“Engineering Management Is Dying”

“There are elements of this philosophy at work at Google, where it’s not unusual to see 200-person projects headed by an Engineer.

Drucker saw it coming. In the ’80s, he predicted the rise of the “information-based-organization”. He saw information as enabling an extremely flat structure, which like an orchestra, consisted of technical experts who perhaps dreamt of moving from second bassoon to first bassoon, or from a good orchestra to a better one, but had no interest in pursuing a career in conducting, a.k.a. management. (…)

I’m also working on two other things that Drucker might recommend. He wrote:

Information is data endowed with relevance and purpose. Converting data into information requires knowledge. And knowledge, by definition, is specialized. The information-based organization requires far more specialists….

I’m becoming a specialist in two aspects of the software process that hackers ignore. The first is applying data, metrics and analytics to process improvement, and the second is structuring the work to enable people to have a better work-life, which I call positive software engineering.”

Source: http://deathrayresearch.tumblr.com/post/26759934886/engineering-management-is-dying