Actually, not jackass, but asshole, but this is a family blog, at least as far as post titles are concerned.
In any case, Scott Berkun's Asshole driven development post on practices in the software industry from a couple of years ago is so true that it almost passes from being funny to being sad. Yes, in my previous career, I was a software developer in the insurance industry and while I had a couple of great bosses (you know who you are!), there were a couple who were...
Well, read on:
Asshole Driven development (ADD) - Any team where the biggest jerk makes all the big decisions is asshole driven development. All wisdom, logic or process goes out the window when Mr. Asshole is in the room, doing whatever idiotic, selfish thing he thinks is best. There may rules and processes, but Mr. A breaks them and people follow anyway.
Some of the other management theories Berkun discusses are Cover Your Ass Engineering, Development By Denial and Get Me Promoted Methodology. And the 300+ comments are worth their weight in gold.
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