Hell of a Tester

Attended a week ago the Frogs (friends of good software) online unconference https://frogsconf.nl/. Unconference type of events are these days pretty much the only type of conference I wish to participate. They almost automatically establish what many more traditional desperately try - discussions and interactivity. Frogs was no exception, and was also extremely well organized. It followed a typical unconference/openspace format, of creating the content and schedule of the conference in the beginning, and then people attending the ones they find most interesting. The conference organizers have background in testing/qa type of work, which is why there where a lot of testing minded people attending, but happily there were also a lot of people from different backgrounds.  We were using Welo as the platform for the unconference and it worked well, allowing you to move virtually between rooms and hangaround places.  Depending on the timeslot, there were 3-5 topics happening at the same time

Are managers valuable? Or useless? Or harmful?! I can admit that during my 17 years career in sw development, I have developed sometimes a bit cynical view on managers. And therefore a sound interest on ideas around not having any, like teal and holocracy (although I am not a big fan of those either 😀). Cynicism comes from managers who think it is their job to make decisions for other people. Decisions like what information to share and for whom, who to hire where, and how to do things. So decisions which mostly affect other peoples work. And these type of managers are not just useless, I think they are extremely harmful. I'd rather take a manager that does nothing than this type of a manager. But I've also had privilege to work with managers who advice, share, participate, challenge and empower. Managers who get the best out of teams and individuals. Managers that give me hope. My question to all managers is: what type do you want to be?