> wait until you hear about managers.
You're assuming that I've never really worked anywhere with managers, good or otherwise.
> Most managers don't document anything
yup, and they are insufferable dicks for not doing it. But, in big companies you need to have presence, so managers that are successful tend to have a documented paper trail of "their" successes. Whether its useful documentation is very much another matter.
> Most managers out there are redundant and have no idea about what leadership is.
There are two issues here, lets do leadership first. Yes, leadership is not taught properly, and that annoys me greatly. Leadership can be taught, and its not to challenging to do. But on the flip side, leadership isn't just about keeping people happy, its about taking hard decisions and getting people to understand what they need to do.
Again, there are lots of bad examples out there.
Now as for redundant, if that was really the case, and that most manager are redundant, then surely they are ripe for "cost savings"? After all capitalism is mostly ruthless when it comes to staff costs.
The problem is that good managers increase productivity. However what "good" is can depend on where you sit on the hierarchy. If your CEO/CTO only talks to managers, then your manager controls the information flow. this is a company culture thing, and is closely coupled to how managers are expected react.
> The reason hackathons produce amazing results is because[..]
...of exposure bias. There are loads of ideas in hackathons, and lots of them are shite. But! the ones you remember are good, thus there appears to be a great signal to noise ratio. I've organised and participated in loads, they are good fun. But you can't run a company permanently in hackathon mode.