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It's called "empire building" and is also part of the principal-agent problem where the manager is the agent and is assumed to have the firm's best interests in
by 7thaccount 3y ago
It's called "empire building" and is also part of the principal-agent problem where the manager is the agent and is assumed to have the firm's best interests in mind, but in reality doesn't. As a result, the principal (for example an owner) has to come up with methods to keep their management honest (example... tying most compensation to stock price - although I think this just makes management short sighted).
I was once in a meeting where an IT manager was told his group would have to handle the install for a piece of software that like 2 engineers used. The guy asked for 3 additional head count and my jaw dropped. If someone has ever seen the Avatar Airbender show, I was like Prince Zuko speaking up at his father's meeting. You see I was there as a courtesy and tried to point out that even one headcount seemed like a lot for something that should take less than a week of work for a single employee. At the time I didn't understand that the manager understood this, but was playing for more staff to build their own importance. I didn't understand the games they play. As part of the game...you always say your people are swamped no matter what...or refer to a massive backlog of work even though that backlog is all super low priority and existing employees can be reprioritized.
- Rinzler89 3y ago> the manager is the agent and is assumed to have the firm's best interests in mind, but in reality doesn't. Every manager I had at every major multinational company only had the interest of their own career progression in mind, not the company's, not their team's. You as an employee under them were just a means to their goal, nothing more. I naively assumed that making them look good and doing the overtime when needed to achieve their idiotic deadlines would also guarantee my ascension later, but boy was I gullible and wrong. Going the extra mile for your boss might work out for you when everything goes smooth in the org in times of economic prosperity when there's room for everyone to move up, but when the org or economy went tits up, and things were being put on chopping block, those managers didn't hesitate to grab the only parachute for themselves and let their team sink or throw them under the bus to save themselves at the tune of "So Long and Thanks for all the Fish", so I learned the valuable lesson to not go the extra mile for any boss unless I have written guarantees of a reward. It's the way the reward system is set up in these companies. Climb the ladder and kick it under you after you dangle the carrot in front of naive idiots to push you up that ladder for rewards they might never see. I think someone called it "the GE way".
- pyuser583 3y agoI’ve been fortunate to have some very good managers. That’s why I find this idea so horrible. I wouldn’t be where I am now if I had to “self-organize.”
- Rinzler89 3y agoI never said all managers all bad or that they should be removed and employees should self organize instead. Managers are needed so that ICs can focus on the work, the problem is that a lot of large companies, especially from traditional industries, tend to create some of the worst kinds of managers possible because their incentives are the worst.
- whoknowsidont 3y ago>I’ve been fortunate to have some very good managers. Every time I've seen this sentiment and asked for something concrete on what made them good managers I get answered with platitudes or "nice-isms." At this point in my career, the emperor has no clothes. There are no good managers, only good peers.
- maccard 3y agoI’ve had good managers and bad managers. As an IC, a good manager will shield you from the chaos, infighting, changing priorities and ever shifting timelines. They will ensure that you are aware of what’s going on, and have enough clarity to be able to proceed. A bad manager will most likely try to help by exposing you to all of the above, and cause you get caught up in all of the confusion that comes with it. Just one example.
- danielscrubs 3y agoTo piggy back on it. A good manager will shield you from other bad managers and outsourcing firms promising the moon. Quite a sad state of affairs.
- 3y ago
- sowbug 3y agoA common miscommunication in an R&D organization is asking another team to do a task, and getting the reply that they're willing to do the task if you provide headcount. You're not asking them to grow their team in perpetuity. You're asking them to reprioritize their existing work to accommodate one request. (I know this isn't really a miscommunication. It's misaligned incentives leading to an exasperating kind of logrolling.)
- datascienced 3y agoThere are not many options. Headcount might help (secondment, overtime, contractors, move from another team, new hire) or pushing other work back (or cancelling it, reducing scope) or saying no (find a workaround, go without it). I might of missed it but there is only so much you can do. A win win might be showing how doing X now is not worth it because event Y makes X obsolete or less valuable.
- kjkjadksj 3y agoYou can just have a queue. I’ve seen departments that basically function as an internal vendor of services to other departments. First in first out. Fixed schedule to expect turn around on most requests. No one complains. Seems quite pragmatic and fair.
- gryn 3y agoUntil they become the sole group that does X (Officially), and other groups realize that having them do a simple task related to X is way more hassles and months of wait time so each team just build their own unofficial X or try to circumvent it from day 0. I'm not say this or that method is better just pointing out what I've seen so far through different companies. Not all work is the same priority but if you try to reprioritize then you can enter the endless quagmire of inter-department/group politics than involve a lot of useless meetings. And a simple FIFO queue can be equally as problematic.
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
- smetj 3y ago> handle the install for a piece of software that like 2 engineers used. Ah yes .. current prios remain in place, more context switching, operational ownership, unplanned fallout, holidays, meetings ... cutting the pie in more pieces does not give you more pie ... people still seem to think that ...
- raverbashing 3y agoYeah Hiring too much is one of the things the "falling upwards" specialists do
- jimvin 3y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xRqXYsksFg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xRqXYsksFg
- fuzzfactor 3y ago>It's called "empire building" No co-incidence New York is called the "Empire State"
- vsnf 3y agoWhat is this supposed to imply about New York?
- fuzzfactor 3y agoI would say the bureaucracies of New York City set an early example for lots of other places.
- osigurdson 3y agoIt is interesting how non-economic companies actually are. A company is often just a bunch of people optimizing for their own interests.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]