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The best leaders are great individual contributors, not professional managers

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Re: The best leaders are great individual contributors, not professional managers

#161

Post by msteffen »

elgar1212 wrote: post #94

The thing about the IC -> management path that bothers me (and makes me skeptical of people who take it) is that programming and getting PRs merged is so god damn satisfying Going from this to just having meetings, training people, looking at dashboards... I can't imagine anyone doing this who genuinely likes programming. Even if the pay is better The people who are the most inspiring (and also the best at getting sh…

As someone who went from IC to management, my perspective is that getting PRs merged is still that satisfying. I just don't have to be the author of the PR.

More generally, I think some ICs do think that if managers and meetings went away, ICs could just write code distraction-free. But as anyone who's rushed to merge a PR before a colleague so that they have to deal with the merge conflict can tell you, engineers often don't get along, actually. Managers keep the company from getting stuck or thrashing when the engineers don't agree, and most of managing is brokering agreements of one kind or another.

Re: The best leaders are great individual contributors, not professional managers

#162

Post by roncesvalles »

karaterobot wrote: post #52
obblekk wrote: post #5

This is true but nuanced in my experience. Often the best managers look around, see other managers being incompetent and messing up people’s natural abilities, and want to fix the problem even if it requires them to become managers. Often the worst managers decide at a young age they’re good leaders, can lead people to do better than they would themselves, and decide they want to get into management. I make this dist…

I agree with every word of this. I would also add that there's a third category, or maybe a 2.b: individual contributors in their 30s and 40s who look ahead to their future and say "well, I guess I better become a manager at some point" without having any particular aptitude or even an intrinsic desire. Many organizations have quite intelligently created parallel paths for contributors to keep advancing, which somewh…

>You find contributors who think management is easier, or more prestigious, or less prone to ageism, and so will switch tracks.

Then there are those who go into product management for all these reasons.

Re: The best leaders are great individual contributors, not professional managers

#164

Post by the_jeremy »

In my contrary opinion, this should apply to tech leadership, not management. The best managers (for employees, not the company) are not necessarily great ICs. The best team leads / architects are great ICs. The problem is that "best" really depends on whether you are coming from the employer or employee's perspective. It's probably best for the company if they're great ICs: they can choose the right feature and deliver quickly and who cares about employee satisfaction at the margin.

Re: The best leaders are great individual contributors, not professional managers

#165

Post by amai »

sph wrote: post #48

Reminds me of my favourite quote by Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord: "I distinguish four types [of officers]. There are clever, hardworking, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and hardworking; their place is the General Staff. The next ones are stupid and lazy; they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qu…

So if you are not sure that you are smart, at least be lazy ;-)

Re: The best leaders are great individual contributors, not professional managers

#166

Post by thewileyone »

dimitar wrote: post #32

I think the solution is to hire both, because there is also the Peter principle: "promoted to incompetence". The professional managers should be in a deputy position to the promoted ICs. This way they can bring their skills and expertise in management and empower the promoted ICs who understand the business or problems deeply. The professional managers can be pretty useful if they don't have people reporting to them…

This is actually a good idea because as a leader you should always hire to your weaknesses.
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