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> After three months, the progress slowed to a crawl, star dev abandoned ship, and customers started complaining for the first time. > Now I will just wait for

> After three months, the progress slowed to a crawl, star dev abandoned ship, and customers started complaining for the first time. > Now I will just wait for someone to tell me that this wasn't real Scrum either, because we were supposed to have Product Owner talk to the client instead of Scrum Master :) Oh wait till management finds engineers to scapegoat for their own decisions. If there is one truth about management, it is that they cannot accept "I told you so" from their reports.

jauntywundrkind 3y ago
Yet to find a company where the folks down the reporting ladder can rate how they perceived various initiatives to have gone. So weird how businesses just don't want to hear how "Implement formal agile process" (or other goals) went.
- nine_zeros 3y ago
  It's because companies are far more obsessed with power structures than with actual output. This is especially true for public companies where the grift is to get into positions of power, propose "initiatives", find scapegoats for failures, then hop on to another company - leaving a trail of damage behind. In my experience, the only time a company does well with structures is when there are fewer levels in the org chart and when the C-Suite penalizes management before ICs. Doesn't happen very often though.
WJW 3y ago
Of course. Because they don't produce outputs directly, reputation is all a manager has to prove their worth to the company. If you take that away by publicly demonstrating how their actions caused bad results, their boss might well fire them since they are apparently being a net negative. Managers face a much more difficult labor market than most engineers too. So to exaggerate a little bit, not accepting "I told you so" from their reports is directly required to keep paying their mortgage and feeding their children. It's not weird that they get upset when you endanger their livelihood. OP has got the right idea and is just being zen about it IMO.
- nine_zeros 3y ago
  You are not wrong. We both agree that the problem is the org structure as it stands. The incentives for layers and layers of management are divergent from the needs of the business and the needs of the producers of output. Perhaps we need to reduce the number of levels, replace managers with technical leaders whose incentives are aligned with the needs of the business. Offload all grunt paper work to an executive assistant. No need for EM1, EM2, EM3, Director, Sr Director, VP, SVP, SSVP nonsense.
- rbanffy 3y ago
  > Managers face a much more difficult labor market than most engineers too. Indeed. I've been thinking about shifting back into management after a couple years as an individual contributor (playing an instrument is fun, but so is conducting a well functioning orchestra). In this space, aligning with stereotypes has become very important in the past decade or so.

jauntywundrkind 3y ago

Yet to find a company where the folks down the reporting ladder can rate how they perceived various initiatives to have gone. So weird how businesses just don't want to hear how "Implement formal agile process" (or other goals) went.

nine_zeros 3y ago
It's because companies are far more obsessed with power structures than with actual output. This is especially true for public companies where the grift is to get into positions of power, propose "initiatives", find scapegoats for failures, then hop on to another company - leaving a trail of damage behind. In my experience, the only time a company does well with structures is when there are fewer levels in the org chart and when the C-Suite penalizes management before ICs. Doesn't happen very often though.

WJW 3y ago

Of course. Because they don't produce outputs directly, reputation is all a manager has to prove their worth to the company. If you take that away by publicly demonstrating how their actions caused bad results, their boss might well fire them since they are apparently being a net negative. Managers face a much more difficult labor market than most engineers too. So to exaggerate a little bit, not accepting "I told you so" from their reports is directly required to keep paying their mortgage and feeding their children. It's not weird that they get upset when you endanger their livelihood. OP has got the right idea and is just being zen about it IMO.

nine_zeros 3y ago
You are not wrong. We both agree that the problem is the org structure as it stands. The incentives for layers and layers of management are divergent from the needs of the business and the needs of the producers of output. Perhaps we need to reduce the number of levels, replace managers with technical leaders whose incentives are aligned with the needs of the business. Offload all grunt paper work to an executive assistant. No need for EM1, EM2, EM3, Director, Sr Director, VP, SVP, SSVP nonsense.
rbanffy 3y ago
> Managers face a much more difficult labor market than most engineers too. Indeed. I've been thinking about shifting back into management after a couple years as an individual contributor (playing an instrument is fun, but so is conducting a well functioning orchestra). In this space, aligning with stereotypes has become very important in the past decade or so.