My problem though, is that 95% of the time, the people doing the asking aren’t competent to do the asking. It’s not just about bad market directions: “You wanted a plaid Cadillac, I painted you a plaid Cadillac.” Often, the people doing the high level directing are there because of the Peter principle. Now it’s a bit more like being a pilot or a train engineer, you’re doing the hands on implementing, but the charted course is not just inefficient, it does lasting damage to the viability of the vehicle. And when it’s all bolloxed, it’s you, your peers, and your profession that take the blunt of the blame. The very thing that got you collectively into the mess—their inability to really understand what they’re doing—is the thing that saves them.
So in an idealized world, I totally agree with you. When I have the pleasure of being healthily remunerated to craft solutions under someone else who has respectable experience and wisdom about software choices, and owns both their success and their failure and insulates me from that, I will happily move past tue sense of responsibility that inevitably works it’s way into what I do.
I understand and I agree with you. Mine is an idealized world, I know it. By the way, spot on with Peter principle, that's one of the main reason, all this producing value makes me go crazy.
My problem though, is that 95% of the time, the people doing the asking aren’t competent to do the asking. It’s not just about bad market directions: “You wanted a plaid Cadillac, I painted you a plaid Cadillac.” Often, the people doing the high level directing are there because of the Peter principle. Now it’s a bit more like being a pilot or a train engineer, you’re doing the hands on implementing, but the charted course is not just inefficient, it does lasting damage to the viability of the vehicle. And when it’s all bolloxed, it’s you, your peers, and your profession that take the blunt of the blame. The very thing that got you collectively into the mess—their inability to really understand what they’re doing—is the thing that saves them.
So in an idealized world, I totally agree with you. When I have the pleasure of being healthily remunerated to craft solutions under someone else who has respectable experience and wisdom about software choices, and owns both their success and their failure and insulates me from that, I will happily move past tue sense of responsibility that inevitably works it’s way into what I do.