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I vehemently disagree with this sentiment. Not to argue against the existence of bad managers (nearly everyone has an anecdote from one time or another), but th

I vehemently disagree with this sentiment. Not to argue against the existence of bad managers (nearly everyone has an anecdote from one time or another), but that doesn't diminish the worth of a strong manager (especially in larger organizations). A good manager of technical team server 2 main purposes in my mind. The first is an insulation between the team and and the outside world. Your "problem solvers" aren't going to get anything done if they spend their entire days negotiating with clients or fielding reqs from other departments. Secondly, a good manager acts as a focusing lens for the team. This allows the individual member to concentrate on any given technical problem without needing to expend the bandwidth to constantly come back to how their piece needs to work into the bigger picture. There might be a whole host of things holding the tech industry back but the idea of the manager certainly isn't one of them.

derefr 11y ago
If you just want a position that gives the people around them those two benefits—without assuming where the position would sit on the org chart—then you will notice there exist a lot of other, similar jobs, that do not also possess the assumption of "supervising" and "being responsible for" the output of the people around them. For example, what you're describing fits closely to the idea of a shared administrative assistant. Or a talent agent. Or a sports coach (or "team manager", which is a misnomer.) Or a diplomatic envoy. None of these people are the boss of the people they work with; they assist the people they work with in getting things done. They do not hire or fire the people they work with; they are not blamed for the incompetence of the people they work with; and they have no incentive to play politics with the lives of the people they work with for the sake of a promotion. Their job is purely to help their team work, and to deflect things that prevent work. Personally, I think we could use way more of these types of "pure interfacer" people in companies; and, in so having them, the need for "managers" would decline sharply. There'd still be some managers—people whose job is to take ultimate responsibility for the output of a group, and who are thus incentivized to direct and reorganize that group. But, with the jobs of keeping the team protected and glued-together taken care of, the active role of "manager" would be reduced enough that they could either be scaled across greater numbers of people, or could be a "manager" for their own group as an accessory role to their regular job.
- sokoloff 11y ago
  Send your shared administrative assistant (or talent agent, or sports coach) in to argue for a technical point with another team's manager. Or send them in to the CIO to argue for budget or to have a features vs schedule/technical debt discussion. A few rounds of that and you may very well wish for a technical manager back.
  - copsarebastards 11y ago
    Dysfunction on other teams doesn't mean we need managers, it means we need to fix the dysfunction.
copsarebastards 11y ago
> The first is an insulation between the team and and the outside world. Your "problem solvers" aren't going to get anything done if they spend their entire days negotiating with clients or fielding reqs from other departments. This is exactly the role of a secretary. > Secondly, a good manager acts as a focusing lens for the team. This allows the individual member to concentrate on any given technical problem without needing to expend the bandwidth to constantly come back to how their piece needs to work into the bigger picture. This is exactly the problem: technical problems will never be solved well unless you are constantly coming back to how each piece needs to fit into the bigger picture. Contrary to your belief, any half-decent programmer is quite capable of doing this. And managers who try to prevent programmers from doing this are literally preventing programmers from doing their job. This is why programmers do things like present an almost-correct solution to the problem so the manager can feel like they've "acted as a focusing lens for the team" to get the last part of the problem. And that's a moderately decent-case scenario for your hypothetical "focusing lens manager"; the more common case is that this manager focuses on the wrong thing entirely because they don't know what a computer is capable of.

derefr 11y ago

If you just want a position that gives the people around them those two benefits—without assuming where the position would sit on the org chart—then you will notice there exist a lot of other, similar jobs, that do not also possess the assumption of "supervising" and "being responsible for" the output of the people around them. For example, what you're describing fits closely to the idea of a shared administrative assistant. Or a talent agent. Or a sports coach (or "team manager", which is a misnomer.) Or a diplomatic envoy. None of these people are the boss of the people they work with; they assist the people they work with in getting things done. They do not hire or fire the people they work with; they are not blamed for the incompetence of the people they work with; and they have no incentive to play politics with the lives of the people they work with for the sake of a promotion. Their job is purely to help their team work, and to deflect things that prevent work. Personally, I think we could use way more of these types of "pure interfacer" people in companies; and, in so having them, the need for "managers" would decline sharply. There'd still be some managers—people whose job is to take ultimate responsibility for the output of a group, and who are thus incentivized to direct and reorganize that group. But, with the jobs of keeping the team protected and glued-together taken care of, the active role of "manager" would be reduced enough that they could either be scaled across greater numbers of people, or could be a "manager" for their own group as an accessory role to their regular job.

sokoloff 11y ago
Send your shared administrative assistant (or talent agent, or sports coach) in to argue for a technical point with another team's manager. Or send them in to the CIO to argue for budget or to have a features vs schedule/technical debt discussion. A few rounds of that and you may very well wish for a technical manager back.
- copsarebastards 11y ago
  Dysfunction on other teams doesn't mean we need managers, it means we need to fix the dysfunction.

copsarebastards 11y ago

> The first is an insulation between the team and and the outside world. Your "problem solvers" aren't going to get anything done if they spend their entire days negotiating with clients or fielding reqs from other departments. This is exactly the role of a secretary. > Secondly, a good manager acts as a focusing lens for the team. This allows the individual member to concentrate on any given technical problem without needing to expend the bandwidth to constantly come back to how their piece needs to work into the bigger picture. This is exactly the problem: technical problems will never be solved well unless you are constantly coming back to how each piece needs to fit into the bigger picture. Contrary to your belief, any half-decent programmer is quite capable of doing this. And managers who try to prevent programmers from doing this are literally preventing programmers from doing their job. This is why programmers do things like present an almost-correct solution to the problem so the manager can feel like they've "acted as a focusing lens for the team" to get the last part of the problem. And that's a moderately decent-case scenario for your hypothetical "focusing lens manager"; the more common case is that this manager focuses on the wrong thing entirely because they don't know what a computer is capable of.