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But when everyone moved to remote work a few years ago, this culture of meetings all day came up... and it still confuses me. My pet theory (that in all likeli

But when everyone moved to remote work a few years ago, this culture of meetings all day came up... and it still confuses me. My pet theory (that in all likelihood isn’t unique to me, but derived from things I’ve read in many other places) is that this is due to an existential crisis among the management class. Many managers who were previously used to managing people very directly, by looking over shoulders and such, realized that their jobs are unnecessary when they saw how productive people became during the pandemic’s forced remote work regime. As a way of coping with the cognitive dissonance they began to schedule huge numbers of online meetings so that they could continue to feel engaged and “useful.” This has turned into a very large “emperor’s new clothes” situation, played out across thousands of companies. Hence the desperate moves by many companies to try to force workers to come back into the office.

13of40 3y ago
> Many managers...realized that their jobs are unnecessary I hear this a lot in forums, but to me it rings out as something that perhaps-disgruntled workers want to be true about managers, but isn't really grounded in measurable fact. It's true that as a manager I don't produce a lot of code, but at the end of the day my job is to know who the experts on different topics are and to know what the zeitgeist (and maybe even plan of record) of the org is so I can get the right people in a room together to solve problems. If we left that up to each individual contributor, especially the more junior ones, we'd never be able to achieve a large scale goal. Imagine if you were trying to build the Golden Gate bridge but you eliminated management and just turned a bunch of workers out on the site to do whatever their skills and experience led them to.
- chongli 3y ago
  I said many managers, not all managers. There are some highly skilled managers (likely promoted engineers) who know exactly what their teams need to be successful and also understand the big picture and where their team’s project fits in. These are not the managers I was referring to. The ones I’m talking about are from “the management class”, likely went to business school, and have no technical background at all, and occupy most of their days “walking a beat” around the office to look over people’s shoulders and make sure they’re busy. These are the Michael Scotts of the world, and they are the ones in crisis, not the skilled managers.

13of40 3y ago

> Many managers...realized that their jobs are unnecessary I hear this a lot in forums, but to me it rings out as something that perhaps-disgruntled workers want to be true about managers, but isn't really grounded in measurable fact. It's true that as a manager I don't produce a lot of code, but at the end of the day my job is to know who the experts on different topics are and to know what the zeitgeist (and maybe even plan of record) of the org is so I can get the right people in a room together to solve problems. If we left that up to each individual contributor, especially the more junior ones, we'd never be able to achieve a large scale goal. Imagine if you were trying to build the Golden Gate bridge but you eliminated management and just turned a bunch of workers out on the site to do whatever their skills and experience led them to.

chongli 3y ago
I said many managers, not all managers. There are some highly skilled managers (likely promoted engineers) who know exactly what their teams need to be successful and also understand the big picture and where their team’s project fits in. These are not the managers I was referring to. The ones I’m talking about are from “the management class”, likely went to business school, and have no technical background at all, and occupy most of their days “walking a beat” around the office to look over people’s shoulders and make sure they’re busy. These are the Michael Scotts of the world, and they are the ones in crisis, not the skilled managers.