Readit NewsVisiting it a few weeks ago was amazing too!
One could even argue that middle management is THE most critical role in corporations over a certain size. In that it is the glue that allows them to get to that size. But it's also what gave rise to things like Dilbert and the idea of rising to the level of your own incompetence.
Middle management is like the lug nuts on a wheel. If you start with 5, you can take one away and be OK, even two and no issues with normal driving. You can go down to two and as long as you aren't hitting large bumps and they aren't adjacent you mostly likely will be fine for a short trip. You could even remove ALL of the lug nuts and if you travel in straight line over a smooth road you can still drive.
After all they mostly just sit there, the tire, the transmission, all the other parts of the car are doing the work. But it's not fair to say that any of the removed lug nuts were doing nothing.
The point of middle management isn't really to do anything spectacular on a daily basis. If the company is working well, middle management effectively has no function. It's when things get out of line. Even then though, it's not really middle management that's calling the shots or fixing the problem, but they are critical in noticing the problems and directing resources. Middle management's role is in reducing the time that things are out of line.
At least that's the idea, and much like any position, the bulk of the group benefits are overwhelmingly produced by the groups most effective producers.
Middle management is the hardest role to hire while simultaneously being the hardest to gauge employee effectiveness.
They seem uninterested in trying to get their hardware supported by submitting their patches for inclusion in the Linux kernel, and popular distros. Instead, you have to trust their repos (based in PRC).
But I don’t look up to him for that. Same way I don’t look up to Tiger Woods for who he is as a husband, or Picasso for… well, also poor behavior with women.
I want to play for Michael Jordan to be with the best and to be challenged to be my best.
Sometimes the thing that makes people excellent in one facet of their life makes them impossible pricks in others.
Extreme excellence in one facet of life is what I admire people like that for.
This is also why men like dating crazy girls. It's not actually a good relationship or management style.
(To balance this out, one thing I noticed reading those bios of Jobs where he shouts at everybody, is that the people being shouted at were all director/distinguished engineer level or higher, so they were all earning millions per year. It's not like he did that with everyone.)
And while Jobs implementation of "caring" was not as good as it could've been, and he could've solved the same problems a bit nicer, he still "cared" and still solved the right problems.
The people at Apple today don't have the same level of care, especially the senior leadership. If they would, I wouldn't have all these bugs that show it.
A lot of the reason people are hating on windows now-a-days is because "fast enough" has become the name of the game for UX. Unacceptable lags in working with a computer have just become accepted.