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As you scale and become more experienced as a manager, it's extremely hard to impossible to maintain technical chops forever. The situation is that either you

As you scale and become more experienced as a manager, it's extremely hard to impossible to maintain technical chops forever. The situation is that either you manage your team of 12 thoughtfully, spending time on team meetings, 1 on 1s, strategy planning and considerations no one else is focusing on, and reading and listening to people... or you're heads down and hands off because you're still coding or building and managing is a distraction. Long term the latter doesn't scale. The CTO won't know all of what his direct knows as well as the directs of the directs. The CEO won't know all of what the CTO knows, plus the CFO and the CISO. Etc. An architect building a new office building hasn't personally done what every sub contractor and specialist has done, and yet makes decisions of their directions. A strong hands on technical manager who can mentor plus lead plus deal with external bureaucracy is as rare as such a person working 80 hour weeks is common. It's also easier with smaller teams and leaner environments without a zillion meetings. I'm a previously-technical, and now less so tech manager and that's my experience. It's a trade off in terms of time and investment in skills. Not to mention the technology changes constantly, leading to more non work homework if you need to stay relevant.

gautamb0 4y ago
I agree fully, though I’d like to add a layer of nuance. The best engineering leaders I’ve encountered have been hands-off (as you said, at a certain point it’s nigh impossible to scale otherwise) However, they’ve uniformly retained engineering mindsets, and have great spidey senses for when things are being overengineered, or when complexity is being underestimated, and much more. They all have also demonstrated the ability to drill in deep when the situation arises, and tend to have strong understanding of high level architectures and systems. I’ve had “pure people managers” who were non-technical and ended up having myriad weaknesses. The opposite has been even worse. But the best know exactly when and how to put on both their people and technical hats.
- mancerayder 4y ago
  To your point maybe one key is if someone has had years of past engineering experience with wisdom that has translated into leadership skills.

gautamb0 4y ago

I agree fully, though I’d like to add a layer of nuance. The best engineering leaders I’ve encountered have been hands-off (as you said, at a certain point it’s nigh impossible to scale otherwise) However, they’ve uniformly retained engineering mindsets, and have great spidey senses for when things are being overengineered, or when complexity is being underestimated, and much more. They all have also demonstrated the ability to drill in deep when the situation arises, and tend to have strong understanding of high level architectures and systems. I’ve had “pure people managers” who were non-technical and ended up having myriad weaknesses. The opposite has been even worse. But the best know exactly when and how to put on both their people and technical hats.

mancerayder 4y ago
To your point maybe one key is if someone has had years of past engineering experience with wisdom that has translated into leadership skills.