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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

#71

Post by TallGuyShort »

zzalpha wrote: post #66
bluGill wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reality is that in order to effectively manage, you have to understand what the doers are actually doing. Actually it is not. One of the best bosses I ever had had no clue what I was doing. He was smart enough to admit that he didn't know how to do my job. He was excellent at his job though: figuring out who were good people and removing roadblocks from their way. He identified a few good programmers to do the…

Actually it is not. Well, the HBR studies cited, here, indicate a correlation between a manager who could do their direct report's job and job satisfaction of that direct report. It does not claim that this is necessary for direct report job satisfaction, only that it makes it more likely. So, my comment could have been better phrased as: The reality is that in order to effectively manage, it helps if they understand…

Yeah I think there's a balance here. One of my favorite managers also didn't understand my project (although he did understand software engineering in general) and I later found out everyone else hated him. I've seen what I suspect is similar later: managers who just see their job as defending their team. Someone needs something from the team? Push back. Their teams needs something? Hound those responsible. Team has an opinion? It's undisputed truth now. No ability to mediate or help with the bigger picture. Just like a lawyer for their employees.

What you need is someone who will take care of the employees and jump on grenades of distraction so they can focus on their job. But you also have to have enough context to step back and say, "hmm... doing this would be best for the greater good - my team should take a look at this." It doesn't need to be the ability to do it themselves, but they have to have some.

Re: Employees are happier when led by people with deep expertise

#72

Post by brbrodude »

bognition wrote: post #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.

Just because some dudes in suits or some bureaucracy academic had not talked about it yet it doesn't mean it's now been "discovered", don't fall for this trap. Everyone's who's experienced a virtuous workplace also "discovered" this as it's a self-evident truth(when it happens). How many times will we "discover" human nature again? Depending on psychologists, economists, administrators and business gurus, infinite times(corollary: we will keep on 'discovering' the same things because we never actually learn). Edit: To try and make it clearer: we are all human yet we systematically neglect our nature/ignore it in others and treat it as if it's a million pieces puzzle we can't figure out. Seems we're just looking at stuff ever more fractioned, we take 1/2, make it 1/10 and act like we made a +8 advancement in knowledge, but we haven't. Holism and shit. To me it's an example of the stupidity of modern thinking.

Re: Employees are happier when led by people with deep expertise

#73

Post by edblarney »

Missing from this study is the fact that we tend to project confidence, intelligence and wisdom on those that we like.

A staffers perception of the competence of their boss may mostly be a function of how much they like their boss.

Also - staffers may have no ability to judge the competence of a boss.

Example: boss is highly technical, nice, gives you good feedback, stays 'out of your hair' - and 'let's you do your job'.

Problem: you're all way behind schedule, and he's afraid to be unpopular by steering you and the team in the right direction. From a management perspective, he's failing, and causing the whole company to fail.

Re: Employees are happier when led by people with deep expertise

#74

Post by dagw »

abawany wrote: post #60

I skimmed the comments and didn't see the following perspective so thought I would add it: one thing that makes it great for me to work with people with deep expertise is the ability to learn amazing things. I am willing to put up with a lot of 'management personality/quirks' if it comes with learning that is invaluable. I believe people who work with 'interesting' (sometimes abusive) chefs such as Gordon Ramsay may…

I agree with you that I want to work with/for those sorts of people. I disagree that I want them as my boss.

Re: Employees are happier when led by people with deep expertise

#75

Post by zzalpha »

baursak wrote: post #8

I'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.

The real shame is that his boss didn't know how to manage him. Unfortunately, it's not unusual for middle managers to languish without decent coaching.

I feel like this often happens due to one or more of: a) the senior management chain was similarly not coached and so they wouldn't recognize a management failure if it bit them in the arse, b) the evaluation structures in place aren't suited to evaluating management types so bad management is "invisible" (e.g. skip level feedback), or c) there's an expectation that if you promote someone into management because they were a strong staff member at the line level, that they'll just automatically excel as a manager, too.

I suspect there are a lot of bad managers out there that could've avoided their fate with early intervention...

Re: Employees are happier when led by people with deep expertise

#76

Post by lordnacho »

Is anybody surprised by this? A boss who can do your job can:

- Fill in when the team is busy. Ever seen the manager at McDonald's flipping burgers or frying fries? Some goes for any other manager, sometimes, they have to step into the code or read legal docs, or operate the machines.

- Provide a perspective that's likely to be relevant to you. He knows what it was like doing your job, and has a good guess as to where it's going. As opposed to simply imagining what you do.

- Understand push-back. A boss who isn't an expert will require explanation that an experienced boss will not. "We can't add this feature because it breaks our database schema". "Uhm what's a database schema?". Only so many times you can hear that from someone who supposed to be deciding things before you lose faith.

- Guess what the team wants. Better experience -> better guesses. Even if the boss hasn't done the work for a while.

- Give feedback beyond "work completed/not". Because they can see where the hurdles are before you complete, and they have an understanding of how big the problems you've solved are on the way to completion.

Looking at my experience, anytime I worked with someone who didn't have the technical understanding, the worst drops in morale happened when I felt something was obvious, but the person needed it explained. It would have been fine for a new staffer to ask, or a graduate, but not a decision maker.

The main annoyance was the issue of where costs could be cut. Some people I've worked with seemed to think that just by asking enough questions, some piece would show up that could be cut from the solution with no harm. And so they'd keep asking around about whether this-or-that was "really" necessary. And perhaps when you're not an expert you can't come up with new pieces or processes, so your line of questioning is inevitably towards slimming whatever is already there.

Re: Employees are happier when led by people with deep expertise

#78

Post by [deleted] »

bluGill wrote: post #63
zzalpha wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of those great discoveries that is hardly surprising and makes you wonder why it hadn't be seen before. Well, the traditional view of "management" is that it's a distinct job from "doing". Therefore, so the thinking goes, there is a distinct difference in skillsets, and thus the manager should be good at the managing bit, and the doer should be good at the doing bit. The reality is that in order to effect…

> The reality is that in order to effectively manage, you have to understand what the doers are actually doing. Actually it is not. One of the best bosses I ever had had no clue what I was doing. He was smart enough to admit that he didn't know how to do my job. He was excellent at his job though: figuring out who were good people and removing roadblocks from their way. He identified a few good programmers to do the…

[deleted]

Re: Employees are happier when led by people with deep expertise

#79

Post by taneq »

cableshaft wrote: post #65
taneq wrote: post #3

I 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.

Except the scientists, I don't think he could replicate their job. Otherwise, I can see it. Such a great show. I rewatch it about once a year. Really wish it had at least one more season, though.

True, their actual expertise is left kind of hand-wavey. On the one hand they can genetically engineer exploding pumpkins, on the other hand they can't fix their lab door alarm keypad. Maybe they're more biochem-based, but I digress... I don't think we ever learn enough about their skills to know what they can and can't do.

Re: Employees are happier when led by people with deep expertise

#80

Post by dkarapetyan »

abawany wrote: post #60

I skimmed the comments and didn't see the following perspective so thought I would add it: one thing that makes it great for me to work with people with deep expertise is the ability to learn amazing things. I am willing to put up with a lot of 'management personality/quirks' if it comes with learning that is invaluable. I believe people who work with 'interesting' (sometimes abusive) chefs such as Gordon Ramsay may…

Nothing more annoying than an incompetent co-worker or boss. I don't think you're alone in that regard. If someone is competent that means I can trust them to do the right thing. If they're incompetent it's a crapshoot and causes unnecessary stress. I guess that is not necessarily the same as deep expertise but it's hard to imagine someone with expertise who is also incompetent in that domain.
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