[BLKNSLVR]

What you describe feels like the inevitable end-game of what the article is promoting, and why I can't subscribe to it.

I think there's a flipside to the argument too. If "good work" isn't enough, it means that those responsible for managing the employees doing "good work" aren't paying enough attention and that creates the need to self-advertise for promotion, as the article describes. But if there's an attention vacuum is it not also possible to hide, to some extent: as long as you continue to do good enough work to stay off the "bad" radar, then fit whatever you want into the spaces in between: Alternative productivity.

I have a current theory about the application of KPIs and OKRs for measuring performance: they're to take the responsibility of actually managing people off the managers who are meant to be managing people; Outsourcing the management, oddly, to the managed.

I'm currently three months through an experiment to see what happens when the vanilla "standard" OKRs I've been given aren't added to, ticked off or reached, or really measured against at all. I feel that I do good work, but I don't feel the need to prove it beyond the doing of it.

I understand the extensive overheads for things like backups and disaster recovery. I don't understand per-employee administrative overhead to measure contributions to "delighting the Customer" (actual example).

If I don't get a pay rise, or worse, as a result of this experiment, then it's been a success in helping to make an important decision.

[thr0way120]

I have been thinking a lot about exactly your point here: That a lot of knowledge work seems to emphasize letting the employee manage themselves. SCRUM is this also. Which leads to the question: "what is management even doing / what is management for?"

I once read a book that management is purely about surveillance. They are purely there to watch you. Narcissists, as a personality trait, are people watchers who like control. So basically you end up creating a class of people who are almost guaranteed to be narcissistic in nature.

Corporations are veritable laboratories of mind control, psychology and propaganda. It is really quite complex and weird about how it actually works. It is otherwise totally illogical.

[BLKNSLVR]

It's a very subtle and complex "thing" so I'll disclaim that this is only part of it, and it meshes together with other parts, but Management is also for decision making, direction provision, and, to some degree, parenting (see last paragraph for where that somewhat crossed over).

Where it really stirs up the concepts into a fine mud is that, in order to be able to make decent decisions, you need to know both business direction from above as well as decision / direction practicality from below, and the more that management becomes removed from on-going engagement with below (eg. outsourcing performance monitoring, lack of involvement in SCRUM) the further their decisions are removed from understanding the practicality.

Surveillance, as the terminology used, is loaded to create fear, which probably serves the needs of bad managers. Good managers should be engaging with their reports to know what they're working on, and to know them psychologically, so they know to ask more probing questions if someone is hiding an issue for fear of upsetting "the boss". Good managers know up the ladder and down the ladder and should be constantly working on finding the balance between each in order to maximise both the productivity of their reports and the progress made in business directions.

One of the reports I had (albeit briefly) was very emotionally attached to his work, and took it personally even when there were requests to make changes to fit it into changing requirements. I love the guy, but he needed fairly regular vent-sessions to talk him through, and out of, the (unnecessary) emotional state in order to reach "oh, this is what I'm paid for".

(funny story: I once got so exasperated with him that I called him my son's name - man that was embarassing for both of us).

[mlrtime]

> One of the reports ...

When people ask what L1 managers do and why are they necessary, this is the thing that hits the hardest. ICs don't understand that there are 1000s of issues like this that need "managing" to get productivity out. It is exhausting and most managers I assume don't want to have to do this, but it's required.