[nine_zeros]

> After 12 years of software development, I've come to the conclusion that software managers are not needed.

+1

If devs are doing:

- Scoping

- Product design

- Coding

- Debugging

- Scaling

- Releasing

- On call duties

- A/B tests

- Can't cause outages

- Postmortems

- Enhancements

- Fight bullshit corporate politics

- Fight to remove blockers

- Fight to remove deadlocks

- Ultimately produce something that earns money for the company

- Write bullshit promotion docs for themselves

- Wait to be Pipped or something.

What exactly is the value provided by a manager?

[andrekandre]

  What exactly is the value provided by a manager?

the illusion of a management structure.... ive seen it a few times in very dysfunctional corporate cultures where they value the illusion more than the reality...

in those cases the managerial "class" is more like an old-boys club, and its the grunts who do the real work (and the boot when things go south)

[dagw]

So the developers take on the responsibility of a manager so they don't need a manager? The value of a good manager is that they can do some of the stuff on that list so the developers don't have to (ideally including all the 'fighting').

[nine_zeros]

> So the developers take on the responsibility of a manager so they don't need a manager? The value of a good manager is that they can do some of the stuff on that list so the developers don't have to (ideally including all the 'fighting').

Incompetent managers fail to unblock their teams and instead push pressure on their reports to "fight". Often blocking career growth, promos, compensation changes with these reasons.

I'm sorry. If the dev ultimately does this work, the manager should be fired or made an IC where they can demonstrate their value.