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My father stayed an engineer when most of his peers became managers; many of them became unhappy over time, and quite a few died from heart attacks before reach

My father stayed an engineer when most of his peers became managers; many of them became unhappy over time, and quite a few died from heart attacks before reaching 60. Yeah, I realized that I disliked management (the concept) when I realized that managing is, in most cases, just as bad as being managed.

greenyoda 13y ago
And unless you're the CEO, being a manager is both managing and being managed at the same time.
- michaelochurch 13y ago
  Right. The corporate system seems to be designed to make almost everyone miserable so the people at the bottom want the jobs above them. The problem is that it leads to pernicious and destructive internal competition, not excellence. My philosophy: mentoring, coordination, and very occasional police work (against internal harassment and bad behavior) are the only valuable contributions of management. The rest of it is useless and should go away. It's outdated.
  - mattdeboard 13y ago
    You spend a lot of time -- "a lot" is a pretty big understatement based on your online activity, blog etc. -- thinking and writing about how miserable being employed at companies X and Y made you. I'm really curious why. I've been miserable in a series of jobs before and the last thing I want to do is go back and wallow in it.
    - michaelochurch 13y ago
      The problem with the career/work game is that when you get robbed (a) it's considered to be your fault, and (b) you never get back the time lost. If there were a way to pop back into the state one should be at, at one's age, were it not for the robberies, then forgiveness would be possible. You'd just recover and forget. But this is a game where if you get screwed, your competition is out there getting better experience so you keep getting screwed in the future, and soon enough you're 40 years old and still a nobody. Fuck that. Also, these problems that I'm attacking are huge problems. If I could, for one example, start a process that made it socially unacceptable for a company to run closed allocation and call itself a technology company, that'd easily add $10+ trillion in value to the world economy. That's just a massive effect. Obviously, one person can't cause that kind of change, but there's no reason not to try to start the process.
      - mattdeboard 13y ago
        I don't really buy it, based on my personal experiences, which play out exactly opposite of what you're saying here. I think you're wrong. It's been very strange watching your evolution as an online persona.

greenyoda 13y ago

And unless you're the CEO, being a manager is both managing and being managed at the same time.

michaelochurch 13y ago
Right. The corporate system seems to be designed to make almost everyone miserable so the people at the bottom want the jobs above them. The problem is that it leads to pernicious and destructive internal competition, not excellence. My philosophy: mentoring, coordination, and very occasional police work (against internal harassment and bad behavior) are the only valuable contributions of management. The rest of it is useless and should go away. It's outdated.
- mattdeboard 13y ago
  You spend a lot of time -- "a lot" is a pretty big understatement based on your online activity, blog etc. -- thinking and writing about how miserable being employed at companies X and Y made you. I'm really curious why. I've been miserable in a series of jobs before and the last thing I want to do is go back and wallow in it.
  - michaelochurch 13y ago
    The problem with the career/work game is that when you get robbed (a) it's considered to be your fault, and (b) you never get back the time lost. If there were a way to pop back into the state one should be at, at one's age, were it not for the robberies, then forgiveness would be possible. You'd just recover and forget. But this is a game where if you get screwed, your competition is out there getting better experience so you keep getting screwed in the future, and soon enough you're 40 years old and still a nobody. Fuck that. Also, these problems that I'm attacking are huge problems. If I could, for one example, start a process that made it socially unacceptable for a company to run closed allocation and call itself a technology company, that'd easily add $10+ trillion in value to the world economy. That's just a massive effect. Obviously, one person can't cause that kind of change, but there's no reason not to try to start the process.
    - mattdeboard 13y ago
      I don't really buy it, based on my personal experiences, which play out exactly opposite of what you're saying here. I think you're wrong. It's been very strange watching your evolution as an online persona.