Employees are happier when led by people with deep expertise • Hacker News Board

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

#111

Post by michaelbuckbee » Wed, Jan 25, 2017, 5:32 PM UTC

I think that startups are particularly susceptible to this, everyone else is sharing stories of MBA's in charge of software dev, but it happens in other areas as well.

I do work in performance marketing (very data driven, analytics, testing, etc.) and the new Chief Marketing Officer was someone from a big ad agency. He had worked with some really big names and bragged constantly about how he had had an ad play in the SuperBowl, etc.

Which was all great, but none of those skills translated down to a budget 1000X less than what he was used to dealing with. He was unprepared to think about things like a website's "Devcenter" as having a purpose beyond a branding exercise.

He wasn't a bad person or actually incompetent, but he didn't have the deep expertise in startup marketing that it would take to really see them succeed.

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

#112

Post by temp246810 » Wed, Jan 25, 2017, 5:35 PM UTC

I'll throw in an alternative perspective:

I don't care so much about expertise, but about just raw intelligence.

Talk to a really smart person about your engineering problem, and even if they are not an engineer they will give you good advice.

Ditto for sales, marketing, etc.

I've always been happy when I can tell the person that is managing me is a few steps ahead of me, allows me to learn from them and actually makes my job easier.

To me, it's only a bonus if they can do my job better.

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

#113

Post by temp246810 » Wed, Jan 25, 2017, 5:36 PM UTC

sage76 wrote: post #110

At a unicorn I was working at, MBAs were being hired to be engineering managers. I did not see a single engineer promoted to management, it was mostly all MBAs. The few I had direct contact were really useless at helping engineers out, all I ever heard from them was "Just get it done.". If I asked for help, they'd say "Well who else is gonna do it then?". I felt demoralised and lost some of my confidence. But the com…

Why don't you name the company?

Unless there is personally identifying information about you somewhere in your comment history, your comment would be so much more helpful with useful examples, especially for people that are familiar with the actual company.

Just my 2 cents.

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

#114

Post by braveo » Wed, Jan 25, 2017, 5:37 PM UTC

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…

I had the same experience, the best manager I ever had was clueless about software development and instead trusted us to do what was asked. A part of that trust was believing when we told him something rather than having him tell us.

It became a symbiotic relationship where we'd bring business decisions to him, and he'd bring technical decisions to us.

OTOH, there's a certain amount of reassurance when you're working under someone who is much better at what you do than you are. You know you'll always have a resource you can grab if you find yourself up against a wall, and it allows you to respect that person even more.

So I understand why the conclusion would be what it is, but I agree with you wholeheartedly about not needing to "understand what the doers are actually doing" to be a good manager.

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

#115

Post by gdulli » Wed, Jan 25, 2017, 5:37 PM UTC

vthallam wrote: post #52

gdulli wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had bosses who couldn't do my job but trusted me and didn't get in my way and gave me the exact environment I needed to work in. Those were the best work experiences I ever had. It's the bosses who can do my job I have to worry about, they feel like they need to get involved with it and that hurts my job satisfaction. I need a boss with complementary skills to mine, not the skills I already have. People have all…

That would be great, as long as the employee is motivated and smart enough to do great work, else it would be difficult for the manager to gauge employee's quality of contribution.

Right, employees have different values and different capabilities and should be managed differently. Saying "Employees are happier when [x]" always breaks down because employees aren't homogeneous.

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

#116

Post by yomly » Wed, Jan 25, 2017, 5:43 PM UTC

mox1 wrote: post #29

yomly wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I would be willing to be those people still knew how to do the job, just without Excel. They fundamentally understand the reason for "analyzing" things and the output generated by that. It's when you put a recent MBA grad with 0 domain knowledge as the manager of these people where problems start. And again, with the accountants. The crusty 60 year old accountant will still be able to read a report generated by a fre…

But when your boss has never even made a model, let alone tried to fish data out of a database, then the kind of work he can imagine, his idea for time duration for work are all off.

More importantly, what he values in the team (for when it comes to promotions) is also likely to be off. And hence, you can end up in a situation where you don't get promoted despite being very good at your job.

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

#117

Post by blister » Wed, Jan 25, 2017, 5:45 PM UTC

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…

This is just my perspective. I've been in (increasingly) challenging engineering leadership roles over the past 5 or so years.

When I first started, I felt exactly like you do. That my job was to enable and empower my engineering team to build awesome product and that all the "management" stuff was a huge waste of time.

I received some advice from my boss that I was missing 50% of the job. You're being paid and expected to do the engineering leadership side on top of being the interface with the company for progress and business objectives. Any talented engineer with a modicum of people skills can usually do a halfway decent job of leading a small team to build a product, but it takes some business acumen to understand how your team fits into the bigger operating environment of your business.

That was the skill they expected you to bring to the table, and you not only despised it, you blew up at them in a meeting.

Granted, that company may very well have had a terrible meeting process and been looking at all the wrong KPIs for how things should work. But knowing how to positively influence that process inside the environment and doing so in a political way that preserves culture and existing team dynamics is crucial.

I hope you give that type of role another shot. The world needs better engineering leaders that can help businesses understand the value of a strong engineering culture.

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

#118

Post by codemac » Wed, Jan 25, 2017, 5:45 PM UTC

sage76 wrote: post #110

At a unicorn I was working at, MBAs were being hired to be engineering managers. I did not see a single engineer promoted to management, it was mostly all MBAs. The few I had direct contact were really useless at helping engineers out, all I ever heard from them was "Just get it done.". If I asked for help, they'd say "Well who else is gonna do it then?". I felt demoralised and lost some of my confidence. But the com…

When I worked outside of SV, I saw the same thing. Several engineers went off to schools nearby to get MBAs just so their careers could improve.

Once in SV though... I rarely see this. When you get an MBA, it's a huge signal to an employer that you accomplished something, and no amount of bad management can ignore that you were issued an MBA. I think job hopping in SV can accomplish the same type of signal.

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

#119

Post by sumitkumar » Wed, Jan 25, 2017, 5:45 PM UTC

temp246810 wrote: post #113

sage76 wrote: post #110

At a unicorn I was working at, MBAs were being hired to be engineering managers. I did not see a single engineer promoted to management, it was mostly all MBAs. The few I had direct contact were really useless at helping engineers out, all I ever heard from them was "Just get it done.". If I asked for help, they'd say "Well who else is gonna do it then?". I felt demoralised and lost some of my confidence. But the com…

Why don't you name the company? Unless there is personally identifying information about you somewhere in your comment history, your comment would be so much more helpful with useful examples, especially for people that are familiar with the actual company. Just my 2 cents.

It's flipkart.

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

#120

Post by johnbellone » Wed, Jan 25, 2017, 5:54 PM UTC

sage76 wrote: post #110

At a unicorn I was working at, MBAs were being hired to be engineering managers. I did not see a single engineer promoted to management, it was mostly all MBAs. The few I had direct contact were really useless at helping engineers out, all I ever heard from them was "Just get it done.". If I asked for help, they'd say "Well who else is gonna do it then?". I felt demoralised and lost some of my confidence. But the com…

I have been lucky in my career to become an engineering leader/manager without having to go and get an MBA. But I still have the same concerns for continuing the climb up that proverbial ladder: what if I want to become the head of a large department? what if I want to become a CTO?

The raw truth of the matter is that it seems that having an MBA is likely the same litmus test as having a B.S. in computer science. Perhaps one can skirt around that requirement if they have a PhD in a particular subject matter that is the new sexy thing. But I still question if I should simply get an MBA, or focus on getting a PhD in research I am actually interested in.