3 ms·
"Which means that people who are naturally political end up with all the power, even if they don't make good decisions, and they aren't held accountable for the
by mattnewport 12y ago
"Which means that people who are naturally political end up with all the power, even if they don't make good decisions, and they aren't held accountable for their management activities, because the fantasy is that they're not managing anyone. And introverts or people with alternative ideas (especially ideas that threaten the alphas) tend to be dumped on, badly peer reviewed and fired."
This pretty much describes my experience of traditional management everywhere I've worked, minus perhaps the line "because the fantasy is that they're not managing anyone". How have you seen things be different in a company with traditional management?
- sago 12y agoThanks for the response. Sorry to hear that's been your experience. I've been into quite a few companies in the same industry as the one I mention, that are roughly the same size (a few hundred people) and most aren't as toxic in that way. There is more HR, policies, feedback on performance, less (but not zero) patronage. Tech people like to rag on managers. But I think good managers are worth multiples of bad managers. It puzzles me that more companies don't take technical management more seriously as an independent skillset, and instead let it be a kind of fiefdom for little Napoleons or a step in the career progression for a programmer.