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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

#131

Post by pdimitar »

CaptSpify wrote: post #109
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…

You often hear the idea that all business cares about is the "bottom line". I don't think that's true. IME, all businesses care about is ego with a heavy correlation to the bottom line. IME management doesn't care if they are making money, as long as they look like they are making money. Often the best way to look like you are making money is to make money, but sometimes it's easier to manipulate data sets...

That's exactly my point. "Fake till you make it" was their motto... for their entire carreers (lol).

So they resort to success/motivational lingo without ever doing anything, hoping their BS is gonna blind the higher management until they retire.

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

#132

Post by steego »

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

They don't, but my experience is more than half are good managers. The best ones I've found delegate by challenging their teams, but also follow up regularly on both an individual and team level. Even mediocre managers can be upgraded to effective managers if they're willing to learn from effective managers.

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

#133

Post by rb808 »

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 know a bunch of mid-level guys that have part time MBAs that never really used them.

I think if you really want to be a leader/manager there are lots of opportunities to do so already. If you dont like being the boss, an MBA wont help you magically change you into a different person on a different (better) career track.

It does provide some useful skills for people that want to be managers, but most people I know that did the MBA just kept their same jobs and were happy to do so.

If you really want to be a top manager you might benefit.

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

#134

Post by netghost »

jkern wrote: post #124
bluedino wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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?

I think the point is that having some level of technical skills is important, but I don't think it alone will let you be a good manager.

Unfortunately, the article neither publishes the dataset, nor goes into it in much depth.

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

#135

Post by pavanky »

sumitkumar wrote: post #119
temp246810 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sounded very much like an Indian company. But I'd rather see OP mention the company name :)

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

#136

Post by pjungwir »

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…

One of my in-laws is a geologist who works for the oil companies, and he tells me in that industry almost all the big executives are engineers. Since he's been in the news, take Rex Tillerson. His degree is in engineering.

Or take any of "the professions": law, accounting, medicine, business consulting, engineering firms. In all those cases you have "partners" who have moved into sales and management. Sometimes they are even still practicing too. Also I get the impression their management is more about giving expert direction to their team, rather than watching Gantt charts.

Also when I read Skunk Works by Ben Rich, it sounded like the upper management had come up through engineering.

So I don't think management-by-MBAs is necessarily the right thing for tech workers. The more you consider programming to be "knowledge work", the more it seems like managers should be experts in the field. Of course they will need to learn new skills---to lead, to manage, to design products, to sell, to hire, to budget, to read financial statements, etc.---but having that technical background seems very important.

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

#137

Post by Apocryphon »

randcraw wrote: post #104
dahauns wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the fundamental principles of software engineering haven't changed a whole lot since then. Not sure I agree with that. A lot of todays best practices and workflows (and the tech to go with it), especially considering team and release management, simply weren't around or at least widespread even twenty years ago. You know, stuff like CI, TDD, DVCS etc. etc.

As a S/W dev who started 30 years ago and finished his MSCS 27 years ago, I totally agree - S/W engineering (SWE) today is NOTHING like it was in the 1980s. SWE then was seen as mainstream CS and often a required part of a CS degree. Today, CS profs working in SWE are rara aves. SWE's desiderata then was to become an engineering process, where components were marshalled into a formal blueprint, and only THEN did impl…

Sounds like the approach then was waterfall. If only we could apply the level of rigor and professionalism you describe to Agile...

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

#139

Post by acchow »

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 am not in silicon valley, so not sure about there but over here

From what I've seen here there are "product managers" and "engineering managers" and they have very different responsibilities (tho I don't fully understand the former yet).

I've never seen an MBA engineering manager before.

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