Comment by jsonking
2 years ago
To put it politely I have a distaste for being referred to as an ‘individual contributor’ (or even worse a ‘resource’). I also don’t like being ‘managed’ and have gained little from ‘line management’ over 20+ years developing software systems.
I do however find it extremely motivating to help a true leader solve their problems in a self-organising team of collaborative peers.
I can’t fathom why so many software organisations are still structured for hierarchical command and control, with the trend of good engineers being ‘promoted’ to management?
Yes I think we need more leadership: with organisations cultivating a culture of leadership, communication, openness and trust. Everyone can display leadership skills depending on the context/task within a team. It is not something reserved for the ‘manager’ (appointed leader).
Do we really need more ‘management’? I don’t think so. Management != Leadership.
Would be keen to see some more articles along the lines of ‘Growing leadership skills for engineers’.
I can fathom it: the larger the organization, the more important it is to the people with power to treat everything else as abstraction.
I'm told Seeing Like a State shares this insight.
I also hate it. But it's unfortunately "left as exercise for the reader" to come up with an alternative that concentrates power differently.
I have been trying to research alternative(s) - with limited success. For example book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Moose-Heads-Table-Karin-Tenelius/dp... , podcast: https://leadermorphosis.co/ , training: https://www.tuffleadershiptraining.com/ , jobs: https://info.jobswithnoboss.com/
At current workplace trying to subtly suggest/introduce that there’s an alternative way…
It's hard to convince the people with the power and money that they should get out of the way. If you're lucky, they are mostly unaffected by the structures of power and believe in "servant leadership". If you're unlucky, well, good luck.
I don't think you can make an existing company change it's stripes; you can only start a new one that believes in collective power and try to find a way to make that stick.
Maybe B Corps help? At least you can prioritize something other than maximizing shareholder value. But even then, I'm not sure how you deal with bad actors without some degree of strong power.
You forgot how great it is to be called 'Talent'
The professional managerial class have completely taken over most tech companies now. 'Technologists' trading buzz words, peddling 'influence' and crowding out the people that actually build things.
Good points! I once read that Talent is acquired, then considered property and referred to as ‘resource’ (sorry no reference).
Red flag == ‘Talent Acquisition Manager’ messages on LinkedIn.
At my last job (lead) we were referred to as "onshore resources" despite being employees.