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There is value in keeping negative attention away. There is also value in attracting attention to technical needs. If you need someone in another part of the or

There is value in keeping negative attention away. There is also value in attracting attention to technical needs. If you need someone in another part of the org to do something technical to make your life easier (or even unblock the project), it's difficult to get the job done without a technical manager. You can usually get the job done with a non-technical manager who can listen and delegate well to a good technical leader, though. The problem is that a non-technical manager won't necessarily know who is a good technical leader and who is just a loud engineer.

tyingq 9y ago
My experience is that a good non-technical manager will develop a relationship with a member of their team that fills that gap. Most of the "good" manangers I've worked for were good because of their soft skills.
- humanrebar 9y ago
  I mentioned that approach, yes. But it can backfire if the team member is makes big mistakes. The non-technical manager will have a hard time identifying bad decisions before they blow up.
  - marcinzm 9y ago
    >I mentioned that approach, yes. But it can backfire if the team member is makes big mistakes. The non-technical manager will have a hard time identifying bad decisions before they blow up. Why do you assume an out of date and no longer practicing manager will have a better chance of catching errors than causing them? There is a reason you hire experts and that reason is not so you can ignore them. If you're afraid of a single point of failure then you foster a collaborative blame-free culture where the engineers cross check each other. I've had managers who would agree with you and generally they were bad managers who hadn't realized they were no longer Senior ICs.
    - humanrebar 9y ago
      I think people who make and collaborate on strategic technical decisions need up close and personal perspectives on in the trenches technical work. I think non-technical managers have a very hard time detecting when someone is blowing smoke. I think former engineers can turn into non-technical managers fairly easily if they aren't proactively contributing actual patches and reviews to their projects. Collaborative, blame free technical culture is ideal, yes, but it requires technical leadership and some amount of technical strategy. Someone (or some committee I guess) has to be able to decide when a project costs more than it makes. Only someone technical can actually estimate the projects. You can collaborate in and delegate that estimation, but there still needs to be a decision somewhere.

tyingq 9y ago

My experience is that a good non-technical manager will develop a relationship with a member of their team that fills that gap. Most of the "good" manangers I've worked for were good because of their soft skills.

humanrebar 9y ago
I mentioned that approach, yes. But it can backfire if the team member is makes big mistakes. The non-technical manager will have a hard time identifying bad decisions before they blow up.
- marcinzm 9y ago
  >I mentioned that approach, yes. But it can backfire if the team member is makes big mistakes. The non-technical manager will have a hard time identifying bad decisions before they blow up. Why do you assume an out of date and no longer practicing manager will have a better chance of catching errors than causing them? There is a reason you hire experts and that reason is not so you can ignore them. If you're afraid of a single point of failure then you foster a collaborative blame-free culture where the engineers cross check each other. I've had managers who would agree with you and generally they were bad managers who hadn't realized they were no longer Senior ICs.
  - humanrebar 9y ago
    I think people who make and collaborate on strategic technical decisions need up close and personal perspectives on in the trenches technical work. I think non-technical managers have a very hard time detecting when someone is blowing smoke. I think former engineers can turn into non-technical managers fairly easily if they aren't proactively contributing actual patches and reviews to their projects. Collaborative, blame free technical culture is ideal, yes, but it requires technical leadership and some amount of technical strategy. Someone (or some committee I guess) has to be able to decide when a project costs more than it makes. Only someone technical can actually estimate the projects. You can collaborate in and delegate that estimation, but there still needs to be a decision somewhere.