Why programmers are not paid in proportion to their productivity (2009)
The actual real reason is that most management is just bunch of morons busy optimizing for their own success, and no one worrying about any common sense good of the company.<p>The company downfall is always hiring the first &quot;manager&quot;. After that managers will just keep inventing excuses to expand their dominion, until the company is 50% management, there&#x27;s more people than actual work that needs being done, yet all work grinds to almost complete halt.<p>Even if a given individual is not a self-serving moron, they are overpowered by the dynamics of the group and they either comply and play the game, or they are out.<p>The bigger the group, the easier it is to hide in a corner with incompetence, stupidity, politics, optimize for your personal gain, and the harder it is to actually competently judge the performance and contributions of each member.<p>Hierarchies make people optimize for raising in the hierarchy, and accumulating power, at the expense of actually doing what the group needs.<p>The way human groups organize in practice is pretty much always complete dysfunction without motivated, benevolent and competent leaders at the very top. Our own self-interest combined with natural bias and blind spots in aggregate always win. And the dysfunction grows more than linear with the size of the group.<p>At the corporate size there is practically no actual owner&#x2F;leader overseeing things (even the board is just bunch of self-serving assholes), so you effectively get a smaller and private replica of a communist state. If you read anything about communist state politics and management you&#x27;re going to see 1:1 with every corporation you&#x27;ve ever worked in.