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I’d say that they give middle management an out, a way to make their jobs “easy” by just throwing a tool at the problem. Middle management should be doing what

I’d say that they give middle management an out, a way to make their jobs “easy” by just throwing a tool at the problem. Middle management should be doing what middle managers do in physical production processes: removing barriers, and reviewing processes for continuous improvement. For whatever reason, management science has not caught up to the ubiquity of knowledge work in the modern economy.

colechristensen 5y ago
From my perspective, some of what middle managers do is helpful, much of what they do could just was well not be done. My point being that these tools create work from top to bottom. There's information to fill out, statuses to be updated, progress to be tracked, reports to be generated, etc. etc. etc. which all fall on to a spectrum of "things which have utility" and "things which are busywork" often heavily favoring the latter. They make management jobs "easier" in that they create a clear set of "something to do" which is different than making their jobs easier in the mode of "providing value to leaders, makers, investors, etc." All being done in a cargo cult of "this is how you should work" and satisfying a certain kind of person's desire for things to be "organized".
- quartesixte 5y ago
  I wonder if HN’s demographics contributes to a general disdain for middle management because, from my non-software engineering point of view, software doesn’t need a lot of management to produce. Hardware on the other hand, needs an organization layer on top of the production layer. Removing barriers, creating traceability, improving processes, and trying to get multiple different teams to work together efficiently.
  - colechristensen 5y ago
    Hardware does indeed need more organization and generally complexity and size requires more organization but there is a fairly constant trend of company age also linking to more and more organization regardless of need. The ever expanding bureaucracy is a problem everywhere.

colechristensen 5y ago

From my perspective, some of what middle managers do is helpful, much of what they do could just was well not be done. My point being that these tools create work from top to bottom. There's information to fill out, statuses to be updated, progress to be tracked, reports to be generated, etc. etc. etc. which all fall on to a spectrum of "things which have utility" and "things which are busywork" often heavily favoring the latter. They make management jobs "easier" in that they create a clear set of "something to do" which is different than making their jobs easier in the mode of "providing value to leaders, makers, investors, etc." All being done in a cargo cult of "this is how you should work" and satisfying a certain kind of person's desire for things to be "organized".

quartesixte 5y ago
I wonder if HN’s demographics contributes to a general disdain for middle management because, from my non-software engineering point of view, software doesn’t need a lot of management to produce. Hardware on the other hand, needs an organization layer on top of the production layer. Removing barriers, creating traceability, improving processes, and trying to get multiple different teams to work together efficiently.
- colechristensen 5y ago
  Hardware does indeed need more organization and generally complexity and size requires more organization but there is a fairly constant trend of company age also linking to more and more organization regardless of need. The ever expanding bureaucracy is a problem everywhere.