on the basis of short-term financial goals that ultimately result in the downfall of society. (Lilly was unreal. They don't have fountains in the courtyard, they have water features. The whole place reeks of pretentiousness. Corporate headquarters rocks, though; long, long ago, Eli Lilly himself ended up buying the whole street of old brick buildings, which are now perfectly preserved under a common roof. Architecturally fantastic! The Lilly people hate it; it's too old and has weird corners. They are all idiots.)

pnathan 15y ago

Because those of us who hack code tend to be abysmal at managing business and other people. So it's a specialization thing. Musicians are legendary for having this problem.