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When I was a wee lad, engineers became managers so that they could be promoted and get salaries sufficient to put their children through college and eventually
by russell 18y ago
When I was a wee lad, engineers became managers so that they could be promoted and get salaries sufficient to put their children through college and eventually retire. Engineers could be bad managers because there were enough layers of managers to smooth things over. These are not those days and the hierarchy has collapsed. There are no safe managerial positions for aging programmers to slide into. If you dont like the prospects of managing stic with the art. The money oisnt that much better.
- gaius 18y agoThis is a form of deferred compensation. Old-style companies had armies of vice presidents who didn't do much, but in fact were being rewarded for work they'd already done, with a smooth transition to retirement. This is how those old-style companies encouraged loyalty. Now that that's gone, it's every employee for himself, hence the rise of contractors. The value of a company isn't in the stuff it owns, or it's brand, or even in its source depot. It's that it's a collective of people who can identify and solve new and difficult problems. Loyalty matters more than ever... Managers who've never been actual practitioners don't understand this.
- russell 18y agoReminds me of a great cartoon from decades back. The picture was of one of those small storefront loan offices. There was a sign in the window, sort of like the lottery signs with replaceable numbers, that said, "37 Vice Presidents on Duty".