Comment by benihana | Hacker News Reader

Comment by benihana | Hacker News Reader

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>Management has its place, but in most companies it's a class of intermediate extortionist thugs who keep talent down: you support my career goals, or you're gone yesterday. Only the most progressive companies (Valve, Github) trust engineers to work directly for the company. No wonder our industry is so fucked.

Wow. In three sentences you likened management to the mafia, said they were only concerned about themselves, complained about lack of trust towards engineers, then said our industry is fucked, all without a hint of irony. It sounds like you want everyone to trust you for your genius talent but you don't feel you should have to extend any trust the other way. That's now how trust or human interaction works, and the whole statement makes you come off like an immature prima donna. You're making us look bad and I'm almost embarrassed to share the same job title as you.

I take it you've never met Michael Church. He compared Google management to terrorists that fly planes into buildings not too long ago.

All of his comments come with a deep disdain for management and a grand philosophy on programming in the abstract. At least the chip on his shoulder for Google wasn't around for this comment.

Let me ask you something, why do you think the person in question brought up Valve and Github as examples when likening management to the mafia?

I see management more like political parties than mafia. But they are more or less the same I guess :-).

Most companies give managers the ability to be extortionists if they want to be. That doesn't mean that all managers go black hat. Many do not.

I've seen companies where 90% of the managers were decent people, and companies where zero percent were decent people. It seems to average about 70, but that bad 30 percent can do a lot of harm.

In my experience, managers are like programmers. Good managers can be really effective. Most are semi effective. Some are downright harmful. For the most part though companies seem to have limited ability to tell which is which. I went through a major re-org over year ago. Just from the management switch my stress level went down by a factor of 10.

the whole statement makes you come off like an immature prima donna

==Takes one to know one?

Without a hint of irony.

Considering pattern recognition is one of the supremely human qualities, why would it be necessary to 'be one' to 'know one'? Why not just recognise one?

I think I just did...

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