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You can thank companies giving out VP or Director titles to their first technical hires for that. At my last company, my boss was the first technical hire. His

by amyjess 11y ago

You can thank companies giving out VP or Director titles to their first technical hires for that. At my last company, my boss was the first technical hire. His title was Director of Software Engineering. He got that title and the responsibilities that came with it solely because he was the first technical hire. He had no management experience at all. He was a great engineer, but he couldn't manage his way out of a paper bag. He had the double whammy of both not knowing a thing about process and not understanding people. He didn't think having a process was necessary because his own code was amazing, he wrote the initial versions of our software all by himself in what actually is a solid example of a well-engineered project, and he couldn't fathom how anyone's code could be less than amazing. He also couldn't handle stress, and he had a habit of screaming at his subordinates and treating us like children whenever he got stressed. His management was the biggest reason I quit.

fossuser 11y ago
I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I think engineers/developers/hackers tend to undervalue the skills necessary to manage a project well. Basically considering the work a lot easier than writing code or building something and thinking that anyone can do it (including themselves in your example). I think the reason for this is because a lot of people can do a shitty job managing a team and it's not as obvious as when people do a shitty job programming (or at least there are more people that can be a bad manager undetected than can be a bad programmer). It's harder to bullshit technical skills, but a bad manager could have good enough social/political skills to get power and it's probably also more likely to attract people looking for power. Engineering seems to provide a filter to avoid some of this naturally. That said being a really effective PM, Manager, VP is a skill different from programming and with a similar depth that shouldn't be dismissed easily. This is more obvious to HN probably because startup founders often have to get better at it in order to build a company. Since it tends to rely a decent amount on empathy and social skills in addition to being able to understand the technical pieces/prioritization it's also harder to know how good you'll be at it when starting. It is something you can get better at though, just takes investment/learning like anything else. Reminds me of Tom West from Soul of a New Machine.
dikdik 11y ago
I wish there was a popular Rate my Manager site like Rate My Professor. Or companies at least took the time to poll people anonymously about their managers and took action against it. Managers make or break your experience at work. In my experience, once you are in management it takes a hell of a lot more fuck-ups before you are ousted.

by amyjess 11y ago

fossuser 11y ago

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I think engineers/developers/hackers tend to undervalue the skills necessary to manage a project well. Basically considering the work a lot easier than writing code or building something and thinking that anyone can do it (including themselves in your example). I think the reason for this is because a lot of people can do a shitty job managing a team and it's not as obvious as when people do a shitty job programming (or at least there are more people that can be a bad manager undetected than can be a bad programmer). It's harder to bullshit technical skills, but a bad manager could have good enough social/political skills to get power and it's probably also more likely to attract people looking for power. Engineering seems to provide a filter to avoid some of this naturally. That said being a really effective PM, Manager, VP is a skill different from programming and with a similar depth that shouldn't be dismissed easily. This is more obvious to HN probably because startup founders often have to get better at it in order to build a company. Since it tends to rely a decent amount on empathy and social skills in addition to being able to understand the technical pieces/prioritization it's also harder to know how good you'll be at it when starting. It is something you can get better at though, just takes investment/learning like anything else. Reminds me of Tom West from Soul of a New Machine.

dikdik 11y ago

I wish there was a popular Rate my Manager site like Rate My Professor. Or companies at least took the time to poll people anonymously about their managers and took action against it. Managers make or break your experience at work. In my experience, once you are in management it takes a hell of a lot more fuck-ups before you are ousted.