Wednesday, 20. February 2008, 15:03:26
There is no good way to be blunt about stuff, so there it goes:
- management is obsolete
- marketing is obsolete
- centralization is obsolete
Shocked already? It just means you haven't been paying attention as of late. Take the first point: it's been known for some time that programmers can't be managed, only facilitated (see the references). It is common sense to say that the same applies to every creative activity. What you probably don't realize is just how many jobs nowadays are of the creative sort, and how few maganers get the concept in the first place. In my experience, most of them seem to think they're managing a Communist factory in the 1960es. Case in point: the best manager I had in 10 years of career did nothing but keep everyone else out of our way. For 5 years while I was there - and the 5 years prior to that - sales (of women's shoes, of all things) kept growing. Once he was replaced, the business came tumbling down in less than a year. Believe me, it was sad to watch.
Speaking of sales, if you still think the key to success is to sucker a lot of idiots into buying things they don't need, think again. Apple doesn't sell because of marketing; they sell because their products are Darn Good (TM). Which brings us to the second point. A couple of months ago, a marketer tried to sell me on how Coca-Cola and MacDonald's were made big by advertising. Well, first of all
Google's brand is bigger than either, and Google hasn't spent much at all on advertising. Not to mention they've been around for less than a tenth of the time. Second, the man's theory ignored the simple fact that Coca-Cola has had a consistently good product for over a century.
Occam's Razor, anyone?
And now for the final
nail in the coffin point: you know those Communist central heating plants, which were built to send hot pressurized water across cities - with huge losses, naturally - because it was supposedly more cost-effective than, you know, generating the heat right where (and when) it was needed? If you live outside the former Iron Curtain, you're probably wondering how could anyone ever think it was a good idea. In that case, tell me again why I should waste 45x2 minutes every day going to work and 8-9 hours or more stuck in a cubicle, when I could work more effectively from home, generating the same data with less stress and ship it to you (or anyone else) at negligible costs. A few things to consider:
- Face-to-face time is overrated. People spend most of their days staring at screens, anyway. Admit it, you're usually IM-ing your coworkers who are within hearing distance. It's faster, and less disruptive to concentration.
- I don't know about you, but I'm far more productive when I manage my own time. Hint: nobody knows me better than myself.
- All that gasoline, time and neurons spent in traffic.
The funny thing is, telecommuting has been perfectly possible since the 1980es, what, with all the fax machines and microcomputers. But companies have only started to consider this seriously in the 21st century. How come? Well, on the one hand, the implications of the open source model are beginning to sink in. Moreover, centralized production (be it of media or anything else) is breaking down in a world with six billion people. Heck, even
manufacturing plants are moving closer to the end users. The Coca Cola I don't buy
from my favorite corner shop is made and bottled locally, right outside the city.
So why don't we spare our employers the costs of office rent, equipment and electricity, and save our precious face-to-face time for when it really matters:
- weekly meetings,
- classes,
- conferences/keynotes,
- quality time with friends and family,
- sex!
P.S. Yes, I just went freelance...
References:
Paul Graham,
Great Hackers,
How to do What You Love and some others.
Joel Spolsky,
A Field Guide to Developers and many others.
WIDGETIZE