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Comment by mainguy

1 month ago

IDK, at many large orgs...there are developers that essentially communicate through "tickets" and "their lead"... and Def never talk to "business" people or customers. It's not very rare if you get a large enough org.

In other large orgs, the managers are in a parallel universe playing status games while the devs self-organize to get anything done. The soft skills involved in doing that wind up being completely invisible to the status universe.

  • > The soft skills involved in doing that wind up being completely invisible to the status universe.

    Are you referring to the work the managers are doing or the devs are doing as being invisible?

    • Both, actually, but in the case I'm thinking of the devs with the strongest leadership skills in terms of organizing their peers to make things happen were completely invisible to management who were playing a different game. Just like their game was invisible to the devs shipping product, who didn't understand the implications on their careers. Saw a couple of great unofficial leaders get fired and a bunch more leave due to the disconnect. It caught up to the managers later, turned out their people skills weren't good enough after execution ground to a halt.

      (Not all managers, this was a special degenerate case, but it's worth considering that different people have different goals/incentives/values. It's not always a straight line to "delivering customer value" that is only held up by a lack of people skills.)

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