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"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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> My take: if your boss can do your job, you're not needed. If your boss can do your work, has the time to do your work (eg there isn't enough work), the work doesn't need to be done in parallel, and can do similar quality work, and is willing to do that work, you're not needed. That's the takeaway, without oversimplification, which makes sense.
Agreed. If not, you could just as well have said "If a colleague can do your job, you're not needed." It's actually an interesting point that. Oversimplified a bit, I feel there are two different ways that people measure their worth in the workplace. There is "no one else can do what I do" and then there's "I make sure that everything I do can be done by someone else". Personally I much prefer the latter.
I can program in ASM, since I did it in college. That's a different assertion from "if a colleague can do your job, you're not needed". ASM programmers are still needed. Also, there's the whole "making a baby in 1 month with 9 wombs doesn't work".
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.
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.
E.g. I am an amateur coder. Anyone who has typed 3 pages of code without looking up on a book or a website, is x100 better than me. If someone decides to make me the leader of coders, I won't tell them "I command you to use this syntax over that paremeter (?)" (coz I'm like Jon Snow.. I know nothing), but I WILL tell them to a) take daily backups/use version control, b) write comments on your code, c) do daily huddles, d) sit in pairs and review each other's code, e) some bright ideas/suggestions that THEY will make, f) I will bust my ... and try to study as many books/blogs/resources to learn the area (and managing coders better), g) I will talk to as many coders (young and old) as I can to understand them and their needs better.
Does that make me a good coder? Hell no! I didn't mention "read Java" in any of my aformentioned example. Will this make me a good manager? Well I have managed OTHER teams in & around IT.. why not coders? They are people too!
I was personally taught by the store manager of a supermarket how to sweep the floor and of course that built respect for him and the organization. (e.g. he knew how to do every little task like sweep the floor, cut meat in the deli, bake bread, etc.) The (now retied) director of the art museum at Cornell could be seen out in his suit passing out pamphlets for an exhibition together with students promoting clubs and…
The station was a part of a chain of dozens. The owner was a well-known local multimillionaire. For whatever reason, he happened to be at my station on my first day at work.
He and I spent over an hour pumping gas, checking oil, doing an oil change, patching tires, and so forth.
I learned a lot more than simply how to work at a service station that day. I continued working at that station for over a year. Never saw the guy again. As I recall, when I started he had stores over half-a-dozen states.
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.
"We went through that stage at Apple where we thought, ‘Oh, we’re going to be a big company, let’s go out and hire professional management.’ We went out and hired a bunch of professional management; it didn’t work at all. Most of them were Bozos. They knew how to manage, but they didn’t know how to DO anything.
If you are a great person, why do you want to work for somebody you cannot learn anything from? And you know what’s interesting - you know what the best managers are? They are the great individual contributors who never ever wanted to be a manager, but decide they have to be a manager because no one else is able to do as good job as them."
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 manage…
But is it actually true?
The best engineers don't usually make the best managers either because they have a hard time giving up control. Good managers let their staff do their jobs and give them the tools needed to excel (including mentoring and coaching).
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.