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Comment by rsanheim | Hacker News Reader

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rsanheim·

Regarding your first insight one of my favorite quotes came to mind:

"The Second Law of Consulting: No matter how it looks at first, it's always a people problem."

- Gerald Weinberg - The Secrets of Consulting

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An especially painful truth in software. Years back I heard a talk by Kent Beck, one of the originators of Test-Driven Development and Extreme Programming. In response to some audience question, he said, "I got into programming because I didn't like dealing with people, and now I'm a @#$&% family therapist for software teams." That comes back to me often.

Family therapist, for a family of people that don't deal well with other people.

Maybe a psychology degree would be a better background to pull engineering managers from.

Psychologists don't make for good relationships. They break their own rules and ethics as much as anyone else.

Believable relationships are scarce in the workplace.

Management study programs tend to include quite a few psychology-related courses, because these skills are indeed quite useful in practice.

You're actually better off with therapy (sorry coaching) than academic psychology. Source: have a PhD in psychology, currently doing therapy.

heh and every therapist i've ever known has their own therapist helping them through their own issues.

Thank you for that reference. I'd never heard of the secrets of consulting. Went and read a summary, it's very fascinating

Which is precisely why a lot of problems never seem to go away.

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