(2006-08-09) Spolsky Econ101 Management

Joel Spolsky on the silliness of "Econ 101 Management" - trying to manage people through Metrics. The biggest problem with Econ 101 management, though, is that it's not management at all: it's really more of an abdication of management. A deliberate refusal to figure out how things can be made better. It's a sign that management simply doesn't know how to teach people to do better work, so they force everybody in the system to come up with their own way of doing it... Yesterday I told you that your developers, the leaves in the tree, have the most information; Micro-Management or Command And Control barking out orders is likely to cause non-optimal results. Today I'm telling you that when you're creating a system, you can't abdicate your responsibility to train your people by bribing them. Management, in general, needs to set up the system so that people can get things done, it needs to avoid displacing Intrinsic motivation with Extrinsic motivation, and it won't get very far using fear and barking out specific orders. (see EMyth)