The essay Advantages of incompetent management by Yossi Kreinin, discusses how competent management isn’t always best and we overlook the desirable effects of incompetent management.
Competent management sets goals and achieves them. Incompetent management does not.
The problem with competent management is that it leads to perverse incentives. Each team is expected to do more and the optimal thing to do is always ask for more resources even if they are not needed. This in turn leads to bloat and sprawl in systems but little room for improvement (the author in particular is focused on code quality, optimization, and things working well).
This is a tidy explanation for what we see at some larger software companies that have seemingly infinite resources but operate poorly.
Incompetent management on the other hand has the virtue of laziness and slack. Because objectives aren’t set or don’t matter, it can be relied on that at least a few well-meaning workers will want to do the right thing. Without the constant haranguing of tightly-managed objectives of competent management, the well-meaning worker is free to pursue what is, in actuality, optimal.
See also:
- Interestingly, this explanation benefits nicely from a cynical world view
- Why there aren’t more engineering management blogs
- Eigenvector goals