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I saw this linked from this post the other day [1]. Would be interesting to hear what you think about the ideas in there.
1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42111031
The issue I have with ragging on the very existence of management is that it's a childish mentality, quickly exposed by the question: "so why don't you freelance?".
The answer of course being: "because I couldn't manage myself, and if I did I'd probably be even worse than them".
Not having a manager is an option every single dev has, at all times. They're in charge of that decision.
Most managers perform poorly. That's a trite fact that anyone with a few years of career experience under their belt will know full well.
But they're not putting their hand up for the role, and they're also not putting their hand up for the job of managing managers (i.e. starting a successful concern) so they can make their company the exception.
Instead they want to flippantly pretend that code by itself is valuable, without an apparatus to connecting it to the market that ultimately pays their rent.
The answer is always the same: find better managers then. Maybe a new better employer that trains their managers well and keeps the manager-reports ratio high. Maybe making yourself the manager.
Self-indulgence isn't the way.
I was definitely leaning this way too, really well put. Training at work (for all roles) definitely needs an upswing. As a freelance for many years I always made sure to do my own training, be it certifications or meetup groups or conferences. I have little real insight into how common that is nowadays, but I often read that it seems less common.