[sharkfish]

This slacker thing could backfire and people in line jobs could get paid less. That'll make'em work harder!

But seriously:

In software engineering, my colleagues don't want to be managers. When I worked in IT, they did want management. I think this difference is a function of the work satisfaction, pay differential. If you make six figures already (most of my software engineer friends do or are close to that figure), there just isn't enough motivation in a few more grand to become a manager.

When will corporations understand that they have made work all about money and therefore have to pay. There is no loyalty, no sense of sticking it out during rough times. So all we can afford to value is the cash.

That's not our fault. And I'm not a slacker because of the changing value system I had nothing to do with.

[nradov]

Could this difference between development and IT be due to a differing need for managers? It seems like modern agile development methodologies have reduced the number of managers necessary by automating things that managers used to do and by making individual contributors more self organizing. You still need some project and functional managers, but not as many as with when following a waterfall methodology under a command-and-control structure.

By contrast it seems like IT still requires a lot more active management to be done well. If you've got to install a new corporate backbone network or consolidate a bunch of servers you need top-notch managers actively driving the projects forward or else you'll end up with a huge mess.