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Technical management of technical endeavors can be just as bad, although you could be right when you say it's "the root of most failure in the engineering domai
by pron 7y ago
Technical management of technical endeavors can be just as bad, although you could be right when you say it's "the root of most failure in the engineering domain," because when technical people manage, the product is often either not delivered, or is delivered but doesn't have any critical failures because people don't want to use it. It's very good when managers have technical expertise in addition, but managerial expertise is much more important in management. Just something I learned in my two-plus decades in the software industry.
- fredley 7y agoYou need both technical and non-technical management skills, and if you can't get both in the same person (likely!), you need the people from each side in a relationship that's based on trust and recognition of each other's expertise. Too often these relationships break down and become adversarial, to the detriment of everyone involved, and of course the project.
- mihaaly 7y agoWell, it is difficult to find an industry with worse track record of product quality and reliability than the software industry, I wouldn't use software development management as reference. (also two decades is software development... and software usage!!) In my experience managers lacking domain knowledge make more harm than good but are excellent putting emphasis on adjacent and auxiliary parts they are good at. Anyone put in charge of something they are not competent in would do the same.