I don’t think I’ve ever worked with a project manager who wasn’t a total pseudo jobber. That is to say, I have worked with some wonderful project managers, but they got things done rather than “manage projects”. They’d be hands deep in Active Directory, weird json stuff to help find issues with OCR or working on change management and training when a new system needed to be adopted. But the whole “agile” side of project managers, scrum masters, IT business partners and so one have always just gotten on the way.
Usually what happens is that they become middlemen that can’t actually relay information between developers and the businesses. As a result developers and digitally inclined business people tend to talk to each other directly while they let the pseudo jobbers waste everyone’s time because… because it’s “best practice”.
Hah. Especially rich when you consider that the whole “agile manifesto” was thought up and sold by people who haven’t worked in software engineering since 20 years before Python even existed. Of course it doesn’t work. Not because any part of it is particularly bad, but because every part of it is extremely vague and completely unfit for reality. If you follow any sort of practice which isn’t YAGNI religiously you’re going to fuck up.
Projects ship because one of the people who do actual work gets fed up with all the bullshit and simply does what needs to be done. All the “project managers” and other role players are only there because SWE management is full of people who can’t code anymore. You don’t see all these pseudo jobbers in IT operations, and you don’t because SysAdmins want to be SysAdmins.
This may shock you, but companies actually need people to do things other than code. There's some strong "junior developer" vibes in this last paragraph, not realizing that SWE management and project management are spending their whole day making sure that the code you're writing is actually what the company needs, and they're not just lighting money on fire by employing you.
Just because someone "can't code anymore" (arguable premise though that is) doesn't mean their job is automatically bullshit.
It’s two decades of experience speaking. I didn’t speak about managers though. I was a manager for a couple of years before my undiagnosed ADHD made itself know when I had my first baby. Management has nothing to do with project management. I’m solely speaking about the horde of pseudo jobbers who work as middlemen between developers and whatever it is that developers are supposed to do. I’ve never encountered one which wasn’t a waste of resources except for business process and lean consultants who would actually do change management on the business side before anyone attempted doing any form of digitalisation.
I probably should have said “won’t code anymore” because that is what I meant. It’s the developers who become project managers, architects, agile whatever. Luckily I don’t have to deal with that anymore because I’ve become specialised in helping startups in-fuck their chaos as they transition into enterprise organisations. Many of them never make it because of how their internal processes are hindered by all sorts of “best practices”.
This doesn’t mean that there aren’t excellent project managers out there. As I said, I’ve worked with some myself. Far too often project managers don’t actually do anything. I recently worked a team which has 1 PM, 1 Manager, 3 IT business partners and one architect in front of two developers. Today they have two developers and one IT business partner, who’s really an accountant that got into coding because he liked it. But is now capable of explaining the business to the developers.
It’s obviously not like that everywhere and I’m happy for you if you’ve had a better track record than me. I would argue that it is perhaps you who lack the experience that you seem to think I do. Because it’s not just on SWE you’ll find an abundance of bullshit jobs once an organisation reaches 100-500 employees.
Usually what happens is that they become middlemen that can’t actually relay information between developers and the businesses. As a result developers and digitally inclined business people tend to talk to each other directly while they let the pseudo jobbers waste everyone’s time because… because it’s “best practice”.
Hah. Especially rich when you consider that the whole “agile manifesto” was thought up and sold by people who haven’t worked in software engineering since 20 years before Python even existed. Of course it doesn’t work. Not because any part of it is particularly bad, but because every part of it is extremely vague and completely unfit for reality. If you follow any sort of practice which isn’t YAGNI religiously you’re going to fuck up.
Projects ship because one of the people who do actual work gets fed up with all the bullshit and simply does what needs to be done. All the “project managers” and other role players are only there because SWE management is full of people who can’t code anymore. You don’t see all these pseudo jobbers in IT operations, and you don’t because SysAdmins want to be SysAdmins.