One of the most serious problems with modern “management” is that the incentives are all wrong. Imagine that I hire a programmer and pay him by the line of code. This idea has been so thoroughly debunked that it is nearly impossible to write out the consequences without sounding cliché. Yet it happens all the time: Companies promote “Architects” who are evaluated by the weight of their “architecture.” The result is stultifying and demoralizing. The architect does not work to facilitate the programmer’s work, he works to produce evidence of his contribution in the form of frameworks, standards, and software process.
So, how are most managers evaluated? By the amount of “managing” they do, as measured by the amount of process they impose on their team. Evaluating a manager by the amount of managing they do is exactly the same thing as evaluating a programmer by the amount of code they write. And it produces results like you describe, where the manager works to produce evidence of their management in the form of processes and decisions from the top down, rather than facilitating the work actually being done.
Hmmm, maybe a bit of an overgeneralization? Or a US-thing? I’ve never seen a manager being rewarded for the amount of “process” they impose on their team. I’m sure there are many bad managers, but it’s also somewhat of a cliché for programmers to blame management for the parts of the work they don’t like.
-raganwald, HN, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2423236
Hmmm, maybe a bit of an overgeneralization? Or a US-thing? I’ve never seen a manager being rewarded for the amount of “process” they impose on their team. I’m sure there are many bad managers, but it’s also somewhat of a cliché for programmers to blame management for the parts of the work they don’t like.
I have, and I do not (usually) reside in the US.
It also produces comic strips. So it’s not all bad.
Like broken windows are not all bad.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window