I think the real management myth is the implicit mental model most managers out there (in my experience) make use of, based on ideas of what a worker is, sourced from the 18th/19th century - i.e. that they are a. doing an unpleasant job they'd rather not do and b. are likely to try to cop off as much as possible.
This works well for factory jobs, but not so great for software development.
From this derives all the stuff about dressing in uniform, good timekeeping (introduces discipline and routine), the need to see the workers doing what the manager understands to be work (i.e. coding window open, typing out code), it's what smacks down on anything perceived to be procrastination from a distance, what maintains a level of suspicion that the staff will, where possible, do as little work as they can get away with.
This whole model seems to be (though almost always not quite consciously) the universally accepted approach most everywhere. That, combined with the fact that many IT managers are not technical themselves, results in a lot of the stupidities within the industry I think (especially so in internal IT).
Software development is extremely sensitive to ability level and environment I feel, so the typical suspicion and focus on things utterly unimportant to the job itself really, really take away from the task itself. What is especially pernicious is the desire to see work as the manager defines it done, i.e. sitting down and coding. Software development consists of many things other than coding including planning, thinking about the problem, etc. and that attitude not only takes away from the process which actually results in good software, it promotes those developers who just sit there coding out crap and punishes those coders who want to think things through more clearly.
I couldn't agree more -- especially when the job is a more researchy role. Right now, I'm at my first "real job", a research internship during my PhD program, and the contrast between my productivity at school and here is shocking. The need to clock in and out and the desire to "look busy" all the time actually end up hurting my productivity, I think, much more than helping it. When my responsibility is creative thinking and new research, much of my productive time is spend doodling in a notebook or staring into space. While sitting and coding is important too, I don't feel like the normal metrics for the appearance of productivity apply.
So, paradoxically, I get paid for the time I sit in my office and begrudgingly hammer out code; the time I spend at home coming up with the important ideas to drive the research goes pro bono.
Maybe I'm just lazy, but I really think that sitting in a windowless office for eight or nine hours a day is not the way to encourage maximum output. Personally, I find myself thinking I'd be much more productive if I just "worked" a little less.
The funny thing at our work is that we want to code and do our software development but the managers are the ones getting in the way, with things such as meetings, interruptions etc. If they actually left us alone we would get more done.
There is little doubt in my mind more would get done. The question I have is would the right stuff get done?
I'm a coder by background. I know how interesting those pesky little problems can become, until they subsume the important things like getting a product delivered.
A good manager realizes the (limited) meetings are to ensure everybody is clear and focused on the same goal. A bad managers thinks meetings help achieve that goal.
"i.e. that they are a. doing an unpleasant job they'd rather not do and b. are likely to try to cop off as much as possible"
If you make the mistake of taking management classes, you learn that this is one of two possible theories. I think they're called the "x" and "y" theories--one is the one you just cited, and one is the theory that people like to work, and are intrinsically motivated to do a good job. Of course, business culture does seem centered around the more pessimistic theory which you outlined.
tl;dr for my comment: I agree, with caveats, and have personal experience to back up my opinion.
Not a bad article but nothing really new. As an undergrad I majored in public history & religious studies (wanted to be a museum curator) while supervising a digitization lab in the special collections library. I didn't have a clue what I wanted to do with my life after I realized I hated curatorial work, so I got a job through Manpower doing web design. Modern web technologies were still emergent then (1999) and I was able to keep abreast pretty well for a few years, until my interests moved more into project management and then actual team leadership.
I've been successful so far and now direct about 60 great people worldwide. I've also had time to reformulate my career objectives and realized going back to school was a sensible thing to do, especially if I ever needed a piece of paper to validate my cv in this down economy. I chose a multi-disciplinary systems engineering program at NCSU and it's been a terrific experience that's meshed very well with my current role at work.
This was a longwinded introduction to my main point: I see other people in both my masters program and other graduate fields at the university who have absolutely no experience in the real world. Not only that, they still tend to believe that the management track of an MBA is where the money is. They're going to be sorely disappointed when they graduate and realize no company worth it's salt is going to think twice about hiring a newly minted MBA that 1) has never worked a real job and 2) has no management experience. I'm starting to work with both my department head and others to help mentor and guest lecture for these students, and hopefully jolt them back to reality.
This isn't to say that an MBA is useless, but an MBA should be a complement to one's work experience and is by no means a replacement. I completely agree with the author that a background in philosophy is often a better tool for a manager than an education in finance/management (still, too many companies lead by the Taylor style of gauging productivity and because Excel still runs the business world there's a strong tendency for managers to try to quantify performance based on metrics... the wrong metrics.).
"no company worth it's salt is going to think twice about hiring a newly minted MBA that 1) has never worked a real job and 2) has no management experience"
It's a nice thought, and I suppose you could discount the vast majority of companies as not being worth their salt, but newly-minted MBAs from top schools seem to be doing just fine relative to the current economy.
I would argue that the top flight schools typically do a better job preparing their MBA students for the real world (externships, more realistic case studies with active participation from visiting corporate leaders, etc) than the bottom 90% do.
I'm surprised at the number of coders I know who got MBAs that just wound up coding again afterwards (just with more debt). In many situations, the (wo)man makes the MBA, not the other way around.
A person who is good with an MBA would likely be equally good without; the inverse holds true as well.
Working a "real job" first (e.g., 2+2), vs. grad school w/o experience
and
Getting an MBA, and getting a super-top elite MBA.
These distinctions aside, I do not think that an MBA is often worth the cost in both dollars and opportunities. I see too many of my peers just thinking they'll work for two years, get an MBA, do something cushy. Even if it's true, it seems... unfulfilling.
A leader is supposed to be someone who has gotten very good at doing something and now leads it.
The problem is that we've created this parallel track called "business" that has separated leadership from any practical experience. There are now two parallel unrelated non-intersecting career tracks: those who do, and those who lead. Those who can do. Those who can't lead.
The pure MBA is our equivalent of the apparatchiks of the former USSR.
To summarize in English: Stewart started an unnamed firm, and tried to exit mid-bubble four years later; his partners didn't want to buy his equity, so he sued them. By the time he got his shares bought three years later the firm had imploded.
I thought the article was really well written and had a number of good/interesting points. The fact that this guy saw the charade for what it was earlier than his partners but failed to find a sucker to buy his shares doesn't invalidate his point -- if anything, it strengthens it.
This whole thing makes me sad because I have a friend who is very good technically who just started his MBA this week. I'm strongly debated not sending this article to him just because I don't want to depress him.
Management is a religion. But society was built on religion and we need it today the same way it was needed in Ancient Egypt and Sumeria. Authority is very hard to justify.
The high priests of the religions of political ideology and management rule over the peoples of the world. The good thing is we are not going to leave Stonehenge and the Pyramids as traces of our stage in development as species.
As an aside, I remember being a management consultant and receiving the following <sarcasm>wisdom</sarcasm> from my manager: "You don't have to be smarter than your client. You just have to appear to be smarter than your client."
So many people criticize MBA's out of complete ignorance. They are full of s.it. They only expose their theorizations about it and propagate their naives misconceptions over and over.... They don't even have one !!!
Remember 'Good Will hunting' when Robin Williams comes back to Matt Damon, telling him he summarizes people out of what he read in books? It's the same s.it !!!
Matthew Stewart shrinks MBA's to his narrow understanding of it. He is definitely not one to take advise from. Really not. Talk to those who have an MBA.
I'm almost 2/3s finished with an MBA program so I'll jump in here.
Sadly his grammar, spelling, and writing does represent a lot of MBA students. People can't write worth a shit anymore. I spend more time than I like to think about correcting other's writing for group projects.
And if you think MBA students can't write, you'd be amazed at how poorly most of of them give presentations. =(
This works well for factory jobs, but not so great for software development.
From this derives all the stuff about dressing in uniform, good timekeeping (introduces discipline and routine), the need to see the workers doing what the manager understands to be work (i.e. coding window open, typing out code), it's what smacks down on anything perceived to be procrastination from a distance, what maintains a level of suspicion that the staff will, where possible, do as little work as they can get away with.
This whole model seems to be (though almost always not quite consciously) the universally accepted approach most everywhere. That, combined with the fact that many IT managers are not technical themselves, results in a lot of the stupidities within the industry I think (especially so in internal IT).
Software development is extremely sensitive to ability level and environment I feel, so the typical suspicion and focus on things utterly unimportant to the job itself really, really take away from the task itself. What is especially pernicious is the desire to see work as the manager defines it done, i.e. sitting down and coding. Software development consists of many things other than coding including planning, thinking about the problem, etc. and that attitude not only takes away from the process which actually results in good software, it promotes those developers who just sit there coding out crap and punishes those coders who want to think things through more clearly.