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Imagine a bad manager spending 30% of the time coding. Now imagine the same manager giving up coding, investing the 30% in making more bad decisions. And don't

Imagine a bad manager spending 30% of the time coding. Now imagine the same manager giving up coding, investing the 30% in making more bad decisions. And don't expect things going better but expect them getting worse due to total lack of grounding in facts and loosing his technical network to back him up.

tdeck 5y ago
There are many ways to be a bad manager, certainly. One way is to make terrible calls that misdirect the team. Another way is to neglect your responsibilities. If the options are "constantly interfering and screwing things up" or "checking out and writing code" I agree that the latter is preferable, but those aren't the only options. If someone is trying to improve their performance as a manager it needs to start with real assessment of the core functions of the job, and those don't include coding. Too often people tell themselves they need to make time to "stay sharp" with coding when what they really mean is "I don't know how to tell Karl to stop micromanaging Hayden, and I don't know how to get the Widget Access team to stop ignoring our bugs, but I do know how to write a rate-limiter". Then it becomes "oops, this rate limiter is pretty involved, so I didn't have time to talk to the WA team. I guess I'll get to that later".
- lifeisstillgood 5y ago
  If the company needs a rate limiter and you don't have the budget to hire someone to create it, then maybe creating it is the sort of go-getting action we want. And if we think the manager should go fight and persuade the organisation it needs a rate limiter then, yes. But they will need to write code to show the slowdown in latency, calculate the cost in servers if we don't have this etc etc. And frankly that sounds more valuable to the bottom line than whether Mary is being micromanaged. There are always always trade offs. "people management" is rarely about inter-personal issues arising to the level of HR like action. It is for more often enforcing standards on the job. Oh like linting. Less and less human stuff cannot be improved with coding and almost always the solution built in is insufficient, and customising it at enterprise level slow and costly. I agree don't do the job you left behind, but that's is not the same as stop coding. The software literate company will need most software not less.
  - tdeck 5y ago
    > Less and less human stuff cannot be improved with coding I couldn't disagree more with this perspective. Interpersonal relations are not reducible to technical problems, they require getting buy in from other people. > And frankly that sounds more valuable to the bottom line than whether Mary is being micromanaged. What if Mary (or in my example Hayden) leaves the company because they're tired of being micromanaged? Engineers are costly to replace which is why we have people to keep track of the human side of things.

tdeck 5y ago

There are many ways to be a bad manager, certainly. One way is to make terrible calls that misdirect the team. Another way is to neglect your responsibilities. If the options are "constantly interfering and screwing things up" or "checking out and writing code" I agree that the latter is preferable, but those aren't the only options. If someone is trying to improve their performance as a manager it needs to start with real assessment of the core functions of the job, and those don't include coding. Too often people tell themselves they need to make time to "stay sharp" with coding when what they really mean is "I don't know how to tell Karl to stop micromanaging Hayden, and I don't know how to get the Widget Access team to stop ignoring our bugs, but I do know how to write a rate-limiter". Then it becomes "oops, this rate limiter is pretty involved, so I didn't have time to talk to the WA team. I guess I'll get to that later".

lifeisstillgood 5y ago
If the company needs a rate limiter and you don't have the budget to hire someone to create it, then maybe creating it is the sort of go-getting action we want. And if we think the manager should go fight and persuade the organisation it needs a rate limiter then, yes. But they will need to write code to show the slowdown in latency, calculate the cost in servers if we don't have this etc etc. And frankly that sounds more valuable to the bottom line than whether Mary is being micromanaged. There are always always trade offs. "people management" is rarely about inter-personal issues arising to the level of HR like action. It is for more often enforcing standards on the job. Oh like linting. Less and less human stuff cannot be improved with coding and almost always the solution built in is insufficient, and customising it at enterprise level slow and costly. I agree don't do the job you left behind, but that's is not the same as stop coding. The software literate company will need most software not less.
- tdeck 5y ago
  > Less and less human stuff cannot be improved with coding I couldn't disagree more with this perspective. Interpersonal relations are not reducible to technical problems, they require getting buy in from other people. > And frankly that sounds more valuable to the bottom line than whether Mary is being micromanaged. What if Mary (or in my example Hayden) leaves the company because they're tired of being micromanaged? Engineers are costly to replace which is why we have people to keep track of the human side of things.