Today I've made the difficult decision to reduce the size of Coinbase by ~14%

What I’m describing is my 1:1s. I’m describing my experience, from a management perspective. You’re describing your experience from a non-management perspective, and I’m not arguing with your experience, but your claims about other people’s experience, speculation about how many, and assumptions about why, are problematic. Some management isn’t good, that is true. Sometimes there are too many meetings. That is also true, those things sometimes happen. I’m at a ‘BigTech’ company, and the meeting rate and quality of management is not consistent or uniform company wide, it’s something you’d have to evaluate on a case by case basis; One problem with your argument is that right level of meetings is more than a lot of devs want, and just because you don’t know what management does does not mean that meetings aren’t effective. With several decades of experience, I have seen lots and lots of programmers who writhe against budgets and oversight and communication, arguing fiercely that it’s all useless and would people just leave them alone to write code. And my experience is watching some of those people go off the rails when left to their own devices. Once you start managing, or try to run your own company, you might start to see more value in communication. My own views on management absolutely changed over time; when I was young, I was speaking about it similar to how you are.

> I have managed a lot over my career

Ah, I do sincerely apologize for making assumptions!

Discussions of history aside - I don’t think your opinion of management, as summarized as an “artificial function with self-fulfilled busywork” is entirely wrong so much as perhaps jaded, pessimistic, or a bit biased. There is a seed of truth there, and you’re right that this has been written about before, and it’s not a new opinion. But it’s also negative and incomplete, it intentionally ignores evidence, and it lacks explanatory power.

If management is useless and self-fulfilling and absorbing money, then why in a competitive capitalist environment can you not find large companies anywhere in the world without it? Or in any economic system that exists, for that matter? Surely if true, then someone else with your opinion can start a company and it would be wildly successful compared to the economic drag of the artificial and self-fulfilling professional managerial class. Why haven’t you started such a company? Why hasn’t anyone else? This is an important question to answer if you want to insist that management doesn’t serve a necessary and functional purpose; “remarkably durable” is a funny expression to use for something that has always existed, by design, from the start, and for which there are practically no counter-examples.

There are a very small handful of companies that claim little to no management roles, except that they still talk about managing and self-organizing and letting people define their roles, so managers emerge. They might claim no management and then still let the good talkers do the prioritizing and organizing and reporting and delegating, just like everywhere else. It might be the same as advertising unlimited vacation; the label sounds amazing while the reality is no different. It looks like the majority of such companies are software companies and have less than 1k employees (which suggests tech companies may be pushing more on reducing management than other sectors). When I searched, Gore came up as one example of a company with more than 10k employees that doesn’t use traditional management, and yet when I go look at their job postings, the very first page has roles like “president” and “manager” and “team leader”.

I’m not making any claims about “most”. TBH, I would actually agree with you, I assume. Most management is pretty bad, and many people are self-serving. Same goes for programmers, let’s not forget; many programmers are just as lazy and self-serving as the bad managers you’ve seen. Sturgeon’s Law is alive and well.

The PMC article kinda nails it - the term and the idea is a spin on Marx, and Marx wasn’t complaining that management is useless, he was just complaining that management kept all the ownership & profits.

It's further north of nothing.

It's a little less than if you got up and stood in the convenience store to pick 1 of 12 "Get Well!" cards. That's a few meaningful steps up (literally) from the 1-click eCard. The output will be a bit better for it, but more importantly, it shows more that interaction mattered for you.

The effort is meaningfully part of the output. I think many would still prefer if you scratched a couple non-perfect words yourself. I know I would. Those words are You, and if you're in a place to send me a card, what matters is that you showed up and offered Your words. The language and the card are transfer media.

In the same way....... you could go the opposite extra mile to make a very elaborate "you suck, here's your severance, loser!" message that would tip towards disrespectful :p

I don't understand — I use AI to write email particularly _because_ I care about the recipient, and am confident the resulting email will more eloquently and accurately express my feelings. I'll also often edit it afterwards to ensure it's in my voice. Regardless, I don't think it's fair to presume that my boss doesn't case because an LLM generated the email.

^ This was written 100% by hand. Let's have Claude proofread it and make any suggestions:

I'd argue the opposite — I reach for AI because I care about the recipient. It helps me express my thoughts more precisely and eloquently than I might off the cuff, and I'll often edit the result to make sure it sounds like me.

Presuming that an LLM-assisted email signals indifference seems like a category error. The care is in what you're trying to communicate, not which tool you used to get there. -- https://claude.ai/share/3d3d1a78-381c-4fcf-9354-69b10f2d6f4a