Guess what? If you’re an engineer, programmer, illustrator, writer, designer, you’re too stupid to manage yourself. Yes, it’s true. And you know it.

I’m sure you felt subtle tugs of inadequacy as you tried to move up the corporate ladder, as you were passed over for promotions and opportunities to play a larger, more expansive role in the organization. After all, you don’t speak the language of business (quick, tell me what EBITDA is) and we all know that engineers/programmers/blah blah don’t make good managers.

Still, your inadequacy made room for Stilton, with his newly minted MBA, so it’s all good. Right?

Fuck that!

Allow me to explain how it came to be that the people who do nothing came to manage the people who get it done.

In 1911, the United States was a rapidly growing industrial society. Value was created by production, and production, for the most part, required labor. Hard, sweaty, dirty labor.

As is true today, those in charge wanted to increase their cut. That meant maximizing production and minimizing cost. Both factors largely revolved around the people doing the labor.

Frederick Winslow Taylor came to their rescue. He wrote a book called The Principles of Scientific Management and set in place a way of thinking about management that managers today still hold to—spiritually if not literally. What did this book say about managers and employees, you ask?

Now one of the very first requirements for a man who is fit to handle pig iron as a regular occupation is that he shall be so stupid and so phlegmatic that he more nearly resembles in his mental make-up the ox than any other type. The man who is mentally alert and intelligent is for this very reason entirely unsuited to what would, for him, be the grinding monotony of work of this character. Therefore the workman who is best suited to handling pig iron is unable to understand the real science of doing this class of work. He is so stupid that the word “percentage” has no meaning to him, and he must consequently be trained by a man more intelligent than himself into the habit of working in accordance with the laws of this science before he can be successful.

Does it even need translation? How about, workers must be managed because they are too stupid to manage themselves. Remember, this is a book on management! In nearly 100 years, nothing has changed. We’re living their dream, baby!

And now you know the rest of the story.

- Bandit