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Peter Drucker said this in 1967, in The Effective Executive. He went further in Management Challenges for the 21st Century: > [F]ewer and fewer people are "sub

Peter Drucker said this in 1967, in The Effective Executive. He went further in Management Challenges for the 21st Century: > [F]ewer and fewer people are "subordinates"--even in fairly low-level jobs. Increasingly they are "knowledge workers." And knowledge workers are not subordinates; they are "associates." For, once beyond the apprentice stage, knowledge workers must know more about their job than their boss does--or else they are no good at all. In fact, that they know more about their job than anybody else in the organization is part of the definition of knowledge workers... > To be sure, these associates are "subordinates" in that they depend on the "boss" when it comes to being hired or fired, promoted, appraised and so on. But in his or her own job the superior can perform only if these so-called subordinates take responsibility for educating him or her... In turn, these "subordinates" depend on the superior for direction. They depend on the superior to tell them what the "score" is. > Their relationship, in other words, is far more like that between the conductor of an orchestra and the instrumentalist than it is like the traditional superior/subordinate relationship... We are already living as though this world were true. I don't remember the last time I saw a manager fully specifying each ticket for a developer, for example. Managers are paid what managers used to be paid. The average developer is paid like a manager; their managers are paid like a manager of managers. The average manager I have worked with spend a fraction of their time in actively telling people what to do; most of their time is managing the complexity of the coordination of work and only incidentally the people.

lifeisstillgood 3y ago
When you say "manager" I am hearing the job description of a tech lead. And yet I look around and see many non-jobs outside of direct hierarchies but still part of this "co-ordination" blob. I wonder if it's time to ask just how many people are needed for co-ordination. My understanding is that a 1:1 ratio of "commits code" to "something co-ordination" is common (that is in ostensibly technical areas only 50% of workers code). But great quote thank you
- ebiester 3y ago
  Tech leads and managers can have an overlap. Tech leads code, but only have one team. Managers often have 2-5 teams and pick up project management tasks. Tech leads are not expected to work with the product manager to flesh out a business case for expanding the scope of a project to retire technical debt or sit in front of the VP of Engineering (director/senior director in a large org; small orgs have entirely different roles than this anyway) and explain why the project is slated to take three months longer than initial estimates. There are three jobs of the tech EM - support the team (be the shit umbrella - navigate the bureaucracy), get the business a condensed version of what is going on with that part of the system, and all the other rest of the work to support a human organization that no longer has secretaries and administrators to just handle it. In a lot of other non-tech non-knowledge worker jobs, supporting the general organization is abstracted to middle management instead, and a manager gets drawn further into task breakdown and enforcement. That's the difference.

lifeisstillgood 3y ago

When you say "manager" I am hearing the job description of a tech lead. And yet I look around and see many non-jobs outside of direct hierarchies but still part of this "co-ordination" blob. I wonder if it's time to ask just how many people are needed for co-ordination. My understanding is that a 1:1 ratio of "commits code" to "something co-ordination" is common (that is in ostensibly technical areas only 50% of workers code). But great quote thank you

ebiester 3y ago
Tech leads and managers can have an overlap. Tech leads code, but only have one team. Managers often have 2-5 teams and pick up project management tasks. Tech leads are not expected to work with the product manager to flesh out a business case for expanding the scope of a project to retire technical debt or sit in front of the VP of Engineering (director/senior director in a large org; small orgs have entirely different roles than this anyway) and explain why the project is slated to take three months longer than initial estimates. There are three jobs of the tech EM - support the team (be the shit umbrella - navigate the bureaucracy), get the business a condensed version of what is going on with that part of the system, and all the other rest of the work to support a human organization that no longer has secretaries and administrators to just handle it. In a lot of other non-tech non-knowledge worker jobs, supporting the general organization is abstracted to middle management instead, and a manager gets drawn further into task breakdown and enforcement. That's the difference.