51–60 of 212 posts
"If Your Boss Could Do Your Job" Anecdote: in one of the law firms whole departments were sent to LWOP due COVID-19 and department heads had to do all the work themselves. They found out that they are perfectly capable of singlehandedly doing the job of the whole department. My take: if your boss can do your job, you're not needed.
The more junior you are, the more likely it is that not only can your boss do your job, they can do it better than you can. The more senior you become, the less likely that is to be the case. How many CEOs could do all of the CFO, COO, CTO, and General Counsel's jobs? Zero. How many programming team leads can do the junior programmer's job? Basically/hopefully all of them.
I could imagine CEOs being capable of performing COO and CTO function. It will of course screw up main responsibilities so it is better not to mix.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This ... it is a total fantasy to think that the leader(s) of a company are somehow aware of all of the work that is entailed by every job in the company. For really small companies, or junior employees with a line manager, that may be true. But as you said, the more senior you become, things completely change. There isn't a CEO in the world that could do all of the jobs they hire other executives to do (finance, sal…
> There isn't a CEO in the world that could do all of the jobs they hire other executives to do (finance, sales, tax/accounting, HR, marketing, technology, operations, legal). It's impossible. Impossible, yet accomplished by thousands and thousands of small business owners every month.
This also doesn't quite acknowledge that even if you can do all of those functions [in a small business or one-person company] it does not mean you're actually good at those jobs.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There isn't a CEO in the world that could do all of the jobs they hire other executives to do (finance, sales, tax/accounting, HR, marketing, technology, operations, legal). It's impossible. Impossible, yet accomplished by thousands and thousands of small business owners every month.
For sure, for very small companies or small/junior teams who have a line manager. This also doesn't quite acknowledge that even if you can do all of those functions [in a small business or one-person company] it does not mean you're actually good at those jobs.
I swear, some of the articles in HBR should just be sub-titled:
"STUFF YOUR MAMMA TAUGHT YOU BUT YOU FORGOT WHILE GETTING YOUR MBA"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This ... it is a total fantasy to think that the leader(s) of a company are somehow aware of all of the work that is entailed by every job in the company. For really small companies, or junior employees with a line manager, that may be true. But as you said, the more senior you become, things completely change. There isn't a CEO in the world that could do all of the jobs they hire other executives to do (finance, sal…
> There isn't a CEO in the world that could do all of the jobs they hire other executives to do (finance, sales, tax/accounting, HR, marketing, technology, operations, legal). It's impossible. Impossible, yet accomplished by thousands and thousands of small business owners every month.
Similarly, a small business owner might call themself a CEO.
Neither is wrong per-se, but when we're talking about CEOs who have hired a team of executives to run their company, it's most reasonable to assume that GP was not talking about such a small business.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For sure, for very small companies or small/junior teams who have a line manager. This also doesn't quite acknowledge that even if you can do all of those functions [in a small business or one-person company] it does not mean you're actually good at those jobs.
It's hard to manage if you don't have a clue about what you're managing. Every estimate looks equally realistic to you. You can't tell lies from the truth. Your own sense of other's performance is limited to easily faked "symptoms" of working hard, like spending a lot of time, or talking in meetings. You don't have to be good at the jobs beneath you to manage them, you just need a clue.
This is no surprise really. Any major company promotes managers from within unless they have a lot of industry experience. A bank manager would have a hard time being a manager at any FANNG company (on the engineering side at least) no matter how good they are with people...you have to have at least some in depth understanding of what the company and department does. The best engineers don't usually make the best man…
I was actually looking forward to giving up some control as I became a manager. Unfortunately, we haven't hired anybody to fill the day to day void I left so I'm still doing my old job + now managing a small team.
I 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…
> they often work on the wrong set of parameters. Discussions often revolve around details which are not really important to the success of the project,
There's a fairly large gap between those two positions. Personally, I'm a fan of a manager that knows enough to discuss the topic with me, but they don't need to know enough to analyze the problem itself. I want to be able to explain to my manager what the problem is, what the various solutions are, and which one I think is best and why. If they can understand all that, that's enough for me.