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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

#161

Post by sage76 »

rplst8 wrote: post #157
sage76 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The MBA would probably be cheaper and definitely less of a commitment, especially an executive MBA. Te reverse this trend, engineers really need to look at management as an important function. I don't see lawyers and doctors doing MBAs to move into management positions, but somehow, many engineers have this tendency of looking askance at management. That leaves the field open for outsiders to swoop in.

I think the aversion that most engineers have to management, is that software development is already a very nebulous beast. Actually delivering a solution that is called a "success" is often a slippery moving target. Being the one who is responsible for the project's success is even scarier.

You could say the same about a big legal case or a surgery. In both cases, lives can be on the line. Here it's just code.

It became scary for me when I saw extremely poor leadership that disregarded everything from Andy Grove's high output management. Forget that, I went through a series of YC lectures where speakers covered how startups should mature into companies, and even those simple management techniques were not being used.

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

#162

Post by battlebot »

rhizome wrote: post #129
krzyk wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?"

Unfortunately, the answer is "yes." I have avoided doing that and the only way I moved "up" was first to move around, then to move into a consulting firm, then finally to my own corporation that is also a consulting firm. Is that a viable career trajectory? I have made it work, but I long ago gave up the idea that I would be anything except an "independent contributor." I did look at jobs like "architect" but those jobs are holding pens for people who couldn't cut it as developers but had enough company knowledge to want to keep around. I don't know what most architects do all day, I've never had one actually help accomplish anything. They like meetings and conferences and overeating, it seems.

Tech is a badly broken field in terms of career advancement. For a long time it made me very jaded. But I'm rich now, so I could give a shit.

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

#163

Post by battlebot »

TheCowboy wrote: post #22
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…

Another phenomenon is the development of management as a science. People can end up in positions of oversight where they have a deficient understanding of the tasks people below them are performing. Study of management and processes is not without merit, and the rants against MBAs can be one dimensional by not recognizing the benefits. But if that was all that it took, then the economy wouldn't "waste" medical doctor…

If management was a science, 98% of the managers would not be able to understand it.

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

#164

Post by autotune »

rhizome wrote: post #129
krzyk wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?"

Not at an employer you want to be at long term.

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

#165

Post by battlebot »

msandford wrote: post #64
yomly wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that is true, although people have been doing MBAs for a much longer time than the tech boom has been around for: e.g. doing an MBA was viable a route into Finance since at least the 80s. Though MBAs have certainly been growing in popularity over the past few years.

> doing an MBA was viable a route into Finance since at least the 80s. That makes sense to me actually, since you need to have a high level understanding of how businesses work and what stuff the C-suite needs to be doing in order to understand how to value a business. The C-suite might be the one place where the "generic management skills" might actually be really useful. But middle management and day to day supervi…

In my personal take on all this, it is those people who have wrecked this entire country. They bear incredible blame for many massive failures that cost billions of dollars and millions of jobs. It is that level of a tragedy. But somewhere, some few people pocketed billions of dollars.

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

#166

Post by battlebot »

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…

That process was too heavy for most business needs and far too expensive as a result. It could never last. I do think developers were more respected back then. Today, developers, like all non-managerial (and to a lesser extent HR) people are completely fungible. For various reasons, we let our expertise be commodified. And as a result, we cheapened the entire field.

The way to get it back is thus: No non-developers ever manages a developer. This is how doctors keep their scam going.

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

#167

Post by jaysprout »

Oh my gosh, that's all I've wanted for years: a boss who knew at least as much as I did. Trying to persuade -- to be an agent of positive change or even just get anything done -- is all but impossible when you have to explain everything to someone before you can even begin a dialogue.

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

#168

Post by vijucat »

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?

That you bring some core competencies to the table that are actionable [1]. That you can calc the ROI on data-driven paradigm shifts [1]. That you can ensure there are enough boots on the ground to manage customer expectations. That you can peel the onion on our go-to markets and incentivize monetizable synergies leading to win-win solutions [2].

That you have become an irreplaceable employee, that you're a girl who gets up early, a girl who stays up late, a girl with uninterrupted prosperity, who uses a machete to cut through red tape, with fingernails that shine like justice, and a voice that is dark like tinted glass.

She is fast and thorough and sharp as a tack. She's touring the facility and picking up slack.

A girl with a smooth liquidation, a girl with good dividends.

A girl with a short skirt and a lonnnnng jacket [3].

[1] MBA jargon watch, pg 1, 2: http://www.johnsmurf.com/jargon.htm, http://www.johnsmurf.com/jargon2.htm

[2] 89 Business Cliches That Will Get Any MBA Promoted: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2012/06/19/89-busine...

[3] Cake - Short Skirt and Long Jacket : http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/cake/shortskirtlongjacket.htm...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7aDstrDMf0

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

#169

Post by tudorconstantin »

A manager should be just a facilitator.

Our department manager at a previous company that I've worked for had economic background, while we were a Perl dev department. Basically, his job depended on our productivity, while our job depended on his ability to win projects. We had to trust each other that we were doing our jobs properly.

While we made sure he could make the customers happy with our work, he screened us from interactions with pesky customers and got us all we needed so we can focus entirely on the projects.

I worked with him for 5 years and we've been totally happy.

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

#170

Post by misiogames »

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…

In big oil, most execs have a degree in engineering but they go up the ranks after they got their MBA's, look at Rex's replacement --> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darren_Woods
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