[convolvatron]

I don't care about promotion. what gets lost here is how we drive the product. we vest all the authority to a manager, and the manger rightfully sees their role as mataining the culture and the group. how do actual engineering decision get made. how to we decide how to evolve the product? thats not in the wheelhouse of the manager. increasingly ICs are encouraged to see their work in isolation - they get a task, they get to decide how to do it, and retire it in two weeks or less. How do we set direction as a group? How do we actually make a cohesive design rather than just dig a pile of feature requests. mostly it seems we just don't.

as an engineer I don't want to deal with scheduling people's vacations. I do think there is a real need for a manager to build and shape a group. To treat people like people instead of just contributors. but broadly as an industry we are totally failing to make decent strategic technical decisions and follow through.