

Why Management is Not a Profession - rams
http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/09/more-evidence-t.html

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alanthonyc
I have slowly been coming to the realization that just as the internet is
doing its creative destruction thing on many obvious institutions (book
distribution, music distribution, etc.) there are a lot more areas where it
applies equally, although much less obviously.

Management as a career is one of those areas. Really, the whole need for
managers (especially "middle" managers) is to maintain a line of communication
between the leader of an organization and its producers/workers. Doesn't the
internet make this type of job obsolete? In an efficient pipeline (of
information), aren't they just bottlenecks?

We're certainly not there yet, quite possibly still a long way away, but once
we get to the point where dissemination of pertinent information is at maximum
efficiency, we won't need these arbiters of information in the system anymore.

I think this ties in to PG's thoughts on people not being meant to have a boss
(<http://www.paulgraham.com/boss.html>) as well as Berners-Lee's talk at TED
about getting information onto the internet in as raw a form as possible.

~~~
erictobia
You make a great point and I do agree to a certain extent. However, there have
been some projects I've worked on where having a great manager made all the
difference in the world. Having someone that deals with all of the non-
technical minutia so that programmers can keep building stuff is really
valuable IMHO.

Maybe software could fulfill this role one day, but as you say we're not there
yet.

It may be that I'm getting too old and cynical, but when I hear arguments
about eliminating the middle-man I can't help but think of a quote from
Malcolm Reynolds in the show Firefly:

"About 50% of the human race is middlemen and they don’t take kindly to being
eliminated."

~~~
alanthonyc
I agree completely with the quote. I may have been reading too much techdirt
lately, but I believe that's pretty obviously the case with the RIAA and the
rest of the entertainment industry trying to clamp down on file-sharing.

Taken to it's logical extreme, there are some other pretty radical examples of
"middlemen":

* universities (another PG example, <http://www.paulgraham.com/credentials.html>) * banks * financial regulators (see: xbrl) * lawmaking bodies * large corporations * etc.

Are we ready for this kind of disruption? I have no idea.

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daemin
In some way I think you need some form of middle-like management once an
organisation gets beyond a certain size. I know Joel Spolsky has mentioned it
and I agree with his reasoning. ([http://www.inc.com/magazine/20080901/how-
hard-could-it-be-ho...](http://www.inc.com/magazine/20080901/how-hard-could-
it-be-how-i-learned-to-love-middle-managers.html))

I can even see it at the startup I'm currently at. Even though the CEO/COO's
door has always been "open", it's been harder and harder to enter it as the
size of the company has increased. It's not a physical barrier, although the
C*O's are busier now, but a psychological one in most cases, where once is (I
don't want to say it but) afraid or cautious in disturbing the busy
individual.

That being said the quality of the person being the manager is probably the
most important detail. I can see that in the company I'm in. In the group I'm
in we have a really good manager, one that's able to gather our grievances and
ideas and present them to the higher ups. While the other group has a pretty
lack lustre manager. The difference in morale, job satisfaction, and employee
retention are striking. But none of these managers have an MBA.

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swombat
That's a real shame, actually, because managers are essential to any project
or large organisation.

However, in my experience, there are really many different kinds of managers
(the term "manager" covers an enormous range of people), and not all of them
are simply attempting to suck a living out of their customers.

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neilo
Hmm, the title is a bit misleading because I thought it applied to managers in
general. The best managers I've known are ones who care about their team
(developers in my case) and that output in regards to the business. As part of
that, they also care about product quality and customer satisfaction. Of
course, these people whom I hold in high regards also never had MBA's. I
recently told my friend who is going for one: "Don't become an asshole". An
unhealthy focus on profiteering seems to lead there.

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signa11
although mentioned in the article, this article by jeffrey-pfeffer et al.
(<http://www.aomonline.org/Publications/Articles/BSchools.asp>) is very, very
good.

