Google’s Quest to Build a Better Boss
nytimes.com
Google’s Quest to Build a Better Boss
1–10 of 40 posts
Re: Google’s Quest to Build a Better Boss
#2Microsoft learned this lesson a long time ago. In the old days of MSFT, the saying was that BillG believed that everyone's manager needed to be a better coder than him/her. The company learned eventually that the best engineers do not necessarily make the best managers and engineered the IC/manager split-career path that exists today.
P.S I like how Google is finding out they're just the same as pretty much any other large organization :).
Re: Google’s Quest to Build a Better Boss
#3I feel this is particularly relevant: http://www.bobbemer.com/DAVINCI.HTM
>One of the brighter students (by the name of L. da Vinci) was immediately promoted to the manager of the project, putting him in charge of procuring paints, canvases, and brushes for the rest of the organization.
Everyone, except businesses (it seems), knows that technical skill != management skill, and the best workers will not necessarily be even good managers. But such knowledge is so rarely followed.
Re: Google’s Quest to Build a Better Boss
#4So, apparently Google found that of their 8 characteristics-of-good-bosses, technical excellence was the least importance. Fair enough. But note that this is looking at a sample of technically excellent bosses! So, e.g., Bock is quoted as saying: "In the Google context, we’d always believed that to be a manager, particularly on the engineering side, you need to be as deep or deeper a technical expert than the people who work for you."
It doesn't at all follow that technical excellence isn't extremely important for bosses who haven't been chosen for technical excellence. (Perhaps it isn't; but Bock's work doesn't seem to provide any evidence.)
Re: Google’s Quest to Build a Better Boss
#5"Once they had some working theories, they figured out a system for interviewing managers to gather more data, and to look for evidence that supported their notions."
Oops. That's called confirmation bias.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/articles/c/confirmation_bias.htm
http://www.skepdic.com/confirmbias.html
Did they also look for evidence that cast doubt on their notions? Looking for both kinds of evidence, and evaluating them fairly, would lead to a more robust conclusion.
Re: Google’s Quest to Build a Better Boss
#6So, apparently Google found that of their 8 characteristics-of-good-bosses, technical excellence was the least importance. Fair enough. But note that this is looking at a sample of technically excellent bosses ! So, e.g., Bock is quoted as saying: "In the Google context, we’d always believed that to be a manager, particularly on the engineering side, you need to be as deep or deeper a technical expert than the people…
Lack of technical excellence doesn't mean technical incompetence.
Re: Google’s Quest to Build a Better Boss
#7So, typically there's a split between creative, project-based leadership and productive, people-based management. In games these creative leaders are (in the west) lead designers, Microsoft calls them "program managers," movies call them directors, and so on. Sometimes it's called "matrix management" and rigidly structured. Whereas at Blizzard, project management is just clearly set up so that the design staff are in complete creative control of the project's direction.
Anyway, I don't really see that separation of roles in evidence within the scope of this article. How does it work at Google? Also, is there some good analysis on this general subject someone can point me to?
Re: Google’s Quest to Build a Better Boss
#8Does anyone have the actual stack ranked list of important qualities?
Re: Google’s Quest to Build a Better Boss
#9So, apparently Google found that of their 8 characteristics-of-good-bosses, technical excellence was the least importance. Fair enough. But note that this is looking at a sample of technically excellent bosses ! So, e.g., Bock is quoted as saying: "In the Google context, we’d always believed that to be a manager, particularly on the engineering side, you need to be as deep or deeper a technical expert than the people…
The article actually said that technical excellence was important, it just said that it wasn't as important as some of the people skills.
I can't really see Google dropping technical competence as a qualification for managers. I've heard that from 2005-2007 (before my time), Google brought on a bunch of non-technical managers from other companies, and the result was a pretty uniform disaster. Most of those managers are no longer with the company.
Re: Google’s Quest to Build a Better Boss
#10I get to see companies of all sizes grapple with various problems and the most interesting thing I've noticed is that each company has a "culture" that influences everything it does. So if it's an insurance company, they're going to think in terms of risk and coverage. If it's a manufacturing company they're going to make decisions based on flow models and statistical process control. If it's an quasi-military organization, they're going to think in terms of hierarchical structures.
It's neat to see Google continuing this pattern by applying tagged data collection and statistical inference to their quest for organizational optimization.
I can only imagine what it's like to work in a large-scale IT operation in the porn industry ;)