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> Hierarchies work because they allow someone close to the work to take a very deep, detail-oriented view, while allowing others to operate at broader, higher l

> Hierarchies work because they allow someone close to the work to take a very deep, detail-oriented view, while allowing others to operate at broader, higher layer of abstraction. I almost never see this happen in real life. Maybe for a little while when a team first starts to establish hierarchies. But it always degrades, in my experience, until there exists an middle layer of management that only serves to slow down productivity. If you want to find out what's going wrong in any large corporate minded software studio, the managers will never give you the correct answer. Go ask the thought workers in the trenches as they typically understand why productivity drops off a cliff. When you have a brilliant visionary at the "broader, higher layer of abstraction" with the productive members of the team reporting directly, magic CAN happen. But largely, "managers" and similar roles are useless bloat. Same goes for the PM/producer type roles. I have a friend who started a game development studio a few years ago and committed to NEVER hiring a producer. It was bold. It's going really well and I think he's totally on to something. IMO, you can build better teams without those roles involved at all.

mountainriver 5y ago
Yes and yes, it’s amazing how the people making so many decisions are so out of touch
urthor 5y ago
I’ve been reading the Mythical Man Month and I think that book has a lot of good ideas. The issue I find is that often leadership of hierarchical organizations is given to nontechnical glue person. These people eventually bubble up and become “middle management,” as they amass visibility and receive credit for the products their technical team built. There is no vampire of workplace productivity like a nontechnical skip manager directing project priorities. I want instead all the nontechnical support personnel to be relegated to being assistants like in Mythical Man Month. Ultimate leadership and ultimate responsibility for delivering a software project must be embedded in a technical leader. Nontechnical product owners are a true blight on society.
- _carbyau_ 5y ago
  To extend that: non-technical has various degrees of bad. Ask any engineer whether Marketing or Accounting should have product ownership.
  - bladegash 5y ago
    Perhaps I am misunderstanding you, but wouldn’t those two non-technical roles have pretty significant reason to have ownership/input into a product? I could see extreme positions on every end I guess. The Marketer has no idea what is technically realistic and makes promises to customers that are not technically feasible. The Accountant paralyzes decision making and reduces expenses via a variety of counterproductive means to protect the bottom line. The Engineer just wants to build cool things and does not really care if it makes money or customers actually want it/might find it cool. So long as curiosity is piqued and we can give it away for free to other engineers. I think they all have a role to play in the process, given that at the end of the day, you can’t have a product without money, customers won’t buy a product if it is not appealing/meets their requirements/something usable, and you can’t have money or a marketable product without people building it under mostly realistic expectations.
    - urthor 5y ago
      Of course they should have a role to play and input. They should be part of the discussion. It's a question of responsibility for delivery. People in those positions shouldn't be the owner, who is accountable to the business for features being delivered. The person responsible for features being delivered should be technical.
    - the_gipsy 5y ago
      Significant? No, or it depends on your definition. Marketing should sell your product, not tell you what to build. Same for accounting. They should tell you what is selling or what is not profitable.
DarylZero 5y ago
> If you want to find out what's going wrong in any large corporate minded software studio, the managers will never give you the correct answer. Go ask the thought workers in the trenches as they typically understand why productivity drops off a cliff Feynman said the same thing about NASA, in his report on the causes of the Challenger disaster.

mountainriver 5y ago

Yes and yes, it’s amazing how the people making so many decisions are so out of touch

urthor 5y ago

I’ve been reading the Mythical Man Month and I think that book has a lot of good ideas. The issue I find is that often leadership of hierarchical organizations is given to nontechnical glue person. These people eventually bubble up and become “middle management,” as they amass visibility and receive credit for the products their technical team built. There is no vampire of workplace productivity like a nontechnical skip manager directing project priorities. I want instead all the nontechnical support personnel to be relegated to being assistants like in Mythical Man Month. Ultimate leadership and ultimate responsibility for delivering a software project must be embedded in a technical leader. Nontechnical product owners are a true blight on society.

_carbyau_ 5y ago
To extend that: non-technical has various degrees of bad. Ask any engineer whether Marketing or Accounting should have product ownership.
- bladegash 5y ago
  Perhaps I am misunderstanding you, but wouldn’t those two non-technical roles have pretty significant reason to have ownership/input into a product? I could see extreme positions on every end I guess. The Marketer has no idea what is technically realistic and makes promises to customers that are not technically feasible. The Accountant paralyzes decision making and reduces expenses via a variety of counterproductive means to protect the bottom line. The Engineer just wants to build cool things and does not really care if it makes money or customers actually want it/might find it cool. So long as curiosity is piqued and we can give it away for free to other engineers. I think they all have a role to play in the process, given that at the end of the day, you can’t have a product without money, customers won’t buy a product if it is not appealing/meets their requirements/something usable, and you can’t have money or a marketable product without people building it under mostly realistic expectations.
  - urthor 5y ago
    Of course they should have a role to play and input. They should be part of the discussion. It's a question of responsibility for delivery. People in those positions shouldn't be the owner, who is accountable to the business for features being delivered. The person responsible for features being delivered should be technical.
  - the_gipsy 5y ago
    Significant? No, or it depends on your definition. Marketing should sell your product, not tell you what to build. Same for accounting. They should tell you what is selling or what is not profitable.

DarylZero 5y ago

> If you want to find out what's going wrong in any large corporate minded software studio, the managers will never give you the correct answer. Go ask the thought workers in the trenches as they typically understand why productivity drops off a cliff Feynman said the same thing about NASA, in his report on the causes of the Challenger disaster.