Skill: the anti-Manager
But I am just about ready to suggest that we have gone too far in trying to normalize performance in software development, and that we may be following a blind alley as far as future capability models go. We may have simultaneously made software development so restrictive, and yet so complex, that programmers good enough to do what we need can't tolerate the methods and measures we make them use.
This jibes quite nicely with one of my several bitches with Corporate management as it has come to be "practiced" in recent years. That is:
Skill is the enemy of management. Management hates Skill. Among the reasons that I can think of off the top of my head, is that skill demands respect from those who are inherently disrespectful, it requires money (as skill is, and should be, more expensive) from those who would keep all the money to themselves, and requires flexibility from those who are most confortable being rigid (at least, with others).
This article lends the lie to the concept, currently in vogue among the MBA set, that Skill can be driven from the Organization. Once so removed, it can be replaced by the Mongolian Horde; just throw enough [insert worker-type here] regardless of (or, more accurately, in spite of) their skill level, and somehow, if you follow the Corporate Rulez to the letter, and don't think too much, a Product will appear.
That Skill can be divorced from success is bullshit, of course, but so are all other such Corporate Panaceae-du-Jour (which is how Corporte Amerika is being run these days). Skill exists, and it is crucial to Organizations that want to become or remain successful long past the buyout stage. Get the fuck over it!
