> To get the extra work done, Jones and his crew secretly shaved a couple weeks off other, easier films and faked their time cards. It was something they did on occasion. (The mysterious price increases angered the managers, Jones said, but they were “not very bright” and didn’t figure out the trick.)
How many companies work just because the average worker is the one making it work? In my experience a lot of them.
It is sad that the money always accumulates at the top even when so often that same people at the top are an impediment for doing better work.
I had a conversation with an engineering manager a few years ago. He told me his daily job was to visit each engineer report, and ask them what they were working on. Then he'd gently guide them back to what they were supposed to be working on.
A business has limited resources, and somebody has to decide which hill they're going to conquer.
The reason managers make more is because their decisions can make more / lose more money than the workers.
BTW, in every company I've worked for, all of the workers thought they were smarter than the manager (including yours truly). The funny part would be when one would be promoted into management, and instantly became incompetent in the estimation of the other workers.
>The funny part would be when one would be promoted into management, and instantly became incompetent in the estimation of the other workers.
This isn't such an unexpected outcome. Junior & senior dev roles rarely prepare staff for the type of meta responsibility that's involved in managerial work, and there's almost no exposure to the majority of your manager's duties. It's typical that the only exposure a non-manager gets to their manager's role is a 20 daily minute standup, some tickets shuffling around a Jira board, and a fortnightly 30-45 minute catch up. Then when your mastery of .NET/python/K8s/whatever is sufficiently well established, the business takes that as evidence that you'll be an adequate manager of humans, and promotes you with little additional training, and you often stop doing hands-on dev work.
Meanwhile, if you're a junior staff member at a supermarket, you're doing managerial-type work daily, and throughout your time, you get exposure to low-stakes managerial responsibility. You work alongside your manager for 9-12 hours/day, and you see pretty much everything they do. Over time, you're given more and more of the meta-managerial work, and when you finally get promoted, it's because both you and the business already have evidence that you can do the managerial work. You then continue stacking shelves 9-12 hours per day, as a manager.
I think there's something the software industry could learn from the supermarket industry's approach. They have a much smoother gradient between non-manager and manager.
Frieren · · focus · HN ↗
How many companies work just because the average worker is the one making it work? In my experience a lot of them.
It is sad that the money always accumulates at the top even when so often that same people at the top are an impediment for doing better work.
WalterBright · · focus · HN ↗
A business has limited resources, and somebody has to decide which hill they're going to conquer.
The reason managers make more is because their decisions can make more / lose more money than the workers.
BTW, in every company I've worked for, all of the workers thought they were smarter than the manager (including yours truly). The funny part would be when one would be promoted into management, and instantly became incompetent in the estimation of the other workers.
OtherShrezzing · · focus · HN ↗
This isn't such an unexpected outcome. Junior & senior dev roles rarely prepare staff for the type of meta responsibility that's involved in managerial work, and there's almost no exposure to the majority of your manager's duties. It's typical that the only exposure a non-manager gets to their manager's role is a 20 daily minute standup, some tickets shuffling around a Jira board, and a fortnightly 30-45 minute catch up. Then when your mastery of .NET/python/K8s/whatever is sufficiently well established, the business takes that as evidence that you'll be an adequate manager of humans, and promotes you with little additional training, and you often stop doing hands-on dev work.
Meanwhile, if you're a junior staff member at a supermarket, you're doing managerial-type work daily, and throughout your time, you get exposure to low-stakes managerial responsibility. You work alongside your manager for 9-12 hours/day, and you see pretty much everything they do. Over time, you're given more and more of the meta-managerial work, and when you finally get promoted, it's because both you and the business already have evidence that you can do the managerial work. You then continue stacking shelves 9-12 hours per day, as a manager.
I think there's something the software industry could learn from the supermarket industry's approach. They have a much smoother gradient between non-manager and manager.