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Management is really a separate skill from anything else, you can't learn it by doing non-management jobs. Additionally, the level of competence in a field you
by CuriouslyC 10y ago
Management is really a separate skill from anything else, you can't learn it by doing non-management jobs. Additionally, the level of competence in a field you need to be able to manage that field is really quite low. For example, something like 8% of college football coaches never played the sport themselves. Even for the coaches that played ball, many of them were bench-warmers at the collegiate level. Assuming you're already a good manager, I think the necessary domain competence required to effectively manage something can easily be picked up fairly quickly with an "assistant manager" apprenticeship under someone with experience managing that area.
- dragonwriter 10y ago> Management is really a separate skill from anything else, you can't learn it by doing non-management jobs. That's a common viewpoint, though I think its untrue in a number of ways. First, management is not a skill, its a function which requires a number of skills. Second, the skills management requires are without exception, or nearly so, not at all unique to management, but each is common to many jobs and non-job tasks humans commonly perform (and, particularly, lots of them are central to many non-management jobs that are analytical and/or administrative in nature.) Third, actual effective management work requires substantial specialized knowledge of the field being managed, in addition to the skills of general management.