[travisgriggs]

One of the interesting things about the tech industry (to me) is the presence and massive success of open source movements. OS does some things well, and others not as well, but it does it with 1/100th of the familiar management institutions we’re used to in the workplace. I don’t know what the answer is, but it makes me wonder if we haven’t somehow mis-arranged the whole thing. I’m old enough that I recall a time when organizations had secretaries, sometimes many. Now days it feels that management is really just the above, getting paid “higher than the rest of you” salaries to do what more equal secretary/clerk functions used to do.

[diarrhea]

I suppose the difference is money. Open source needn’t be free of its involvement, but it often is. Add money to open source and you get either a functional org, but with the usual overhead, or dysfunction and corruption.

[shrimp_emoji]

Money is the root of all evil.

Often, nobody would be doing the closed source stuff they're doing without the cold incentive of money, unlike free software which is inherently decoupled from a profit motive. Maybe there's an externality to pay in herding and keeping the cats committed to the profit motive.

[kibwen]

Spot on. The only difference between a manager and a secretary is that one is above you on the totem pole and the other is below.

[travisgriggs]

I want neither. But I recognize the need. Why can’t we have “secragers” or “manataries”, who fill this need in a more co-equal fashion (and no, that is demonstrably not what product managers usually end up being)