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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

#121

Post by bluedino »

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 did not see a single engineer promoted to management

Good engineers don't necessarily mean good managers

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

#122

Post by arcanus »

johnbellone wrote: post #120
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. Per…

Get the doctorate. Don't feed the trend if you don't want it to grow.

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

#123

Post by TallGuyShort »

mverwijs wrote: post #93

First it states that business knowledge is most important. Than it states that deep tech knowledge is most important. Which is it?

I think there's 2 different questions: Which one makes people happier? Which one makes people more successful? I was at a company where a CEO with deep experience in our field effectively stepped aside as they hired a CEO with deep experience in business. A lot of people didn't like it, even though the old CEO stayed around and was very involved. But looking back, the new CEO helped the company do very well. As I stated in a different comment, you need a balance. You need technical leadership and business leadership, and sometimes they need to be different people working together on the same team.

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

#124

Post by jkern »

bluedino wrote: post #121
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 did not see a single engineer promoted to management Good engineers don't necessarily mean good managers

isn't the entire point of this article the opposite?

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

#125

Post by [deleted] »

arcanus wrote: post #122
johnbellone wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Per…

Get the doctorate. Don't feed the trend if you don't want it to grow.

[deleted]

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

#126

Post by krzyk »

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…

Do you want to move up? Don't you feel that becoming a manager (as opposite to individual contributor) will make you loose touch with the tech?

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

#128

Post by arijo »

bluedino wrote: post #121
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 did not see a single engineer promoted to management Good engineers don't necessarily mean good managers

Being an engineer does not necessarily make you a bad manager though.

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

#129

Post by rhizome »

krzyk wrote: post #126
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…

Do you want to move up? Don't you feel that becoming a manager (as opposite to individual contributor) will make you loose touch with the tech?

Unavoidably, but is "becoming a manager" the only definition of "moving up?"

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

#130

Post by pdimitar »

blister wrote: post #117
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 expec…

Appreciate the feedback, thank you.

I had a pretty good idea on what was expected of me even back then. Truth be told, I would have cultivated the more business-oriented skills with time if the management environment wasn't so full of self-congratulatory practices and people patting themselves on the back -- while all of them know perfectly well they contributed no more than $500 to their employer's bottom line at the end of the month.

I plan on doing a small business of mine so I have no choice -- I will learn everything necessary from this point of view with time.

But in that particular environment I didn't care about helping those people at all. They were all there because the job was stable, well-paid and expected almost nothing of them. The CEO was an idiot who bought a very cheap "success lingo" all the time. These people didn't want any changes; that meant they had to work more which was the exact thing they were strongly against (and were sabotaging everyone who tried to introduce a more positive change like myself and one girl who was leading team of designers and frontenders).

Thank you for your kind words. Even being strongly dismissive of my own abilities (which IMO is important if one wants to always evolve and improve himself) I believe I would indeed be a valuable addition to a managerial roster but quite frankly, I don't want to be involved in politics and fighting with people who despise change.

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