Comment by loup-vaillant | Hacker News Reader

Comment by loup-vaillant | Hacker News Reader

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> […] managers […] should be trained to respect opinions of subordinates.

That's your problem right there: the subordinacy of engineers.

We are biased to listen to high-status people more than low-status people. The strength of this bias varies from people to people, and from culture to culture. But if you are asking someone to listen to the opinion of a direct subordinate, you are asking for trouble.

This is one reason why Michael O. Church is so big on guilds, or "professions". If instead of being a subordinate, the engineer was a (possibly certified) master craftsman, things would be different. Just picture the manager calling the the engineer "master", then not listen to her opinion.

> […] engineers […] should be trained in how to negotiate with management

Conversely, it's harder to negotiate when you have lower status than the manager. You may feel it is not your place. But if you're a master programmer, offering your services to said manager, then you could feel more confident about talking to him as a peer. You could feel more confident about saying things like "your idea won't work —trust me, it's my speciality."

I agree with you. I'd like to live and work in such a world myself.

But my rather pessimistic opinion is that status, hierarchy, etc are deeply embedded in us as a species - just like animal species who have pack leaders or dominant males or whatever - and this won't be easy to get rid of. The ones who hold financial strings, the ones who act more arrogant, more confident, more powerful, more knowledgeable - they are unconsciously seen as having higher status.

The hierarchy could be inverted with a very small change to the laws governing engineers, just as it has been done for lawyers. The details vary by jurisdiction, but generally lawyers must practice in some form of partnership where non-lawyer members are restricted. Work similar to project management is frequently performed by secretaries that are subordinate to the lawyers.

Whether or not strengthening the profession of engineering would be good for society is another question. It is inherently anti-competitive. It could easily slip into a system with very few and highly paid "qualified" engineers whose small number would hinder development. This is a problem with medicine and the supply of doctors in some places.

I would note that in the legal field, effective DOJ threats have prevented any attempt to limit the supply of JD grads, while the other rules such as management of lawyers by non-lawyers has remained in place.

The problem is not hierarchies as such, but in failing to recognize the hierarchy as an expert organization where the experts are the masters of their expertise. Managers are project managers who have the responsibility to direct their experts to solve the issues to make the project succeed. It's therefore the managers job to have a best overall understanding of the project, and incidentally it's the job of the experts to inform the manager of any serious issues they cannot solve alone, and possible solutions for the problem if possible.

Expert organisations are not hypothetical, and actually have been present in all hitech companies I've worked for. Then again it could be a cultural difference, as I'm working in Finland where social equality is a big thing, and calling your manager, director or CEO with honorifics like "mister" would be considered awkward or almost inappropriate.

This would change almost nothing in the current scenario. Companies still have in-house legal teams, who are trained lawyers and I'd argue they are still 'subordinate' to whoever their managers are. Given the number of startups that regularly skirt the edges of the law it's obvious that many founders don't pay heed to legal advice either (or even seek it out) [1]. Why should it be any different if engineering was more 'professionalised'?

[1] I'm not making any judgements about this, simply stating that it happens.

> This would change almost nothing in the current scenario. Companies still have in-house legal teams, who are trained lawyers and I'd argue they are still 'subordinate' to whoever their managers are.

I have no idea what your scare quotes mean, so I'll pretend I didn't see them.

What you describe may be yet another problem of subordinacy, but there is a difference: when you get legal advice, it's not binding. You may chose not to follow it. But only engineers can build a bridge. That gives them a limited veto power.

In the current scenario, there are several steps. First, the lawyers says how much the different kind of litigations cost. Second, the boss (or some other manager) works out which costs more: letting people die, or fixing the lethal stuff. Finally, there's the engineer, which either fixes the damn thing, or does not.

This suggests at least two angles of attack. First we could increase the cost of death for companies. Second, we could held specific people personally accountable. Either the manager for trading lives for money, or the engineer for implementing that trade off.

Now, as another commenter warned about, we should be careful about not freezing innovation in the process. At this point, the problem is so hairy I have no idea what's best.

The quote marks around 'subordinate', to me, are intended to indicate that the status that the relationship entails on the surface does not hold where it matters. The lawyers are not really subordinate to the managers and are able to extract more value from management than the managers are able to extract from the lawyers. If this dynamic persists long enough, then, like the Janissaries of Ottoman fame, the subordinates eventually find themselves the masters.

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