Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand.
Putt's law, from a pseudonymous 1981 book. Its corollary is the sharper half: every technical hierarchy evolves a competence inversion, since the competent are promoted out of the work.
In practice
- A hospital's strongest clinician is made a service director, spends her week on rotas, and the clinic is covered by a locum.
- An engineering director who cannot read the codebase approves the architecture, and the person who can has no authority over it.