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Comment by michaelochurch | Hacker News Reader

I could go to MBA school, become a McKinsey-type douchebag, and join the top VC firms at high levels. I'm 40 IQ points smarter than them.

But I don't. Instead, I'm studying Haskell. On a Sunday night. Including all the random stuff I read just because I'm passionate about technology, I probably work 70 hours per week. (Much of that's self-directed and career-oriented; working more than 30-40 without a career payoff is a chump's game.)

Why is this? Why do I side with the team (technologists, as opposed to douchebags) that seems to be losing? Because I think the good guys are going to win, and that actual technical knowledge is going to become an important asset again. It might be 10 or 20 years from now, but I think it will happen.

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I'm sure you're a great guy and just coming across negatively in this one comment, but you sound less pleasant than the vast majority of McKinsey people I've ever met. It's a bit odd in a comment complaining about consulting douchebags.

I'm honest about what I am. I don't live to screw people over, in the way that management consultants do. (They invented the stack-ranking practices that destroyed a great number of technology companies, and that are directly responsible for the Enron calamity.) I'm also not trying to maximize my Niceness Score. The world is on fire and I'm not afraid if other people get soaked in the process of saving the damn thing.

I'm an engineer, and I have several friends who are or were management consultants. None of the ones I met "lived to screw people over".

None of the management consultants I know live to screw people over either.

It's worth noting, however, that many of them also believe that the world is on fire and they're not afraid if other people get soaked in the process of saving the damn thing. It's just that their solutions - like stack ranking, restructurings, org structures, etc. - tend to soak engineers like you, while your solutions - like open allocation or programmer's unions - tend to soak managers and consultants like them.

"It's just that their solutions - like stack ranking, restructurings, org structures, etc. - tend to soak engineers like you, while your solutions - like open allocation or programmer's unions - tend to soak managers and consultants like them."

Spot on! The reason for the angst is that typically management and consultants call the shots and the software developers are ignored.

It is incredibly frustrating when your company pulls in consultants, who have spent all of a week studying up on your company and industry, after ignoring staff who have been pointing out the key problems for months.

Savvy consultants make a business model out of this: interview the line workers to figure out what the actual problems are, and then repeat their recommendations back to management. The line workers get listened to, the managers get solutions, and the consultants get paid. It's basically trust arbitrage, exploiting an inefficiency in manager's decision-making to turn superficial characteristics into money with very little effort required.

Anyways, the solution isn't to complain. It's to become CEO, or management, or wherever the decision-making power rests, and then listen better than average executive does. This is behind the "software is eating the world" thesis and many of the fortunes that have been made in the last 20 years; the extreme cluelessness of decision-makers has created a number of exploitable market opportunities that you can attack with persistence and better information.

"Anyways, the solution isn't to complain."

I strongly support the michaelochurch's of the industry because if we actually saw the kind of changes they speak of on a large scale we would be decades ahead technologically and the vast majority of people would be better off.

However, people who complain "in the small" and do nothing about it are perpetuating the existing system.

E.g. If you know key decisions are made outside of and before meetings then work within that system to get what you want.

Or if people get hired based on who they know then spend a little bit of time each month networking. The number of chumps I know who complain about this but never network is insane.

Or if you have expert knowledge of a critical legacy system then make sure you are compensated appropriately. $500k/year is nothing compared to the cost of replacing you in the short term (4-5 years). Or you could leverage your expertise into a decent management role.

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