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> A sweeping statement indeed, but it does reflect my experience too.

IMO - managers are terrible at the same rate as ICs. But the damage a terrible IC can do is limited in most companies because there's guardrails like automated testing, pull requests, no access to the production database, etc. At worst they end up being a big timesuck for other team members until they get let go.

A terrible manager will sink a project or team single-handedly, though.

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noirbot a day ago | parent [-]

There is no code-review process for management decisions. Management is essentially like writing code on the production server all the time. The stakes are maybe a little lower, it's a good bit harder to make disastrous mistakes, but there's no real roll-back or testing for if you're about to ruin your team.

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lifeisstillgood a day ago | parent [-]

But why isn’t there a code review process for management decisions?

What if code was how decisions were recorded ?

What if companies were programmable ?

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noirbot 18 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The most obvious reason, in my mind, is that merely proposing a decision is enough to be a problem. Suggesting we're killing a project a dev has spent months on, or moving someone to another team, or saying we'll miss a major KPI, or not promoting someone aren't things you can have a public full-team review on. Just knowing the manager was considering it is enough to upset people.

If someone writes code that has an error in it, you maybe think a bit worse of them, but it's a learning opportunity and that's what the review is for. If your manager suggests a course of action that you deeply disagree with, that's hard for them to come back from.

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lifeisstillgood 11 hours ago | parent [-]

But thats politics. Look at every railway, roadway, power station - always supported or opposed by various factions. We think it’s actually healthy for our society, so why is it bad on the scale of companies - some of whom have larger GDP than some countries

Having political discussions out in the open is - I hold as an axiom - a positive on balance.

This who are “upset” about things - well they are adults in a political society - they can understand the issues. Do they feel exposed / vulnerable ? Maybe there is a political solution to thinking you have two weeks notice and that’s all the protection

I think it’s worth having decisions openly debated - otherwise we are blessing an elite and frankly hoping they will get it right.

The survival rate of companies suggests they might not be

	▲	lifeisstillgood 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I would also suggest that politics is how FOSS works - the only reason Linus was the "CEO" of the kernel was because people voted him in by sending him patches. And kept sending them. There was nothing preventing someone else being voted in except the politics of it all... I would suggest that the first step in a concrete plan (see below) is that every line manager becomes the place where the next line manager does a git pull from. Eventually you want to release code, the actual CEO needs to git pull and sign off.

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AnimalMuppet a day ago | parent | prev [-]

What if there were no hypothetical questions?

That is, you can ask hypothetical what ifs all you like, but unless you have a concrete plan for getting there, you're just writing fantasies.

And, management decisions get reviewed before implementation all the time. It's just not a code review, precisely because management decisions are not code.

Why aren't they code? Because people aren't computers. If you're going to treat them like they are computers, then I don't want to work in your company.

	▲	noirbot 18 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It's also that a lot of management "decisions" happen in the moment. Is how they phrase something in a meeting or a one on one. It's how they respond or ignore questions. It's how strongly the push for someone to be promoted. They're decisions, but often not something you can have sitting for review for days ahead, even if it's only seen by senior management. I've had plenty of times management announced something I agreed with, but the way they explained it was so rancid I came out of it upset. At the end of the day, management, and in general all human interactions, are a glimpse into who you are. It can go amazingly well, or disastrously poorly. You can try to be very careful and say what's needed, but tone and timing and phrasing will almost always give things away.
	▲	lifeisstillgood 10 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Look with a historical lens - democracy in USA. From the point of view of say Chartists in 1776 it is a good start, 80 years till slave males can vote, 80 years till women can vote and another forty till civil rights. In 1776 can we call that a “concrete plan”? Or is the fantasy “votes for all” actually a plan? Yeah we can have plans - get Zuckerberg to give up power and place it in the hands of employees? Maybe convert Meta to a co-operative? But on the literacy point - at some point we ran everything with illiterate “managers” - but slowly developed organisations that use literacy. My, yes ok fantasy, is not only democracy but that everyone inna company is software literate and has access to (maybe not write access) the code base of the company. So there is a concrete plan - a whole org test rig, a company that every IRL action has a virtual shadow, a codebase that directs this IRL actions day-to-day and everyone having access to the codebase and able to suggest / comment or even vote on pull requests. Run the company through code - change the company through democratic politics