This is so much the case that on a Freakonomics episode I caught on NPR the other day about economists attempting to prove whether the Peter Principle is true (TL;DR probably yes, and likely more so than you’d even guess—but also this is all very hard so maybe don’t take it too seriously) it seemed that this is something so difficult that they barely even try to do it and when they do the measurements are so narrowly-focused and come with so many caveats that one hesitates to call them useful.
Like best case you manage to find that you can measure one of several plausible performance indicators and if you’ve picked the exact right kind of job where worker productivity can kinda-meaningfully be measured (it often cannot) then maybe you can conclude some things with a large enough dataset, but then connecting that to any particular behavior on the part of the managers is another big hurdle to overcome before you can try to, say, develop effective scientifically-sound training, and at that point you’ve likely wandered into “just give up, this is too messy” territory.
[edit] and this:
> That gets to another major undercurrent of IT. Managers want to place IT employees in the "worker bee" category. They don't want IT workers to be managers, and entitled to the great benefits according the management class. The long running IT salary advantage in the US, and the constant ebb and flow between management and IT "working" to push that down is a major social undercurrent here.
Nail. Head.
Managers of developers act piss-pants afraid of us properly joining the (socially speaking) upper-middle (cf Fussell) or professional class, which the MBA set are busy trying to eliminate everywhere else (lawyers, doctors, college professors) so they’re the last ones standing.
This shit is why micromanagement PM frameworks and packing us into loud visually-messy sardine can open offices is so popular. Dropping that stuff would be table-stakes for our moving up the social status ladder. Adopting it pushes us way down the pecking order.
This is so much the case that on a Freakonomics episode I caught on NPR the other day about economists attempting to prove whether the Peter Principle is true (TL;DR probably yes, and likely more so than you’d even guess—but also this is all very hard so maybe don’t take it too seriously) it seemed that this is something so difficult that they barely even try to do it and when they do the measurements are so narrowly-focused and come with so many caveats that one hesitates to call them useful.
Like best case you manage to find that you can measure one of several plausible performance indicators and if you’ve picked the exact right kind of job where worker productivity can kinda-meaningfully be measured (it often cannot) then maybe you can conclude some things with a large enough dataset, but then connecting that to any particular behavior on the part of the managers is another big hurdle to overcome before you can try to, say, develop effective scientifically-sound training, and at that point you’ve likely wandered into “just give up, this is too messy” territory.
[edit] and this:
> That gets to another major undercurrent of IT. Managers want to place IT employees in the "worker bee" category. They don't want IT workers to be managers, and entitled to the great benefits according the management class. The long running IT salary advantage in the US, and the constant ebb and flow between management and IT "working" to push that down is a major social undercurrent here.
Nail. Head.
Managers of developers act piss-pants afraid of us properly joining the (socially speaking) upper-middle (cf Fussell) or professional class, which the MBA set are busy trying to eliminate everywhere else (lawyers, doctors, college professors) so they’re the last ones standing.
This shit is why micromanagement PM frameworks and packing us into loud visually-messy sardine can open offices is so popular. Dropping that stuff would be table-stakes for our moving up the social status ladder. Adopting it pushes us way down the pecking order.