

How I Learned to Love Middle Managers - __
http://www.inc.com/magazine/20080901/how-hard-could-it-be-how-i-learned-to-love-middle-managers.html

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cubicle67
> Published September 2008

I'm still stuck in August :(

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graywh
Welcome to magazine publishing. If the magazine comes out in August and gets
an August date, come Septermber 1st no one buys it because it's an old issue.
At least, that's what the publishers think.

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cschneid
The explanation I always heard was that the date was the pull date. So
NewsWeek was always dated as the day the next issue would come out. For
monthly magazines, it's the month that the next issue will come out in.

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graywh
That makes sense.

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biohacker42
I hate to throw Agile buzzwords around but:

The Scrum master's job is to remove obstacles from the team's path. There's no
telling people what to do, just listening to them at regular team meeting and
helping solve what ever problems they come up with.

The scrum master does not have to be a manager just a "person with influence".

So maybe Joel & Co. can implement regular team meeting where "people with
influence" listen to complaints and then try to solve them. And solving
problems may require nothing more then being comfortable chatting with Joel.

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mynameishere
_The Scrum master's job is to remove obstacles from the team's path_

Meanwhile, the Dungeon master's job is to _insert_ obstacles in the team's
path.

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ConradHex
What do I have to roll to make my saving throw?

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edw519
The same thing happened at McDonald's many years ago. You had 2 kinds of
people in the building: 1 manager and 38 teenagers. We had to figure out how
to get things done with or without the manager. The more knowledgeable
(senior) employees gradually became de-facto supervisors. Eventually, the
company gave them the title "swing manager" and a little raise for the job
they were already doing.

I suspect Joel's new middle managers were already well positioned for their
new jobs, probably doing them already. The recognition and extra $ are always
a nice touch.

(Any resemblence between the way McDonald's is run today and when I was a
teenager is purely coincidental.)

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lucraft
Gosh. Trouble in paradise?

