[HN Gopher] Why CEOs are failing software engineers and other cr...
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       Why CEOs are failing software engineers and other creative teams
       (2020)
        
       Author : replyifuagree
       Score  : 20 points
       Date   : 2021-08-26 14:49 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (iism.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (iism.org)
        
       | davesque wrote:
       | I think this article overthinks the issue. There's a
       | preponderance of marketing/corporate seminar buzzwords that makes
       | me much less receptive to the overall argument. I _have_ noticed
       | that there seems to be an endemic issue in the tech industry with
       | failed management. However, in my experience, I can usually sum
       | up the issue in a few words. And they 're broader in scope, often
       | having less to do with management "styles". There seem to be a
       | handful of contributing factors:
       | 
       | * Management often is not sufficiently well connected to the
       | problem they're trying to solve. Sometimes they don't even have a
       | problem they're solving. They just have a personal
       | entrepreneur/idea person brand that they're selling to investors.
       | In the extreme case, to that kind of person the right choice of
       | turtle neck can matter more than actual hands-on experience or
       | customer need.
       | 
       | * Management and founders tend to be primarily motivated by exit
       | strategies. This means that they necessarily become less
       | concerned with the problem they're solving and more concerned
       | with how they _talk_ about the problem to investors. There seems
       | to be a fundamental trade-off between pleasing investors and
       | actually doing meaningful work.
       | 
       | * Management nowadays is often composed of the most highly-
       | motivated yet most unqualified individuals in the talent pool.
       | I've noticed that there seems to be this notion that grit alone
       | is enough to go out and change the world. This means you end up
       | with a lot of go getter types who are highly motivated to do
       | _something_ but have no practical management or business strategy
       | experience. The problem gets especially bad where management
       | experience is lacking. You end up with people using lots of
       | subtly coercive tactics to motivate their employees, often
       | without even realizing it. Part of this comes from the fact that
       | coercion seems to be the default strategy for most humans. After
       | all, we 're all basically just animals with a recently developed
       | neocortex. In my experience, when push comes to shove, most
       | people revert back to force or threats.
       | 
       | * The glut of tech workers means that companies can go through
       | them like paper plates. There's very little incentive from a
       | labor market standpoint for companies to develop healthy
       | relationships with their employees.
       | 
       | Anyway, there's my brain dump take on it :).
        
         | commandlinefan wrote:
         | > the most highly-motivated yet most unqualified individuals
         | 
         | I was struck by a similar thought not too long ago - we
         | software developers often point out that it's effectively
         | impossible to objectively measure software developer's
         | "performance". As impossible as evidence suggests that it, it
         | strikes me as even _more_ impossible to measure a manager 's
         | effectiveness. They're stuck with very coarse, very game-able
         | metrics like "on time, on budget" that only cheaters can
         | possibly succeed at.
        
         | nine_zeros wrote:
         | Made me chuckle because the rant on management is real.
         | 
         | I have root caused it. The problem with management in any org
         | is accountability without control of output.
         | 
         | Management is really a vague job in tech. The org hierarchy
         | should be more like Junior engineers reporting to senior
         | engineers reporting to staff engineers. Each chain only works
         | on one project at a time.
         | 
         | Yes, we need some managers but only a few. Mostly for
         | promotions and for cross-team horn fights.
         | 
         | I'd be curious to know if there are companies with fewer
         | managers and how they rate on employee happiness.
        
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       (page generated 2021-08-26 23:03 UTC)