I've experienced this my entire professional life. I think this is the cause: https://charity.wtf/2020/09/06/if-management-isnt-a-promotion-then-engineering-is

I've experienced this my entire professional life. I think this is the cause: https://charity.wtf/2020/09/06/if-management-isnt-a-promotion-then-engineering-isnt-a-demotion/ https://charity.wtf/2020/09/06/if-management-isnt-a-promotio... tl;dr: Management should be a supporting role, but because it's closer to the business (and usually staffed by "Idealists" as described here: https://leanpub.com/developerhegemony https://leanpub.com/developerhegemony), it's given a more powerful position, and does whatever it can to execute as needed by the business. Of course everyone (managers included) also want to keep the power they have and gain more power/money over time. Developers' time isn't respected because managers have more power and building software is hard, so rather than building partnerships and supporting everyone as needed, then just squeeze harder, treat people lower on the org chart as lower worth as humans, and generally don't shield or abstract things away as much as they should (often not at all). From the article: > The goal of most software projects is to deliver to deadlines and budget of the plan. The real goal of a software project is to create the right software, but instead decisions focus on the meeting the plan not creating software. The plan is focused on instead of the software because the plan is the artifact of the more important people, the managers. They're higher up on the ladder because they're more loyal to the company. Even when this isn't the case they're still higher up because it's safer to have them in power rather than devs who can change stuff.