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Is this because as groups grow in size, high level decision making power tends to move up to less informed management individuals?

You'll end up with a "I programmed a little bit back in the day" person who makes decisions based on how to currently keep their staff best utilized. Tools choices, boundary points, stacks, become chosen based on goals that are not rooted in design simplicity.

I've watched this story play out again and again and again at companies. Upper management will promote these types of individuals into lower/middle management because

a) they're deemed actually reassignable whereas a really talented Ux designer is obviously adding the most value doing that

b) people buried/invested in tech stack/design details are harder for owner/operators to relate to than individuals more like themselves.



As groups grow in size it becomes increasingly hard to be informed as management. Eventually it becomes near impossible.


And yet, somehow open source projects manage to have some degree of success with very little of anything representing “management”.


How many of the extremely successful open source projects have clear strong management that's one dude(ette)? Linux, Python, Ruby, Blender...

Great delegation and engaging with community feedback productively are of course part of that strong management.


How many do, and how many of those see success outside their core highly technical user bases?




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