[shusson]

> software engineers are the worst at planning their own work. The vast majority will just go off and do wtf ever they want

There are successful companies that have senior engineers managing/leading teams and still coding. This idea that software engineers need managers and that somehow being a software engineer means only coding (IC) is a pattern that early American tech companies went with. Originally I imagine it was to reward and empower engineers, these days I feel like more and more companies use it to control and manipulate engineers.

[icedchai]

In the mid-2000's, I worked at a company where the engineering managers were actual engineers that coded. They often did double duty as PMs. You don't see that often today.

[shusson]

Yeah the progression feels like a textbook example of the iron law of bureaucracy [1]

[1]https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html