As the market contracts, recent claims about ‘fake’ and ‘BS’ jobs by venture capitalist David Ulevtich have put middle management roles under the spotlight.
Engineering managers have to constantly grapple with cycles of growth and contraction – especially in the volatile technology industry. This creates a people management challenge to meet the changing needs of the organization, by constantly shaping and reshaping teams and unblocking them to do their best work. Now, as the sector faces its first real period of contraction in decades, this facet of the job is under increased scrutiny.
David Ulevitch, the former founder and CEO of OpenDNS and now an investor at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), put this topic under the magnifying glass recently, when he railed against what he sees as the proliferation of “fake work” and “BS jobs” at big tech companies.
