Comment by Karrot_Kream | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Karrot_Kream | Hacker News Reader

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> I don't think this theory makes much sense when you examine it. But it's excellent at justifying a caste system, one where all workers are controlled by wise managers, and where there's a stable hierarchy of executives above that. I note that the hierarchy established is basically equivalent to those of feudalism. It also has the handy property of justifying high compensation for managers and executives; since workers are cogs and higher-ups do the important thinking, all gains should flow upward.

Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. I agree that metricising performance is only as good as your metrics, and in my personal opinion, metricising knowledge work is a fool's errand (too many variables to accurately capture performance). That is _separate_ from having managers though. Managers can often triage work effectively, help engineers unblock their work, help identify people in the org that contain the domain knowledge necessary to help one of their direct reports, etc etc.

I think the whole urge to track velocity and points and stupid things like that to be absolutely dumb, though. Also I'm an IC and am coming up to the point in my career where I have to figure out a way to not be pushed into management.

I'm not opposed to managers. I am one, after all. But I don't think "management" is a universal skill. I think somebody who manages developers should probably be a developer. I think somebody who manages doctors should be a doctor. And I think there's a lot of merit in non-hierarchical systems, like the way doctors and lawyers are mainly accountable to professional organizations.

I agree that metricising knowledge work is a mistake. But I think it's also true for other kinds of work. In colleges I worked in a factory and there was no end of trouble that came from managing via metrics.

> I think somebody who manages doctors should be a doctor.

i could be wrong, but i believe in 'real' professions like medicine and law, there's some kind of board/bar rule that prohibits being managed by someone who never had the actual job they're managing. any one know if that's accurate?

For a professional engineer's license, you have to demonstrate competence and have 4 letters of recommendation from PEs who have either managed you directly, or have overseen your work. So there is not a requirement that you (as a budding prospective PE) may never work for someone who isn't a PE, however it does limit your ability to achieve your own license. Therefore, there is a desire from the younger engineers to seek out PEs to work under.

There isn't in law, but, in most (maybe all?) US jurisdictions, only a lawyer can own a law firm.

I find physicians like the idea of working for doctors, and hospitals have shrewdly supported the role of 'chief medical officer", while keeping financial controls with the other C level officers. The Children's Hospital in San Diego is famously "Rady's" because the physicians ran it into the ground and the Rafy family bailed it out on condition they accept professional management practices. Not coincidentally, the Rady family also funded the the UCSD Rady School of Management. Also not coincidentally, many health care workers loathe working there, generally attributing this to a belief that management is more interested in the bottom line than patient outcomes, and this leads to a general distrust of Management.

Agreed. The big problem in academia is that when you don't trust academics you need administration to provide oversight. Administration is now a huge portion of the cost of university education. Not research, admin.

To be fair, academics can also be childish, vindictive, sexist. There is also a real problem of hiring one's friends and students. BUT inter-organizational competition helps to some extent with these problems. Regardless, they justify administration and associated costs.

Managers, CEOs, police officers, border agents, and presidents can also be childish, vindictive, and sexist - but they're rarely subject to similar oversight.

There's something disturbingly paternal about the idea that unusually clever and/or creative people can't be trusted to act like adults and therefore need adult supervision from people with authority over them.

Seems you both agree but are talking about modern management practices vs the concept of having someone "manage". The workplace class of "Management" is much more than just the act of managing you describe.

What you describe is how I've seen software dev management properly work, managers are a support structure for the workers, like Admin. They have important and useful skills, but don't get the position of metaphorical aristocracy.

When you have MBA style dated general management they operate by putting the devs subordinate to their management "expertise" and then they don't "triage work effectively, help engineers unblock their work, help identify people in the org that contain the domain knowledge necessary to help one of their direct reports, etc etc." because it's not really in their interest to do so.

It's not just incentives either, there is a huge cultural component, which is why it's so easy to parody "tech management" and have the caricature be recognizable around the world.

What is an IC? I think it should mean something like senior engineer but I've only seen this acronym in the context of intelligent community

Internal Consultant?

Intestinal Combustion?

Individual Contributor (i.e. not a manager). It's a standard term at Microsoft, but I don't know how widely it's used elsewhere.

Individual Contributor, if I'm not mistaken

You're right. Thanks and fixed.

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