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Why do incompetent managers get promoted?

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Re: Why do incompetent managers get promoted?

#121

Post by hgsyndrome »

goatinaboat wrote: post #84
mdorazio wrote: post #10

I don’t agree with anything in this article. Incompetent managers get promoted because the things they are competent at are not the things their employees want them to be competent at. There is a dichotomy between traits that get people promoted at large companies and traits that make a good manager from the perspective of subordinates. Those traits only sometimes overlap. Thus the whole argument is predicated on a f…

politics, self-promotion, networking, choosing the right (high-visibility) things to work on, taking credit A “good” manager gives his team credit for success and takes the blame himself for failures. A bad manager does the opposite. That’s all there is to management really, it’s simple, but very few do it.

Hear ye, hear ye. So very true, and indeed rare. It's the hallmark of great leadership actually. In business or the military.

Re: Why do incompetent managers get promoted?

#122

Post by sidlls »

UncleMeat wrote: post #52
dcole2929 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feel like you somehow managed to hit the nail on the head while also completely missing the point. Absolutely agree that often the things that get you promoted and the things that are considered compentency in a manager aren't necessarily the things that make a subordinate view someone as competent. But completely disagree on what those traits are. In my experience, management tends to view favorably things like deli…

I think a key error people often make is assuming that the line engineers are always right. If a decision pisses off the line engineers it must be idiotic! The manager must be a fool. Peter principle in action. This surely happens sometimes. But I’ve personally witnessed a lot of engineers (especially junior engineers) who don’t give a shit about customers or shipping products or building alignment or communicating p…

I’ve seen what you describe in engineers at all levels, mostly evenly distributed. Engineers just tend to be very narrowly focused on technical solutions. That’s a problem both in management and culture in the industry.

Re: Why do incompetent managers get promoted?

#123

Post by HomeDeLaPot »

amznthrowaway5 wrote: post #95
majormajor wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This attitude is what I've usually seen from management, and junior engineers are often the ones who fight against this attitude, before they get too jaded and leave. Management will dishonestly claim successful delivery with zero regard for the actual product, and then force the engineers into 24/7 oncall. Or do junior engineers build a broken system because they don't know better which results in them having to c…

That’s possible but not what I’ve seen. I’m on ML teams, the junior engineers often come in with a good CS background and sometimes good software engineering practices, while the highly credentialed senior scientists often refuse to even write unit tests.

That's ML. Senior scientist != senior engineer, right?

Re: Why do incompetent managers get promoted?

#124

Post by amznthrowaway5 »

HomeDeLaPot wrote: post #123
amznthrowaway5 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s possible but not what I’ve seen. I’m on ML teams, the junior engineers often come in with a good CS background and sometimes good software engineering practices, while the highly credentialed senior scientists often refuse to even write unit tests.

That's ML. Senior scientist != senior engineer, right?

Well it's Senior "Applied Scientist". They get to make all the rules and get a much higher salary than sr engineers. ML teams seem to consistently reward the wrong people who can't actually deliver real value.

Re: Why do incompetent managers get promoted?

#125

Post by yogrish »

mdorazio wrote: post #10

I don’t agree with anything in this article. Incompetent managers get promoted because the things they are competent at are not the things their employees want them to be competent at. There is a dichotomy between traits that get people promoted at large companies and traits that make a good manager from the perspective of subordinates. Those traits only sometimes overlap. Thus the whole argument is predicated on a f…

Can’t agree more. Currently I am in same situation. I lead a small core technical team that delivers cutting edge tech. My peers lead very big teams that do maintenance work. But my BU head measures success by how many people his reportees handle, new initiatives taken (process wise or fun wise etc ) that bring high visibility and mileage to him. He doesn’t bother about guiding and managing a technically motivated team that brings lot of innovations. He uses same yardstick for all.

Edit: grammar correction

Re: Why do incompetent managers get promoted?

#126

Post by mdorazio »

dcole2929 wrote: post #28
mdorazio wrote: post #10

I don’t agree with anything in this article. Incompetent managers get promoted because the things they are competent at are not the things their employees want them to be competent at. There is a dichotomy between traits that get people promoted at large companies and traits that make a good manager from the perspective of subordinates. Those traits only sometimes overlap. Thus the whole argument is predicated on a f…

Feel like you somehow managed to hit the nail on the head while also completely missing the point. Absolutely agree that often the things that get you promoted and the things that are considered compentency in a manager aren't necessarily the things that make a subordinate view someone as competent. But completely disagree on what those traits are. In my experience, management tends to view favorably things like deli…

Yes and no. My work is often outside of strict engineering/deliverable teams, so we probably have different perspectives. I'll agree with your points within specific department scopes.

Re: Why do incompetent managers get promoted?

#127

Post by huntsman »

bityard wrote: post #89
mumblemumble wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this could be put even more simply: You get promoted for making your superiors happy, not for making your reports happy. What actually makes anyone happy is going to vary from organization to organization, from person to person, and from situation to situation. I've known managers whose job was 100% just to keep their subordinates happy, but that happened because keeping those roles filled was one of the comp…

An effective manager does two things first and foremost: 1) Make sure that his/her employees' day-to-day work aligns with the goals of the company 2) Remove any and all roadblocks keeping employees from being efficient and effective in their work, even if it means risking political capital. I've always fantasized that if I ran a company, when annual reviews came around, the reviews would be bi-directional. In order w…

Are reviews of managers by employees that uncommon? At Google every manager is reviewed by a survey of their direct reports every performance cycle and that certainly feeds into assessment of manager performance.

Re: Why do incompetent managers get promoted?

#128

Post by cortesoft »

I wonder how much of this is just another form of the Fundamental Attribution Error? Everyone thinks they are the competent ones, surrounded by incompetent people that are bringing them down and preventing them from being truly excellent at their jobs. Sure, I fail to deliver things, but that is because of reasons x,y,z; my manager, on the other hand, struggles because they are incompetent.

Re: Why do incompetent managers get promoted?

#130

Post by koonsolo »

Here is some real practical advice (since the article is missing that):

One of the big hotshots in your company likes cycling? Well, you like to go cycling too! Let's go cycling together in the weekend!

Become friends with one (or multiple) of the big bosses, and your career is set. And it's probably going to be a clique of higher ups, since they are all buddies at this point.

Golf is not as popular in Europe as in US, but it's still a place for the higher up's to socialize.

Humans are mainly emotional, not rational. They will promote their friends first. Whether this is good or bad is not the discussion, it's the reality of human nature.

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