One of our top engineers said to me “I don’t think I can manage anyone”. I
don’t think he wants to either.
Keeps his own hours. Works from home. In China. And earns 2x his peers.
Nobody manages him. We create tasks and he picks some to do.
So why should he manage anyone?
Management was the breakthrough idea of 2nd Wave American
Industrialization. Frederick Taylor and Henry Ford all the way to Drucker
and McKinsey (James O McKinsey).
Manage people and business processes better to produce better.
What does it offer a world where production has moved further to the edges
than even Drucker postulated?
Whatsapp had 40 people and was worth more than Yahoo. You don’t need many
people do you.
And this ace engineer does great where he is.
And how does the recruitment and task flow get organized? Across 40 people
roughly like him? By a couple of us using software.
Our internal platform for work.
So where is the management?
You might say it is right before my eyes but you are mistaken.
The management itself has been stripped out if the management jobs. We have
product people (product “managers”) and a sideline to thinking about the
product experience is deploying tasks against people.
Management in a “software eats the world” age.
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