Employees are happier when led by people with deep expertise
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Re: Employees are happier when led by people with deep expertise
#2>The benefit of having a highly competent boss is easily the largest positive influence on a typical worker’s level of job satisfaction
This is one of those great discoveries that is hardly surprising and makes you wonder why it hadn't be seen before.
Honestly some of my worst work experiences were getting jerked around by a superior who completely failed to understand the work required to do my job.
Re: Employees are happier when led by people with deep expertise
#3I thought that was one of the nice touches in Better Off Ted. It turns out that Ted probably could fill in for any one of the team if he needed to, and the reason he didn't interfere more technically was just that (as a good manager) he was avoiding micromanaging.
Re: Employees are happier when led by people with deep expertise
#4I was just thinking about this today. I'm usually happier when I'm doing things that I know my boss nearly-fully understands and when I know that they're able to work on it themselves if needed.
Re: Employees are happier when led by people with deep expertise
#5This not exactly surprising but yes, it's nice to be able to talk to your boss about the subtleties of my work. This is what makes work interesting. I hate when it's clear that all he is interested in are deadlines and budgets.
Re: Employees are happier when led by people with deep expertise
#6[deleted]
Re: Employees are happier when led by people with deep expertise
#7>The benefit of having a highly competent boss is easily the largest positive influence on a typical worker’s level of job satisfaction This is one of those great discoveries that is hardly surprising and makes you wonder why it hadn't be seen before. Honestly some of my worst work experiences were getting jerked around by a superior who completely failed to understand the work required to do my job.
I suspect it is a comparatively new phenomenon in the workplace which is in part attributable to the recent surge (5-10 years) in knowledge work.
When I worked in bigco as an analyst, the director and even managers were from a different era. The better ones knew excel to some extent but had no idea how to do sql or even excel automation which was a large part of what the analysts were required to do. Part of this is a rapid almost stepwise change in the work that is done, part of it is due to tech companies recruiting from a diverse set of industries.
In other industries like law, finance and accounting, most people start at the bottom and slowly work upwards so the skillset is more of a continuum up the hierarchy so it is feasible that your bosses can still do your job.
It used to be the same in other industries but that is fast changing. For instance, the top level accountants will have been studying at a time where bookkeeping was literally done in paper books...
Re: Employees are happier when led by people with deep expertise
#8I've had a boss who was very competent technically, but was completely incompetent as a people manager. Somehow he rose to a VP level, but still wanted to micromanage everything down to individual code reviews. It was comical at times. Eventually he was fired.
Re: Employees are happier when led by people with deep expertise
#9The most surprising part about this to me is that this matters at the top. Sure, for a middle manager it makes sense that it matters quite a bit. I'm pretty surprised that it matters much at the top, though.
If Elon Musk decided to head a major grocery chain I wouldn't stop to consider whether his lack of experience in retail groceries mattered much. But maybe it does?
Really interesting to see the analogy extend to sports, too. Professional sports teams, even successful ones, are almost universally run (coaches, GMs, etc.) by people who didn't play at a high level. Without actually pulling the numbers up, I'd estimate with high probability that the number of "all-stars" either managing or running teams is countable on one hand.
I mean, hell, this year's superbowl is being lead by two coaches who played D3 football, and one GM who played football for a Canadian university. One of said coaches is pretty universally considered one of the greatest coaches of all time.
For the most part these coaches/GMs absolutely could not do the job of the players on the field, nor could they ever.
Re: Employees are happier when led by people with deep expertise
#10The most surprising part about this to me is that this matters at the top. Sure, for a middle manager it makes sense that it matters quite a bit. I'm pretty surprised that it matters much at the top, though. If Elon Musk decided to head a major grocery chain I wouldn't stop to consider whether his lack of experience in retail groceries mattered much. But maybe it does? Really interesting to see the analogy extend to…
Did Elon Musk have a lot of experience in self-driving cars or space rockets before Tesla?