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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)

#81

Post by Guest42 »

danielscrubs wrote: post #68
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…

I agree, when I was working with small companies this kind of thinking was all too common: Can we make a Twitter clone in a week? “Yes it’s just a backend and a frontend.” Vs “with support for 187 million active users? Which level of accessibility? Will we have a cloud provider? Media upload support? Redundancy? What kind of login functionality? Do we have support if they loose their email account? Why are you lookin…

And the common question..."How quickly can you do it if I add 10 people....ok 11, but no more, because we have to be mindful of cost"

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

#84

Post by skohan »

tomlagier wrote: post #77
skohan wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A couple approaches I have seen which can be effective are:

- Call attention to the timeline and frame things in terms of specific tradeoffs: "Yes we can do A, but that means we won't have the time/resources to do B"

- Propose an incremental approach. I.e. "There are some technical challenges with achieving A+B+C, so what if we start with A, and then asses the best way to reach B and C."

With the incremental approach, I think this can help avoid the stakeholder feeling like they lost something, and 9 times out of 10 once you give them A they will find out that's all they needed in the first place, and they don't end up asking about B+C again.

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

#85

Post by oytis »

From my personal experience, when people wish their manager was more technically capable, it indicates some management failure.

I am currently managed by a person who although has a technical background but for a long time is only doing management, so definitely can't do my job. And it is totally fine, because he's not making any technical decisions, these are made by technically excellent people.

Examples of management failures that I have seen on the other hand involve product managers and/or people with sales attitude playing product designers or solution engineer's roles. That doesn't end well and creates a lot of conflict between the management and the technical people.

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

#86

Post by caturopath »

subsubzero wrote: post #74

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…

Given the right support, I've seen lower-knowledge managers really do well. I think a lot of the worse situations I've seen were when someone didn't realize their technical judgement was inapplicable or rusty, and that they needed to defer to their experts.

This is tricky, of course -- for low-level managers with typical engineer IC reports especially, it's super common for them not to have a single report whose judgement they can trust.

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

#87

Post by jrockway »

hinkley wrote: post #54

Like the Senate, you often need someone who can break ties. A team with an even number of technical people can get deadlocked on a decision. If the boss can’t or won’t step in, it can make for a miserable experience.

If I've learned anything from watching the Senate, it's that 51/49 doesn't drive forward progress. Those 49 will do everything in their power to undermine the 51.

If you find your team deadlocked on decisions and you think the way forward is to find a tie-breaking vote, I have bad news for you.

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

#88

Post by caturopath »

nobleach wrote: post #11

My direct boss, yes, absolutely he could do everything I do and perhaps even do it better. His mind is brilliant for being able to see the big picture and know the potential pitfalls. When I spitball ideas at how to solve a problem, he seems 5 steps ahead. With that said, he plays a different role. He is more like the arbiter between business and engineering. And I like him having that role. With that said, I actuall…

> With that said, I actually DO NOT want my C-suite to have coding prowess. I prefer them to be gifted in their areas...This frees him up to do more CEO things (like get our next round of funding)

I think you're missing one thing here that makes it a little more analogous to your boss: not only should the CEO and your boss be good at their own jobs (e.g. securing funding), they should be good at their reports' jobs as well (just like yours is). Expertise that is 3+ layers down the org chart is completely irrelevant, of course, as you point out.

There are executive situations where there's a lot of specialized knowledge one level below where this doesn't quite work, but that should garner lots of extra attention.

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

#89

Post by chasd00 »

danielscrubs wrote: post #68
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…

I agree, when I was working with small companies this kind of thinking was all too common: Can we make a Twitter clone in a week? “Yes it’s just a backend and a frontend.” Vs “with support for 187 million active users? Which level of accessibility? Will we have a cloud provider? Media upload support? Redundancy? What kind of login functionality? Do we have support if they loose their email account? Why are you lookin…

heh in the consulting world it's pretty common to be in a situation of "i signed a contract to deliver a twitter clone in a week, here's the kickoff date. get started."

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

#90

Post by jtdev »

HenryBemis wrote: post #34
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.

What if.. your boss doesn't know how to do your job, BUT he knows the requirements around it? 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…

How do you “know the requirements around it” if you can’t code?

Imagine managing a team of diamond cutters and not being able to cut diamonds yourself... you would only recognize poorly cut diamonds after they had been cut and you would have no idea of how to help your team improve with specific recommendations and guidance.

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