this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2024
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Programming
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The bloody managers are the biggest problem. Most don't understand code much less the process of making a software product. They force you into idiotic meetings where they want to change how things work because they "don't have visibility into the process" which just translated to "I don't understand what you're doing".
Also trying to force people who love machines but people less so into leading people is a recipe for unhappiness.
But at least the bozos at the top get to make the decisions and the cheddar for being ignorant and not listening.
Anti Commercial-AI license
So, I've had my eye on management and started doing some management training. The job of management really isn't to do the work itself (or even to understand the work). That's the job of specialists and technical leads. The job of management is to oversee the workforce (hiring, organizing teams, dictating process, allocating project time, planning mid and long term department goals, etc) not to actually get your hands into the work itself.
It's certainly helpful to understand coding broadly speaking. But I'm in an office where we're supporting dozens of apps written and interfaced with at least as many languages. Nevermind all the schemas within those languages. There's no way a manager could actually do my job without months (if not years) of experience in the project itself.
At the same time, the managers should understand the process of coding, particularly if they're at the lower tier and overseeing an actual release cycle. What causes me to pull my hair out is managers who think hand-deploying .dlls and fixing user errors with SQL scripts is normal developer behavior and not desperate shit you do when your normal workflows have failed.
Being in a perpetual state of damage control and thinking that this is normal because you inherited from the last manager is the nightmare.
Identifying and integrating new technologies is normal and good managerial behavior.
Getting fleeced by another round of over-hyped fly-by-night con artists time after time after time is not as much.
But AI seems to thread the needle. Its sophisticated and helpful enough to seem useful on superficial analysis. You only really start realizing you've been hoodwinked after you try and integrate it.
Setting aside the absurd executive level pay (every fucking corporate enterprise is just an MLM that's managed to stay cash positive) it does feel like the problem with AI is that each business is forced to learn the lesson the hard way because no business journal or news channel wants to admit that its all shit.