Author here. I'm not entirely sure, I'll try to work it out. One thing I am sure of is that we need to get rid of the professional engineering management class. It's a parasitic institution.
Let's be real here for a moment. Software engineering, in general, is the most thing-oriented profession available. It attracts people who are incredibly thing-oriented. Most lack the want or ability to manage other people. This double track is specifically to give prestige to people who are amazing engineer but also can't look strangers in the eye.
Most engineers are bad at engineering too. That's just the natural distribution of all professions. Managers are not special, their incompetence is just felt more directly and viscerally.
To be honest, he did fine given the context, but Linus had some issues that would have quickly jeopardized his managing career in almost any companies.
I do not think this is true at most big companies. I have had plenty of managers who are as disagreeable as Linus. At least Linus is usually correct, not true of many managers who no longer understand the technical details.
In recent years, even Linus realised that it was a problem with Linus and took steps to fix it.
There's no way in hell any of us would be ok with our managers treating us the same way Linus treated other engineers. It worked because he's a genius and he controls the Linux project. You had to play by his rules or not at all. Google doesn't have the same advantage - it's not the only game in town.
I am not intimately familiar with Linus beyond his product Linux and his famous rants, so I can only grant you his aspy-ness.
I think Linus's handling of the Linux kernel is an excellent example of stellar technical leadership in a parallel track. It is what technical companies should look like. Engineers do their thing without worrying about administrative tasks like HR bullshit, salary negotiations, hiring, firing, and fights over who makes the coffee.
To be fair, the majority (vast majority?) of people who get paid to work on the kernel do in fact have to endure HR bullshit, salary negotiations, etc.; they're just doing it with Intel HR or Qualcomm HR rather than Linux Foundation HR.
that is definitely something I have felt in the past (as an engineer having to deal with parasitic managers)
I have since found that like there are good and bad engineers, you can have good and bad managers.
I now find myself thinking about management as if it were the command chain in an army, and I would be hard pressed to imagine how an army composed of a general and thousands of privates, with no layers in between, would ever be able to accomplish anything.
You don't abolish the chain of command. You abolish management as a separate organization with its own incentives. For example, Linus is a leader but he is not a manager. In engineering this is what you want.
The only way it changes is if someone gains enough power to make the change. And almost by construction engineers do not have that power. So it would take an exceptionally self-less manager. I
Or else an engineer who agrees who by luck or skill gains extraordinary power, implements this new power structure, and achieves such astonishing success with it that firm owners have no choice but to take notice and demand similar reforms at their firms. Or some third way I'm not seeing.
A.k.a. nothing like what the blog envisions is likely to happen.
How about if an engineer founds a startup and dictates that this is how it'll be done there, and the startup ends up succeeding? That would fit your second scenario: "an engineer who agrees who by luck or skill gains extraordinary power, implements this new power structure". I think we have seen cases of engineer founders who were in a position to do that kind of thing.
The blog post links to a story about Larry Page "firing" all the project managers; while they didn't exit the company, they were moved to another organization, and it seems Page got his wish of "no managers" in his organization for some time, until there were problems and complaints and "eventually" they started hiring more managers. If he had a fully workable approach in mind, it seems he could have implemented it for long enough to demonstrate its success.
> How about if an engineer founds a startup and dictates that this is how it'll be done there, and the startup ends up succeeding? That would fit your second scenario: "an engineer who agrees who by luck or skill gains extraordinary power, implements this new power structure".
Yes, arguably this is how we got to the current state of affairs, particularly thanks to Larry and Sergey, and the cross pollination and following-on of their approach. What I question is the likelihood of someone with this viewpoint reaching that level of power.
Assuming the structure produces better products and better incentivizes the team, it should have a competitive advantage. Build a startup based on similar management principles. If multiple startups attempt it, a few may succeed and serve as an example to follow.
I would say the top business leadership is to blame. The CEOs for example. They permit the engineering management class to be mediocre-performing parasites, they don't really understand how to measure their performance or the performance of the teams under them.
It's the cluelessness of the top management that enables this horrible principle/agent problem. It's as if you had a stock broker who would give you reports every month about how well he's doing, but you aren't capable of understanding whether your assets are increasing or decreasing, and you don't know how to add up the numbers for yourself or care to learn how. And it's their own fault for, in tech organizations, not caring enough to be taught how to manage their managers better.
Note: it may even be that some things are difficult to measure, but I don't see even a reasonable attempt to vet the engineering management class.
Another note: I'm not sure top leadership looks for any qualities in "management" other than "seems like someone with a rough attitude that will push people hard", even if they're pushing people hard without knowing what the people are even doing. It's a "whip-holder" role rather than any kind of attempt to make work more efficient.
