Comment by q7xvh97o2pDhNrh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by q7xvh97o2pDhNrh | Hacker News Reader

q7xvh97o2pDhNrh

I clicked through to the linked McKinsey article [1] to see what all the hubbub was about, and I found this gem:

> For example, one company found that its most talented developers were spending excessive time on noncoding activities such as design sessions or managing interdependencies across teams. In response, the company changed its operating model and clarified roles and responsibilities to enable those highest-value developers to do what they do best: code.

The rest of the article is equally hare-brained. It's a sort of clueless management-consultant thinking that believes software engineers should be furiously typing all the time, and it entirely fails to understand that actual software engineering is about solving business problems.

Stuff like this really makes me wish I'd optimized for $$$ earlier in my career, and I only hope I can retire before this kind of absurd thinking spreads into real technology companies.

[1]: https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/technology-media-and-tel...

EDIT: Changed "MBA thinking" to "management-consultant thinking," in response to fair feedback below.

> It's a sort of clueless MBA thinking that believes software engineers should be furiously typing all the time

(Your point is good, but the dig against MBAs is unnecessary and I wish it was less acceptable here on HN. It wouldn't be ok to make fun of people with Sociology degrees or History degrees here, but jokes about MBAs get a pass. We really should be better than that, but I realize I'm swimming against the current on this one.)

That aside, I have found a lot of clueless folks in tech leadership have that "furiously typing" misconception, as if developers are only productive when their fingertips are pounding keys. I once worked with a CEO who refused to set aside time in the schedule for things like setting up source control and a bug tracker, because he believed that developers should be furiously typing code in at all times.

If sociology or history degrees doled out management positions the way MBAs somehow do I guarantee you they would be met with derision. It’s like making fun of politicians, it happens because they are often inappropriately given power.

What is the problem with criticism "mba thinking"? It's a legit complaint against the kind of naive "efficiency" analyses and measures that happen, and is completely justified. I have an MBA, I certainly don't find it offensive, I think the criticism is apt.

The usual art student tropes are more offensive because they are about people in a chosen degree being dumb (incidentally, when I did engineering all the hardcore "haha artsies are so dumb" engineers failed out after first year). That's not the same as criticizing a specific flaw in their education. If there's some big blind spot the average sociology degree leaves, that should be fair game.

MBA programs have (generally) moved past Taylorism. Apparently McKinsey not so much.

I'm a software dev with an MBA, and yes, my classmates were very much "our job as managers is to make the minions work harder" [0] so I'm equally OK with the MBA slur.

I struggle trying to educate people that the best way of measuring developer productivity is measuring outcomes, and that a developer going for a walk in the park is a great thing for them to do.

[0] In Australia, where management is generally still locked into 1950's-style authoritarianism. YMMV.

It’s such a hilarious misdirection, that mentality. Finding ways for every employee to work less is the definition of efficiency and profit.

How is that being better? There’s a pattern of management coming out of business schools that’s clearly not working because at the end of the day, you have managers trying to micro not macro manage highly skilled workers working in areas they don’t understand well. The result is hilarious. We’re supposed to suppress that? To be better? Is laughing bad now?

History and sociology are respectable academic disciplines.

My respect in fields is directly proportional to relevant maths used.

How do physics and math stack against each other?

Lately physics has been providing seed ideas for mathematicians to explore them rigorously. e.g. mirror symmetry and amplituhedron.

I’ll join the current with you. I have an MBA. I write code. It’s an unfair trope. I understand the stereotype I guess I just haven’t experienced it so yeah..but I understand the vitriol against McKinsey in particular.

> the dig against MBAs is unnecessary

You're right. Ironically, I've seriously considered getting an MBA myself.

I changed it to "management-consultant thinking," which feels much more fair, given we are ripping on a McKinsey article in the first place. :) Thanks for the note.

Seems like criticism to "clueless MBA thinking" in the software engineering context.

99% of MBA's are certainly clueless about SWE because they never did SWE professionally.

It didn't seem to me like a criticism of MBA's fundamentally speaking.

> 99% of MBA's are certainly clueless about SWE because they never did SWE professionally

Anecdotally, most of the MBAs I know are former coders. The last decade of Silicon Valley thinking it can reinvent commerce from first principles has massively increased the value and leverage of former coders with MBAs.

Anecdotally, I worked with several brilliant engineers who have MBAs. Folks who are extremely technical and can go deep in their fields of expertise, yet they see the bigger picture in terms of business outcomes, and have tools in their toolbox to navigate ambiguity, mitigate escalating complexity, influence senior stakeholders (technical or not), etc.

Of course an MBA is not the only way of acquiring those skills, but it is certainly an effective way. It can be incredibly powerful to someone with already strong technical skills. So I'd agree with OP that this trope is unwarranted and out of touch with reality.

edit: I like OP's edit, replacing "MBA" with "management-consulting thinking". Lots of old school consulting companies come up with recommendations for areas that they have no domain expertise. While it may look good on paper, it's a recipe for disaster, like the original article describes.

I'd agree with that. I mean (usually?) most people are referring to the person straight from high school to college to MBA to management/executive/consultant without having worked a day in their life, but still.

Does grate on me, though I might be biased, having worked 20 years in IT progressing upwards, and now looking at an MBA to round out my formal business education for further advancement.

entirely fails to understand that actual software engineering is about solving business problems

The irredeemable cynic might wonder if this is because they see themselves as the only ones who should be solving business problems.

Which is funny, because they aren’t very good at it.

Charitably, I guess they might've meant something different with that quote (say, they were referring to people who were only good at coding, and the roles for design and cross-team coordination were covered better by different people).

But they keep coming across poorly on that metrics project.

I'm imagining their clients optimizing their operations, by bringing in management consultants, to tell them that the earlier management consultants need to be enabled to do what they do best: stay the heck away from sabotaging software development organizations.

> In response, the company changed its operating model and clarified roles and responsibilities to enable those highest-value developers to do what they do best: code.

Interestingly this is my distaste when I read pro remote-work posts about undisturbed focused time to do "the work".

I'm not saying it is intended or correct, but it is the implication I take from it, and I feel it undersells what engineers do

There is a time and a place for every purpose. Unfortunately, on site work conditions usually add a lot of friction to getting focused work done. Being potentially more optimal for collaboration work does not make up for this.

So, yes, you may hear about the sudden ability of people to get work done at a level they could not do when on site, and so they are happy about this aspect of remote.

It's been a couple of years since we went remote with our teams, and it has been a very positive experience for both collaboration and focus. We found that collaboration worked a lot better when it was actually intentional. It made the result of the collaboration more high value and strategic.

If you are depending on people accidentally bumping into one another for collaboration to occur, then you are being very poorly led.

Relatedly I have always pondered the value of most consultancy work from the big firms. Maybe this is an unfair attack but it always felt like lots of PowerPoints and not much substance. I can see bringing a consultant in that specializes in maybe a specific manufacturing process or some other type of physical process but have always had trouble seeing the value in the other type of process change consultancy.

I wonder if McKinsey just skipped over the part where they hired/assigned specific people for design, inter-team coordination and code monkeying or if they actually decided that "design sessions or managing interdependencies across teams" should not be done.

And maybe the corporate $$$ optimization means real technology company will avoid this.

> it entirely fails to understand that actual software engineering is about solving business problems

So do most HN discussions about this. Look at how many people will say, “I’d rather be coding than in this meeting…”

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