[strawpeople]

There is no evidence that management problems are harder to solve than coding problems. Not only that, but when coders make mistakes the impact can be large and the responsibility clearly falls on the coder, whereas when managers make mistakes, the responsibility is diffused to their subordinates. Managers should either be paid a lot less, or be fireable by their reports when they make mistakes.

[kortilla]

It has nothing to do with difficulty. It’s not a leveling up game of leetcode.

> whereas when managers make mistakes, the responsibility is diffused to their subordinates.

No it’s not. They will roast their subordinates but unless the org is completely dysfunctional they are responsible for the ultimate deliverables.

The higher up you move, the more responsible for outcomes that are less and less in your control. You even gain legal liability as you enter the “officer of the company” levels.

[rgifford]

> ...unless the org is completely dysfunctional they are responsible for the ultimate deliverables.

This is true in theory if everyone has perfect knowledge. In practice I've never seen it play out. A large part of management is framing (i.e. playing off imperfect knowledge). It happens before and after success or failure is decided. Smart managers commit, but frame their responsibilities or outcomes in favorable terms. They find ways to de-risk. They publicly share risky deliverables with other teams or increase scope to push decision making up the ladder. They commit to only what their team can slam dunk. They make sure to only lead rockstar teams (this is huge). They cherry pick metrics to make failure look reasonable and success look incredible. They leave before major failures are realized or hand failures off before they sour. Remember: In large human systems, feedback cycles can easily take years.

It's a game and there's lots of clever ways to play. But the only way to lose is to publicly accept loss. When you do, it's very honorable and moving. But I've never seen the hit to perceived competency offset by perceived integrity. Because at the end of the day, companies make money. There's no company metric for honor. It's politics, whether we choose to see it or not doesn't really matter. For an extreme example, take a look at the presidency. Incumbent presidents lose in election year recessions. Period. Never mind most economic crises are a decade or so in the making.

People in aggregate are much simpler than we like to think. And so leadership is much more sleight of hand than our nobler ideals would have us believe.

[strawpeople]

> It has nothing to do with difficulty. It’s not a leveling up game of leetcode.

Then you should reply to the parent comment and not mine.

> No it’s not. They will roast their subordinates but unless the org is completely dysfunctional they are responsible for the ultimate deliverables.

Please. If you’ve never seen incompetent managers bumbling along making their staff into scapegoats, etc., then you don’t have a lot of experience.

Nothing changes at the higher levels either. Projects are cancelled and teams fired etc, not the executive in charge. The time execs get fired is when they do deliver and there is some kind of liability.

[kortilla]

I guess I’ve been mainly working at successful companies? The biggest company I worked at was Google 7+ years ago and managers that couldn’t deliver and blamed employees would get exited or demoted quite quickly.

It’s been even more aggressive in the startups I’ve been at since.

[matwood]

> There is no evidence that management problems are harder to solve than coding problems.

As someone who has done both in small and medium companies, I find people problems to almost always be harder. Most coding problems outside cutting edge companies tend to at least have solutions. People and leadership often doesn't have a right answer.

And yes, a key coders mistake can be large. But a management mistake 'build feature X over Y' or 'implement policy B' can just as easily cost the company dearly and put small companies out of business.

[hangonhn]

> There is no evidence that management problems are harder to solve than coding problems.

I think that's the sort of thinking some forms of schooling drill into our heads: harder problems = greater reward/value.

That's not really how it is. We get rewarded for the value we supposedly generate by solving some problem or at least some portion of that value is rewarded to us. So if there are some low hanging fruits that generate a ton of value, then that's how you will be rewarded. I'm sure Ph.D.s solve far harder problems than me all day long but societally we don't tend to value many of those problems or their solutions.

[danaris]

> We get rewarded for the value we supposedly generate by solving some problem or at least some portion of that value is rewarded to us.

And that's the sort of thinking other forms of schooling drill into our heads: value generated ~= value compensated.

That's not really how it is. We get rewarded for the position we are at in the class hierarchy. If you're "in charge of" someone, you have to be making more money than them.

Is that how it should be? No. It's very much not. But it's largely how it is.

[hangonhn]

Totally agree with you. I think your point and the one I made earlier are at least two of the naive beliefs often held by a lot of engineers in tech -- myself included. The really pernicious part is that the value generated by engineers are sometimes quite big and the reward they get is a small fraction of it but big enough to make the engineer happy that they never stop to ask for more or find a better deal.

[sneak]

There is! Management would be replaced by cheaper management if it were possible to do so at the same level of quality.

Either corporations are insane immoral pathological paperclip/profit maximizers, in which case any manager would be replaced with a cheaper version or even a algorithm, or they're not and managers aren't worth what they're being paid.

If the CEO or upper management is so fungible, why aren't they being replaced with staff who will work just as hard and effectively for a tenth of the price?

[strawpeople]

You’re confusing leverage and political positioning with competence and capability.

Not that all managers are incompetent. Some are indeed inspired and or excellent. However these are rare. Just as there are many average engineers who aren’t very productive, so there are many managers who aren’t very capable and are just in their position because they were in the right place at the right time.

[sneak]

Obtaining leverage and positioning oneself politically are indeed competencies and capabilities that are required to excel in medium to large orgs. They're not mutually exclusive.