I‘m working in a strongly hierarchical org, whit very high N number. What shocking me and blocked good ideas or solutions is that: The persons in charge, empowered to make decisions are so far from reality. And the outcome of their decisions has no effect on their lives… And not because they are evil, just unable to understand the problem. (Once some guy asked, why we put bugs in the code…) Now I fight to change this doing a half management half coder job. But thats hard, I am close to total burnout…
I‘m working in a strongly hierarchical org,
whit very high N number
The persons in charge, empowered to make
decisions are so far from reality
Yeah. I've seen it happen when managers are literally just a level or two up and don't come from an engineering background.
I think it's inevitable, honestly. I think it's fundamentally impossible for management to really understand or respond to in-the-trenches stuff. That's like tasking the mayor of a large city with sweeping the streets or physically fighting crime themselves, in person. They literally cannot spend enough hours in the shoes of the folks under them to understand that stuff.
And, that's fine. Management just needs to have the humility to understand that, and has to empower people/groups that do have their boots on the ground to fix those problems.
It's not unique to this industry, although I do think the newness and explosive growth of our industry may make it particularly prone to this kind of thing.
I see your point. In my BigCo I don’t see real empowering. I agree with you this is a key factor.
My dilemma should I leave or not? Is it better or worse in other place? My helplessness is, I reached limits where I know I can‘t improve the situation anymore. But I see a general pattern and so I am pessimistic to find a better place…
