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The reason we have managers in engineering is: - some developers don’t want to work - some developers have no social skills and work to ruin the morale of eve

The reason we have managers in engineering is: - some developers don’t want to work - some developers have no social skills and work to ruin the morale of everyone else on their team - some developers don’t want to interact with the client or the business - some developers don’t want to do anything that remotely looks like project management or agile or otherwise. - some developers have no idea what the business does or how to meaningfully contribute as engineers - some developers don’t want to pair, mob or provide training of any kind to junior engineers - some developers don’t want to participate in interviewing or recruiting others on the team - some developers just want to write code and go home there’s a reason we have middle managers and until devs want to do more than “just write code” than… …there will always be middle management in engineering.

precompute 4y ago
> some developers just want to write code and go home This is the only good point here. The truth is, middle managers exist because technical work is seen lowly anywhere the management is stupid enough to think that technical competency is easy to acquire. Also, these developers that never participate are usually the ones that get promoted to middle management.
- jollofricepeas 4y ago
  Tried reading this comment a few times and I don’t understand it at all. Please clarify.
  - precompute 4y ago
    Sorry for the run-on sentence. Managers that do not value technical competence very often think that it is easy to acquire; that it only takes a few years of work, and / or that being able to interface with computers is a rather banal skill. This makes them grossly undervalue people that work with software / computers. Middle Managers are hence elected as buffer between them and the "peasants" (AKA "IT Guys"). Usually, these middle managers are elected right from the peasantry, and often it's the person that sticks out. This is also often the least technically competent member of the team / department.
    - JeremyBanks 4y ago
      [dead]

precompute 4y ago

> some developers just want to write code and go home This is the only good point here. The truth is, middle managers exist because technical work is seen lowly anywhere the management is stupid enough to think that technical competency is easy to acquire. Also, these developers that never participate are usually the ones that get promoted to middle management.

jollofricepeas 4y ago
Tried reading this comment a few times and I don’t understand it at all. Please clarify.
- precompute 4y ago
  Sorry for the run-on sentence. Managers that do not value technical competence very often think that it is easy to acquire; that it only takes a few years of work, and / or that being able to interface with computers is a rather banal skill. This makes them grossly undervalue people that work with software / computers. Middle Managers are hence elected as buffer between them and the "peasants" (AKA "IT Guys"). Usually, these middle managers are elected right from the peasantry, and often it's the person that sticks out. This is also often the least technically competent member of the team / department.
  - JeremyBanks 4y ago
    [dead]