[RogerL]

This has nothing to do with tech, IMO. Wander over to Wall Street, go into some white collar office with a bunch of people doing data entry, go to some fulfillment center warehouse, and then go to a construction site and you'll see the same behavior.

Managing people is not trivial. So, to bring tech into it, it really boggles my mind when I see these awful styles. I mean, we spend years developing our skills, and break our arms patting ourselves on our back on how skilled we are. Then, for whatever reason, we end up on the people side and suddenly making it up as you go is fine. We have books on managing people - they are not a panacea, but I'm shocked at how few people in these positions have heard of them, let alone read them.

For example, the Microsoft Press books form the 90s are great. Debugging the Development Process, Software Project Survival Guide, Writing Solid Code, Rapid Development, and then books like The Mythical Man-Month, and Peopleware. Just a passing familiarity is all I ask. But no. Favored people and 'can't be hit by a bus' people get away with anything, great people with a few rough edges get fired at whim, no guiding principles on what it takes to execute a project (get shit done doesn't count, sorry), no concept of personal development. Ugh.

[dmajoraddnine]

What I find particularly interesting about this is that, as technology creeps further and further into the mainstream, we're going to need more people writing/maintaining software. And they're likely going to be from the fatter part of the bell curve w/r/t skill (or else wouldn't they have become interested in software anyway?). So will it get easier or harder to manage coders when the average ability level moves toward the mean?

[pnathan]

This is a good statement. Management is actually hard, and questions of leadership and management have been seriously thought about for centuries, because it is a hard problem that manifests itself in places where good results are expected.