Mintzberg's work on the structure of organisations, and what's been built on top of it on the other hand is quite interesting. Glouberman and Mintzberg's followup work on organisational structure in healthcare is pretty good too (wrong but good). Glouberman is a philosopher too which fortuitously makes things relevant to the OP.
They make a differentiation between cure (doctors) versus care (nurses). I'm feel that computer hackers are rather like doctors and nurses in that regard. High levels of professional autonomy and prioritisation for the doctor level hackers (e.g. I've been given Dr House level free reign to diagnose and cure a system that's been sick for at lest the last two-ish years, and nobody else has been able to work out what's wrong with it). Junior devs are more like nurses, working under direction to treat symptoms to make the patient better but where the architectural considerations are less important.
We currently have a Clinical Nurse Specialist level hacker trying to bolt some new behaviour on top of a very sick subsystem (written back in the day when nobody knew what they were doing). I'm interested to see what he makes of it - he already dismissed extending the subsystem out of hand, and justifiably so, so I'm looking forward to seeing his next decisions.
They make a differentiation between cure (doctors) versus care (nurses). I'm feel that computer hackers are rather like doctors and nurses in that regard. High levels of professional autonomy and prioritisation for the doctor level hackers (e.g. I've been given Dr House level free reign to diagnose and cure a system that's been sick for at lest the last two-ish years, and nobody else has been able to work out what's wrong with it). Junior devs are more like nurses, working under direction to treat symptoms to make the patient better but where the architectural considerations are less important.
We currently have a Clinical Nurse Specialist level hacker trying to bolt some new behaviour on top of a very sick subsystem (written back in the day when nobody knew what they were doing). I'm interested to see what he makes of it - he already dismissed extending the subsystem out of hand, and justifiably so, so I'm looking forward to seeing his next decisions.