5 ms·

My last job was almost this. My question is how does it get to that point?

pyrale 3y ago
My best explanation is that some people believe that project management can be completely oblivious to the nature of the work to be done, and still be useful. To them, maximizing their ability to make choices about the way work will be done means they have more ability to take the good decisions that will lead the project to a successful end.
arkh 3y ago
People whose only knowledge of management stopped at factory work in the 1920s.
happymellon 3y ago
Someone up top found a cheaper supplier of pencils. Unfortunately these are cheap pencils, so the graphite keeps breaking. People are spending too much time sharpening their pencils, besides a good pencil sharpener is expensive. The solution is to get a sharpener person to move the sharpener about to save everyone time. However they are expensive to employ so we are going to outsource it because sharpening pencils are not our core business. It always starts as cheaping out on the free soda. Unless, as was also mentioned, someone is a project/product manager without actually understanding the business.
techcode 3y ago
Was your last job a place with more focus on quarterly business cycle and less if any on longer term? It might even be that there's seemingly a lot of long term goals/objectives/focus. If it's mostly strategic level plans/talks/etc, while day to day things are still planned, executed and evaluated on half-year and even just quarterly period - it seemingly ends same as not having longer term plans.
- archerx 3y ago
  It was focused around quarterly cycles but they also had a lot of long term goals.
gyulai 3y ago
> My question is how does it get to that point? Putting salespeople in between engineers and clients, and giving them perverse incentives to say "yes" to everything the client asks, and no incentive at all to try to understand what it takes to actually get any of that stuff accomplished. It produces clients that live in fantasyland.
bregma 3y ago
Microsoft Excel. Someone spends hours torturing numbers in a spreadsheet until they give up and yield the desired answer. Pivot tables are created and used to make a slide deck using Microsoft Power Point. A decision is made, another round of golf played, and someone checks on the value of their non-salary compensation. That the spreadsheet does not reflect your experienced reality is of little consequence because at that level, the spreadsheet is the reality. If your number doesn't reflect what's in Excel, you can be easily replaced with another number.
- icemelt8 3y ago
  This is such a great comment.
- nonrandomstring 3y ago
  > the spreadsheet is the reality. This nails an entire culture, from healthcare, to education, to policing... But we cannot blame software itself, right? Something went deeply, horribly wrong in our own societal script. Something way beyond Max Weber or Franz Kafka's takes on bureaucracy. SOmething that made us bow down before computers as new gods. I'm becoming a techo-athiest.
  - dial9-1 3y ago
    scale of complexity
    - nonrandomstring 3y ago
      That's a tempting answer. I see why you proffer it. But I have to say no. Complexity is neither an immanent feature nor inevitability. Behind unruly complexity is our failure to manage it. And indeed, a love of complexity, a fetish for it that seduces us into ever more. To defeat complexity we have to embrace, and engage with it. We have to see what parts of technology that got us to where we are, must now be justifiably rejected. All I see right now, especially with regards to "AI" and the new wave of techno-populism, is a retreat from complexity and more embrace of "magic".
  - 3y ago

My best explanation is that some people believe that project management can be completely oblivious to the nature of the work to be done, and still be useful. To them, maximizing their ability to make choices about the way work will be done means they have more ability to take the good decisions that will lead the project to a successful end.

arkh 3y ago

People whose only knowledge of management stopped at factory work in the 1920s.

happymellon 3y ago

Someone up top found a cheaper supplier of pencils. Unfortunately these are cheap pencils, so the graphite keeps breaking. People are spending too much time sharpening their pencils, besides a good pencil sharpener is expensive. The solution is to get a sharpener person to move the sharpener about to save everyone time. However they are expensive to employ so we are going to outsource it because sharpening pencils are not our core business. It always starts as cheaping out on the free soda. Unless, as was also mentioned, someone is a project/product manager without actually understanding the business.

techcode 3y ago

Was your last job a place with more focus on quarterly business cycle and less if any on longer term? It might even be that there's seemingly a lot of long term goals/objectives/focus. If it's mostly strategic level plans/talks/etc, while day to day things are still planned, executed and evaluated on half-year and even just quarterly period - it seemingly ends same as not having longer term plans.

archerx 3y ago
It was focused around quarterly cycles but they also had a lot of long term goals.

gyulai 3y ago

> My question is how does it get to that point? Putting salespeople in between engineers and clients, and giving them perverse incentives to say "yes" to everything the client asks, and no incentive at all to try to understand what it takes to actually get any of that stuff accomplished. It produces clients that live in fantasyland.

bregma 3y ago

Microsoft Excel. Someone spends hours torturing numbers in a spreadsheet until they give up and yield the desired answer. Pivot tables are created and used to make a slide deck using Microsoft Power Point. A decision is made, another round of golf played, and someone checks on the value of their non-salary compensation. That the spreadsheet does not reflect your experienced reality is of little consequence because at that level, the spreadsheet is the reality. If your number doesn't reflect what's in Excel, you can be easily replaced with another number.

icemelt8 3y ago
This is such a great comment.
nonrandomstring 3y ago
> the spreadsheet is the reality. This nails an entire culture, from healthcare, to education, to policing... But we cannot blame software itself, right? Something went deeply, horribly wrong in our own societal script. Something way beyond Max Weber or Franz Kafka's takes on bureaucracy. SOmething that made us bow down before computers as new gods. I'm becoming a techo-athiest.
- dial9-1 3y ago
  scale of complexity
  - nonrandomstring 3y ago
    That's a tempting answer. I see why you proffer it. But I have to say no. Complexity is neither an immanent feature nor inevitability. Behind unruly complexity is our failure to manage it. And indeed, a love of complexity, a fetish for it that seduces us into ever more. To defeat complexity we have to embrace, and engage with it. We have to see what parts of technology that got us to where we are, must now be justifiably rejected. All I see right now, especially with regards to "AI" and the new wave of techno-populism, is a retreat from complexity and more embrace of "magic".
- 3y ago