The best leaders are great individual contributors, not professional managers • Hacker News Board

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

#81

Post by marnett » Sat, Dec 03, 2022, 4:52 PM UTC

Aeolun wrote: post #64

pbronez wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you me? I also miss doing the individual contributor stuff. But… I know the business. I know the team. I know the pain points, why the exist, and the organizational dynamics that allow them to persist. Now that I have moved from informal to formal leadership, I try to focus on: (1) adroitly executing the approvals and things where I could screw up the team by being slow (2) coaching individual team members to bui…

Now imagine trying to do the same thing as an IC :(

ICs can gain high levels of leadership leverage, not via teams and people (thought possible), but via the technical projects/designs/paradigms they implement.

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

#82

Post by farorm » Sat, Dec 03, 2022, 4:53 PM UTC

UweSchmidt wrote: post #75

It appears that outside our bubble software-work enjoys such a low status that management does not possess, or admits to possessing, any technical competence. This is in stark contrast to engineering or manufacturing companies, where engineers make up the highest levels of management and also adjacent areas like running the factories, and generally management prides itself with being hands-on, dropping knowledge and…

I think modern software companies moves to remove roles like scrum masters, testers and analysts. My theory here is that e.g scrum masters wants to scrum, it’s their job. Much better to have the team take turn being the scrum master. They own the process and the pain.

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

#83

Post by waltbosz » Sat, Dec 03, 2022, 5:11 PM UTC

hsavit1 wrote: post #45

waltbosz wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the personal attacks in this comment to be unbecoming of HN standards.

so following the cult like dogma of the late steve jobs is more inline with HN standards? probably yes

No I never said that. My intent was never to defend Steve Jobs.

I just think the tone of way the comment was mean spirited and inappropriate. I think it's important to call out bad behavior in the HN community.

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

#84

Post by gopalv » Sat, Dec 03, 2022, 5:12 PM UTC

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…

> Rarely is an awesome individual magically called upon to become a manager, particularly by poor managers who are already messing stuff up

There's a passage in Platos' Republic which is illuminating about this particular circumstance.

And I quote from [1].

""" And for this reason, I said, money and honour have no attraction for them; good men do not wish to be openly demanding payment for governing and so to get the name of hirelings, nor by secretly helping themselves out of the public revenues to get the name of thieves. And not being ambitious they do not care about honour. Wherefore necessity must be laid upon them, and they must be induced to serve from the fear of punishment.

And this, as I imagine, is the reason why the forwardness to take office, instead of waiting to be compelled, has been deemed dishonourable.

Now the worst part of the punishment is that he who refuses to rule is liable to be ruled by one who is worse than himself.

And the fear of this, as I conceive, induces the good to take office, not because they would, but because they cannot help --not under the idea that they are going to have any benefit or enjoyment themselves, but as a necessity, and because they are not able to commit the task of ruling to any one who is better than themselves, or indeed as good. """

Stuff that was true two millenia ago, still continues to be the same.

[1] - http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.mb.txt

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

#85

Post by 988747 » Sat, Dec 03, 2022, 5:25 PM UTC

gardenhedge wrote: post #23

debacle wrote: post #6

Being a manager is like having kids. A lot of people don't want to have kids, because they see how other people's kids behave. You can do the right things and raise incredible children. A lot of people don't want to be a manager, because they see how other people behave as managers. You can do the right things and be an incredible manager.

I think this is wrong and is an unhealthy way to look at management. Comparing workers to kids is.. not defensible.

But in many countries this view is even directly written into the law.

In my country for example, employer must know at all times where the employee is, because they are responsible for any accidents that happen to them during the work hours. And to avoid those accidents you have to provide them with stupid things like instruction manuals for microwave, or electric kettle usage, because apparently employee cannot be trusted with operating those devices safely. You, the employer are also responsible for doing their taxes for them (i.e. paying monthly deductions), as well as sending them to the doctor every once in the while for routine check-ups.

One of the reasons that I work as freelancer is to avoid such bullshit.

On the plus side, your liability, as an employee, for any damages caused is limited to 3 monthly salaries, because, being just a kid, you cannot be held fully responsible for your own mistakes.

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

#86

Post by swagasaurus-rex » Sat, Dec 03, 2022, 5:55 PM UTC

farorm wrote: post #82

UweSchmidt wrote: post #75

It appears that outside our bubble software-work enjoys such a low status that management does not possess, or admits to possessing, any technical competence. This is in stark contrast to engineering or manufacturing companies, where engineers make up the highest levels of management and also adjacent areas like running the factories, and generally management prides itself with being hands-on, dropping knowledge and…

I think modern software companies moves to remove roles like scrum masters, testers and analysts. My theory here is that e.g scrum masters wants to scrum, it’s their job. Much better to have the team take turn being the scrum master. They own the process and the pain.

The non technical scrum master fills a very important role for higher management: somebody to take blame and responsibility.

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

#87

Post by baruch » Sat, Dec 03, 2022, 6:05 PM UTC

gopalv wrote: post #84

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…

> Rarely is an awesome individual magically called upon to become a manager, particularly by poor managers who are already messing stuff up There's a passage in Platos' Republic which is illuminating about this particular circumstance. And I quote from [1]. """ And for this reason, I said, money and honour have no attraction for them; good men do not wish to be openly demanding payment for governing and so to get the…

The main reason I took my first management position was after I remembered the pain of refusing a previous offer and getting an awful manager to lead the team.

Though I do not think I'm very good at managing myself. Though I might be an OK leader.

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

#88

Post by etempleton » Sat, Dec 03, 2022, 6:05 PM UTC

Not always, but sometimes, the problem with people who want to manage is that they want to direct work. They like that power dynamic. I find the best managers kind of hate telling people want to do, but will if and when they have to.

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

#89

Post by etempleton » Sat, Dec 03, 2022, 6:10 PM UTC

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…

it is a very real fear. When you look around and realize everyone that works at a company that is over 60 is in upper management it becomes clear that you either move up or out. I have also noticed it is sometimes hard to keep up with certain types of work after a certain age. The strength you retain as you get older is wisdom of experience.

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

#90

Post by fuzzfactor » Sat, Dec 03, 2022, 6:10 PM UTC

walnutclosefarm wrote: post #55

I think the article, and many of the comments here, miss the point badly. No manager of a team doing technically complex and creative work can for very long remain capable of doing all the work themselves. Modern projects and processes simply require too much specialized knowledge to function for that to work. What managers need that (probably) comes from having been a strong individual contributor is sufficient know…

>The best leaders are great individual contributors, not professional managers

Duh.

For a technical business to have the most unfair advantage (well above patents, etc.) there has got to be the most technical competence/productivity at the very top.

There's still an unfair advantage if there's as much competence at the top, but when it's the most that's when it's really the most unfair.

Jobs was an outstanding visionary, salesman, task-oriented and goal oriented manager, but without Woz at the top along with him Apple would have been greatly limited.

Once things took off they could build some bigger teams, on paper it looked like they could afford anything. It was expected to require more than one engineer to design as salable a product as Woz could do single-handedly.

By 1985 Jobs was reminiscing about being burned:

>We're going to be a big company, we thought. So let's hire "professional managers." We went out and hired a bunch of professional management, and it didn't work at all.

>They knew how to manage, but they didn't know how to do anything.

As this took place it required more & more personnel, as well as these non-domain managers to go with them, in order to accomplish less than Woz and a small team. It was a no brainer.

What a person can do single handedly turns out to be the best indication of how much more they can do with a proper high leadership position (if they are willing), especially when compared to "professional managers" without the domain expertise to hold their own when there's no technical team backing them up.

Not how many people the impressive manager has managed before, even if there was legitimate positive financial outcome in their background.

Once there was a competent all-technical team, if less wizardly than Woz himself, Jobs could sell that just as well, Woz was well set, and he was out of there with his shares in Apple wisely held.

If Apple had not recognized this as early as they did, there would be no way Apple could have gotten as big as they are now.

>I always had, by design, an "administrative partner" on my team who brought those abilities to the table - and I always paid attention to what they had to say. That combination (technical knowledge, leadership skills, and sub-contracted management skills) carried me

Woz could legitimately say this about Jobs which is a true measure of whether there was adequate technical leadership at the very top during his time.