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Let’s have no managers, instead of managers with no engineering experience

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Re: Let’s have no managers, instead of managers with no engineering experience

#41

Post by rnd33 »

hliyan wrote: post #15

Sometimes we engineers do a poor job of communicating complexity: we have un-communicated assumptions that we think the listening party shares. Which sometimes lead to this: "You could prepend the words “it’s just” to anything, it’s not going to change the fact that you sound completely ignorant and will ignore any challenges that your team communicates to you." I have often found it effective to counter "just-justif…

> "Yes, it's just an API change, but it requires 50 new test cases and impacts 120 existing test cases",

"See, that's exactly why we shouldn't write any/so many tests!" - A product owner I know...

Re: Let’s have no managers, instead of managers with no engineering experience

#42

Post by mcphage »

sheepmullet wrote: post #12
mcphage wrote: post #4

> It’s better to have no management than unqualified management. If you’ve ever been on a project with more than 1 or 2 people without a manager—or where the manager doesn’t do their job—you would know how insane this sounds. It does not work. Once you’re coordinating groups of people you need a manager to keep them working together towards a common goal.

> Once you’re coordinating groups of people you need a manager to keep them working together towards a common goal. What is a manager? I've worked on many successful teams (including projects with 100+ devs) without formal managers in the typical hierarchy sense. You just need a combination of program managers, project managers, product managers, and architects.

So you’ve worked on successful teams without managers—they just had... managers, managers, managers, and architects?

Re: Let’s have no managers, instead of managers with no engineering experience

#43

Post by mburger »

This might be interesting in this context: https://rework.withgoogle.com/guides/managers-identify-what-...

"... teams with great managers were happier and more productive..."

In my opinion, it's not about having no managers---it's about having managers with the right mindset, qualities, and behaviors.

Re: Let’s have no managers, instead of managers with no engineering experience

#44

Post by derrekl »

the-pigeon wrote: post #24
derrekl wrote: post #14

I often institute a “just” $1 jar. Anytime “why don’t we just” or “it’s just” is uttered you have to put a dollar into the jar. This applies to engineers, managers, myself, everyone. The idea is breaking the habit of trivializing work that isn’t. Something like a dollar jar is fairly effective as a notifier but doesn’t necessarily replace the habit with a better one. Nevertheless the game itself seems to help even if…

Hmm isn't that just like a swear jar? You don't get rid of the swears or the trivializing but rather you just replace the particular words being used for the trivializing. So what's the benefit?

I think being called out for a bad habit is a step in the direction of replacing/improving it. In some cases it’s enough and the person caught figures out a better habit themselves. In other cases more techniques/actions are necessary. As it relates to this article the context was nicely set to illustrate the jar technique. Other contexts would need to be set to illustrate techniques related to situations where calling out is not enough.

Re: Let’s have no managers, instead of managers with no engineering experience

#45

Post by ryandrake »

Maybe I've just gotten extremely lucky, but in the 15+ years I was doing software development, with one exception (a CEO where I was employee #1), I never had a "non-technical" manager to whom I reported. Where are these companies that hire someone who literally knows nothing about engineering to lead a group of engineers? I'm not saying it doesn't exist but I've never seen it.

I've seen my share of non technical product managers, project managers, etc. but not engineering team managers. In all cases my engineering leadership were technical all the way up to at least the SVP level.

EDIT: So, I got to the end of OP's rant and it looks like he's shifted his target from "managers" in general to project managers. He might even be confusing the two.

Re: Let’s have no managers, instead of managers with no engineering experience

#46

Post by coolso »

Brajeshwar wrote: post #10

It depends. I've worked along-side and led multiple managers and have experienced various types of managers. The good ones usually stood out. A good manager is usually the ones that shield their teams from the onslaught of clients' un-managed demands. She is the one that liaises effectively between a looming deadline and the sanity of the team. She is the one making sure the clients are making their timely payments w…

Serious question: may I ask why, in describing a plurality of good managers, you chose to use a lot of singular feminine pronouns and no plural gender-neutral pronouns; while in describing a singular (one) bad manager, you avoided the use of a pronoun altogether in one sentence; used one plural general-neutral pronoun in another; and then switched from using the pronoun you previously extensively used when describing good things (singular feminine pronouns), to instead using the singular masculine pronoun? I was just curious if there was a story behind that or something.

Re: Let’s have no managers, instead of managers with no engineering experience

#47

Post by humanrebar »

tyingq wrote: post #29
humanrebar wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is value in keeping negative attention away. There is also value in attracting attention to technical needs. If you need someone in another part of the org to do something technical to make your life easier (or even unblock the project), it's difficult to get the job done without a technical manager. You can usually get the job done with a non-technical manager who can listen and delegate well to a good technic…

My experience is that a good non-technical manager will develop a relationship with a member of their team that fills that gap. Most of the "good" manangers I've worked for were good because of their soft skills.

I mentioned that approach, yes. But it can backfire if the team member is makes big mistakes. The non-technical manager will have a hard time identifying bad decisions before they blow up.

Re: Let’s have no managers, instead of managers with no engineering experience

#48

Post by nathanaldensr »

b4lancesh33t wrote: post #16

It's just management, after all. I don't mean to be too flippant, but isn't this whole article an instance of exactly what the author is complaining about? Let's have good managers rather than bad ones. Good managers trust their reports to tell them the constraints of the work and factor that into the team's strategy. Being conversant in the underlying task helps a lot with that, but there are plenty of managers who…

That's what I was thinking. Really, the problem with most managers is that they are not empathetic with both the business side and the tech side at the same time. Good managers know how to set expectations and communicate with correct language when talking to either cohort.

Re: Let’s have no managers, instead of managers with no engineering experience

#49

Post by ryandrake »

aviolette wrote: post #39

You need experienced managers as the size of an organization grows. For development teams you need an engineering manager to work with product to design stories, orchestrate work with other teams, and to provide technical mentorship. The author conflates "all managers" with "project managers." and implies this is some artifact of the hegemony. My experience with project managers is that they are largely an artifact o…

Yea, I picked up on this too. I was pretty confused reading through the rant. Is his beef with his engineering managers or with his project manager(s)? It looks like he's frustrated with project managers.

My rule of thumb for "how you know you need a project manager": As a manager of engineers, if you find you have more E-mails than you can possibly respond to, or more meetings than you can possibly attend, or more people "pinging" you than you can possibly satisfy, then you need a project manager.

If you're an individual contributor engineer, you probably are not in the position to even know if you need a PM or not, especially if your manager is doing a good job.

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