Comment by arca_vorago | Hacker News Reader

Comment by arca_vorago | Hacker News Reader

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I agree but I don't think it's fair to put it all on the incompetence of devs/engineers... in many cases it's mismanagement and the real problem is devs/engineers don't know how to talk to management to get to them see why $badpractice is bad. So because the devs don't have MBA's, and the MBA's don't talk well to technicals there is a huge culture gap in the average fortune 1000 workplace. I've seen the inside of companies where the cost cutting was so excessive the infrastructure was near crumbling... just due to sheer mismanagement. You want to know how many stories I've heard about a sysadmin requesting horizontal and structured cabling done by professionals and been denied? How many stories about IT departments not even having an actual budget and only getting approve/deny requests? So half of the infrastructure around companies is just cobbled together by some underpayed one man miracle show who if he is super lucky gets a full time t1 assist.

At the end of the day, the buck should stop somewhere... and it does. With management.

In the meantime, I think it's time for sysadmins/engineers/devs to start getting MBA's and going for CIO/CTO positions and start to push a shift.

"in many cases it's mismanagement and the real problem is devs/engineers don't know how to talk to management to get to them see why $badpractice is bad."

I would say that's still management incompetence. They're paying all this money for experts in the field, and they still want to disregard their opinions.

In my experiences, non-technical managers tend not to trust software engineers. This is partly due to a lack of true professional credential for software developers and a lack of their own technical chops to call out any bullshit.

To put it simply, they don't feel comfortable saying: "Well... you're the Doctor".

>They're paying all this money for experts in the field, and they still want to disregard their opinions.

Nope - they've gotten burned by being talked down to like the cliche mechanic telling a girl her SUV's hammenframas needs to be replaced, and it's $1600.

If you as a software developer cannot speak coherent English sentences (with a small handful of management jargon) to management without devolving into technical shorthand, you are a failure.

Not management.

You.

You have to explain what is going on in a manner your audience can understand.

You should not expect managers to be technical (they might be (and good for you if they are)) - they're accomplishing a different task from you and need solid, understandable, actionable data to take to their management and customers.

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