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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)

#91

Post by 0xEFF »

RHSeeger wrote: post #60
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…

> having a thorough understanding of, or at least an accurate intuition around the subject matter. > they often work on the wrong set of parameters. Discussions often revolve around details which are not really important to the success of the project, There's a fairly large gap between those two positions. Personally, I'm a fan of a manager that knows enough to discuss the topic with me, but they don't need to know e…

I agree with this up to a point. It’s been valuable to me as an IC, and I feel it’s a value I provide when the problem is so hard there isn’t a clear solution.

It’s nice to be able to say, “what do you think I should do?” as an IC, and nice to be able to analyze the problem if necessary as a manager.

On the other hand if nobody knows what to do with a hard problem, everyone gets stressed out about it.

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

#92

Post by 908B64B197 »

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…

> Can we make a Twitter clone in a week?

Yes.

The v1 isn't the hard part of building a competitor to Twitter. The hard part is scaling the user base, getting funding to keep the site running and being able to grow it.

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

#93

Post by sokoloff »

danielscrubs wrote: post #72
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 speci…

I would think the General Counsel has the hardest of those abilities to "I'll just have a go at it."

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

#94

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

lamp_book wrote: post #80
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…

> 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,…

They might. But it could easily take a few years, during which time they'll very likely be a mediocre to poor manager.

Expecting someone with five years of engineering experience to become an effective manager overnight - often with no training or mentorship at all - makes as much sense as expecting an intern to operate at the same level as a senior on Day 1.

Even really smart people with multiple talents need more of a warm up than that. And most people are neither that smart nor that talented.

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

#95

Post by RHSeeger »

0xEFF wrote: post #91
RHSeeger wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> having a thorough understanding of, or at least an accurate intuition around the subject matter. > they often work on the wrong set of parameters. Discussions often revolve around details which are not really important to the success of the project, There's a fairly large gap between those two positions. Personally, I'm a fan of a manager that knows enough to discuss the topic with me, but they don't need to know e…

I agree with this up to a point. It’s been valuable to me as an IC, and I feel it’s a value I provide when the problem is so hard there isn’t a clear solution. It’s nice to be able to say, “what do you think I should do?” as an IC, and nice to be able to analyze the problem if necessary as a manager. On the other hand if nobody knows what to do with a hard problem, everyone gets stressed out about it.

> On the other hand if nobody knows what to do with a hard problem, everyone gets stressed out about it.

Those are the problems that it's the developer's job to figure out, in my opinion. If the manager can figure out the problem and solution but the developer cannot, then the dynamic is backwards (or the manager is actually a dev/tech lead, not a project/product manager). Or it's a totally different team structure than I'm used to.

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

#96

Post by skohan »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #94
lamp_book wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

They might. But it could easily take a few years, during which time they'll very likely be a mediocre to poor manager. Expecting someone with five years of engineering experience to become an effective manager overnight - often with no training or mentorship at all - makes as much sense as expecting an intern to operate at the same level as a senior on Day 1. Even really smart people with multiple talents need more o…

But that's true of non-technical people too right? So the question is if you as an organization are considering investing a year or two to develop a manager, why not start with a subject matter expert?

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

#97

Post by airstrike »

sokoloff wrote: post #93
danielscrubs wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 speci…

I would think the General Counsel has the hardest of those abilities to "I'll just have a go at it."

I think it's probably hard to rank them but being CFO also requires specific hard skills that you can't improvise on

A good COO will also have specific experience and therefore hard skills and easily outclass a general manager that's just winging it... but some operations are simpler than others, so the requirements associated with any of these C-level roles (including CFO and GC) are really on a spectrum

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

#98

Post by benja123 »

From my experience you don’t need a manager to necessarily be an expert in their field, but it certainly does help.

When a manager lacks the expertise then what it comes down to is how much a manager is, 1. Willing to work hard to gain the necessary knowledge to be effective in their job, 2. Listen to their subordinates on matters they are less knowledgeable about and displaying a deep interest in truly understanding it.

What I have noticed is that if a non expert manager is not willing to do these two things what usually happens is they become yes men/women for upper management. They will agree to commitments that the team can’t necessarily meet (or in some cases will require them to work overtime), other times they will make the team cut corners or do things that are going to create a lot of problems down the road. When it comes to cleaning up the mess that was created, they have already moved onto to their next role leaving the clean up to their old reports and the next manager.

A manager that is an expert in the field they work in can do just as much damage as a non expert manager when they micro manager everything leaving little opportunities for growth.

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

#100

Post by zabzonk »

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…

> Can we make a Twitter clone in a week?

Why would you want to make one at all?

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