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I agree managers often seem like useless morons.
But it's easy to say they could be removed. They are sometimes a necessary shield to make sure devs can dev.
Cause stakeholders and finance are even more moronic.
I had a manager who I thought was useless and just let all the insane demands from stakeholders pass down to devs. When I saw their schedule and slack convod I noticed they had meetings with finance about cutbacks - project X would be cancelled unless finished before some date or budget. And they spent hours on meetings about how to handle that in a way that didn't ruin project Y.
If a lead dev replaced our manager they wouldn't be able to dev anymore - it would be meetings all day. -
Yeah I noticed the same with tickets (but not entirely agrred on the entire rant). Luckily we as a team had decided to bounce back any ticket that was not correctly processed but deemed important by the higher ups after they stated that it's important that the process flow is correctly used.
Somehow they actually listened o.o
Previous job: not so lucky but also not so big a company that you have a big hierarchy...
I’ve now discovered that management actually decides for themselves what software engineering is. 🧐
It is getting increasingly common that in different architectural groups the decision has already been made… by management…without actually passing through our review… as a little more senior blokes and gals.
Not even a discussion? On the fit?
That leads me to the conclusion, since I consider the management (at least the two or three closest layers) are morons, good at talking but not really knowing anything about what we do (we kind of take stuff and make other stuff from it by using energy and other stuff in HUGE FUCKING FACILITIES AROUND THE PLANET), that even they did not make the decision. It was forced upon them. They did not decide either! Because they can’t! Because they are idiots all of them!
I have not investigated this issue but this is the logical conclusion. Or not.
Recently, for instance, decisions were made to route information flows by some tech. Some new tech. At some place in our eco-system. At a certain time. And, if we were to have reviewed this initiative in our process we would have said:
”Well, I hear you! But we are not going to do that right now because WE ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING HUGE GLOBAL PROJECT THAT CHANGES PRETTY MUCH FUCKING EVERYTHING AND WE CAN NOT JUST IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING EXECUTION PROCESS OF THE PROJECT CHANGE THE FOUNDATIONS OF MESSAGE ROUTING BECAUSE WE LACK THE NUMBER OF HUMANS TO DO THE FUCKING JOB. So, we need to take a look at this and to get a better understanding when we can make this happen.”
What is the point of having this step in our organization if it is just pass-through? What is the point? Meetings? Just having meetings? Spending time mastering the organizational skill of administrating meetings? Feeling important? Using big words (holistic being my favourite)?
Below, juniors devs are being hired doing stupid stuff that does not need doing. For months and months.
I believe now that half of the dev staff does not need to be there and three quarters of the team, service, delivery (etc) managers are unnecessary. I mean, the good juniors are going to change jobs soon either way and we are stuck in this vicious cycle where we are not being allowed to be innovative in software engineering. Stability is of the essence here but the rate of our releases are just silly slow. I would say that we are far, far away from any track that leads us to where we want to be. Agile. Innovative. Close to business. Learning. Teaching. Faster. Stability despite response to implementing changing business needs.
And then there are the consultants…
*sigh*
rant