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You could say this for almost any primarily supportive role. Individuals forget these roles bring nothing on their own and exist entirely to empower ICs. Conver
by BlargMcLarg 4y ago
You could say this for almost any primarily supportive role. Individuals forget these roles bring nothing on their own and exist entirely to empower ICs. Conversely, that means they can disenfranchise ICs and be a net loss just as easily.
They aren't useless, but one could argue the industry needs a reality check on how many of these supportive roles need to exist (in terms of quantity) and how many of these individuals are contributing anything. There are plenty of bad stories ranging from "benevolent but capable" to "clearly power tripping and a drain".
- OkayPhysicist 4y agoPart of this problem, IMO, is that we as a society have largely eliminated subordinate supporting roles, in favor of adding more organizational work to both the ICs and management tier. Which leads to needing more managers, which leads to beaurocratic bloat as the people who have the power to make decisions end up being in a position where increasing management overhead improves their standing.
- BlargMcLarg 4y agoIt all went downhill once we decided ICs should not only take care of the bureaucracy, but also adapt to supporter roles rather than the other way around. I won't rail against the usefulness of soft skills, but requiring almost every IC to be a well-spoken social butterfly just seems lazy in the face of the ridiculous number of supporting roles. Ideally it'd be more 50/50 (help-me-help-you kind of deal), but right now it feels incredibly one-sided at most places.
- OkayPhysicist 4y agoExactly. It's the difference between having a manager and having a secretary. When your support staff also has the power to fire you, it's inevitable that the technical staff have to adapt to the support.