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Comment by democracy | Hacker News Reader

You stay in the company long enough and you write less code and spend more time managing people and processes as now you own your projects as the most knowledgable person for these projects.

You start hating it (I did) and look for a pure programming role. But you are not in your twenties any more and you have to align with and follow someone else's designs and decisions and you can't since you are experienced and know more and you have to push back and argue and end up going to lead/architect role again and writing less code again.

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George Hotz once mentioned in an [1] interview; Managing people just another abstraction in making software. You can think of people kind of like an IDE that you can use to create things... I thought it was an interesting way to view management.

[1] https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2018...

Yeah my boss certainly sees me and my colleague as a technical problem solving API: he says “now that I have told you what the problem, it is no longer my problem, and I don’t want an update unless it’s the solution.”

I think this is sort of ok at a high competence level, but fails when the people you work with are less experienced. One could say the same of an IDE I suppose..

At a low competence level, this leads to non-solutions that still have to be used because of deadlines.

I would argue that the how is up to the team and it is the boss/managers level to ensure the right competencies are present in the team. Having the boss join the team is not sustainable.

This is probably a very efficient mentality, but I find it equally depressing.

> you have to push back and argue

no, you don't.

Exactly. Mistakes need to be made over and over again. Do not try to stop this force.

Then what is the point? Are you just there to gather your paycheck?

I mean, to an extend, yes. But you need to be able to excert some positive effect.

big companies do not innovate. (counter examples welcome!) unless you’re in a 1-20 person startup, your impact is -5% to +5% as a division. Essentially you’re stroking egos: yours or management’s. best to choose the latter and try your hand at changing the world in after-work projects.

Funny how the uncomfortable truths get downvotes.

Would like to see those counter examples people seemingly have.

Xerox.

Arpa / Darpa.

3M.

AT&T / Bell labs.

Google (maps, Borg, bigtsble, etc)

Amazon (AWS, FBA)

Apple (iPhone, iPad, iPod)

I would argue these are the exceptions that prove the rule. They all have demonstrable leaders that made this happen. Xerox is done, as is AT&T, as those leaders are long gone. Sony is another one that lost their leader and their magic.

I would argue Apple is on this route now as we are only now seeing the impact of losing Jobs.

Are small companies immune to losing their leader and their way? Or is it just that we don't notice because there are so many small companies?

As has been seen over the last two decades, small companies can’t “innovate at scale” when it comes to hardware. The logistics, supply chain management, etc. makes it almost impossible. Look no further than the smart phone market.

Well at least innovate and survive in the mass market.

Big companies always innovate but take little risk.

That new smell for dove soap. The thicker papertowl bounce came out with are all examples of innovations.

Changing the world.. that's a dangerous idea companies want no part of.

Treating jobs as “just a paycheck” is normal and healthy.

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