4 ms·

I get paid to give advice to tech executives and directors. Something I often have to say to them is: hire talented managers. Talent dominates technique. They n

I get paid to give advice to tech executives and directors. Something I often have to say to them is: hire talented managers. Talent dominates technique. They need to stop reading blog posts like this and just think about talent. We’re obsessed with technical talent but we hire managers at random after asking a couple of behavioral questions they’ve heard a thousand times.

skeeter2020 4y ago
This is definitely not universal. I'm at my 3rd organization in an engineering management capacity, and only the 1st one where I grew into the role didn't both put me through the technical gauntlet and explicitly interview for people leadership skills and experience. I think the challenge is that management is a more subtle skill with longer lead times to positive outcomes. There is no testable analogy for the coding challenge or take home project. >> Talent dominates technique. I really don't like this as it implies some sort of naturally leader vs. skill development over time. We'd do much better to optimize for affinity, desire and coachability in potential leaders.
mancerayder 4y ago
What's your opinion of the new hiring standard that has arisen the last several years across Big Tech and has trickled down: We're looking for an experienced Software or SRE or DevOps or X Manager in this exciting and fast growing company! Must be able to code in a job interview, have five years experience or more directly managing a staff count of at least ten engineers, and answer algorithm questions! We also expect you to know not just application architecture and CI/CD workflow inside and out, but experience with X and Y vendor applications, Z framework, and running Agile teams! My qualm is that a manager can't remain a hands-on coder very long if they're spending their days in 1:1's, product meetings, negotiating with other teams to protect their engineers, and generally being good managers. I'm baffled by how someone can be an experienced and talented manager, and also have their technical chops stay strong - forever. Technology changes such that what you became and expert at when you weren't a manager, is different from when you're manager today. All that remains are patterns, intuition and wisdom that can't easily be captured. When you've experienced first-hand managing various personality types like 'shy engineer who needs to be encouraged' and 'arrogant talented engineer who everyone relies on but does what they feel like' and 'new junior engineer' and 'repurposed engineer who was doing a completely different role' as well as 'the other remote team that's just joined'... you realize these things are hard. There's no way a heads-down coder can be good at these things. Unless they're elite geniuses or people who work 6-7 days a week. So I don't understand the job specs for tech management today.
- therealdrag0 4y ago
  I’m not a manager but I’ve observed managers stay technically strong by being involved in technical activities. Participate in design reviews, project planning, on-call issues etc. being able to smell good vs bad system design does not change that fast. Also they’ll occasionally bust out a ticket that only takes a few hours, aka still able to commit code. I don’t think this is unreasonable for edge level managers. I even get good insight from managers at the director/vp level at where I work.

skeeter2020 4y ago

This is definitely not universal. I'm at my 3rd organization in an engineering management capacity, and only the 1st one where I grew into the role didn't both put me through the technical gauntlet and explicitly interview for people leadership skills and experience. I think the challenge is that management is a more subtle skill with longer lead times to positive outcomes. There is no testable analogy for the coding challenge or take home project. >> Talent dominates technique. I really don't like this as it implies some sort of naturally leader vs. skill development over time. We'd do much better to optimize for affinity, desire and coachability in potential leaders.

mancerayder 4y ago

What's your opinion of the new hiring standard that has arisen the last several years across Big Tech and has trickled down: We're looking for an experienced Software or SRE or DevOps or X Manager in this exciting and fast growing company! Must be able to code in a job interview, have five years experience or more directly managing a staff count of at least ten engineers, and answer algorithm questions! We also expect you to know not just application architecture and CI/CD workflow inside and out, but experience with X and Y vendor applications, Z framework, and running Agile teams! My qualm is that a manager can't remain a hands-on coder very long if they're spending their days in 1:1's, product meetings, negotiating with other teams to protect their engineers, and generally being good managers. I'm baffled by how someone can be an experienced and talented manager, and also have their technical chops stay strong - forever. Technology changes such that what you became and expert at when you weren't a manager, is different from when you're manager today. All that remains are patterns, intuition and wisdom that can't easily be captured. When you've experienced first-hand managing various personality types like 'shy engineer who needs to be encouraged' and 'arrogant talented engineer who everyone relies on but does what they feel like' and 'new junior engineer' and 'repurposed engineer who was doing a completely different role' as well as 'the other remote team that's just joined'... you realize these things are hard. There's no way a heads-down coder can be good at these things. Unless they're elite geniuses or people who work 6-7 days a week. So I don't understand the job specs for tech management today.

therealdrag0 4y ago
I’m not a manager but I’ve observed managers stay technically strong by being involved in technical activities. Participate in design reviews, project planning, on-call issues etc. being able to smell good vs bad system design does not change that fast. Also they’ll occasionally bust out a ticket that only takes a few hours, aka still able to commit code. I don’t think this is unreasonable for edge level managers. I even get good insight from managers at the director/vp level at where I work.