Ah yes, the "highly skilled engineer paid at great expense but not allowed to have an extra pen" problem. Sounds ridiculous until you go and need to almost beg to get a pen.

Oh this triggered some memories! Yes, I've worked for companies that made you return the old pen to get a new one.

Definitely for me. Having to sign for pens snd pencils was a thing at one place. They later went broke. My contract ended two years before they did, I wonder if it was the stationery budget or the bad will it caused?

There's a potential research paper in this somewhere: "Subtle consequences of mildly antagonistic workplace practices and their effect on annoying the crap out of people to the extent of later bankrupting a company due to the snowball effect."

Been a long day.

> I think it's incredibly short-sighted, but a lot of British businesses treat their software staff as equivalent to generic office inhabitants, rather than highly skilled software practitioners. They also seem to treat their tech staff like children.

This is not just true for British businesses... it's common worldwide across everything that's not a tech startup. The older the people in management are, the less likely they are to even understand what the younger staff is talking about.

German Mittelstand is infamous for this - they're roadblocked on one side by the government bending over backwards to impede proper buildout of real broadband across the country and not just in cities, and on the other side by 80+ aged patriarchs who still are dictating business communication in an audio recorder for their secretaries to type down. These pre-Boomer fossils are only focused on micromanagement and keeping control until the day they literally die, and the Boomer generation isn't much more modern either.

The result? Humble startups led by young people of a diverse background are eating their lunch left and right, and the Boomer+older generation are standing still, scratching their heads and wondering what's going on.

What do software staff have to do with laying rural fibre infrastructure? What do octogenarians have to do with software managers who these days are usually younger than the engineers, either because they went straight into management having negligible interest in tech, or because they soon found out they weren't any good at implementation?

Wanna live in a nice place with a garden for reasonable prices in your own house? Rural Germany is for you. Remote work from there? Yeah, not on 36k modem speeds you're not!

> What do software staff have to do with laying rural fibre infrastructure?

The rural fibre point was only to illustrate how German Mittelstand is blocked on not just the treatment of their tech staff.

> What do octogenarians have to do with software managers who these days are usually younger than the engineers

Micromanaging octogenarians are who are calling the shots in way too many Mittelstand companies, often against the express demands of their younger staff and management level.

That why I can’t stand contracting. If you treat your team like children they are gonna behave like it.

Also: no accountability of decision. Fire a few people and keep pushing harder. Never smarter.

This does not convey to quality product. It convey to pass arbitrary deadlines with half the team gone and the other ready to switch project.

Terrible knowledge management, too.