Deep expertise is absolutely crucial to properly scope projects, get the right requirements from stakeholders, understand level of effort and understand dependency trees. Basically ensuring that the objectives and work are well defined and the right engineers are working on the right pieces of it. I've seen projects fail for O(years) because the managers are not sufficiently technical to do this properly.
Employees are happier when led by people with deep expertise (2016)
181–190 of 212 posts
Re: Employees are happier when led by people with deep expertise (2016)
#182The boss "should" be able to do most of your job BUT they Should not need/want to. Good bosses understand the word "delegation" and that is what it takes to build a real team and company. I am a boss and I can do most of my team's work (whether efficient or not) but I don't want to because I have higher priority things to do to get the most out of my time. For example, I can code but I don't (well mostly). I have a t…
The part that really matters is that you can empathize with the work that is being done. The more distance you have between you and actually ever doing that kind of task, the less that empathy is. It’s the same as with customers — if you never do the user studies, you will not understand even if you once did.
Re: Employees are happier when led by people with deep expertise (2016)
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, and that's why worker self-management is the proposal one sees from any form of politics that doesn't care for managers -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers%27_self-management To be honest, I would love to work for a place that implements self management even half hartedly. My understanding is that Valve is like that. Valve may not make things on the schedule that people want them to - but no one can deny th…
My perception is that valve has suffered some negative experiences due to bad actors interacting with its radically libertarian labour practices. I don't have insider knowledge, so I could be wrong, but this is the sense I have gotten reading articles over the years about how the IP for VR was handled for instance
Sounds interesting, could you point to some readings on that aspect of Valve?
Re: Employees are happier when led by people with deep expertise (2016)
#184I 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…
And so will you then become a gradually worse leader as some of those engineering skills start to atrophy? The unfortunate truth is that you won't have the focus time to do large scale engineering tasks any more, unless you neglect your leadership responsibilities.
Re: Employees are happier when led by people with deep expertise (2016)
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'd imagine that most people who are top engineers would rather be doing engineering than anything else. Really? I love software development, but I don't think just churning out random CRUD software based on some specs is very interesting. A lot nicer to solve problems of your customers, see how the product makes them happier and think about ways to improve their user experience. Somehow I assumed that's how others…
If the top engineers at your company are churning out random CRUD software from specs, you may want to reconsider where you're working. Good engineering is about understanding the problems of your customers, designing software that solves these problems, and improving their user experience.
Majority of jobs are going to be like that though.
Re: Employees are happier when led by people with deep expertise (2016)
#186Earlier 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…
4b... Sums up the last 12 months of what should have been a 3 month project.
Re: Employees are happier when led by people with deep expertise (2016)
#187On 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.
Another nightmare is needing your boss' help & not getting it because your boss simply chooses not to help. Early in my dev career I ended up w/ an smart, unhelpful manager. They were the only person in the company w/ Scala experience, and I needed to touch a Scala service as a fairly green developer. I asked my boss for help, and was denied. I later found out that my boss had recommended against hiring me during my…
Another experience bin the same vein is if you ask the boss for some help and come review time, they ding you for it.
This especially stings if it comes from a team lead because in my mind, the team lead exists to bounce ideas off of and to iron out issues.
But if you ever see a team lead or manager dinging you for just reaching out to them, switch teams or quit.
Re: Employees are happier when led by people with deep expertise (2016)
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
The legend scales infinitely. You don't have to pump every gallon of gas, or write every line of code. But if everyone knows that you can, will, and often do...
> The legend scales infinitely.
I think that's truer than you mean. The legend can scale, but the reality doesn't. Unfortunately I'm more interested in the latter.
Re: Employees are happier when led by people with deep expertise (2016)
#189Clickbaity and utterly misleading title. I expected very different content, but I agree with the gist of the article, in that the boss must be highly competent at *his* job, know what he's talking about and stay grounded in reality.
The title of the post was changed after I submitted this comment. Earlier it was something like "if your boss could do your job, you're usually happier".
Re: Employees are happier when led by people with deep expertise (2016)
#190Employees are happier when led by people with deep expertise who share their knowledge and help others grow . It’s missing key words
+1
Star ICs who went into management but can't leave tech could end up micromanaging or just being an aloof unhelpful resource.