It is all too obvious that management learns nothing from mistakes. Isn't it about time they started doing so? The problems just keep piling up.
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Some developers are arrogant, and arrogant people don't listen well to customers or anyone. In my experience, the arrogant developers were the ones with weak skills. They were defensive for that reason and arrogant toward anyone who disagreed with them.
The best developers I knew were not defensive, because they were confident in their skills. They were happy to discard their preconceptions, if it meant learning something better. And they very much wanted to satisfy customers; that was their whole reason for developing software.
I and others have complained about management. But generalizations about managers are no more valid than generalizations about developers. In both cases, there were good ones and bad ones.
Even now, there are excellent developers and managers at SAS. There are top-notch sales and marketing folks, tech support teams, etc. The top 10% of SAS is as talented a group as you'll find anywhere.
The tragedy is that SAS needs new revenue streams, but the people who can do that job are not in a position to do it. We attracted some of the best people, but we did not enable them to do their best work.
Ignoring or devaluing the comments (or customer concerns) you don't agree with does not make those statements any less valid, regardless of your technical competence. Perhaps this behavior contributed to the current predicament?
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Yes, since an extra level of indirection is a fundamental theorems of computer science, I’m agreeing with you directly and ignoring the baseless accusations of the troll who you are referencing. Those of us who are deep in the history of SAS R&D understand who did, and did not have integrity, the talent and commitment necessary to move the needle long-term. The fact that many of us were not enabled, and in some cases not even allowed to take our work next level, does not mean we were arrogant.
It's not arrogance to want to do your job well.
Those customers are to blame. They did not see how astounding the technical talent pool was. Had they seen it, they would have begged, pleaded, on bended knee for the Development teams to take their money. They would have offered up their homes and chaste young daughters in tribute, as an honor and a sacrifice to ensure that future generations could benefit from your greatness.
Pop! Back to reality, Developers. Perhaps your arrogance contributed to the problems?
If you're talking about R&D, some of them truly can't learn from mistakes, because they lack basic knowledge.
Anyone can learn to code. But managing large software projects takes skills you learn at university, and they didn't.
I knew R&D managers with degrees in psychology, history, business administration, even forestry. They never studied computer science, or computer engineering, or anything related.
These people are not going to learn, unless they go back to school. And these people are not going back to school.
There are excellent managers remaining at SAS: good, smart people, knowledgeable and hard working. But the minority must compromise with the majority.
kissing the right a-s, being of the right mold (not exactly people with top thinking skills) and playing the right game is the "skill, merit, and competence" in that kind of case.
Those people did learn from 'mistakes'. They saw that it is a 'mistake' for someone to apply critical thinking skills in that environment. The people with those skills are run out of there. Rewards accrue to those who pass along the wishes of whomever's in vogue at the moment.
You think they got to be managers using skill, merit and competence? Don't be silly.