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Some people on HN seem to constantly despise any manager in a company that is not a technical person. Whether it's a majority or not is hard to tell, but it's a

Some people on HN seem to constantly despise any manager in a company that is not a technical person. Whether it's a majority or not is hard to tell, but it's a conspicuous group of people for sure looking at upvoted comments of the sort. The theory seems to be that all these companies work only because of their engineers. Management is just useless. They are just "people with suits, that memorize buzz words take credit for the work of others". With all such incompetent people in high position, one has to wonder how these companies seem to survive for so long. Maybe, just maybe, they are not so incompetent and raise to those positions because of merits. Maybe engineering skils are not the only needed ones. It seems to me that this culture is just based on resentment for the people that are higher in a hierarchy. From this point of view, the only way to feel good is to disparage them and assume they are there only because of the "corruption of the system".

telltruth 9y ago
No, my friend. I have lived under and interacted with enough suits at big 5 that I can tell you that if 80% of those people disappear you will see absolutely no change in the bits shipped by that group. How do I know this? Well, I have seen one suit getting replaced by another random suit all the time. There have been suits who never actually tried out the product they supposedly owned and preached to outside world. I am not kidding you. They literally had no account in the system. Most suits had no clue where source code existed for their product and even never had read documentation that their customers had to suffer through. Their known contribution included setting up exec retreats were people are supposed to tell them about what needs to be done and then they go away with “blessing” the plan that got surfaced after their reports fought it out. Another of their contribution was to do meetings with other suits at customers/partners. Another was to do budgets and when things go red (or pressured to show profits), do hard decisions, aka, throwing 10% of team under the bus in form of layoffs. Their next contribution was to present works of their teams when it got done and credit it to their leadership and vision. I am talking about CVP+ levels, BTW. It’s easy to identify these suits. Go to the leaf level employees in their group and ask them about actual contributions of their CVPs in their product that made a difference. If they cannot mention anything concrete other than blanket buzz words like “leadership”, “vision” etc (in case they cannot honestly answer) then you know you have a suit at the top. These people are very different from Jobs, Musk, Zuke, Jenson Huang etc who are absolutely down and dirty at every level, knew more details then any individual employee and had real technical contributions in their product that made significant difference.
- crispyporkbites 9y ago
  > I can tell you that if 80% of those people disappear you will see absolutely no change in the bits shipped by that group. How do I know this? Well, I have seen one suit getting replaced by another random suit all the time This is a feature of a well run business, you want to be able to change your executive teams without negatively impacting on the rest of the business in the short term. > These people are very different from Jobs, Musk, Zuke, Jenson Huang etc who are absolutely down and dirty at every level, knew more details then any individual employee and had real technical contributions in their product that made significant difference. Sure in the early days of the product this is the case, but these are exceptional individuals who have transitioned into executive roles over time. They have spent the time since building up a management culture and organization capable of running a billion dollar company, which is not easy to do, and is more than a full time job. I think you grossly misunderstand what executives do, both long term and day-to-day. At the end of the day a company is mostly just a group of people, with a set of assets. To grow and evolve beyond the current products you need to cultivate this group into a team that can consistently bring success.
  - telltruth 9y ago
    Ok, so if team can work without suit then it was because suit was doing great job. So you are saying we need to pay suit 20 times an engineers salary so he doesn’t have to be there and team keeps producing. I get it now.
    - crispyporkbites 9y ago
      Right on - although most execs don't get 20x the comp as an engineer these days.
- ptero 9y ago
  > if 80% of those people disappear you will see absolutely no change in the bits shipped by that group For a short to medium time, sure (and I think the better the exec is the longer his team will be able to work successfully without him). In my experience most successful execs build teams that build good products. Remove the exec and the good team still builds good products, but it usually starts rotting (e.g., good technical people are frequently not good at handling people issues), then snaps as good people leave and what is left cannot build anything anymore. Most good exec contributions are not visible at the technical level (there are some exceptions as you cite), but they still create an environment where smart engineers find it fun to work productively. It feels like some magic is involved in this -- I do not have this skill, but I have seen it in action a few times. Just my 2c.
deepGem 9y ago
Well, most software engineers don't despise managers. Engineers despise suits who don't understand software engineering. Sadly, most suits fall into this category and to make matters worse they turn out to be control freaks. They want to control something that they don't understand and this pisses engineers off. Managing a team of talented software engineers is more art than science. Good luck trying to win the hearts of engineers while being a control freak who doesn't understand what the team is doing. All the prominent CEOs and execs who stand out are exceptions to this case. They foster strong team building and give complete freedom for the team to execute. They own up to their mistakes. Most of them are not control freaks, but they are detail oriented (Jobs). It's a joy to work with such managers.

telltruth 9y ago

No, my friend. I have lived under and interacted with enough suits at big 5 that I can tell you that if 80% of those people disappear you will see absolutely no change in the bits shipped by that group. How do I know this? Well, I have seen one suit getting replaced by another random suit all the time. There have been suits who never actually tried out the product they supposedly owned and preached to outside world. I am not kidding you. They literally had no account in the system. Most suits had no clue where source code existed for their product and even never had read documentation that their customers had to suffer through. Their known contribution included setting up exec retreats were people are supposed to tell them about what needs to be done and then they go away with “blessing” the plan that got surfaced after their reports fought it out. Another of their contribution was to do meetings with other suits at customers/partners. Another was to do budgets and when things go red (or pressured to show profits), do hard decisions, aka, throwing 10% of team under the bus in form of layoffs. Their next contribution was to present works of their teams when it got done and credit it to their leadership and vision. I am talking about CVP+ levels, BTW. It’s easy to identify these suits. Go to the leaf level employees in their group and ask them about actual contributions of their CVPs in their product that made a difference. If they cannot mention anything concrete other than blanket buzz words like “leadership”, “vision” etc (in case they cannot honestly answer) then you know you have a suit at the top. These people are very different from Jobs, Musk, Zuke, Jenson Huang etc who are absolutely down and dirty at every level, knew more details then any individual employee and had real technical contributions in their product that made significant difference.

crispyporkbites 9y ago
> I can tell you that if 80% of those people disappear you will see absolutely no change in the bits shipped by that group. How do I know this? Well, I have seen one suit getting replaced by another random suit all the time This is a feature of a well run business, you want to be able to change your executive teams without negatively impacting on the rest of the business in the short term. > These people are very different from Jobs, Musk, Zuke, Jenson Huang etc who are absolutely down and dirty at every level, knew more details then any individual employee and had real technical contributions in their product that made significant difference. Sure in the early days of the product this is the case, but these are exceptional individuals who have transitioned into executive roles over time. They have spent the time since building up a management culture and organization capable of running a billion dollar company, which is not easy to do, and is more than a full time job. I think you grossly misunderstand what executives do, both long term and day-to-day. At the end of the day a company is mostly just a group of people, with a set of assets. To grow and evolve beyond the current products you need to cultivate this group into a team that can consistently bring success.
- telltruth 9y ago
  Ok, so if team can work without suit then it was because suit was doing great job. So you are saying we need to pay suit 20 times an engineers salary so he doesn’t have to be there and team keeps producing. I get it now.
  - crispyporkbites 9y ago
    Right on - although most execs don't get 20x the comp as an engineer these days.
ptero 9y ago
> if 80% of those people disappear you will see absolutely no change in the bits shipped by that group For a short to medium time, sure (and I think the better the exec is the longer his team will be able to work successfully without him). In my experience most successful execs build teams that build good products. Remove the exec and the good team still builds good products, but it usually starts rotting (e.g., good technical people are frequently not good at handling people issues), then snaps as good people leave and what is left cannot build anything anymore. Most good exec contributions are not visible at the technical level (there are some exceptions as you cite), but they still create an environment where smart engineers find it fun to work productively. It feels like some magic is involved in this -- I do not have this skill, but I have seen it in action a few times. Just my 2c.

deepGem 9y ago

Well, most software engineers don't despise managers. Engineers despise suits who don't understand software engineering. Sadly, most suits fall into this category and to make matters worse they turn out to be control freaks. They want to control something that they don't understand and this pisses engineers off. Managing a team of talented software engineers is more art than science. Good luck trying to win the hearts of engineers while being a control freak who doesn't understand what the team is doing. All the prominent CEOs and execs who stand out are exceptions to this case. They foster strong team building and give complete freedom for the team to execute. They own up to their mistakes. Most of them are not control freaks, but they are detail oriented (Jobs). It's a joy to work with such managers.