[agounaris]

The author is very cynical on this series for businesses but I think there is a lot of truth in those writings. There is something fundamentally broken in the way we govern software products. From the interview process to the evaluation of the individual.

No engineering organisation can survive with just engineers. For many reasons. This limitation requires some roles to be there to support this process.

I think that most businesses practice process management. A person is there to make sure the team is compliant with the way the CEO, the board, the VPs etc, want to run the business.

What if we ban the term "manager" completely and instead focus on self organising teams and naturally elected leaders. Those leaders will go down with the team or be rewarded with the team. What if we treat product development like a well organised heist! The mastermind, the hacker, the explosives expert etc. will equally split the profits if this is job done well.

[thinkingkong]

The real reason for parallel tracks is to prevent people from becoming managers. Not to encourage it. The challenge before parallel tracks was common was that every engineer assumed the only way to get ahead was to stop coding and manage people.

The parallel tracks more or less has the same level constraints as you go. Namely, you cannot have 5 L4's on a team with 5 people, and one L4 manager.