[HN Gopher] Excess management is costing the U.S. $3T per year (...
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Excess management is costing the U.S. $3T per year (2016)
Author : sherilm
Score : 60 points
Date : 2023-01-07 17:46 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (hbr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (hbr.org)
| anonreeeeplor wrote:
| The reward for success in most corporations is to be able to hire
| more people.
|
| I can't think of many situations where being successful means you
| get to degrade the quality of what you are doing.
|
| The problem is peoples egos and signaling.
|
| I once worked at a company and did this huge set of projects on a
| shoe string using creativity and hard work.
|
| A manager was hired in another parallel group to mine and they
| got to immediately hire six people.
|
| It made me so annoyed because it felt like I had demonstrated
| results and not gotten resourced.
|
| It sets off these ego driven hiring wars.
|
| Once one manager starts staffing up, you immediately felt
| threatened and under siege and at war.
|
| If your competitor peers (they are never your friend) out hire
| you, then soon their people are coming into your area trying to
| take over work under you.
|
| The entire thing is super corrupt. Like I personally don't like
| over hiring but if you have never felt what it is like to be put
| in that position - it is quite threatening.
|
| It also signals if you don't hire the way other teams are hiring
| they you are a failure as a manager or as a team.
|
| After this experience I realized how compromised you are being
| middle management: you lose skill and value and you become at the
| mercy of impossible to control politics coming from all
| directions.
|
| And then what happens next? Well, many times the hiring manager
| who built their little empire leaves and dumps all the people
| they hired loose. They all end up in a sort of limbo. Original
| manager had an idea of what to do with them, now someone else
| ends up having to baby sit them, often without any vision for
| what to do.
|
| This process of hiring and leaving just degrades the talent and
| dead weight: it's such a sort of baked in disease and hard to get
| rid of.
|
| I personally won't be a middle manager ever again. At least not
| one that doesn't report direct to a ceo.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > The reward for success in most corporations is to be able to
| hire more people.
|
| In business:
|
| 1. success => more budget
|
| 2. failure => budget gets cut
|
| In government:
|
| 1. success => budget gets cut
|
| 2. failure => more budget
| rqtwteye wrote:
| Not necessarily true. In my company the rule is: 10 offshore
| devs/testers get nothing done => hire 20, if that that
| doesn't work, hire 50. The actual work could probably be done
| by 2 or 3 competent people.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Are you sure your company isn't doing government contract
| work? I made the expensive mistake of hiring government
| contractors once. They did a great job of sending me
| massive bills while accomplishing nothing at all. I fired
| them and refused to pay those bills. They threatened to
| sue. I replied I had all their documentation and progress
| reports that showed they accomplished nothing. Never heard
| from them again.
| acdha wrote:
| I've seen that in every sector (.com, .edu, and .gov) --
| there's a huge management culture pushing untruths (e.g.
| "a good manager can manage anything") and contempt for
| the actual workers which causes those pathological
| outcomes anywhere so afflicted. Part of what makes it
| popular is that when one contracting company produces
| another 8-9 figure write-off you can blame them and try
| again with the latest set of expensive suits swearing
| they're completely different, but it's harder to shirk
| responsibility if it's people who report to you.
|
| This is more common in government due to politics: if
| agencies aren't allowed to hire competent technical
| staff, the contractors will be poorly supervised but when
| it fails the same people who cut staffing will use it to
| argue even more things need to be contracted out. Again,
| the problem isn't the sector but the lack of an effective
| feedback loop.
| WalterBright wrote:
| the lack of an effective feedback loop.
|
| Of course. The feedback loop for government is different
| from that for business. Failure in business means going
| out of business. This powerfully incentivizes business to
| stop rewarding failure. Like when Azure lost $billions
| and Amazon cut off its funding.
|
| No such feedback exists for government operations.
| WalterBright wrote:
| For example, in the public schools:
|
| 1. fail to get kids to meet grade academic standards =>
| teachers get a raise and more budget
|
| 2. gifted programs succeed => gifted programs get canceled
| acdha wrote:
| That's not an example, it's just wrong.
|
| School performance is heavily politicized so many people
| have an incentive, sometimes financial, to say public
| schools are failing but what actually happens is what close
| to a century of research has shown: student performance
| tracks their household socioeconomic status, but we tend to
| approach the problem backwards for ideological reasons and
| see it as "improve school performance to fight poverty"
| when every bit of data says it should be "deal with poverty
| to improve school performance".
| WalterBright wrote:
| If failure is never the school's fault, why do they keep
| getting more funding?
| acdha wrote:
| You have to look at the details: for example, is the
| enrollment static or do you see things like more students
| requiring support services which we've chosen to put on
| schools rather than funding through a national health
| service like most of our peer countries? That one's
| especially important when making historical comparisons
| because the United States no longer excludes special
| needs kids or tracks lower-performing poor kids into
| work. Comparisons with other countries are similar -
| people will talk about countries like Singapore being far
| ahead but once you compare similar SES cohort
| performance, the effect becomes much smaller.
|
| Is it the case that the amount of money spent on
| infrastructure is increasing unnecessarily or because
| previous generations voted against maintenance until
| things failed completely?
|
| Is spending going up due to teacher salaries or because
| the solution to perceived problems is adding more layers
| of much higher-compensated management who will reliably
| divert staff time away from education?
|
| Again, I'm not saying that everything is perfect with no
| room for improvement but rather that there's both
| deliberate misrepresentation (e.g. the charter school
| industry literally banks on this belief) and significant
| confusion caused by trying to find a cheap fix for
| complex social problems.
| woodruffw wrote:
| This feels like an oversimplification: it would be foolhardy
| for the government to cut funding for e.g. a bridge if it
| begins to run over, because paying $500M for an incomplete
| bridge is a significantly worse outcome than paying $600M for
| a finished bridge.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > it would be foolhardy for the government to cut funding
| for e.g. a bridge if it begins to run over
|
| Exactly. They failed, so they get more budget. Happens with
| nearly all government projects. It's almost as if the
| department/contractor knows that if they fail they'll get
| more budget. Hmmm...
| slickrick216 wrote:
| This and your other comment in this post are such spot on sage
| advice and align so well with my own experience I feel we must
| have worked in the same companies. Thank you for putting words
| to some things.
| sillystuff wrote:
| In both public sector and private sector places I have worked,
| management usually was, at best, dead weight. More often than
| not, management was an active impediment of getting work done for
| the ordinary worker doing the actual productive work of the
| institution.
|
| At one place, a director and the VP she reported to both retired.
| A temporary director was hired under contract who was mostly
| hands-off (and remote), but she immediately fired the manager who
| was her direct report. The group I worked in had reported to the
| fired manager.
|
| Without managers, productivity soared. We literally got more
| accomplished in a year without managers than we did in the prior
| five years combined. All of our deferred maintenance issues, some
| dating back over a decade, were addressed in the first 6 months
| of being freed of the managers.
|
| Sadly, it didn't last. They re-hired the full hierarchy of
| positions. And, the pace of work ground to a halt. Quality of
| work also suffered due to the artificial deadlines imposed by the
| managers-- combined with their shifting priorities based on which
| other manager(s) it was most politically expedient for them to
| please on any given day.
|
| At another, the new VP of marketing said in a meeting, about 9
| months into his tenure, "What?! We're a software company?"
| Imagine all the value he must have added for those prior nine
| months.
| Rury wrote:
| Yes, that's because managers are the quintessential
| bureaucratic worker, and bureaucracy is an antithesis to
| productivity. Unfortunately though, some amount of bureaucracy
| is inevitably needed to sustain an organization.
| namaria wrote:
| I find this view interesting if you think the origin of the
| concept (of bureaucracy) illustrates the transition from
| arbitrary management towards a rule-based, rational (and very
| much productivity enhancing) approach...
| meltyness wrote:
| I agree with your sentiment but argue that rather than
| harming productivity, bureaucracy harms autonomy. This can
| cut both ways. On one hand, having a clear cut process is
| often a boon.
| badrabbit wrote:
| I don't have strong opinions about this but the working
| strategy I have come up with so far, when it comes to
| implementing my ideas is to keep it a secret/hidden from
| management until all the ground work is laid out and only then
| take on responsibility for it and publicly pursue it. As soon
| as management finds out it gets mananged into the least risky
| form that threatens the status quo minimally. I had many good
| ideas that were managed to death or inefficacy. The problem of
| perverse incentives is a pandemic at this point.
|
| Even after whatever i did showed a ton of value for little cost
| of any kind, they will eventually find a way to manage it into
| an inefficient thing or replace it by something much less blame
| inducing.
|
| As a worker, my focus is on generating value. Either I produce
| revenue or reduce risk and liability. For managers, this is a
| distant secondary concern, they are worried of what their boss
| might think and how they will appear in the management team and
| what the risk to them (not the company) would be if their
| reports fail or decide to leave.
|
| So, I could do the best job ever but that might make my manager
| look like he can't control me. I know what those of you that
| work in startups might think, the manager should feel like they
| succeeded in extracting value out of me instead right? That's
| startup culture, a startup wants to extract all the value out
| of you to maxize their success. Every other large org has
| politics and incentives such that even CEOs can't shake things
| up without gathering support, they can't create a culture that
| maximizes profits and productivity because that means less
| people might be needed or would have to do more or the worst
| case, what irks me the most: "If we do all that now, we will
| look bad if we don't keep doing this much in the future", i.e.:
| if you are a rockstar now, that only hurts you when you
| inevitably become less than a rockstar. So the snowballing
| inefficiency in my opinion is a result of trying to keep the
| balance between doing as little as you can vs making some sort
| of a profit and burning through budget money so you look
| important and valuable (the enemy of open source!).
|
| It really is frustrating if you get bored easy. I was surprised
| at the whole "quiet quitting" thing because I have been seeing
| people do that for a long time, people getting mad at me
| because now they think they look bad because I did anything
| more than the minimum.
|
| But really, just observing not complaining. I am now
| understanding these reasons. But it is difficult to fall in
| line and comply.
| anonreeeeplor wrote:
| In my opinion if you are creative, imaginative and have ideas
| - You should choke up on it.
|
| Creative work, inventing things - it's the most value able
| thing. Not the "management." If you are in a non creative
| environment and you find you have all the ideas, your focus
| should be either on leaving to build your own thing or to
| "take over" by effectively being the one who writes all the
| plans and who everyone comes to for ideas.
|
| Creative people who create value are rarely rewarded in most
| medium or large sized organizations.
|
| I realized after seeing how larger organizations work: There
| is no winning.
|
| It is like the red queen problem. The more you run, the
| faster you are expected to run. You will very rarely if ever
| be able to convert this into upward motion. Your manager is
| very non incentivized for you to get ahead.
|
| I personally feel like startups are simply the way to go.
| There is a much much larger market, many more options,
| granted it pays less, but you will get seen and credit for
| your work.
|
| And startup skillsets are generalist skills that are often
| much more transferable. And you are valued more in general as
| more depends on you.
|
| Reading what you said here: You are maladapting to a corrupt
| environment.x
|
| I know exactly what you are saying: I spent my career having
| my ideas snatched, ignored, implemented with great results
| and no recognition or reward or worse.
|
| I think you should just go to smaller firms in general.
| jdkee wrote:
| "The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the
| expanding bureaucracy."
|
| -Oscar Wilde
| namaria wrote:
| Uh I can enable a nice bonus in my capital city now. But
| seriously, I read that in Leonard Nimoy's voice!
| spacemadness wrote:
| All management at big corps has taught me is that delivering
| the product you're working on is not the focus but also super
| necessary at the same time. I'm surprised people aren't having
| more meltdowns trying to live the impossible reality modern
| managers promote.
| sircastor wrote:
| At my work you have to go up 3 levels before we have someone
| who's actual job is just managing. and that person was primarily
| brought in to sort out issues on another team. I'm fortunate that
| a lot of our org is very functional and doing the work.
| kqr wrote:
| There is a good way to do "lots of management": it's when a small
| amount of bureaucracy is distributed over management with plenty
| of autonomy so that managers get to spend 80 % of their time with
| technical work and only do a small amount of clerical work.
|
| That creates skilled managers that can step in and substitute for
| individual contributors. It also teaches them what the day-to-day
| work actually looks like, what the culture of the company
| actually is, what the obstacles actually are, and so on.
| Technically active management is super powerful, and the only way
| to achieve it is with a large group of managers, because a small
| group won't have time to regularly dive into technical details.
|
| The problem is that's never what happens. Any time managers have
| excess time on their hands, they don't find something valuable to
| do -- instead they invent more bureaucracy and administration to
| fill their time, and make the organisation less effective.
|
| Why is that?
|
| I genuinely want to know because if I ever get the opportunity to
| help shape an organisation, I would want technically active
| management. I think it's critical for success.
| analog31 wrote:
| For years I've struggled to come up with a "theory of the firm"
| that's intellectually satisfying but not cynical. Why do we have
| management? I've only been able to come up with a couple of
| hypotheses:
|
| 1. Principal-agent problem. Who do the employees work for? Self
| interest. The customers? Self interest. Suppliers? Self interest.
| The company has to figure out how to reconcile the self interest
| of individual participants with the interest of the company. If
| you let everybody do whatever they want with no repercussions,
| they will (figuratively speaking) walk away with anything that
| isn't nailed down. So far the only way we know how to prevent
| this is to assign humans to guard the interest of the business.
|
| 2. Failure mode. John Gall claimed that all sufficiently complex
| systems operate in failure mode 100% of the time. What he meant
| was that some or all of the controls have been bypassed, and the
| system is being operated manually. Humans are (at least for now)
| uniquely capable of functioning in systems that are in failure
| mode, e.g., by breaking the rules when necessary. This is why I
| doubt that management can be automated.
|
| Now, _while_ managers are doing both of those things, perhaps
| even just instinctively, they can be doing good and productive
| things. I 'm actually quite happy with my own boss.
| xyzzy123 wrote:
| Because control systems are only sometimes a good replacement
| for human relationships (even formal / limited ones, such as
| you find at work).
|
| There are natural scaling limits around this.
| theevilsharpie wrote:
| > So far the only way we know how to prevent this is to assign
| humans to guard the interest of the business.
|
| Managers very much work in their own self interest, along with
| the rest of us.
|
| In an interview, an engineer might be asked something like,
| "how many nodes did you manager/how many lines of code/how many
| microservices/etc.," as a way of gauging their level of skill
| and expertise. There is an implicit understanding -- on both
| sides -- that the complexity of the systems the engineer dealt
| is directly correlated with their expertise and talent, even if
| that kind of proxy is irrational when you really think about
| it.
|
| Managers deal the same thing, except their questions are more
| along the lines of, "how many people reported to you/how big
| was you budget/etc."
|
| In fact, I'd argue that self-interest is even worse on the
| management side, because the career stakes are so much higher.
| I have seen, on several occasions, top management commit to a
| strategy that was objectively failing with no practical path to
| success, because admitting that the strategy had failed would
| have gotten them fired by the board. It can be extremely
| catastrophic to the company when it enters that kind of failure
| mode.
| namaria wrote:
| Why are you melding agency theory with pop science systems
| theory to replace sound economics (transaction cost theory of
| the firm)? I think you'd like to read Coase
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nature_of_the_Firm)
| kqr wrote:
| 1 is not a particularly good explanation in my mind for two
| reasons:
|
| (a) people are great at working not in their own interest,
| together, on something greater than themselves. In fact, I've
| observed a negative correlation between this and management, in
| that the spirit of being "in it together for the greater good"
| seems to be weakened in organisations with more management.
|
| (b) if people inherently only work out of self interest, then
| so would managers and the whole thing would break down anyway.
| sinenomine wrote:
| A very underrated take. Consider how the
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional%E2%80%93manageria...
| gets a very privileged treatment by the media and what this says
| about our society.
|
| There should be no sinecures if we strive for fairness.
| [deleted]
| AdilZtn wrote:
| How did we go from 10 employees for 1 manager to 4.7:1?
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| parkinson's law.
|
| no, really, this is fully laid out in his essays from the
| 1950s.
|
| If you have not read them, you should. They are easy and
| insightful.
| AdilZtn wrote:
| I've read the Wikipedia page, that's insightful! I'll read
| the book, thank you.
| neonate wrote:
| http://web.archive.org/web/20230107180139/https://hbr.org/20...
|
| https://archive.ph/HnGhE
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