Employees are happier when led by people with deep expertise (2016) • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by chasd00 » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 5:01 PM UTC

madhadron wrote: post #78

pydry wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 op…

it's the opposite really, a good manager is rare because being a good manager is very very hard and takes an enormous amount of both study and experience. Being a good manager is like being a therapist for a dozen people with deadlines on mental health. The soft skills required cannot be acquired from reading the documentation.

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

#102

Post by airhead969 » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 5:05 PM UTC

I think we should deconflict managers from leaders. Managers are people who facilitate employees' productivity and HR matters, whereas leaders trail-blaze priorities, philosophy, and mentor towards the actual work. The issue is trying to make a senior leader into both a leader and a manager, when these are very different skillsets and both take a great deal of time. IMO, it's better to do like Google by having managers that aren't micromanaging tasks but are there to provide assistance.

tl;dr: Let the leaders lead and the managers manage. It's nice when one person can do both well, but that's an unreasonable expectation for the amount of work involved.

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

#103

Post by MarkLowenstein » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 5:06 PM UTC

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…

Joel Spolsky on his sergeant major, 3 paragraphs. One of those anecdotes that will stick with you forever.

https://mogadalai.wordpress.com/2008/12/02/what-is-leadershi...

(Not the original source, but the most readable I found.)

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

#104

Post by slt2021 » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 5:09 PM UTC

skohan wrote: post #84

tomlagier wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

little bit of caution on "Yes we can do A, but that means we won't have the time/resources to do B" - this, along with Agile method of squeezing work every two weeks will lead to simply mediocre quality hacked together deliverables and accumulation of technical debt.

Sometimes you need to spend time upfront and do it properly from the beginning, otehrwise the software quickly can become unmaintainable

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

#105

Post by LegitGandalf » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 5:10 PM UTC

Not only that, but if tech matters to the company, and it increasingly does these days, the broader organization really needs to have some technical savvy in order to avoid a bunch of anti-patterns that are running wild in non-tech savvy organizations:

* Setting bad expectations with stakeholders and customers

* Taking on bad opportunities, committing the organization to unnecessary technical debt for no monetary gain

* Fracturing teams across competing opportunities

* Top down decrees issued from abstraction that causes organizational thrashing

* Decisions made in abstraction with no understanding of the stubborn technical constraints that block fruition

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

#106

Post by ghaff » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 5:13 PM UTC

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…

>top-tier engineers are not generally qualified in terms of non-technical requirements

It's just that both sets of somewhat orthogonal skills are less likely to reside in one person.

An analogy from baseball is why are pitchers generally lousy hitters (even pre-DH)? Did they get less practice? Probably. But it's also the case that (again even pre-DH) any ability to do more than lay down a bunt was absolutely a nice little bonus but their job 1 and 2 and 3 is pitching the ball.

On the other hand, even the best fielding shortstop in the league still needs to have a half-way decent batting average, even if they can get away with a lower one than other positions.

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

#107

Post by s17n » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 5:15 PM UTC

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,…

> The reality is that people who achieve in one area are more likely to achieve in others.

Aptitude is in general going to be either uncorrelated or positively correlated across different areas, but time invested is going to be negatively correlated. Hence the stereotype of nerds with poor social skills: building social skills takes time and effort, and time and effort spent on building those skills is time and effort not spent on, eg, improving your programming ability.

Of course, people who have off the charts aptitude will be in the top percentiles across the board. But you're not going to find too many organizations staffed entirely by those people.

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

#108

Post by jonas21 » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 5:16 PM UTC

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,…

> 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.

The "if they wanted" part is key. It's hard to become extremely good at something unless you really enjoy doing it. I'd imagine that most people who are top engineers would rather be doing engineering than anything else. If you make them a manager, they're going to enjoy that less and not be as good at it -- but a lot of people get pressured into becoming managers nonetheless.

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

#109

Post by aszen » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 5:17 PM UTC

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.

what are u looking for exactly, a good place to attract talented developers is to post jobs on some slack workspaces, many programming languages/frameworks have dedicated slack work spaces where enthusiast developers like to hang out. i find that people in smaller communities have richer technical skills and often are easier to work with

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

#110

Post by tigerlily » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 5:23 PM UTC

madhadron wrote: post #78

pydry wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 op…

> there should be a vote of no confidence option where a majority vote of the team can immediately remove the manager.

Like in a band. Best projects I've worked on have been like bands. Each engineer skillfully playing their instrument, while the manager secures the gigs, promotes the band, listening and acting on feedback from the members.