[IronKettle]

> I know I certainly wasn't very well-equipped to handle tension or to have hard conversations about fair distribution of work.

I guess my point is more that primary school really should've prepared you for this: Group dynamics and how to handle these "group tensions" is more of a basic learning skill that we should be developing very early on.

I'm not arguing that this is a useless skill to teach, more that it's far more expensive and much less effective for MIT to be teaching you these skills and not MyTown elementary/middle/high school.

[shrimp_emoji]

Why can't the managers with business backgrounds be the social engineers expertly manipulating the asocial software engineers? I thought that's what they were for. Distribution of labor!

[IronKettle]

I think for me it's more like:

One of the fundamental duties of a middle manager is to worry about group dynamics, team effectiveness, group communication, etc.

If the engineers are now doing all of that as well, what's middle management doing?

("Nothing, same as always" is of course the snarky answer)