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

141–150 of 247 posts

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

#141

Post by acchow »

codemac wrote: post #118
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.

> When you get an MBA, it's a huge signal to an employer that you accomplished something

What?

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

#142

Post by robalfonso »

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…

This is the problem that remains unsolved for many businesses.

Good engineers don't necessarily make good managers. So they hire MBA's to be managers, but a MBA doesn't correlate to being a good manager either, in fact there is a chance that they may be a worse manager - because they don't do anything in particular (related to products that is).

So really when it comes down to it, hire managers who are good at managing people/processes and have some kind of real experience in your product or service. And in lieu of that hire a good manager who is smart and can pick it up, way down the line is hire a manager by their degree - if thats all they have going for them you are probably in for a painful ride.

Also a MBA is great if you pair it with a engineering background, but also be concerned about executives (CEO,etc) that can't sniff out people in their organization who would be a good manager regardless of background - some people have knack for management, like any other natural talent.

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

#143

Post by NickNameNick »

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…

There's a specific qualification called a Masters of Engineering Management. Maybe it needs to be more common.

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

#144

Post by thisisit »

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…

While I can't speak for what happened at this company. I think the problem is not "MBAs or engineers being managers" rather them not being good listeners.

And that is the point the HBR article is also missing. In my previous job, I had manager (ex-engineer) who would often say - "I don't even understand what are you talking about". But he would always listen patiently to us and even spend some of his personal time after office or weekends on google trying to understand the issue in depth. If he came across articles/links he thought could help us, he would email us. If he couldn't do that, he always approached the upper management to provide us training or help as required.

while in my recent job I had a manager (ex-engineer) who tried his best to come across as someone with "deep expertise". He would often google topics we wanted to discuss with him. The end result wasn't pretty. Lot of times he would make an assertion that he read somewhere that the design we were presenting was unworkable. Example: while talking about a design on "messaging queues" (MQ) using RabbitMQ he insisted on using Microsoft Outlook. It can handle so much daily load of message (email) volume he said.

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

#145

Post by sage76 »

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.

Not sure if I should directly name. You can google my info and quickly find out which startup it is.

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

#146

Post by lukas099 »

acchow wrote: post #141
codemac wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> When you get an MBA, it's a huge signal to an employer that you accomplished something What?

I think the key word here is something.

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

#147

Post by analog31 »

pjungwir wrote: post #136
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…

My hypothesis is that the MBA degree is largely valued by other people with MBA degrees, so you have pockets of high MBA concentration that grow within specific businesses. MBA's hire other MBA's, but also encourage their most promising subordinates to get MBA's.

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

#148

Post by ScottBurson »

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 way I would put it is that the key skill is knowing how to manage engineers. It's different from managing other kinds of employees. The easiest way to acquire the necessary understanding is to be an engineer oneself, but it isn't necessarily the only way. In particular, it takes considerable humility, which doesn't seem to be something they teach in MBA programs.

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

#149

Post by Benjammer »

thisisit wrote: post #144
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…

While I can't speak for what happened at this company. I think the problem is not "MBAs or engineers being managers" rather them not being good listeners. And that is the point the HBR article is also missing. In my previous job, I had manager (ex-engineer) who would often say - "I don't even understand what are you talking about". But he would always listen patiently to us and even spend some of his personal time af…

That's the difference between a manager trying to be the grease between all the gears of the team, and a manager who wants to provide a little extra force himself on every gear.

Both management styles help the gears turn, but with the latter method you end up with more friction between the gears.

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

#150

Post by shanusmagnus »

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?

Maintaining contact with tech (as in engineering) may not be the success criterion.
Post reply on HN