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Here's a counterpoint: Lou Gerstner. He saved[1] IBM 25 years ago and had no relevant tech experience. I've also had personal experience with non-techie manager

by trimbo 8y ago

Here's a counterpoint: Lou Gerstner. He saved[1] IBM 25 years ago and had no relevant tech experience. I've also had personal experience with non-techie managers who were exceptional. Moral of the story is I don't think it's wise to automatically overlook non-techies in the available pool of candidates who might do better at the job. [1] - Arguably ruined it as well by turning it into a services company, but hopefully everyone agrees he exhibited competence in the turn-around despite the direction chosen.

jon-wood 8y ago
All the truly non-technical managers I've worked under have been great. They know the bounds of their knowledge, and will either work to expand them if needed, or accept that they should take advice. Very technical managers are also generally fine (up to a certain layer, where business and people management fundamentals trump all). The scary ones are the pseudo-technical managers who think they know far more than they actually do, and so insist on getting into the weeds of technical discussions, and even overruling people who know what they're doing - my worst was a manager who in a post-mortem on a weekend outage after someone pushed "urgent" code on a Saturday morning came out with "well people just shouldn't write bugs, its that simple".
- Twisell 8y ago
  Can’t agree more about pseudo-technical managers. In 2011 I warned a manager that we must go full JavaScript/HTML5 to be tablet friendly on a website we had to launch (lots of dataviz was involved). He overruled my advice, in front of the boss, and choose a hybrid flash/Wlanguage solution that only him master in the company. ‍️ Of course it’s 2018 and said site still haven’t transitioned out of flash. ‍️ I’m not frontend, theirs customers are not techs savvy, but I can’t help feeling ashamed everytime I need to interact with this site.
jrace 8y ago
Sounds like he was effective in steering the bus away from the brick wall....and into the ocean. Makes you wonder if a different person could have both turned the company around and steered it into the right direction.
- trimbo 8y ago
  I dunno. Getting a company of hundreds of thousands of people out of a death spiral and into an additional quarter century of prosperity seems like a pretty amazing achievement?

by trimbo 8y ago

jon-wood 8y ago

All the truly non-technical managers I've worked under have been great. They know the bounds of their knowledge, and will either work to expand them if needed, or accept that they should take advice. Very technical managers are also generally fine (up to a certain layer, where business and people management fundamentals trump all). The scary ones are the pseudo-technical managers who think they know far more than they actually do, and so insist on getting into the weeds of technical discussions, and even overruling people who know what they're doing - my worst was a manager who in a post-mortem on a weekend outage after someone pushed "urgent" code on a Saturday morning came out with "well people just shouldn't write bugs, its that simple".

Twisell 8y ago
Can’t agree more about pseudo-technical managers. In 2011 I warned a manager that we must go full JavaScript/HTML5 to be tablet friendly on a website we had to launch (lots of dataviz was involved). He overruled my advice, in front of the boss, and choose a hybrid flash/Wlanguage solution that only him master in the company. ‍️ Of course it’s 2018 and said site still haven’t transitioned out of flash. ‍️ I’m not frontend, theirs customers are not techs savvy, but I can’t help feeling ashamed everytime I need to interact with this site.

jrace 8y ago

Sounds like he was effective in steering the bus away from the brick wall....and into the ocean. Makes you wonder if a different person could have both turned the company around and steered it into the right direction.

trimbo 8y ago
I dunno. Getting a company of hundreds of thousands of people out of a death spiral and into an additional quarter century of prosperity seems like a pretty amazing achievement?