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> The simple cases become managers I wonder about this one. I became a manager because the organizational problems can be so frustrating and I wanted to fix th

> The simple cases become managers I wonder about this one. I became a manager because the organizational problems can be so frustrating and I wanted to fix them. However, what you get is pretty much only the aspects of tech work that the author calls out as burning people. A few days ago I wrote a simple Rails app for a young relative's hobby. Most satisfaction I've had with anything related to tech in years.

WJW 4y ago
> I became a manager because the organizational problems can be so frustrating and I wanted to fix them. The biggest "carrot" held out to idealistic people wanting to become a manager is exactly this: the (fake) opportunity to "fix things". Only after you've become a manager does it become apparent that long-lasting problems are long-lasting for a reason and that none of the choices low-level managers are allowed to make can meaningfully move the needle. Sometimes they fall for it a second time, but being a manager of managers is often even worse since now you don't even have direct reports to effect change.
- ajmurmann 4y ago
  It's even worse. Even if you made a difference you won't know for certain and you'll mostly hear from people who didn't like what you did. One of the clearest success you can get is avoiding worse shit that would have come to your org. That alone can have a massive impact, many times that of a average IC, but "avoiding worse shit" isn't entirely satisfying. It's just frustrating that it had to be avoided in the first place.
- feanaro 4y ago
  I've long wondered why we insist on modelling company structure as strict trees / hierarchies. Perhaps there are other classes of graphs which would be better suited in order to avoid such situations?
  - HighlandSpring 4y ago
    Maybe because it's a pretty good fit for the only things that ultimately matter: allocating budget and attributing revenue and PnL
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Organizations do implement matrix structures to greater or lesser degrees which have their own advantages and disadvantages. Typically someone formally reports to one manager but will be "dotted line" into one or more additional people.
  - badpun 4y ago
    It's because there's ultimately one person responsible for company's performance (the CEO), so everybody has to report to him/her through a tree-like structure. A company is a very centralized structure, no different than the army.
    - WJW 4y ago
      "The CEO is ultimately responsible" is just the highest level of the carrot from my post a few levels up. A CEO may seem quite powerful from the inside of a company, but from their perspective they have to deal with competitors, shareholders, suppliers, regulators, and a host of other actors, all of whom have different objectives than the CEO and all of whom can constrain the possible actions of the CEO to varying degrees. Not to mention that many of the managers at or just below CXO-level are highly ambitious people who more likely than not have aspirations to become CEO themselves, so it may be in their interest to do some tactical backstabbing to make the current CEO look bad to the shareholders. All of this adds up to conditions where a CEO definitely cannot do whatever they want, because resources are limited even at this level. Just look at all the failed projects various CEOs at (say) Apple and Google have tried that didn't work even with all the money in the world. (As a former military officer, this is the same for generals btw. They may have a lot of "power" in the organization itself, but they're heavily constrained by outside factors. They have to make do with the budget they're given, and have very little control over hiring targets etc. Not to mention that during wartime the enemy will not be under control either)
einpoklum 4y ago
> and I wanted to fix them In the more optimistic case, you would need an independent and irreverent labor union with a lot of buy-in and pretense to try to call the shots, in order to do that. In the less optimistic case you would need a social revolution. It's generally more the structure of companies that creates these situations than the individual composition of management.
granshaw 4y ago
You can try to start a solo services business where you create MVPs just like that for startups. Am considering it myself

WJW 4y ago

> I became a manager because the organizational problems can be so frustrating and I wanted to fix them. The biggest "carrot" held out to idealistic people wanting to become a manager is exactly this: the (fake) opportunity to "fix things". Only after you've become a manager does it become apparent that long-lasting problems are long-lasting for a reason and that none of the choices low-level managers are allowed to make can meaningfully move the needle. Sometimes they fall for it a second time, but being a manager of managers is often even worse since now you don't even have direct reports to effect change.

ajmurmann 4y ago
It's even worse. Even if you made a difference you won't know for certain and you'll mostly hear from people who didn't like what you did. One of the clearest success you can get is avoiding worse shit that would have come to your org. That alone can have a massive impact, many times that of a average IC, but "avoiding worse shit" isn't entirely satisfying. It's just frustrating that it had to be avoided in the first place.
feanaro 4y ago
I've long wondered why we insist on modelling company structure as strict trees / hierarchies. Perhaps there are other classes of graphs which would be better suited in order to avoid such situations?
- HighlandSpring 4y ago
  Maybe because it's a pretty good fit for the only things that ultimately matter: allocating budget and attributing revenue and PnL
- ghaff 4y ago
  Organizations do implement matrix structures to greater or lesser degrees which have their own advantages and disadvantages. Typically someone formally reports to one manager but will be "dotted line" into one or more additional people.
- badpun 4y ago
  It's because there's ultimately one person responsible for company's performance (the CEO), so everybody has to report to him/her through a tree-like structure. A company is a very centralized structure, no different than the army.
  - WJW 4y ago
    "The CEO is ultimately responsible" is just the highest level of the carrot from my post a few levels up. A CEO may seem quite powerful from the inside of a company, but from their perspective they have to deal with competitors, shareholders, suppliers, regulators, and a host of other actors, all of whom have different objectives than the CEO and all of whom can constrain the possible actions of the CEO to varying degrees. Not to mention that many of the managers at or just below CXO-level are highly ambitious people who more likely than not have aspirations to become CEO themselves, so it may be in their interest to do some tactical backstabbing to make the current CEO look bad to the shareholders. All of this adds up to conditions where a CEO definitely cannot do whatever they want, because resources are limited even at this level. Just look at all the failed projects various CEOs at (say) Apple and Google have tried that didn't work even with all the money in the world. (As a former military officer, this is the same for generals btw. They may have a lot of "power" in the organization itself, but they're heavily constrained by outside factors. They have to make do with the budget they're given, and have very little control over hiring targets etc. Not to mention that during wartime the enemy will not be under control either)

einpoklum 4y ago

> and I wanted to fix them In the more optimistic case, you would need an independent and irreverent labor union with a lot of buy-in and pretense to try to call the shots, in order to do that. In the less optimistic case you would need a social revolution. It's generally more the structure of companies that creates these situations than the individual composition of management.

granshaw 4y ago

You can try to start a solo services business where you create MVPs just like that for startups. Am considering it myself