7 ms·

I can't agree with you more. But let me briefly offer an insight about why I think things won't change: management itself exists to perpetuate the things on th

I can't agree with you more. But let me briefly offer an insight about why I think things won't change: management itself exists to perpetuate the things on the left hand side of your equations above. Traditional managers in established (i.e. large) companies are terrified of letting their staff work from home because they perceive (correctly) that if those staff are still productive then there isn't really any reason for them to be employed in their own role. The things on the left hand side of your equations are a proxy for success that the manager can use to justify their own usefulness. As soon as you start measuring "real" progress the need for non-productive members of staff disappears entirely and most middle management instantly becomes surplus to requirements.

troll24601 15y ago
The idea that management exists to perpetuate the things on the left is as cynical and generally wrong as the idea that coders exist to increase complexity and guarantee their own necessity. It is true only of the worst of either group of people. The best work hard to make themselves unnecessary.
- moonchrome 15y ago
  >coders exist to increase complexity and guarantee their own necessity Holds true in more cases than not, at least in my experience in the enterprise. "Writing your own X" when off-the-shelf solution is available is a dominant example of this.
  - rbanffy 15y ago
    In many companies the same rigid structures that allow them to operate with average and below-population-average employees reward those who can game them andreduce their own output to the lowest levels toleraed by the structure. I have freed many good programmers from this trap, but not nearly enough and many remain to be saved.
- rbanffy 15y ago
  I've seen the very worst managers a lot more frequently than the very worst programmers. While some structures may reward bad programmers, structures far more frequently reward bad managers and very often prvide them with a place to hide their inadequacies very easily.
  - Joeri 15y ago
    That's because if a programmer is bad, work doesn't get done, and people notice immediately. But if a manager is bad, the subordinates often manage to get work done despite the manager, and the bad manager is in turn more likely to have a bad manager who doesn't recognize the on-going failure.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
edj 15y ago
I don't have much experience with managers because I freelance now and I've never worked at a company with more than about 80 or 100 people. So this is a real question and not snark... Assuming large companies continue to exist, how do you run one without managers? If your company is 1000 people do have 10 executives and 990 engineers, customer support, etc. and no managers at all? How does everyone communicate? How do the executives delegate? Do you need some managers? How many per worker is optimal? It seems like every large corporation in existence has managers. I can't think of any exceptions. So I'm not sure what an alternative would even look like. Perhaps rotating temporary management structured like jury duty? I'll probably be downvoted because bashing management is a time honored hacker pastime... But I really am curious. Is it possible to do away with management? Is it desirable?
- arctangent 15y ago
  Oh, you definitely need some managers. I'm not suggesting that we should do away with them completely :-) In the past (i.e. prior to what we sometimes call "the information age") it was a perfectly reasonable thing to have a very tall pyramid shaped hierarchy within a company. This was because the people at the bottom of the hierarchy needed to be told what to do and how - i.e. the manager was the "expert" at some task. Nowadays people at the bottom of the hierarchy (especially in technology) tend to know exactly how to do their jobs - in fact they know much more than their manager about their own specialty. This has led (in savvy organisations, at least) to much flatter hierarchies. > Do you need some managers? How many per worker is optimal? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Span_of_control http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Span_of_control "In the hierarchical business organization of some time in the past it was not uncommon to see average spans of 1 to 4 or even less. That is, one manager supervised four employees on average. In the 1980s corporate leaders flattened many organizational structures causing average spans to move closer to 1 to 10. That was made possible primarily by the development of inexpensive information technology. As information technology was developed capable of easing many middle manager tasks – tasks like collecting, manipulating and presenting operational information – upper managers found they could hire fewer middle managers to do more work managing more subordinates for less money."
  - 15y ago
pnathan 15y ago
You should read some Rands in Repose about the point of the manager job role.
BenSS 15y ago
Not every company has this fear. In fact, some large companies are the most progressive with the ability to work remotely and have a huge investment in infrastructure to support this. On the negative side, the employees become more replaceable in the minds of many execs. This includes project and middle managers, so it's not just on the leaf developers.
- doktrin 15y ago
  Agreed : out of sight = out of mind. It's a -lot- easier to think of remote workers as a pure commodity.
  - grogs 15y ago
    Indeed. Some people believe that there's no real productivity gain from all team members being located in the same place. However, one of the (potential) benefits of being located in the same place (as management) is job security. People grow attachments to others. Plausible if you accept that problems can be broken into separate pieces. Furthermore, measuring/comparing the productivity is non-trivial/impossible.
grogs 15y ago
At my previous employer, a high* level manager (3 levels above me - a leaf node developer), considered it his job to just shield his subordinates from demands/bullshit of those above him. That's definitely a desirable quality, and leads me to believe he'd have other desirable qualities. * In reality, middle management, but at the level where strategic decisions are made/strongly influenced.

troll24601 15y ago

The idea that management exists to perpetuate the things on the left is as cynical and generally wrong as the idea that coders exist to increase complexity and guarantee their own necessity. It is true only of the worst of either group of people. The best work hard to make themselves unnecessary.

moonchrome 15y ago
>coders exist to increase complexity and guarantee their own necessity Holds true in more cases than not, at least in my experience in the enterprise. "Writing your own X" when off-the-shelf solution is available is a dominant example of this.
- rbanffy 15y ago
  In many companies the same rigid structures that allow them to operate with average and below-population-average employees reward those who can game them andreduce their own output to the lowest levels toleraed by the structure. I have freed many good programmers from this trap, but not nearly enough and many remain to be saved.
rbanffy 15y ago
I've seen the very worst managers a lot more frequently than the very worst programmers. While some structures may reward bad programmers, structures far more frequently reward bad managers and very often prvide them with a place to hide their inadequacies very easily.
- Joeri 15y ago
  That's because if a programmer is bad, work doesn't get done, and people notice immediately. But if a manager is bad, the subordinates often manage to get work done despite the manager, and the bad manager is in turn more likely to have a bad manager who doesn't recognize the on-going failure.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

edj 15y ago

I don't have much experience with managers because I freelance now and I've never worked at a company with more than about 80 or 100 people. So this is a real question and not snark... Assuming large companies continue to exist, how do you run one without managers? If your company is 1000 people do have 10 executives and 990 engineers, customer support, etc. and no managers at all? How does everyone communicate? How do the executives delegate? Do you need some managers? How many per worker is optimal? It seems like every large corporation in existence has managers. I can't think of any exceptions. So I'm not sure what an alternative would even look like. Perhaps rotating temporary management structured like jury duty? I'll probably be downvoted because bashing management is a time honored hacker pastime... But I really am curious. Is it possible to do away with management? Is it desirable?

arctangent 15y ago
Oh, you definitely need some managers. I'm not suggesting that we should do away with them completely :-) In the past (i.e. prior to what we sometimes call "the information age") it was a perfectly reasonable thing to have a very tall pyramid shaped hierarchy within a company. This was because the people at the bottom of the hierarchy needed to be told what to do and how - i.e. the manager was the "expert" at some task. Nowadays people at the bottom of the hierarchy (especially in technology) tend to know exactly how to do their jobs - in fact they know much more than their manager about their own specialty. This has led (in savvy organisations, at least) to much flatter hierarchies. > Do you need some managers? How many per worker is optimal? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Span_of_control http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Span_of_control "In the hierarchical business organization of some time in the past it was not uncommon to see average spans of 1 to 4 or even less. That is, one manager supervised four employees on average. In the 1980s corporate leaders flattened many organizational structures causing average spans to move closer to 1 to 10. That was made possible primarily by the development of inexpensive information technology. As information technology was developed capable of easing many middle manager tasks – tasks like collecting, manipulating and presenting operational information – upper managers found they could hire fewer middle managers to do more work managing more subordinates for less money."
- 15y ago

pnathan 15y ago

You should read some Rands in Repose about the point of the manager job role.

BenSS 15y ago

Not every company has this fear. In fact, some large companies are the most progressive with the ability to work remotely and have a huge investment in infrastructure to support this. On the negative side, the employees become more replaceable in the minds of many execs. This includes project and middle managers, so it's not just on the leaf developers.

doktrin 15y ago
Agreed : out of sight = out of mind. It's a -lot- easier to think of remote workers as a pure commodity.
- grogs 15y ago
  Indeed. Some people believe that there's no real productivity gain from all team members being located in the same place. However, one of the (potential) benefits of being located in the same place (as management) is job security. People grow attachments to others. Plausible if you accept that problems can be broken into separate pieces. Furthermore, measuring/comparing the productivity is non-trivial/impossible.

grogs 15y ago

At my previous employer, a high* level manager (3 levels above me - a leaf node developer), considered it his job to just shield his subordinates from demands/bullshit of those above him. That's definitely a desirable quality, and leads me to believe he'd have other desirable qualities. * In reality, middle management, but at the level where strategic decisions are made/strongly influenced.