[OkayPhysicist]

The problem, IMO, is the muddying of the managerial role, such that they now do 2 separate roles, one of which is overpaid, the other not. The computer all but killed the secretary, and the remaining (computer-assisted) secretarial duties got split between the ICs and management. Because you can only dump so much secretarial work onto your ICs before they stop being able to produce anything, the managerial level got a bulk of the secretarial work, which in turn prompted more hiring at the managerial level. On top of that, it represented a flip-flop in power dichotomy, because the managers still have their managerial duties/powers: the people doing a lot of the secretarial work now have the power to fire the people doing the product work. Combined with people's self-interest in protecting and building their own positions, this leads to secretarial work bloat, and thus even more managerial bloat, and an increase in secretarial workload on the ICs.

My pitch for a the ideal corporate structure: bring back the secretaries. Re-introduce the division between your secretarial work and your managerial work, and shrink the number of managers by a significant fraction. Ideally, the result is A) fewer managers means more budget for hiring better mangers B) less secretarial work among your ICs and managers boosting both productivity and job satisfaction C) flatter management hierarchy means less information loss between ICs and the top decision makers and D) the people doing secretarial work no longer have the power to shunt that work off onto the ICs.

[esafak]

I'm curious about this. What kind of secretarial work do you have in mind, for a typical tech company? What fraction of time do you estimate it takes? Meeting scheduling is automated today. What else?

[peteradio]

Document management and user access control are two I can see.