Management techniques and why you should blog
I am not a manager, and I don't think I would survive as one. I believe that being a good manager takes a lot of work, and I am not sure if the compensation (money, personal satisfaction, and sense of accomplishment) would be worth the additional time, stress, and hassle. That is not even considering whether or not I would be any good at it. I think being a bad manager would be depressing, because I think you would feel bad hampering rather than enabling other people's productivity. I don't know if I'm very good at being empathic to people, or influencing others, or communicating and expressing goals in such a way as to have everyone share in the delivery and feel rewarded from success. I know I am not good at filtering uncertainty that makes many people nervous.
Anyhow, Joel Spolsky (Joel on Software) has been recently updating his blog with three entries about different management techniques, while simplistic, it is at least slightly interesting as food for though about what makes a organization or team work, or not work as the case too often seems to be. Maybe geeks want a management optimizer, just like with their C/C++ compilers, enable -O2 and the performance reviews are done, the budget spreadsheet is balanced, and the task list is not growing geometrically.
* The Command and Control Management Method
* The Econ 101 Management Method
* The Identity Management Method
Another blog I've recently discovered that seems to have some pieces worth reading, or at least worth scanning is Steve Yegge's Stevey's Blog Rants (newer, March 2006 to at least August 2006) and Stevey's Drunken Blog Rants (older, 2004-2005). The one that has impressed me the most is Why You Should Blog. Plus he uses Emacs, so he must be a real keyboard wielding programmer.
So here I am, trying to at least make an entry of some sort. Maybe even a comment or opinion of my own.