Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Employees are happier when led by people with deep expertise

hbr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 247 posts

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

#91

Post by abawany »

dagw wrote: post #74
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.

I based my comment on my personal experiences and also from reading Ramsay's biography. I have also read some anecdotes from people who worked with Jobs.

Ramsay's temper and abusiveness are legendary but people who work for him tend to stay with him for a long while; probably no correlation to subsequent success, I admit. That was the crux of my comment: the trade-off of putting up with a lot of quirks vs. learning things that you cannot learn anywhere else. Some people find the learning experience overrides the quirks to a certain point of personal tolerance.

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

#92

Post by dagw »

wageslave2 wrote: post #44
quantumhobbit wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Successful managers need both people and technical skills. That is why it isn't an easy job.

Actually technical skills and then people skills and in that order.

Absolutely disagree. They need enough technical skills to understand gist of what is going on, but beyond that they should be deferring to the people on the team with the most relevant experience/expertise in technical questions.

The most important skill my boss can have is the ability to sweet talk his boss.

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

#95

Post by coredog64 »

hueving wrote: post #36
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. There is an important distinction. An effective manager should understand the general process and what can be time sinks, but they don't have to understand extremely specific details of what each worker is working on at any given time. For example, a manager of a software team doesn't need to understand the…

My best manager was an ex-Air Force fighter pilot who had a general idea of what we were doing. He understood his role wasn't to do what we were doing but instead to enable it.

Some of the worst bosses I had were technical people who had been promoted to upper management and couldn't let go of the tech stuff. My attitude towards them was that if they wanted to code then they could take a demotion (and give up those huge equity grants) and get down in the trenches. Otherwise they could STFU.

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

#96

Post by xexers »

I agree, but this is very tricky in the software development industry where things change so quickly. I went from senior to leading a team of 5 people. As soon as I started to lead, my technical skills started to atrophy. I've now switched companies and dropped back down to a Senior position because I need to build my skills back up. How do you navigate this?

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

#97

Post by eternalban »

xexers wrote: post #96

I agree, but this is very tricky in the software development industry where things change so quickly. I went from senior to leading a team of 5 people. As soon as I started to lead, my technical skills started to atrophy. I've now switched companies and dropped back down to a Senior position because I need to build my skills back up. How do you navigate this?

If you know fundamentals things do not change that quickly. True paradigm shifts (such as FP) that require ground up revisit of internalized knowledge happen at a fairly stately pace.

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

#98

Post by alexbanks »

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…

> The worst boss I've ever seen took some programming classes as a door into management - he knew enough to be dangerous when telling programmers what to do, but not enough to be helpful.

But this doesn't satisfy the original assertion, right? The article specifically references deep expertise. Taking some programming classes is not that.

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

#99

Post by lhnz »

pdimitar wrote: post #84

Right now I am 36. I had a team- and tech-lead position for the first time in my carreer back when I was 28. All other programmers loved me (except 2 slackers who hated being asked for statuses, even if it was twice a month). QA was much better than before, frontenders were happy to receive clear directions and tasks while having some freedom in choosing designs. The devs from other teams loved interacting with me, I…

Although I was never demoted (I left), I completely see where you're coming from.

When I was a manager, I stripped away red-tape and created an environment which I felt gave engineers room for self-improvement - particularly if I could see that they were smart and ambitious and needed to be stretched. Since then I've been freelancing, however a few of my ex-colleagues from way back have told me that I was one of the best managers they'd had. The simple reason for this was that I'd concentrated on making sure they enjoyed their job.

Perhaps they were just being nice, but I know I've had similar experiences. The managers that I've enjoyed working with have always been the type that would remove menial work (this doesn't include hoarding all of the opportunities for high-level decision making which is a massive red-flag) and help you find opportunities to learn or explore the kind of work you're passionate in.

Non-technical managers often see somebody that's good at what they do as a resource that must be overseen and exploited for as much work output as possible. Bean-counting ensues and that person finds that they have next to no autonomy which causes them to resent their job and eventually leave.

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

#100

Post by CodeSheikh »

Hiring MBAs at tech companies as managers directly managing engineers has not proved to be effective. MBAs have traditionally worked in finance, oil and other Wall Street companies and everyone thought that bringing in MBAs to tech world (partially pushed by investors) would be a good idea. As with any new experiment, you just have to wait and let the time decide the results. And it has been few good years now since MBAs have flooded tech industry and as many like minded engineers have experienced, MBAs with no technical background are a bust as your decision making managers. Sure they can thrive at duties such as managing supply chain management of a large tech companies such as Apple or Amazon. Or dealing with international clients where your "prized" skills such as charisma, emotional intelligence and thinking on the feet matters.
Post reply on HN