Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by blitzar 1582 days ago
Telling or managing a player to kick the ball into the back of the net is a lot easier than actually kicking it in the back of the net.

Telling or managing a team of 20 people to put products on shelves is a lot harder than putting products on shelves.

5 comments

I like the analogy, but I don't fully agree with it. If the "product on shelf" is a basic CRUD app, then sure, managing a team of 20 people might be harder than doing the individual tasks related to putting the product on shelf, but oftentimes there are challenging technical aspects related to the product. In some cases those technical challenges might be harder than management of the team.
I was thinking stacking shelves in a supermarket as an example of "putting products on a shelf"; but yes, as the complexity, skills required, technical knowledge or genetic 1 in a million requirement goes up for the managed worker there is a point where the degree of difficulty swaps over.
Depends on how well isolated the tricksy bits are
have you ever been a manager?
> Telling or managing a team of 20 people to put products on shelves is a lot harder than putting products on shelves.

After 20 years of experience I can tell you it depends on many factors, but first of all on the people you work with.

And why would that be? That's a strong claim that's completely unsupported.

Personally I disagree.

>>Telling or managing a team of 20 people to put products on shelves is a lot harder than putting products on shelves.

no it isn't

You think managing minimum wage shelve stackers in a supermarket is easier than actually stacking the sheles in a supermarket?
Yes, and so do all the managers and stockers that I've known over the course of my decade of stocking shelves.
telling people is easy, actually getting the result that you want in each situation is hard