> Fact is, whoever is held responsible for succeeding/failing is going to get paid more. Being held responsible sucks and is hard.
Indeed, but let me ask you this: what real responsibility do all those layers of middle management in a typical big software company actually have?
Detailed planning of individual features is junior management stuff. The only estimates that are really worth a damn come from the junior managers, based on the technical data provided by their teams.
Strategic product and project management -- what products and major functionality are going to be built and when they will ship -- is senior management stuff. The technical decisions that really matter are taken by senior managers or executives. Are we going to drop major projects W and X but include Y and Z, given that this means we can ship a new version of this product in Q3? Shall we authorise a 20% increase in payroll budget for this product's team, given that this would allow us to include project Y by that deadline as well?
Obviously in a large organisation with many products, each of which is itself large, there is scope for having layers of management in between so everyone is working on a sensible scale. But you can scale out a pretty long way with just a single layer containing just a few extra managers, and I'm pretty sure that the 2/3/4/5/6 layers you often find in a lot of big software companies are mostly dead weight.
Indeed, but let me ask you this: what real responsibility do all those layers of middle management in a typical big software company actually have?
Detailed planning of individual features is junior management stuff. The only estimates that are really worth a damn come from the junior managers, based on the technical data provided by their teams.
Strategic product and project management -- what products and major functionality are going to be built and when they will ship -- is senior management stuff. The technical decisions that really matter are taken by senior managers or executives. Are we going to drop major projects W and X but include Y and Z, given that this means we can ship a new version of this product in Q3? Shall we authorise a 20% increase in payroll budget for this product's team, given that this would allow us to include project Y by that deadline as well?
Obviously in a large organisation with many products, each of which is itself large, there is scope for having layers of management in between so everyone is working on a sensible scale. But you can scale out a pretty long way with just a single layer containing just a few extra managers, and I'm pretty sure that the 2/3/4/5/6 layers you often find in a lot of big software companies are mostly dead weight.