Journal: The theory of management

In my last position before I retired, my boss and I were discussing problems with managing programmers and programming projects.

I told him that one of the biggest problems I have had in 20+ years of programming is that "management" seems to believe that any so-called manager can manage a factory production line, a farm growing oranges, or even a group of programmers writing software - that management is somehow a pure science and anyone that can manage one thing can manage anything else.

My boss floored me with his funny response: "that might be possible - if software grew on orange trees".

Smart man!