251–260 of 319 posts
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Groups of companies, like Amazon, dont really make sense to me in abstract so I cant really comment. But whoever the head of AWS is should definitely have a grasp of fundamentals.
I'm pretty sure the CEO of AWS can't do any engineering work anywhere in AWS. He's an MBA and an Industrial Engineer (whatever that is). He used to be a product manager.
I cant work for someone who doesn't understand what I do. An unused sword rusts in its sheathe. I remember working for a gent years ago, who was stressed out that my output was so low. He declared "I started this business in my living room let me show you I can do any job in this building" He came to my workspace, where I had 20 servers stacked on my workbench. He looked at them. Attached a single power cord. And the…
A better word might to 'appreciate' what you do. I'm mostly a manager/leader/vision person now and occasionally still code. Even though I've written a lot of code over the years, there's no way I could just drop in on a complicated project and understand all the intricacies without some ramp up right now. And that's ok. I appreciate the challenges everyone (engineering, customer support, operations, etc...) I manage faces and trust the people who do that work.
There is only so much time in the day, and if I'm tinkering with Node versions I'm not doing the work I need to get done.
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>If your boss has a reasonably-sized team but is spending their day writing code They dont need to spend all day writing code, they need to spend their nights and weekends making sure their skills dont rust.
So you want them to come to work and do their job, then go home and waste their nights and weekends doing a variation of your job? How about, a proportion of their work day must be allocated to keeping up to date with the tools behind the thing they're attempting to manage?
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If your boss can do your job, one of you is redundant. Managers of engineers should be the interface to the business and other units within the organization. That's a big enough job without requiring coding skills on top of it.
Uh no? There is another limiting factor which is time. And there's is yet another which is having a substitute in case you're sick or whatever.
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For the sake of argument, a company could be structured such that your boss knows what you do and their boss knows what they do but not necessarily what you do.
There are a lot of jobs where the bosses bosses boss does know the job as that’s where they started. Your post has an authoritative tone but is too reductive and dismisses the real world often working in a completely opposite way, so I’m not sure it’s a credible argument.
Doesn't make sense.
With 7 - 10 reports per manager, that means the higher up boss or CEO should know how to do the jobs of 350 - 1000 different people. (7*7*7)
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If your boss can do your job, one of you is redundant. Managers of engineers should be the interface to the business and other units within the organization. That's a big enough job without requiring coding skills on top of it.
If your boss can do your job, he can understand what you're doing and correctly determine how you perform. One of you is only redundant if the manager doesn't have his time filled with other things. An engineering manager actually reads the output of the engineers and participates in having it applied to realise bigger projects. He makes higher level decisions about the engineering projects.
In terms of evaluating job performance, you've got peer reviews, deadlines met, contributions in meetings and so forth.
In other words, a manager should have their time filled with other things. Unless the team is really tiny (too many managers), there's plenty for the manager to be doing- planning with product / sales / design teams alone should be enough to keep them busy.
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For the sake of argument, a company could be structured such that your boss knows what you do and their boss knows what they do but not necessarily what you do.
There are a lot of jobs where the bosses bosses boss does know the job as that’s where they started. Your post has an authoritative tone but is too reductive and dismisses the real world often working in a completely opposite way, so I’m not sure it’s a credible argument.
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> I cant work for someone who doesn't understand what I do. Someone can understand what you do without being able to do it.
This really calls into question your meaning of the word "understand."
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This really calls into question your meaning of the word "understand."
This really calls into question your understanding of the difference between the words "what" and "how". I know and understand what a marketing intern does, but I don't know how to specifically record a TikTok that will appeal to Gen Z with an IQ below 115. And I don't care, because I can measure the performance and fire or hire the intern.
Of course not, unless you were also an expert on making Tiktok content for the same audience and could definitively say what should and shouldn’t work.