<i>&quot;To me, this speaks volumes more about the incompetency of the manager...&quot;</i><p>Yes, and in particular, it may indicate that the manager knows absolutely nothing about software development, and couldn&#x27;t tell good code from bad code if his life depended on it. Since the guy who wrote the article was working on billing and provisioning for a cable company, it&#x27;s possible that his boss was someone like the head of the billing department - not a technical person at all.<p>It&#x27;s even more depressing when tech-savvy managers, who should be able to judge employees by their actual contributions to the end-product, practice &quot;ass in chair&quot; management.<p>Also: Lots of interesting discussion from when this article was originally posted 2 years ago:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=6895502" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=6895502</a>