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Employees are happier when led by people with deep expertise (2016)

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Re: Employees are happier when led by people with deep expertise (2016)

#21

Post by MattGaiser »

helge9210 wrote: post #3

"If Your Boss Could Do Your Job" Anecdote: in one of the law firms whole departments were sent to LWOP due COVID-19 and department heads had to do all the work themselves. They found out that they are perfectly capable of singlehandedly doing the job of the whole department. My take: if your boss can do your job, you're not needed.

> My take: if your boss can do your job, you're not needed.

If he has time to do your job. My boss can code, and very well. But he doesn't have time to do so.

Re: Employees are happier when led by people with deep expertise (2016)

#22

Post by notahacker »

Since two of the measures of boss competence are entirely employee-rated the causality is likely to run both ways. i.e. regardless of their actual technical skill in your field and management abilities as assessed by others you are less likely to appraise your boss as competent at their own job and capable of doing your job if you're unhappy about the work they have asked you to do.

Re: Employees are happier when led by people with deep expertise (2016)

#23

Post by noisy_boy »

dandanua wrote: post #5

On the other hand, if your boss thinks he can do your job (and do it even better than you), while in fact he can't – you will get the worst nightmare.

I'll take it up a notch: all of the above + doesn't lift a finger and finds faults at everything you do. Add a bit of colonial superiority complex and its recipe for a job from hell.

Re: Employees are happier when led by people with deep expertise (2016)

#24

Post by skeeter2020 »

I think the conclusions miss the mark slightly and focus on a symptom of good bosses: they care about tasks from a state of understanding what is required to do them well, they have empathy for the challenges, and respect for the talent in completing them. Obviously the easiest way to get to this perspective is to experience it first-hand, hence the correlation between those who could do the job and being good managers of the job, but I don't see this as a requirement, just a common path.

I also don't see this a refutation that we shouldn't hire good engineers into management, rather we shouldn't do this blindly and as the single criteria. My best managers were all top quartile engineers but probably not top 5-10%, because they also cared about the non-technical requirements that a good manager needs to cover, and this inevitable consumes focus, effort and time that your best engineers don't want to allocate.

I'm a relatively new engineering manager (~3 years) and wrote about the traits of a good development manager from my perspective here:

https://www.codeleadmanage.com/articles/20200204-four_qualit...

Re: Employees are happier when led by people with deep expertise (2016)

#25

Post by [deleted] »

Frost1x wrote: post #19
dandanua wrote: post #5

On the other hand, if your boss thinks he can do your job (and do it even better than you), while in fact he can't – you will get the worst nightmare.

Is worst nightmare the new normal? Various levels of management often handwave away a task because they understand its function at a high level. True quality management requires a deeper understanding of what it is you're managing. I understand the function of creating, launching, and orbiting a satellite geosynchronously to do GPS so it's easy, right? Yea, not so much. I'm a firm believer that you need to understand…

[deleted]

Re: Employees are happier when led by people with deep expertise (2016)

#26

Post by bluefirebrand »

commandlinefan wrote: post #13
MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: post #4

I don't mind if my boss can't do my job. I mind if my boss can't do my job AND tells me how I should do it. The major difference there is one is support and tracking, the other is just incompetent in all areas if management.

I don't know - in my experience as a programmer, when I work for somebody that's never worked as a programmer, they tend to estimate based on how long they wish something would take (which is usually an hour, two max). Ex-programmers turned managers who still code from time to time are far more realistic about how long something might take to complete.

My experience with the

> Ex-programmers turned managers who still code from time to time are far more realistic about how long something might take to complete.

Is that they had huge egos and thought they could do everything in much less time than I could, or would just "put in the time to make sure it was done when it had to be"

So nah, I prefer not having ex programmers as my manager.

Re: Employees are happier when led by people with deep expertise (2016)

#27

Post by whydoineedone »

I certainly feel this way. There are too many MBA-types who aren't really competent at the low-level technical work they manage and don't really even have an understanding of it. It's hard for me not to be resentful about it. I know that's my own ego talking but it's the truth. I changed my career trajectory to avoid folks like that

Re: Employees are happier when led by people with deep expertise (2016)

#29

Post by dukeyukey »

helge9210 wrote: post #3

"If Your Boss Could Do Your Job" Anecdote: in one of the law firms whole departments were sent to LWOP due COVID-19 and department heads had to do all the work themselves. They found out that they are perfectly capable of singlehandedly doing the job of the whole department. My take: if your boss can do your job, you're not needed.

My boss can code better than I do, but he doesn't have the time, he's got CTO stuff to do instead. So I code and he CTOs, and everything tuns out well.

Re: Employees are happier when led by people with deep expertise (2016)

#30

Post by sokoloff »

The more junior you are, the more likely it is that not only can your boss do your job, they can do it better than you can. The more senior you become, the less likely that is to be the case.

How many CEOs could do all of the CFO, COO, CTO, and General Counsel's jobs? Zero.

How many programming team leads can do the junior programmer's job? Basically/hopefully all of them.

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