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Comment by raincom | Hacker News Reader

Figuring out "bad management" is really a hard problem. The same problem exists in the government bureaucracies too.

"Management is that for which there is no algorithm. If there's an algorithm, it's administration." (Maurice Wilkes, IIRC)

It may be, but I've also found that very few companies try. Usually because bad management is in charge.

Incredibly hard. If there were some formula and it was really easy to just keep "the good ones", then every company would only have great managers. It's simply not that easy at scale.

Listen to yourself. It's management's job to manage people. Some of those people are going to be managers. So management can't police themselves apparently?

I don't buy it.

Correct. It's fundamentally a problem that cannot be completely solved. People are too messy.

Then managers are only a salary line -- one that can go away apparently.

Not being completely solvable doesn't mean that giving up entirely is a better option.

We don't stop all crime, but that doesn't mean we stop funding all police and jails.

Ask tech leads who consistently deliver value who's good one and who's not – you'll get pretty accurate picture.

If there's a clique or patronage, simply asking may not get you the real picture.

It's amazing how many smart people here think this is just a trivial problem that they can solve for big tech if big tech would only listen.

This is a fundamental human organization problem that many countless organizations of people have failed to perform optimally since people have started organizing into groups.

Listen to yourself. That's what management is supposed to do: manage people -- including other managers. You can't both accept and deny responsibility in the same breath.

If you truly believe that, then this is cognitive dissonance in it's highest form.

There's what you imagine and what you can see with your own eyes in reality.

Amazon, with its billions and hoards of smart people, still ended up in a situation where they find themselves in excess of 14,000 employees.

It means that there's no simple formula and perhaps once in a while, orgs just need to clear the slate and see where the pain points are and build up once again.

Yes and the best people to ask who to trim are tech leads with track record of consistently delivering value.

Their field of view spans from little guys at the bottom of the chain, through the essence of working product up to at least two levels of management.

And they do have good judgement, if they didn't they wouldn't be able to consistently deliver value in the past.

All organizations. Nonprofits, militaries, religious orders, everything.

And anyone who tells you otherwise is either ignorant or lying.

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