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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)

#71

Post by skohan »

yeswecatan wrote: post #46
j_walter wrote: post #39

This is no surprise really. Any major company promotes managers from within unless they have a lot of industry experience. A bank manager would have a hard time being a manager at any FANNG company (on the engineering side at least) no matter how good they are with people...you have to have at least some in depth understanding of what the company and department does. The best engineers don't usually make the best man…

I was actually looking forward to giving up some control as I became a manager. Unfortunately, we haven't hired anybody to fill the day to day void I left so I'm still doing my old job + now managing a small team.

You might have to be comfortable letting the void exist, and let your managers deal with the resulting failure. If you continue doing two jobs without escalating the issue, your employer is getting a great deal and has no incentive to correct the situation.

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

#72

Post by danielscrubs »

sokoloff wrote: post #30

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.

This is not at all my experience (except CFO which has responsibilities not only on paper but in real life, where blame can’t be transferred) but I’m willing to chalk it up to culture differences.

Basically the more you see yourself as a “manager that facilitate work” the easier it is to go higher and the less expertise you need (social expertise exempted). Need something done? Hire someone to do it!

Is there a specialist under you that isn’t replaceable? Better keep him in his position!

I really wish we had what you seem to have though.

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

#73

Post by musingsole »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #35
PaulHoule wrote: post #2

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…

When I was in my teens, I got my first "real" job. It was working at a service station. 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 se…

I love this story and the owner is exemplifying the moral behavior I'd want to if I were in that place... However,

> Never saw the guy again.

It doesn't scale. If you have the knack to build a company like that, eventually you won't be able to touch the front lines of what your company is doing. Hopefully, having that type of leadership at the top creates emulation all the way down, but still, it rings of "die a hero or live long enough to become the villain"

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

#74

Post by subsubzero »

Having had some absolutely horrible managers in tech the worst usually are the ones with lower technical expertise. The reason being is mainly related to understanding scope of work and the complexities of said projects.

That being said I also have had other really bad managers who were star IC's that were promoted to mgmt as they really had no where else to go in their career. These managers usually are clueless on dealing with people and other teams.

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

#75

Post by lbotos »

random314 wrote: post #61
skohan wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> probably not top 5-10%, because they also cared about the non-technical requirements that a good manager needs to cover It sounds like you're saying that top-tier engineers are not generally qualified in terms of non-technical requirements, and I don't know that this assertion is justified. From my perspective, as a relatively new technical manager who also spent years as an engineer working with technical managers…

Very often when folks describe the ideal manager, they are describing themselves.

A quote I stole from some conference talk that i think of all the time as a manager: "You become the manager you wish you had, you need to become the manager your reports wish you had."

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

#76

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

yeswecatan wrote: post #70
vsgzusnex wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then maybe your job right now should be hiring?

It should be. Our recruiters haven't found any good for months.

Get a linkedin login and start looking. Seems like recruiting either are focused on other teams, or don't have enough context. Both of those can be helped by you doing some lead generation.

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

#77

Post by tomlagier »

skohan wrote: post #65
varjag wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Essentially a manifestation of bikeshedding. Yep, very common.

Yes and it can go especially poorly when you have a "problem oriented" person on the team: 1. Manager proposes low quality requirements 2. Problem oriented team member points out a flaw in the requirements which is orthogonal to the actual goal of the feature/team/organization 3. Endless discussion around this one detail 4a. Manager changes the requirements just to end the debate, in a way which sacrifices the core g…

Oof. The number of 4b's I've had to deal with in my career...

What are some techniques to use when you see this happening? I frequently try to get stakeholders to simplify and really identify the core problem / proposed solution, but I run into a lot of "all or nothing" or "design for every possible use case" folks in startups.

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

#78

Post by madhadron »

pydry wrote: post #49
skeeter2020 wrote: post #24

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…

I see it mostly as a refutation of the idea that MBA style management-as-a generic-function works - nothing more.

I have come to the conclusion that management is not a profession. Engineering, law, medicine, teaching are professions, that is, occupations that require considerable training or study. Manager is a role in a team that requires you not to be deficient in social and organizational skills.

In settings where the people being managed are professionals, I have come to think that there should be a vote of no confidence option where a majority vote of the team can immediately remove the manager.

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

#79

Post by watwut »

skohan wrote: post #43
skeeter2020 wrote: post #24

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…

> probably not top 5-10%, because they also cared about the non-technical requirements that a good manager needs to cover It sounds like you're saying that top-tier engineers are not generally qualified in terms of non-technical requirements, and I don't know that this assertion is justified. From my perspective, as a relatively new technical manager who also spent years as an engineer working with technical managers…

I agree, knowledge matters. It is pipe dream to think that empathy and people skills are enough for manager (or anyone) to compensate for lack of knowledge. Lack of technical knowledge does not imply neither peoples skills nor empathy. Technical knowledge does not imply lack of either

Moreover, I found that non-technical managers had often trouble in empathy and people skills departments. I think that a lot of issues stemmed from non-technical manager having basically inferiority complex, confusing disagreement with disrespect, being unable to distinguish between mistake and lie. Moreover, not understanding culture technical people tend to create or even not being aware that there is such a thing as difference of culture.

The cultural difference is a big thing - non-technical management in my experience value completely different things, ends up insulting engineers or otherwise creates difficult situations. All of that then implies that I as a programmer suddenly have to deal with interpersonal issues that manager created or is unable to deal with.

The thing is, the choice is not between non-technical person with people skills and technical without. The choice is between person with technical knowledge and one without, where the one without them has also disadvantages in peoples skills.

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

#80

Post by lamp_book »

skohan wrote: post #43
skeeter2020 wrote: post #24

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…

> probably not top 5-10%, because they also cared about the non-technical requirements that a good manager needs to cover It sounds like you're saying that top-tier engineers are not generally qualified in terms of non-technical requirements, and I don't know that this assertion is justified. From my perspective, as a relatively new technical manager who also spent years as an engineer working with technical managers…

> It sounds like you're saying that top-tier engineers are not generally qualified in terms of non-technical requirements, and I don't know that this assertion is justified.

I see this sentiment or implication that technical skills and people skills are somehow mutually exclusive often, even on here which is crazy. I think this stems from some broader trope that people are "balanced" like RPG characters or something, e.g. nerd vs. jock or artist vs. scientist, salesman vs. accountant, etc. The reality is that people who achieve in one area are more likely to achieve in others. If someone figured out how to be a good engineer, they can probably figure out how to be a good manager, too, if they wanted.

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