11 ms·

I am writing a book covering a lot of this ground (shout out to Roald Coase) - but I have a different (ish) conclusion. It's not going to be a few "software-fr

I am writing a book covering a lot of this ground (shout out to Roald Coase) - but I have a different (ish) conclusion. It's not going to be a few "software-friendly" companies like FAANG that eventually lead the charge and we see productivity - it's waaay longer term than that. My take is software is a form of literacy - and it will only be when managers code daily that we will see enough of the control layers (model, monitor mentor) being actually software that software will show up in productivity stats If you like an analogy - steam engines used to power factories but there was one central engine and you spread out the power to other areas via bands / chains. Electricity came along but mostly replaced the central engine - it was not till people experimented with having power sent to many engines did the modern (Fordist) factory layout become feasible In short - everyone needs to learn to code or - if an SRE is what you get when you ask a coder to design a software development process, a programmable company is what you get when you ask a coder to design a company

jeffreyrogers 5y ago
Coding is hard though. I remember helping a smart friend of mine with his homework in college for an intro CS course and even basic fizz-buzz type stuff was very hard for him. This is a guy who has had a highly successful career post-college and did well in his (non-technical) major. I'm skeptical that more than a small fraction of the population will ever learn to code at more than a superficial level.
- lifeisstillgood 5y ago
  "They said you couldn't teach women to read" - Santa Claus' Grandfather in Arthur Christmas (Best Xmas kids film, not best source of political quotes but I am still asleep)
  - jeffreyrogers 5y ago
    I don't think anyone has seriously said that for a long, long time, if ever. Literacy is obviously pretty easy, much easier than algebra, for example, because in societies with universal schooling almost everyone learns how to do it.
cactus2093 5y ago
> when managers code daily No offense but this doesn't sound like a well thought out idea. Have you worked at a tech company as either a coder or a manager? Why should managers code daily? What would they be coding up anyway? If you're saying they should be coding features in the product, then I think you're just saying there should be no middle managers. That's been tried a lot in many different forms over the years, and there's a reason the majority of successful tech companies still have managers. If you're saying that managers should be coding the tools that they use themselves for managing their employees - why? Their job is talking to the people they manage, listening to them, helping to solve problems, helping to make trade-offs to deliver the product on time, coordinating with other people in the company to keep things running smoothly on their team, etc. If you have a problem that does require a technology solution, like keeping track of tasks or automating some part of the team's work, then it will be orders of magnitude more effective to buy a solution that already exists or hire a team of coders to build it rather than have each individual manager trying to code up solutions themselves. That would be a big distraction from their main job of actually managing their team. Until you can automate the whole job of a manager with an AI, the important parts of the job are just not things that you can easily code up a solution to.
- analog31 5y ago
  At my workplace, managing the team is only a portion of each manager's job. The other portion is carrying out administrative tasks assigned by their manager. Examples include gathering data for updating and maintaining a variety of metrics and dashboards, writing procedures, and so forth. In fact a lot of that stuff could be automated, and it is. The managers, including one former coder, use mostly Excel. If they have to create a tool for others to use, with a user interface, they usually find a canned solution that can be bought and installed. In fact, my lack of interest in that side of middle management is one of the things that led me to turn in my manager hat and return to the rank and file. Ironically, they promoted me out of management, which is a pretty good hint. ;-)
- lifeisstillgood 5y ago
  Do managers write daily? If so my conjecture is they should code daily. Will they write a UI button. No. But I am not sure that's what a typical coder should be doing in a "programmable company". I am really finding it hard to express this conjecture (it might be rubbish) but why should humans be involved in day to day creativity in the operations of a company? Is it possible at some point to have the operations of a company encoded, moving along and fixed? This is the ideal anyway (the whole point of "change management" is improvements ). Anyway, my conjecture is that there become three basic management functions - monitoring the company, modelling the company and mentoring the people. I can easily imagine code written to explore new models (it's what everyone does pouring over excel all day - in fact I would suggest a company that can do away with excel from managers is winning)

jeffreyrogers 5y ago

Coding is hard though. I remember helping a smart friend of mine with his homework in college for an intro CS course and even basic fizz-buzz type stuff was very hard for him. This is a guy who has had a highly successful career post-college and did well in his (non-technical) major. I'm skeptical that more than a small fraction of the population will ever learn to code at more than a superficial level.

lifeisstillgood 5y ago
"They said you couldn't teach women to read" - Santa Claus' Grandfather in Arthur Christmas (Best Xmas kids film, not best source of political quotes but I am still asleep)
- jeffreyrogers 5y ago
  I don't think anyone has seriously said that for a long, long time, if ever. Literacy is obviously pretty easy, much easier than algebra, for example, because in societies with universal schooling almost everyone learns how to do it.

cactus2093 5y ago

> when managers code daily No offense but this doesn't sound like a well thought out idea. Have you worked at a tech company as either a coder or a manager? Why should managers code daily? What would they be coding up anyway? If you're saying they should be coding features in the product, then I think you're just saying there should be no middle managers. That's been tried a lot in many different forms over the years, and there's a reason the majority of successful tech companies still have managers. If you're saying that managers should be coding the tools that they use themselves for managing their employees - why? Their job is talking to the people they manage, listening to them, helping to solve problems, helping to make trade-offs to deliver the product on time, coordinating with other people in the company to keep things running smoothly on their team, etc. If you have a problem that does require a technology solution, like keeping track of tasks or automating some part of the team's work, then it will be orders of magnitude more effective to buy a solution that already exists or hire a team of coders to build it rather than have each individual manager trying to code up solutions themselves. That would be a big distraction from their main job of actually managing their team. Until you can automate the whole job of a manager with an AI, the important parts of the job are just not things that you can easily code up a solution to.

analog31 5y ago
At my workplace, managing the team is only a portion of each manager's job. The other portion is carrying out administrative tasks assigned by their manager. Examples include gathering data for updating and maintaining a variety of metrics and dashboards, writing procedures, and so forth. In fact a lot of that stuff could be automated, and it is. The managers, including one former coder, use mostly Excel. If they have to create a tool for others to use, with a user interface, they usually find a canned solution that can be bought and installed. In fact, my lack of interest in that side of middle management is one of the things that led me to turn in my manager hat and return to the rank and file. Ironically, they promoted me out of management, which is a pretty good hint. ;-)
lifeisstillgood 5y ago
Do managers write daily? If so my conjecture is they should code daily. Will they write a UI button. No. But I am not sure that's what a typical coder should be doing in a "programmable company". I am really finding it hard to express this conjecture (it might be rubbish) but why should humans be involved in day to day creativity in the operations of a company? Is it possible at some point to have the operations of a company encoded, moving along and fixed? This is the ideal anyway (the whole point of "change management" is improvements ). Anyway, my conjecture is that there become three basic management functions - monitoring the company, modelling the company and mentoring the people. I can easily imagine code written to explore new models (it's what everyone does pouring over excel all day - in fact I would suggest a company that can do away with excel from managers is winning)