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I'm a manager who focuses on good communication. I strive to hire and retain Rodrigos. It's extremely difficult to attract talent of that caliber (writing compi

I'm a manager who focuses on good communication. I strive to hire and retain Rodrigos. It's extremely difficult to attract talent of that caliber (writing compilers...). My experience has been that when I do build my pure-Rodrigo team that my boss (usually the CEO) just can't deal with employees of that caliber. I end up spending 90% of my time executive handholding because they continuously try to force the team around their (usually primitive) objectives instead of letting the geniuses drive progress forward. Rodrigo will get his work done 10X faster than another dev, regardless of the artificial deadlines. I shield my team as much as I can from the bullshit from above but in the end I usually walk because if you're unwilling to take advantage of the resources in your own company then there really is no hope. Executive/management ego is THE problem. In the future there will be Rodrigos, scripts and the unemployed.

wizzard 14y ago
This is music to my ears. While I wouldn't necessarily go so far as to say that all management is useless, they certainly seem to go out of their way to create barriers and waste time. They tend not to understand the observer effect: Making programmers spend more than five minutes a day reporting their progress adversely affects their progress. And you're right about the ego. So much ego...
- malvosenior 14y ago
  I've been spending a lot of time thinking about where this is going and how we can accelerate the outcome (again speaking as a high level manager). The problem seems to come from access to capital. I've never seen an executive who adds "10x" value in terms of what they actually can produce through "work", instead what you find are 10x executives who create value through their ability to literally increase company valuation 10 times via their connections and network. Their network unfortunately will be founded on structural advantages they've gained from society (rich parents mostly). The right rich guy will get your company sold for millions of dollars more than an engineer can because his friends will be doing the acquisition. It has NOTHING to do with the actual value being created by the company. As for middle management, they are a resource that should be subordinated to the engineers and other high value producing individual contributors. Non-creative work needs to suit the needs of the creatives not vice versa. So, how to get around executive domination? Lowered costs to deploy technology is a great first step. When you can launch your product on ec2 and get going for an order of magnitude less money than was possibly 10 years ago, then you don't really need to raise millions of dollars (which by the way would be spent by the MBA types trying to attract top talent anyway). If you are top talent, run with it. Avoid ANYONE who isn't going to be producing value for you and your vision. Avoid the cult of VCs. Tech talent needs to take ownership of the success narrative and not give in to temptation to bring execs and vcs on board regardless of the capital boost they may provide. In the end they will make your product worse 100% of the time.
- codeonfire 14y ago
  I believe the barriers and waste are deliberate or at least subconscious. If you view dev management as the middle man trying to cause a paycheck by interposing themselves between developer and user, it makes sense that they would try to disrupt and inhibit the dev process and cause cost on both sides. The benefit is that they are needed to 'manage' all the delay and disruption they are causing.
rpwilcox 14y ago
Thank you for your comment and your effort. I get a little chuckle everytime I see job ads for ROCKSTAR DEVS, thinking, "Really? Can you actually handle a rockstar dev?" Having seen classical managers call a group of mild mannered programmers unmanageable before, i'm glad the some folks realize that you might get exactly what you asked for when you hired that rockstar dev: some behavior that might look prima-doma to C level execs (but is really just the devs saying, "please don't add tickets to the sprint mid sprint"). Or when some exec gets mad at people who clock in at 10 ("2 hours late!!") without realizing they fought some server or deadline until 3am.

wizzard 14y ago

This is music to my ears. While I wouldn't necessarily go so far as to say that all management is useless, they certainly seem to go out of their way to create barriers and waste time. They tend not to understand the observer effect: Making programmers spend more than five minutes a day reporting their progress adversely affects their progress. And you're right about the ego. So much ego...

malvosenior 14y ago
I've been spending a lot of time thinking about where this is going and how we can accelerate the outcome (again speaking as a high level manager). The problem seems to come from access to capital. I've never seen an executive who adds "10x" value in terms of what they actually can produce through "work", instead what you find are 10x executives who create value through their ability to literally increase company valuation 10 times via their connections and network. Their network unfortunately will be founded on structural advantages they've gained from society (rich parents mostly). The right rich guy will get your company sold for millions of dollars more than an engineer can because his friends will be doing the acquisition. It has NOTHING to do with the actual value being created by the company. As for middle management, they are a resource that should be subordinated to the engineers and other high value producing individual contributors. Non-creative work needs to suit the needs of the creatives not vice versa. So, how to get around executive domination? Lowered costs to deploy technology is a great first step. When you can launch your product on ec2 and get going for an order of magnitude less money than was possibly 10 years ago, then you don't really need to raise millions of dollars (which by the way would be spent by the MBA types trying to attract top talent anyway). If you are top talent, run with it. Avoid ANYONE who isn't going to be producing value for you and your vision. Avoid the cult of VCs. Tech talent needs to take ownership of the success narrative and not give in to temptation to bring execs and vcs on board regardless of the capital boost they may provide. In the end they will make your product worse 100% of the time.
codeonfire 14y ago
I believe the barriers and waste are deliberate or at least subconscious. If you view dev management as the middle man trying to cause a paycheck by interposing themselves between developer and user, it makes sense that they would try to disrupt and inhibit the dev process and cause cost on both sides. The benefit is that they are needed to 'manage' all the delay and disruption they are causing.

rpwilcox 14y ago

Thank you for your comment and your effort. I get a little chuckle everytime I see job ads for ROCKSTAR DEVS, thinking, "Really? Can you actually handle a rockstar dev?" Having seen classical managers call a group of mild mannered programmers unmanageable before, i'm glad the some folks realize that you might get exactly what you asked for when you hired that rockstar dev: some behavior that might look prima-doma to C level execs (but is really just the devs saying, "please don't add tickets to the sprint mid sprint"). Or when some exec gets mad at people who clock in at 10 ("2 hours late!!") without realizing they fought some server or deadline until 3am.