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> The management world has tried to develop software engineering processes that allow people to be plugged into them like interchangeable components. I've wond

> The management world has tried to develop software engineering processes that allow people to be plugged into them like interchangeable components. I've wondered about this a lot lately. It's not limited to software engineering only, you see it in other creative/human domains as well. Media production. Teaching. So on. But it's made me wonder, why doesn't the equation ever invert: "The <fill_in_the_blank> world has tried to develop _management_ processes that allow people to be plugged into them like interchangeable components." Why has management never come under the scrutiny of "one size fits all" and the subsequent salary/headcount reduction?

LarryMullins 4y ago
Are you familiar with the concept of co-ops? A lot of businesses are run by their workers or their members/consumers. They can hire or fire people to work as management as they see fit. It's not very unlike the board of investors of a business hiring or firing management, except instead of a board of investors you have co-op members.
- travisgriggs 4y ago
  Yeah, I love co-ops. I wish there were more of them. I'd love to work for one if the pay was acceptable.
  - jimbokun 4y ago
    Would be interesting to structure a software startup as a coop. I think the pushback would be the founders and early employees willing to share equally with later employees/members.
    - davidw 4y ago
      There was one in my hometown, in a different industry. One thing I heard about it was that decision making was extremely painful.
      - ghaff 4y ago
        It wouldn't surprise me if there weren't similarities to volunteer organizations, decision making in which--as you say--can be very painful.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - clankyclanker 4y ago
      Igalia is that, in Spain: http://www.igalia.com/ http://www.igalia.com/
    - adastra22 4y ago
      Valve is basically that, no?
      - tm-guimaraes 4y ago
        No. Valve is privately owned, with GabeN having a big share (AFAIK, since it's private, we wouldn't easily know who/what owns each % of Valve) You might hear about Valve in these kind of discussion not because of its ownership model but because of its "flat hierarchy", the philosophy of "no boss". But obviously, humans always organise in hierarchies, companies like Valve simply have no formal ones, you just have to navigate well social/politically to understand who you need to please. Also, a single person can't usually deliver a big project in a reasonable timescale, so how do you get a team? There's always a lot of more politics (arguing around, convincing others) involved in flat-hierarchies or co-ops, but they are much less likely to get a power hungry vulture dictating things.
  - nextos 4y ago
    https://galois.com https://galois.com is employee-owned, and AFAIK they use interesting technologies like Haskell, theorem provers, etc.
ep103 4y ago
Because capitalism incentivizes maximizing capital flow to the owner of the organization. Making labor interchangeable and delivering a minimally viable end product are both ways of minimizing capital that could otherwise be made to flow to the owner of the organization. If you want to create a management style that optimizes for quality of product or optimizes for management styles that reflect the needs of labor, instead of a process that optimizes for minimizing labor, then you need to change the incentivization plan accordingly.
didericis 4y ago
Same. The question I’ve been finding more and more interesting over the years is “how do you tell when you have an interchangeable component/what are the implicit dependencies holding things together”. You run into an abstracted version of that in software all the time, but it’s way more ubiquitous that just a software or business problem. There’s always a limit to interchangeability/some kind of assumed context. That rabbit hole is incredibly deep. I don’t think I’ve ever run into anything comparable. If you pull on that thread long enough you end up in deep esoteric discussions about perception and philosophy and the history of categories/evolution. And whether or not all of that rabbit hole I ended up in is an unrelated tangent or not requires dealing with the same exact problem (which is whether or not the boundaries you’ve placed around something are legitimate/fit your definition, or if they belong somewhere else/you’re missing very important hidden context).
mixmastamyk 4y ago
Someone's got to do the plugging. Won't work as an entry level job.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dustingetz 4y ago
principle agent problem capital flows through trust networks have i missed anything?
nradov 4y ago
The franchise restaurant world has tried to develop management processes that allow people to be plugged into them like interchangeable components. McDonalds is probably the most prominent example. The system works fairly well. https://www.businessinsider.com/mcdonalds-hamburger-university-2333 https://www.businessinsider.com/mcdonalds-hamburger-universi...
steve1977 4y ago
In my experience, many managers don’t operate on the basis of professional skills, but on their network with other managers and people. This makes them them harder to replace, but it also makes it harder for them to switch companies.
chadcmulligan 4y ago
I've often thought the same. I've recently been reading "Behemoth: A History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World" it's not only the history of the factory but the history of Labour with relation to capital and industry, I'm only up to Henry Ford at the moment, but it's a good read and puts these questions in a different light. In short its the money, these systems are designed to minimise risk, worker happiness is not a priority, any conditions are only gained by worker actions of some sort.
Retric 4y ago
The basic premise of MBA programs is arguably to create interchangeable managers. One size fits all is less efficient at both the managerial and employee levels, the advantage is largely risk minimization.
- toss1 4y ago
  Yup Except that it is only local or small risk minimization; the catastrophic existential risks end up maximized to the point of becoming inevitable. With companies, the MBAs happily optimize away anything that isn't immediate revenue. So manufacturing gets offshored, along with all the deep knowledge of how to make things. R&D gets shrunk and minimized because it is a quarterly expense with returns not immediately specified. They kill or sell off all the "dogs" of products and try to milk the "cash cows". This makes the numbers look great until things change and the "cash cows" need updating for a new market environment. But the company now has no idea how to do it because they have no seasoned and up to date product development, no R&D technology development, and no manufacturing know-how. So, it goes into a death spiral if it hasn't already been disrupted. On the societal level, MBAs justified the western world outsourcing all the manufacturing because it was "fungible" and cheaper to do it offshore, made more profits this quarter. Meanwhile, all that know-how was stolen by China, who isn't interested in quarterly profits, but in global hegemony, and now has both economic and strategic chokeholds on the western democracies (everything from corners on lithium and solar panel markets, to spies in western corporations, to backdoors in key commercial and likely military microchips). The entire strategic advantage of the west was sold out for a few dozen quarters of increased profits. This will go down as a colossal strategic blunder of historic proportions. All thanks to trying to standardize management.
  - didericis 4y ago
    The main thing that gives me hope is that the type of knowledge generation environment in the western world still hasn’t been acquired by dictatorial powers like China. Given the exponentially increasing technological change we’re experiencing, the knowledge transferred via the method you described will likely be surpassed and rendered obsolete relatively quickly (hopefully) and make that transferred knowledge less likely to undo the progress made towards global order and uplift. Because China is experiencing all kinds of internal demographic and political turmoil, and they’re still much further behind than people realize, what I worry about more in the long run is decay of western education than anything externally driven. We are our own worst enemy, and we risk hollowing out what has historically been the engine of innovation for the majority of the world (I am talking primarily about the pipeline feeding people into US University systems since World War II and high level technical/tinkering environments, as I think European education seems to have lost a decent amount of innovative capability a while ago, though I know much less about it). That problem is deeper than the problem of products of that system being sold off as you describe, but related. That poses a far bigger long term risk to domestic and global prosperity than China, imo, although China is still a massive risk for at least the next decade if Xi continues his current trajectory, and the education problem is of course related to our ability to confront that. I see two extremely important problems that need to be solved: 1. The most intelligent and competent members of the public need to be pulled from all backgrounds, colors and creeds and be rigorously evaluated purely for ability and merit regardless of all other criteria. Historically there has been bias in favor of the host nation population. Now there is bias in favor of restorative education and nepotism. While truly restorative education has merit, it cannot interfere with attempts to identify and nurture the best of the best, which is of upmost national security importance, and is important for the maintenance and improvement of the machinery which has given us so much material prosperity. 2. We need to accept that not everyone is able to handle the complexity of the world we have created and educate those who are not in that first highly selective pool of people how to be good citizens, participate in complex systems in a way that’s beneficial for all parties despite the complexity, achieve high status, and create a compact that actually rewards them for being good citizens regardless of intellectual ability. There is a very toxic aspect in the upper echelons of modern society where those not able to handle the insane complexity and competitiveness of technocracy are essentially lied to by most of our educational system to continue schooling and training indefinitely, or they are ousted from the training environment and treated like livestock. Many people then end up clinging on to large bureaucratic systems for meaning and survival, which becomes further and further out of sync with real societal needs. This is a much harder problem to solve than the first given modern organizational complexity, but people will not accept the solution to the first problem (which is inevitably unbalanced and discriminatory against those less able) unless the system as a whole is explicitly rewarding and accepting everyone for participation and giving them achievable pathways to high status. I see that second problem as THE problem of the 21st century. If that problem is not solved, or if it is forcibly “solved” arrogantly and stupidly, I worry the world will be plunged into a level of dysfunction that makes the past 3 years look like nirvana. If that problem is solved we could find ourselves enjoying the highest levels of prosperity, meaning, belonging, and global uplift in the history of mankind in the decades to come.

LarryMullins 4y ago

Are you familiar with the concept of co-ops? A lot of businesses are run by their workers or their members/consumers. They can hire or fire people to work as management as they see fit. It's not very unlike the board of investors of a business hiring or firing management, except instead of a board of investors you have co-op members.

travisgriggs 4y ago
Yeah, I love co-ops. I wish there were more of them. I'd love to work for one if the pay was acceptable.
- jimbokun 4y ago
  Would be interesting to structure a software startup as a coop. I think the pushback would be the founders and early employees willing to share equally with later employees/members.
  - davidw 4y ago
    There was one in my hometown, in a different industry. One thing I heard about it was that decision making was extremely painful.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      It wouldn't surprise me if there weren't similarities to volunteer organizations, decision making in which--as you say--can be very painful.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  - clankyclanker 4y ago
    Igalia is that, in Spain: http://www.igalia.com/ http://www.igalia.com/
  - adastra22 4y ago
    Valve is basically that, no?
    - tm-guimaraes 4y ago
      No. Valve is privately owned, with GabeN having a big share (AFAIK, since it's private, we wouldn't easily know who/what owns each % of Valve) You might hear about Valve in these kind of discussion not because of its ownership model but because of its "flat hierarchy", the philosophy of "no boss". But obviously, humans always organise in hierarchies, companies like Valve simply have no formal ones, you just have to navigate well social/politically to understand who you need to please. Also, a single person can't usually deliver a big project in a reasonable timescale, so how do you get a team? There's always a lot of more politics (arguing around, convincing others) involved in flat-hierarchies or co-ops, but they are much less likely to get a power hungry vulture dictating things.
- nextos 4y ago
  https://galois.com https://galois.com is employee-owned, and AFAIK they use interesting technologies like Haskell, theorem provers, etc.

ep103 4y ago

Because capitalism incentivizes maximizing capital flow to the owner of the organization. Making labor interchangeable and delivering a minimally viable end product are both ways of minimizing capital that could otherwise be made to flow to the owner of the organization. If you want to create a management style that optimizes for quality of product or optimizes for management styles that reflect the needs of labor, instead of a process that optimizes for minimizing labor, then you need to change the incentivization plan accordingly.

didericis 4y ago

Same. The question I’ve been finding more and more interesting over the years is “how do you tell when you have an interchangeable component/what are the implicit dependencies holding things together”. You run into an abstracted version of that in software all the time, but it’s way more ubiquitous that just a software or business problem. There’s always a limit to interchangeability/some kind of assumed context. That rabbit hole is incredibly deep. I don’t think I’ve ever run into anything comparable. If you pull on that thread long enough you end up in deep esoteric discussions about perception and philosophy and the history of categories/evolution. And whether or not all of that rabbit hole I ended up in is an unrelated tangent or not requires dealing with the same exact problem (which is whether or not the boundaries you’ve placed around something are legitimate/fit your definition, or if they belong somewhere else/you’re missing very important hidden context).

mixmastamyk 4y ago

Someone's got to do the plugging. Won't work as an entry level job.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

dustingetz 4y ago

principle agent problem capital flows through trust networks have i missed anything?

nradov 4y ago

The franchise restaurant world has tried to develop management processes that allow people to be plugged into them like interchangeable components. McDonalds is probably the most prominent example. The system works fairly well. https://www.businessinsider.com/mcdonalds-hamburger-university-2333 https://www.businessinsider.com/mcdonalds-hamburger-universi...

steve1977 4y ago

In my experience, many managers don’t operate on the basis of professional skills, but on their network with other managers and people. This makes them them harder to replace, but it also makes it harder for them to switch companies.

chadcmulligan 4y ago

I've often thought the same. I've recently been reading "Behemoth: A History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World" it's not only the history of the factory but the history of Labour with relation to capital and industry, I'm only up to Henry Ford at the moment, but it's a good read and puts these questions in a different light. In short its the money, these systems are designed to minimise risk, worker happiness is not a priority, any conditions are only gained by worker actions of some sort.

Retric 4y ago

The basic premise of MBA programs is arguably to create interchangeable managers. One size fits all is less efficient at both the managerial and employee levels, the advantage is largely risk minimization.

toss1 4y ago
Yup Except that it is only local or small risk minimization; the catastrophic existential risks end up maximized to the point of becoming inevitable. With companies, the MBAs happily optimize away anything that isn't immediate revenue. So manufacturing gets offshored, along with all the deep knowledge of how to make things. R&D gets shrunk and minimized because it is a quarterly expense with returns not immediately specified. They kill or sell off all the "dogs" of products and try to milk the "cash cows". This makes the numbers look great until things change and the "cash cows" need updating for a new market environment. But the company now has no idea how to do it because they have no seasoned and up to date product development, no R&D technology development, and no manufacturing know-how. So, it goes into a death spiral if it hasn't already been disrupted. On the societal level, MBAs justified the western world outsourcing all the manufacturing because it was "fungible" and cheaper to do it offshore, made more profits this quarter. Meanwhile, all that know-how was stolen by China, who isn't interested in quarterly profits, but in global hegemony, and now has both economic and strategic chokeholds on the western democracies (everything from corners on lithium and solar panel markets, to spies in western corporations, to backdoors in key commercial and likely military microchips). The entire strategic advantage of the west was sold out for a few dozen quarters of increased profits. This will go down as a colossal strategic blunder of historic proportions. All thanks to trying to standardize management.
- didericis 4y ago
  The main thing that gives me hope is that the type of knowledge generation environment in the western world still hasn’t been acquired by dictatorial powers like China. Given the exponentially increasing technological change we’re experiencing, the knowledge transferred via the method you described will likely be surpassed and rendered obsolete relatively quickly (hopefully) and make that transferred knowledge less likely to undo the progress made towards global order and uplift. Because China is experiencing all kinds of internal demographic and political turmoil, and they’re still much further behind than people realize, what I worry about more in the long run is decay of western education than anything externally driven. We are our own worst enemy, and we risk hollowing out what has historically been the engine of innovation for the majority of the world (I am talking primarily about the pipeline feeding people into US University systems since World War II and high level technical/tinkering environments, as I think European education seems to have lost a decent amount of innovative capability a while ago, though I know much less about it). That problem is deeper than the problem of products of that system being sold off as you describe, but related. That poses a far bigger long term risk to domestic and global prosperity than China, imo, although China is still a massive risk for at least the next decade if Xi continues his current trajectory, and the education problem is of course related to our ability to confront that. I see two extremely important problems that need to be solved: 1. The most intelligent and competent members of the public need to be pulled from all backgrounds, colors and creeds and be rigorously evaluated purely for ability and merit regardless of all other criteria. Historically there has been bias in favor of the host nation population. Now there is bias in favor of restorative education and nepotism. While truly restorative education has merit, it cannot interfere with attempts to identify and nurture the best of the best, which is of upmost national security importance, and is important for the maintenance and improvement of the machinery which has given us so much material prosperity. 2. We need to accept that not everyone is able to handle the complexity of the world we have created and educate those who are not in that first highly selective pool of people how to be good citizens, participate in complex systems in a way that’s beneficial for all parties despite the complexity, achieve high status, and create a compact that actually rewards them for being good citizens regardless of intellectual ability. There is a very toxic aspect in the upper echelons of modern society where those not able to handle the insane complexity and competitiveness of technocracy are essentially lied to by most of our educational system to continue schooling and training indefinitely, or they are ousted from the training environment and treated like livestock. Many people then end up clinging on to large bureaucratic systems for meaning and survival, which becomes further and further out of sync with real societal needs. This is a much harder problem to solve than the first given modern organizational complexity, but people will not accept the solution to the first problem (which is inevitably unbalanced and discriminatory against those less able) unless the system as a whole is explicitly rewarding and accepting everyone for participation and giving them achievable pathways to high status. I see that second problem as THE problem of the 21st century. If that problem is not solved, or if it is forcibly “solved” arrogantly and stupidly, I worry the world will be plunged into a level of dysfunction that makes the past 3 years look like nirvana. If that problem is solved we could find ourselves enjoying the highest levels of prosperity, meaning, belonging, and global uplift in the history of mankind in the decades to come.