Comment Mutually conflicting goals (Score 1) 1174
I also have seen that in several companies now, and I've come to a conclusion that one major reason for it are mutually conflicting goals.
For a manager, the daily job is about profits and looking after ones career.
For a software engineer, it's actually more about self expression. Creative problem solving that is, or can be, closer to art than work.
There is a clear conflict there, and it's not easy at all to fit together such distant mentalities.
I don't know sure way how exactly to handle this, but I think one step to right direction is to abandon strict management-dictated specifications and accept more like an evolutionary approach for software design.
Open in-company genuine two-way communication might also help.
There are of course other reasons that I have witnessed that have contributed to unpleasant working environment, like egos too big to admit that there might be someone, like the customer, that actually might know better about the field in question. But overall I think the major reasons for unpleasant working conditions for software engineers are caused by too distant mentalities between the management and software engineers.
For a manager, the daily job is about profits and looking after ones career.
For a software engineer, it's actually more about self expression. Creative problem solving that is, or can be, closer to art than work.
There is a clear conflict there, and it's not easy at all to fit together such distant mentalities.
I don't know sure way how exactly to handle this, but I think one step to right direction is to abandon strict management-dictated specifications and accept more like an evolutionary approach for software design.
Open in-company genuine two-way communication might also help.
There are of course other reasons that I have witnessed that have contributed to unpleasant working environment, like egos too big to admit that there might be someone, like the customer, that actually might know better about the field in question. But overall I think the major reasons for unpleasant working conditions for software engineers are caused by too distant mentalities between the management and software engineers.
