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Employees are happier when led by people with deep expertise

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

#211

Post by tybit »

thisisit wrote: post #144
sage76 wrote: post #110

At a unicorn I was working at, MBAs were being hired to be engineering managers. I did not see a single engineer promoted to management, it was mostly all MBAs. The few I had direct contact were really useless at helping engineers out, all I ever heard from them was "Just get it done.". If I asked for help, they'd say "Well who else is gonna do it then?". I felt demoralised and lost some of my confidence. But the com…

While I can't speak for what happened at this company. I think the problem is not "MBAs or engineers being managers" rather them not being good listeners. And that is the point the HBR article is also missing. In my previous job, I had manager (ex-engineer) who would often say - "I don't even understand what are you talking about". But he would always listen patiently to us and even spend some of his personal time af…

I think the latter manager is a somewhat common example of a poor engineer who escapes engineering by moving to management, but then also makes a poor product/people manager to. Not that you have to be good at one to be good at the other, but some people just aren't good at either.

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

#212

Post by hifier »

vijucat wrote: post #168
acchow wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When you get an MBA, it's a huge signal to an employer that you accomplished something What?

That you bring some core competencies to the table that are actionable [1]. That you can calc the ROI on data-driven paradigm shifts [1]. That you can ensure there are enough boots on the ground to manage customer expectations. That you can peel the onion on our go-to markets and incentivize monetizable synergies leading to win-win solutions [2]. That you have become an irreplaceable employee, that you're a girl who…

This might be the best comment I have ever read on HN.

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

#213

Post by icanhackit »

It works both ways. In my first job I had the most intelligent and insightful boss I've ever encountered but I was too young and cocky to notice and the same went for my coworkers. We insulted him behind his back, ignored his suggestions to improve our work, ignored the fact that he was a truly interesting person who had some incredible stories to tell (his background was consumer electronics and radio comm's systems) and it wasn't until I left the company, travelled, grew wiser and older that I realized we as a team made him a pretty unhappy person and he wound up leaving the company to take a more junior role to save his sanity. The only reason he couldn't get rid of us was he wasn't respected by the owner of the (quite small) company and thus no real power beyond supervision. Work went out the door on time so everything was dandy.

Be careful judging others abilities through the lens of your own role in a company. Now that I've had two managerial roles I can see things from his perspective and often long to take a job where I'm simply judged on my own work rather than the sum of a collective.

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

#214

Post by jfim »

thisisit wrote: post #144
sage76 wrote: post #110

At a unicorn I was working at, MBAs were being hired to be engineering managers. I did not see a single engineer promoted to management, it was mostly all MBAs. The few I had direct contact were really useless at helping engineers out, all I ever heard from them was "Just get it done.". If I asked for help, they'd say "Well who else is gonna do it then?". I felt demoralised and lost some of my confidence. But the com…

While I can't speak for what happened at this company. I think the problem is not "MBAs or engineers being managers" rather them not being good listeners. And that is the point the HBR article is also missing. In my previous job, I had manager (ex-engineer) who would often say - "I don't even understand what are you talking about". But he would always listen patiently to us and even spend some of his personal time af…

Agreed. The best manager I have had was non technical but at the end of the day he knew that his job was to defer to us on technical matters and make sure that there was nothing hindering us from getting things done, while ours was to get things done and making sure that we kept him updated on progress and blockers.

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

#215

Post by IndianAstronaut »

martincmartin wrote: post #15
bognition wrote: post #2

>The benefit of having a highly competent boss is easily the largest positive influence on a typical worker’s level of job satisfaction This is one of those great discoveries that is hardly surprising and makes you wonder why it hadn't be seen before. Honestly some of my worst work experiences were getting jerked around by a superior who completely failed to understand the work required to do my job.

Because what your boss does, day-to-day, is very different than what you do. So it seems natural that they'd need different skills. I'm a software engineer, and hiring managers has been a problem at every company I've worked at. You want someone who has written software earlier in their career, and has a degree in software engineering or similar. In other words, people who have chosen to spend a lot of time with comp…

One of the VPs at my prevoous companies used to sit in on our quarterly hackathons and build something. Made him a fantastic and well regarded engineering manager.

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

#216

Post by Method-X »

sage76 wrote: post #110

At a unicorn I was working at, MBAs were being hired to be engineering managers. I did not see a single engineer promoted to management, it was mostly all MBAs. The few I had direct contact were really useless at helping engineers out, all I ever heard from them was "Just get it done.". If I asked for help, they'd say "Well who else is gonna do it then?". I felt demoralised and lost some of my confidence. But the com…

You should consider entrepreneurship. Climbing a corporate ladder is only one path to "success".

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

#217

Post by paulddraper »

nunez wrote: post #206
_jgvg wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an undergrad in computer engineering, and an MBA from a top-10 or top-5 (depending who you ask) school. I learned a LOT from it, even though my experience after my undergrad degree was mostly in business. Businesses, finance markets are far more complex than people usually think, and if you like to learn, an MBA is a great way to build a solid base for being a product manager, or a director who actually unders…

Can't these things be learned by reading?

Virtually everything can be learned by reading.

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

#218

Post by wyldfire »

nunez wrote: post #206
_jgvg wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an undergrad in computer engineering, and an MBA from a top-10 or top-5 (depending who you ask) school. I learned a LOT from it, even though my experience after my undergrad degree was mostly in business. Businesses, finance markets are far more complex than people usually think, and if you like to learn, an MBA is a great way to build a solid base for being a product manager, or a director who actually unders…

Can't these things be learned by reading?

As in all things for which you can be awarded a degree: yes.

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

#219

Post by _jgvg »

nunez wrote: post #206
_jgvg wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an undergrad in computer engineering, and an MBA from a top-10 or top-5 (depending who you ask) school. I learned a LOT from it, even though my experience after my undergrad degree was mostly in business. Businesses, finance markets are far more complex than people usually think, and if you like to learn, an MBA is a great way to build a solid base for being a product manager, or a director who actually unders…

Can't these things be learned by reading?

Yes, they can, but you can only create "muscle memory" by practice. And practice includes reading cases, trying to figure things out and getting it wrong, discussing how to do it and so on.

You can read a hundred books about coding, but until you actually try, you don't really know anything.

So a technical background with an MBA can be a killer combination. You know how things work across the company, and that gives you a huge edge over everyone else.

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

#220

Post by ucaetano »

losteverything wrote: post #202
_jgvg wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an undergrad in computer engineering, and an MBA from a top-10 or top-5 (depending who you ask) school. I learned a LOT from it, even though my experience after my undergrad degree was mostly in business. Businesses, finance markets are far more complex than people usually think, and if you like to learn, an MBA is a great way to build a solid base for being a product manager, or a director who actually unders…

Book please. Link please. More please. Awesome reply.

Most of the content was cases, with some parts of books, for example:

Biographies of Robert Moses and LBJ by Robert Caro - we used this for studies of power in organizations. We'd read parts of it and understand where these people would get their power from, how they would yield it, and so on.

A lot of it is hard to learn without discussions and debate, trying and getting it wrong, and figuring out where you got it wrong. Even some of the things I mentioned are never stated like that during the course, you kinda build that along the way (such as the link of the value chain example).

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