Productivity compared to which time in the past? If we compare productivity today compared to say 1960/1950 then we have definitely improved. We can manufacture at speed & scale. We can communicate with people across the continents like never before. We can work-from-home to a large extent than ever before. We can destroy each other at much grander scale like never before.
But like any system, any improvement in efficiency results in shifting the bottlenecks. It never truly goes away. The nature of the bottleneck may be different but its there. The things like "forms, compliance, process" are the new bottlenecks.
Technology is a means to an end. It cannot be the end itself (at a macro level). Tech is by humans, for humans and of humans. Humans will always be the centerpiece for time to come (unless AI becomes so good as they potray in sci-fi films/tv-series).
1. General purpose: Typical FANG like where hire first and then do team matching later
2. Targeted hiring: Companies want specific people and they try to recruit them
A sizable number of top open-source contributors get recruited are in #2. Eg. 1) Top contributors in Rust lang hired by AWS. 2) FANG companies targeting top AI researchers from academia.
One's open-source presence needs to be really prolific and the project has to make an large impact to be in #2 category.
For #1 category folks, your public profile does not matter that much (atleast for FANG companies)
Other way to think is #1 are treated as cattle, #2 are treated as pets.
The famous incident where author of homebrew was rejected by a top company because he could not invert a binary tree got in the wrong channel (#1) to begin with where he was treated as a cattle.
Note: Recruiter from FANG calling you still goes in #1 category for most people
Next tweet: "Today is the best time ever to start a company. You might fail, you might succeed, it’s a crazy ride either way, and you’ll learn and grow more than at any job."
I do not fully understand but my interpretation: Try it anyway even if you are not cut out for it.
One thing which has helped me is to listen to a podcast or any audio of your favorite topic while lying down. Initially your mind will try to remain attentive but after 20 min or so it becomes harder. After a while you will feel so sleepy that you would want to stop the audio.
One factor I think is span of control. If the director you mentioned starts getting project statuses from 15+ teams then the director might not scale. The director will not be able to scale for things like appraisals, burning issues, hiring.
Anecdote (which serves as a reverse example i.e. senior asking a question):
We were having a regular status call and since the meeting finished early there was a general chit-chat happening.
That is when we started talking about "iphone" and our boss innocently asked "what is iphone" (it had been on the market for a year since its first launch)
We started looking at each other in disbelief. But we knew this about her. She used to openly ask in a meeting without shame on things she did not know. But once she understood something she use to process that info very well.
The team really adored her because she was so good in other managerial things (like defending team, good rapport with individuals, planning, etc).
Back story was that all her time was spent with her 2-3 kids leaving no time for other things.
> I don't feel like the guy who does a plan which must be blindly followed by others
When I became PE, my boss said that if you have to successful then you need to get teams listen to you by influencing instead of an authority.
At that moment, I had no idea how to go about this. But I realized one thing: "Knowledge is power". If you know the tech-stack, product & domain then you are well equipped for this role.
But the reality is that lot of companies open offices in certain countries because they can afford to pay less than US and while extracting the similar work. I am not talking about outsourcing companies and instead I am referring to product based companies opening their offices in Bangalore, Pune, Hyderabad, etc (or may be east European countries)
I think WFH choice is a spectrum. At one end its "I will work remote only" and the other end its "I want to be physically present in office". And then there are in between like 80% wfh but 20% for important meetups/discussions.
All this is fine but what happens when in a team of 5, 1 person prefers WFH all the time and 2 want in office and others in-between. Its really awkward to have meetings where majority team is in a room white-boarding and one guy/gal joining in remote. Also the person working from home will miss a lot of ad-hoc conversations/corridor talk.
Offcourse all of the above does not matter if one's nature of job is not dependent on others to large extent and then that person can definitely wfh much more effectively.
But like any system, any improvement in efficiency results in shifting the bottlenecks. It never truly goes away. The nature of the bottleneck may be different but its there. The things like "forms, compliance, process" are the new bottlenecks.
Technology is a means to an end. It cannot be the end itself (at a macro level). Tech is by humans, for humans and of humans. Humans will always be the centerpiece for time to come (unless AI becomes so good as they potray in sci-fi films/tv-series).