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Comment by exe34 | Hacker News Reader

I had this hypothesis back in 2014 that all the communications from higher level managers could be replaced by a markov chain, because it was just variations on the same themes ("improve conditions", "make it easier to do....", "<generic positive words that don't translate to actual actions or measurable improvements>".

I never saw LLMs coming.

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I have a friend who works a high-level management position, who told me that as long as results are delivered, management is doing their jobs 'by definition'. So if a manager is either horribly abusive or totally incompetent and his subordinates make up for it in some way, that the result is at least acceptable, nothing bad can happen to said manager, at least officially.

Only failure is actionable, in which case said managers will make a good effort to shift blame.

So if your boss is an idiot and an a-hole, and you have to work twice as hard because of it, you are enabling the bad working conditions he's subjecting you to.

Thankfully my boss is actually great (he doesn't know me on here), and even the suits know enough to just leave us to get on with it while they play musical chairs.

"You don't work for a company; you work for a boss."

I didn't realize this until far too late.

I already told my boss, if he leaves, I'm following him wherever he goes.

Yank on that thread harder, developers and engineers are not safe just because they rely on different patterns.

But once you've toppled the house of knowledge work, you'll find you can rebuild it easily because the foundation still exists, and it's the thing missing in this analysis; judgement.

Optimal judgement is worth a premium... in some cases. In other cases, it's sufficient to merely keep trundling. Numerically more companies are boring than exciting.

MBAs are just components, and the cost of that component just went down.

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