Beware Management Consultants
- ID
- 15385
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 19 Aug 2026, 3:29 AM
- Fetched
- 21 Aug 2026, 1:51 AM
- Provider
- Hacker News
- Category
- dev-community
- Original URL
- https://about.iceland.co.uk/our-story/the-dark-ages/beware-management-consultants/
- Source URL
- https://hnrss.org/best
Summary
- Score
- 4.0
- Created
- 21 Aug 2026, 2:58 AM
- Tags
- Audience
- developersvibe_coderssaas_founders
What happened
A satirical corporate fable from Iceland supermarket's 'Dark Ages' (2001-2005) about a rowing race: the Green team (7 rowers, 1 captain) beats the Red team (7 captains, 1 rower). Consultants restructure Red into 4 Captains, 2 Managers, 1 Senior Director with a dotted line to the rower. Green wins by 2 miles next year; the rower is fired, managers get bonuses, consultants blame the boat, and rowing is outsourced to India.
Why it matters
If you're building a startup team or running a dev org, the concrete lesson is captain-to-rower ratio: too many oversight layers and not enough people doing actual work guarantees failure, no matter how much you restructure. The outsourcing punchline is a warning that cost-cutting moves that don't address the root dysfunction just relocate the problem. For Malaysian founders considering outsourcing decisions, this is a reminder that the tool isn't always the issue.
Discussion angle
Ask the room: what's your current captain-to-rower ratio, and when was the last time a restructuring actually removed layers instead of adding them?