Whenever I work with non-engineers, it's baffling to me how impractical they are. They don't measure things. They don't test things. They don't try new ways of doing things. It's like work is just a place to hang out and push some paper.
I get that we ideally don't want to work, but I would be so bored being so ineffective. I think the article is trying to distinguish between these two kinds of people with respect to IT. With IT, you need to measure. You need to test. You need to plan. You need to experiment. A new idea or implementation can start an entire industry. So many people just don't get that.
The great part is that if you create a good environment, the shit is fun. During good times, I fucking love my job. At bad companies, every day is a living hell.
If we could fix the bugs in modern capitalism, we could see real competition kill off these boring, ineffective companies, ideally in favor of driven but balanced places where people can do cool stuff. Plus, with a good social welfare system, if people wanted to fuck off for a few years, there would definitely be enough surplus production to support that (there probably is now, but it's all hoarded...)
Because their performance matrices are evaluated by how closely they follow their SOP. They are forced to follow it even if it's brain dead. It is up to the ones setting the policies and procedures (the management) to make sure that their SOP and workflow they put in actually works.
If the management don't give a shit, keep giving bullshit orders and setting bullshit targets, workers with common sense will leave from all the frustration, leaving only the kinds of people you met running the department.
That makes sense, but I'm also taking about employees who operate without an SOP.
But your point about bullshit orders and targets makes sense. So it's more an individual company's culture than a general trend? Maybe I've just had bad luck