Managers at GameStop used to be the non-managers working there. Same in a whole host of other professions, where it is expected and required that you actually u

Managers at GameStop used to be the non-managers working there. Same in a whole host of other professions, where it is expected and required that you actually understand and have experience doing the work of the people you manage. Cos, you know, in those trades, managers often have to step in and do the work. Customer service managers have usually worked as CSRs. They know the work they manage. It has always baffled me that anyone ever accepted the idea a non-technical person could or should manage teams of developers without having written code, shipped an application, or even setup a server. They have no intrinsic experience or domain knowledge to inform their management of the coders, devops, or sysadmins. And they need it. You simply cannot manage people very well when you don’t understand the experience of doing their job. You can be the nicest, greatest person when it comes to dealing with people, but when it comes to hearing conflicts that are getting in the way of getting things done, when your team is blocked by things that you can’t understand, and you can’t actually see the way through the problem yourself, that’s not good management.