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Why do incompetent managers get promoted?

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Re: Why do incompetent managers get promoted?

#131

Post by rumanator »

dcole2929 wrote: post #28
mdorazio wrote: post #10

I don’t agree with anything in this article. Incompetent managers get promoted because the things they are competent at are not the things their employees want them to be competent at. There is a dichotomy between traits that get people promoted at large companies and traits that make a good manager from the perspective of subordinates. Those traits only sometimes overlap. Thus the whole argument is predicated on a f…

Feel like you somehow managed to hit the nail on the head while also completely missing the point. Absolutely agree that often the things that get you promoted and the things that are considered compentency in a manager aren't necessarily the things that make a subordinate view someone as competent. But completely disagree on what those traits are. In my experience, management tends to view favorably things like deli…

Your comment is a bit shortsighted because OP did not missed the point. A good manager delivers on time and on budget while complying with the requirements, which the manager negotiates. A good manager provides good and effective reporting, and delivers. That's what a manager is supposed to do, and what a manager is hired for. None of the traits you pinned on engineering leads to competent management. Thus, you expressed your personal opinion while completely oblivious to the management role and it's requirements, and more importantly why a upper manager hires lower managers to get stuff done on time and within budget.

Re: Why do incompetent managers get promoted?

#132

Post by rumanator »

derekp7 wrote: post #50
mdorazio wrote: post #10

I don’t agree with anything in this article. Incompetent managers get promoted because the things they are competent at are not the things their employees want them to be competent at. There is a dichotomy between traits that get people promoted at large companies and traits that make a good manager from the perspective of subordinates. Those traits only sometimes overlap. Thus the whole argument is predicated on a f…

This raises a question in my mind -- do any of these traits actually make the company more successful? Or more generally, are traits that are undesirable to subordinates, yet desirable to higher management, actually good for the company, and are traits that the subordinates value actually detrimental to the company? The reason I ask is that it would seem that natural selection would take over, and if a management sty…

> Or more generally, are traits that are undesirable to subordinates, yet desirable to higher management, actually good for the company, and are traits that the subordinates value actually detrimental to the company?

This issue is not about traits, but outcome. If you delegate a task, you want that task to get done as you expect it to get done. The manager is your single point of contact wrt how that task is being executed, and thus the person who is held accountable for the outcome of that task. You hired someone to handle that task because you want it done but you can't spare your time doing it yourself. The manager keeps you in the loop and briefed about the major sticking points, and works with you to adjust your expectations. Obviously it's important that engineers approve their manager but the primary goal is obviously delivering projects that meet requirements and expectations, not pampering subordinates.

Re: Why do incompetent managers get promoted?

#133

Post by t0mas88 »

bityard wrote: post #89
mumblemumble wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this could be put even more simply: You get promoted for making your superiors happy, not for making your reports happy. What actually makes anyone happy is going to vary from organization to organization, from person to person, and from situation to situation. I've known managers whose job was 100% just to keep their subordinates happy, but that happened because keeping those roles filled was one of the comp…

An effective manager does two things first and foremost: 1) Make sure that his/her employees' day-to-day work aligns with the goals of the company 2) Remove any and all roadblocks keeping employees from being efficient and effective in their work, even if it means risking political capital. I've always fantasized that if I ran a company, when annual reviews came around, the reviews would be bi-directional. In order w…

Having working in management for years, both middle and upper, internal and external, as founder and in other companies: I have quite a strong stance against "confidentially".

Because the reality is that 80% of the typical workforce (maybe even more in the case of engineers) has a lot of comments about how things could be better and how their manager is doing it all wrong. And those comments tend to come out in an unnecessarily strong negative form if you provide an anonymous forum. But most companies don't need more people telling you what's wrong, they need people that take a responsibility in improving it and move things forward.

Re: Why do incompetent managers get promoted?

#134

Post by smallcharleston »

amznthrowaway5 wrote: post #124
HomeDeLaPot wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's ML. Senior scientist != senior engineer, right?

Well it's Senior "Applied Scientist". They get to make all the rules and get a much higher salary than sr engineers. ML teams seem to consistently reward the wrong people who can't actually deliver real value.

They might or might not deliver real value, but I’m sure most research scientists view a lot of software as simple implementation rather than real value. I think everyone needs to work together for these complex systems.

Re: Why do incompetent managers get promoted?

#135

Post by perl4ever »

JamesBarney wrote: post #18

> ...I’m not sure if every post will end up being occupied by an incompetent manager, but I do think that when a lot of managers realized they’ve hit their peak or comfort level, they then start to focus on playing politics instead of delivering results to hold on to their position. I have an alternative theory. When you're a single contributor you have total control over your productivity and success, but very littl…

You are, at one point, using "large impact" and "control over success" as though they were obviously not synonyms.

But if control is "indistinguishable from noise" then it sounds like control=impact, which means I don't understand your overall point and distinction at all. It seems like it gets all muddled along the way.

Re: Why do incompetent managers get promoted?

#136

Post by perl4ever »

TuringNYC wrote: post #19
eppp wrote: post #6

How many times do people who are good at their jobs get promoted just because there isnt anywhere else to go? You cant make any more money at the level you are without switching companies so you get stuck going into management. I got promoted to being a manager of a small group just because there wasn't anyone else to do it and I am completely incompetent as a manager of people. I don't enjoy it and didn't ask for it…

It is even worse. For companies without SME tracks, SMEs find themselves getting almost no raises or comp despite contributing to more and more revenue and/or important/complex work. Then you see stupid things happen, like they find need for and hire 2 or 3 people just so they can justify a 5% raise. Then they find need for and hire more people to justify another 10% raise. Suddenly you have a company with many FTEs…

A creative way to handle that situation is...nepotism. Hire all the buddies of the essential individual contributor instead of giving them a raise or promoting them.

Re: Why do incompetent managers get promoted?

#137

Post by perl4ever »

ryandvm wrote: post #23

I've distilled the following maxim from my workplace experience. There are two ways to achieve success in this world: * Be exceptionally skilled at something * Be unscrupulous Those traits certainly aren't mutually exclusive, but the counterexamples of folks that have achieved success without either of them seem to be few and far between. [Obviously we're excluding folks that are "gifted" success.]

People who are the most successful are always "all of the above" where that includes talent, training, flexible ethics, privileged background, luck, and drive. Anyone who lacks the utmost in any of those categories is going to be outdone by another of the billion people on the planet. This isn't something you should have to have empirical evidence for to believe.

Re: Why do incompetent managers get promoted?

#138

Post by perl4ever »

dpeck wrote: post #117
dchyrdvh wrote: post #112

Because they are useful to do the "dirty" work. I realised that when I started running my company. There are good employees and bad ones. It's emotionally hard to fire the bad ones, but if we are separated by a few managers, it's easy to make the cold rational decision and let those managers do the rest.

it was a interesting realization when I came to terms that a great many roles in our society exist because emotions are hard for people to deal with. So we "outsource" some large percentage of it to someone to be a buffer and absorb/redirect some of it so that the rest of the process goes smoothly. Its present in some aspects of nearly every field and while its frustrating to those of us who like to think that we're…

People often say that "homo economicus" is not at all like real humans, but there's a lot of machinery to close the gap.

Re: Why do incompetent managers get promoted?

#139

Post by perl4ever »

alexpotato wrote: post #21

An interesting (albeit long) take on this comes from Venkatesh Rao and is called the Gervais Principle [0] VERY long story short: - The people at the top (what he calls Sociopaths although not necessarily in a negative sense) need a layer of people below them to both do the work and take blame for when things go wrong - The people in the middle (he calls them Clueless) need to be hard working and smart BUT, crucially…

"but not smart enough to figure out they are being used"

As if, if they were smart enough, they would do...what?

The implication is that you can't have a stable situation in which people are being "used" with their knowledge. That doesn't make sense to me.

My perception is that what keeps the system stable is that different classes of people have different value systems, and they accordingly dehumanize other types, which keeps them from encroaching on others' territory.

Re: Why do incompetent managers get promoted?

#140

Post by eric234223 »

mdorazio wrote: post #10

I don’t agree with anything in this article. Incompetent managers get promoted because the things they are competent at are not the things their employees want them to be competent at. There is a dichotomy between traits that get people promoted at large companies and traits that make a good manager from the perspective of subordinates. Those traits only sometimes overlap. Thus the whole argument is predicated on a f…

> Incompetent managers get promoted because the things they are competent at are not the things their employees want them to be competent at.

Employers don't have other option. What happens is the people who love coding don't want to be managers and the people who want don't want to code or suck at coding take up manager positions. The problem arises when these managers have to promote. They choose the lesser capable guy who is not a threat to their job. This is what i have seen in software industry.

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