Well said. I think the key point you make is that we are paid to maximize the value of the business. If the business isn't profitable, we could all lose our jobs. Too many IC feel that if the company isn't maximizing their personal effort they are inefficient and wrong. However, sometimes more value can be added by NOT writing more code or more documents. It is sometimes more valuable to throw away a bunch of completed work and not fall victim to the sunk cost fallacy. Sometimes a "worse" architecture is the highest BV.
From what I understood, they are talking about the author’s complaint that he doesn’t get to spend 100% of his workday coding/testing/documenting. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the companies were poorly run - larger enterprises with more projects, teams and customers are going to require more meetings.
Maybe he worked at poorly managed companies, who knows. The fact that he was asked to participate in meetings instead of only being assigned purely code-related tasks isn’t very compelling evidence of a company being a “joke”.
I tend to find that where the PO/product job doesnt have to be shared with developers the velocity and quality of the product improves considerably.
I dont think that relatively speaking companies that dont do this are horribly run since it seems to be the norm but I can see why somebody who isnt used to it would rant.
In general larger companies do everything inefficiently. It's to be expected. Small companies wouldnt exist otherwise.
In my view the most effective organizations are made up of mini CEOs.
When you read about organizations which were highly effective there is usually a common theme of management by objective and giving people ownership. “The HP Way” and this speech by Rickhover are two such examples: https://govleaders.org/rickover.htm
