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The truth is a significant portion of managers, in my experience, are not particularly well suited to the task or are incompetent on some level. Usually their d

The truth is a significant portion of managers, in my experience, are not particularly well suited to the task or are incompetent on some level. Usually their domain level knowledge of what is happening is lower than it should be, so they struggle with leading teams because they’re not as good at knowing what’s going on as they should be. One way to mask that incompetence and lack of domain level knowledge, in my experience is to come by the workers and look over their shoulders and ask questions. This is not a problem managers who are experts in what their workers are doing have. But those people in my experience are a minority. They are hired by high performing companies, everything in the middle and down get the cruft. High performing managers don’t need this, because they know what’s going on even if everyone is at home. They can see who’s slow, who’s fast, who’s delivering what they need. And they know why and how to fix things very quickly. Poor performing low domain level knowledge managers struggle with this, because they can’t “look over the shoulder”, and ask questions until they have some understand of what’s going on that allows them to (attempt to) fix things. Thus low to mid performing managers do poorly at WFH while high performing managers are fine with it (in my experience). Having the “over the shoulder” view does indeed allow for lower performance managers to get a grip on a project so I understand why they want to keep it.

kemiller2002 4y ago
>>This is not a problem managers who are experts in what their workers are doing have. You're more or less right, but I don't think this is exactly the case. A good manager shouldn't need to be an expert in what their staff is doing. The manager should be there to help them let them do their jobs and stay out of the way. I always say the same thing around this, "If you have to constantly watch your employees either, why do they still work for you, or why are you the manager?"
- PeterisP 4y ago
  Managers play very different roles in different jobs. There are many jobs where your direct manager is a foreman who is doing pretty much the same job but is expected to be an expert in that job and has the responsibility of teaching the others how to do it and doing quality review/supervision to ensure that they're doing it properly.
- maxsilver 4y ago
  > A good manager shouldn't need to be an expert in what their staff is doing. The manager should be there to help them let them do their jobs and stay out of the way. It's not an either/or, it should be both. A good manager must be at least good at anything their staff is doing and a good manager should be there to help them, let staff do their jobs, and stay out of the way. If the manager isn't really good at (or an expert in) the role under them, then by definition they can't be a good manager, because they couldn't actually help their staff. But a manager shouldn't be doing their staff's job (they shouldn't be micromanaging), they should have trust in their staff to do good work, and only get involved when explicitly asked, or when something has gone too far off the rails. --- It should be a "trust but verify" situation. You should trust your team to do work, and stay out of their way to let them do it, but also know enough of the specifics to be able to verify any of it and correct when necessary.
  - dagw 4y ago
    A good manager must be at least good at anything their staff is doing Completely disagree. I've never had a manager who was as good as me at doing my particular job, even when I was the most junior of developers and that has not once been a problem. Even the bad managers I've had weren't bad because they could help me with my day to day job. If I needed help with those aspects of my job I spoke to the project lead or one of the senior developer.
    - maxsilver 4y ago
      > I've never had a manager who was as good as me at doing my particular job. If I needed help with those aspects of my job I spoke to the project lead Ok sure, but a "Project Lead" is just another title for a manager. Calling your managers something else, doesn't make them not-a-manager.
      - dagw 4y ago
        Maybe it's just semantics and terminology, but I consider those two very different roles (that admittedly are sometimes done by the same person). A manager has personnel and admin responsibilities, and ultimately is the one that decides which projects I work on and how I spend my time. My manager can fire me, while my project lead cannot. My manager is the person I go to talk salary and related issues. I can be working on 3 different projects with 3 different project leads, while still having the same manager.
- hammock 4y ago
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  - marcosdumay 4y ago
    As a manager you don't get to say "it is not my responsibility" unless you are claiming the responsibility rests above you. You can delegate the task, but if you do it, the responsibility is now shared. It never leaves you.
deeptote 4y ago
> The truth is a significant portion of managers, in my experience, are not particularly well suited to the task or are incompetent on some level. Competent managers are few and far between, Steve Jobs said/did a lot of stupid crap but one cogent point he made was that the best managers are the ones who never wanted to be a manager, they just went and did it because they were sick of dealing with incompetent managers.
- Loughla 4y ago
  I count myself as a good manager, and I believe my staff would agree, from what I can tell. I know I'm not perfect. I'm slow to act, I'm way too able to see both sides of every argument, and I want to make sure all of my ducks are in a row before I make noise across the institution based on what my team needs. But, my secrets: 1. I didn't want to be the boss, I just absolutely HATE being told what to do. The only way to not be told what to do, then, is be in charge. 2. Be open and honest in everything. If you don't know what they're saying to you, say that out loud. If you can't get any traction for whatever the thing they need at the institution, tell them and troubleshoot what comes next. If you really, genuinely understand the individual's complaints, but know that it won't go anywhere, be up front about that, and the reasons for it if you are able. 3. Let the experts be experts, support them, believe them, but also ask questions and do your research so you can (a) call out their bullshit if necessary and (b) not sound and act like a complete moron. In other words, trust, but verify. 4. Do not ignore inter-personal conflict. It will only fester, it will never get better. Your job is to manage the people, including their relationships. Nobody says you have to be friends, but you better f**ing believe you have to work together. 5. Buy drinks if the office does an after-hours, and then leave so they can shit talk you if they want. Even if you're great, they'll shit talk something about you; it's human nature. Again, I'm not perfect, but these things are 99% of successful managing. I see my job as insulating my staff from the bullshit that flows down from on-high, that way they can actually do the important work. I loved WFH. My staff were happy, they were productive, and they were productive in FAR less time. But, alas, the executive team here is stuck in a 1950's factory mindset of 'presence is productivity'. It's infuriating.
  - htrp 4y ago
brnt 4y ago
Management without domain knowledge is there for other reasons. One of them probably includes speaking to the outside world: customers, people who certainly don't have domain knowledge. It's not strange that this kind of job may require as many FTEs as doing actual work. Maybe what is strange is calling it 'management', and implying a hierarchy. I've experienced corporate cultures in a few places, and Americans do love their hierarchies! If that bothers you, you could consider a job in a place where this is less so.
- marcinzm 4y ago
  In my experience talking to customers without having domain knowledge tends to not end with the best outcomes. edit: Which is why you've got sales engineers, solutions engineers and so on at most competent companies that do external sales. Internally you've got product and project managers with technical backgrounds.
otabdeveloper4 4y ago
Truth is a significant portion of employees, in my experience, advocate for work from home because they want the chance to slack off. P.S. Someone has to say this.
- granshaw 4y ago
  Truth is most humans are only capable of 4 hours of deep work a day, even less if some of that was really mentally taxing work such as debugging or figuring out nasty trade offs involving multiple codebases, domains, and tools P.S. Someone has to say this.
  - kranke155 4y ago
    This is super important. I am often more productive at home because I get the change to recharge.
- EncomLab 4y ago
  In my experience, the only people who "look behind doors" are those who stand behind them. If you have time to determine who among your co-workers is slacking you either do not have enough work to fill your own job description or should be in HR.
- marcinzm 4y ago
  And a significant portion of being in the office isn't actually doing work but pretending to since management often values that more than actually getting work done.
- dleslie 4y ago
  As long as they deliver on schedules they commit to and are agreed to then it's not a problem to have down time. Even when I worked in an office I would take long walks or leave early, because a rested and happy mind is a productive mind.
- NAHWheatCracker 4y ago
  I agree with you, but I'll also put in that some people want to slack off because of their managers' discourage them. That's my situation, at least.
registeredcorn 4y ago
I would argue that not all managers necessarily need to be experts at whatever it is I do all day, as long as they can get me what it is that I need to do my job effectively. I do find it incredibly frustrating when I need to explain repeatedly what it is that I do, or when I tell them what I need and they don't make it happen. Or, try to sidestep it by repeatedly asking for "just one more meeting" on the topic. The worst is when I raise a concern, they raise a counter, and I have a series of counter-counter points to support my concern, but it is still ultimately dropped because they "don't agree". This predictably leads to issues months later, which leads into the very same people asking, "Why didn't anyone bring this up?" where I can then either mention it and humiliate them, or pretend that it never happened and make myself look like a fool. Basically, the way I see a good manager is someone who doesn't necessarily need to know the in's and out's of how my job works, but is able to trust my assessments and support my requests, when it comes to getting things done. A manager who is an expert in that subject might be able to draw the same conclusion, but if that trust and support are fulfilled, their level of personal expertise on the subject is largely irrelevant from my perspective. As long as they can fight to get that thing supported, and don't do so in a way that undermines or ignores professional assessment, I don't care what they do or do not know about the topic.
JoeAltmaier 4y ago
Rings true to me. The OS group I was in at Convergent Technologies didn't have a group leader, a director nor a VP-level software manager for 4 years, and we did fine. We turned out multiple important releases fully supporting hardware and innovating software. But we were all very senior people in the group
mhss 4y ago
> One way to mask that incompetence and lack of domain level knowledge, in my experience is to come by the workers and look over their shoulders and ask questions. Nothing wrong with asking questions. I'll take a manager that asks questions 100x over a paper pusher that is not curious about what I do and makes dumb decisions due to lack of information. The difference is more nuanced. How you ask and what you ask is what makes a difference. As a manager with a long dev career before, I know better than asking random questions at random times without context. I need to provide context about why I am asking and what I'm hoping to achieve and why sometimes educating me is good for everyone in the team. You also not need to ask "over the shoulder" when you have source control, tickets, design docs and presumably other artifacts to track progress of what's being done. Domain knowledge is a big advantage, but if you're a good manager eventually you'll find yourself leading teams in domains you had not worked on before. Unless you're talking about the domain here being "sw engineering", it is almost inevitable you end up leading teams in an area where you're not the expert. It requires a more skilled manager to be successful at leading a team where you cannot rely on your domain expertise.
ivan_gammel 4y ago
Operational awareness <> domain knowledge <> professional expertise <> leadership skills. Operational awareness can be low if you have a lot of trust in your team. You only need some control checkpoints, at which you can interfere if something goes wrong, but the team can deliver autonomously the rest of the time. In fact, very high OA can be a sign of micromanagement or of a too high cognitive load on the manager. Domain knowledge can be low if you have domain experts in the team and/or good documentation, so you could delegate sharing and accumulating the knowledge. Professional expertise can be low if you have senior people in the team and you gained authority by other means, so team can trust your decisions. The only skill that a good manager must demonstrate is the leadership, which I define as a collection skills to organize collaboration, build trust, optimize processes, enable, motivate and grow people. That skill is indeed often missing, especially in startups, where promotions to management positions often happen based on ownership, not on leadership.
- marcinzm 4y ago
  >That skill is indeed often missing, especially in startups, where promotions to management positions often happen based on ownership, not on leadership. In my experience many startup founders also get defensive if someone else shows more leadership than they do. And since often startup founders aren't great leaders that's not a high bar.
omginternets 4y ago
From what I've seen, managers can also ask for updates via Slack to great effect. Moreover, that conversation/status-report can take place asynchronously, which avoids distraction. So I have a hard time believing this is the main motivating factor behind the push to return to the office.
heliodor 4y ago
On top of that, many industries and politicians are pushing for society to return to the office because of the ecenomic negatives of not doing so. Think of all the commercial real estate sitting empty, think of all the dress clothes and makeup that is not being sold, etc. Lots of industries are very interested in workers going back to the office and lobbying their politicians to push for it.
- BlargMcLarg 4y ago
  Ironic considering car usage makes up a huge portion of emissions, and this would be the easiest way to cut it with very little negative impact to mental health.
  - whoooooo123 4y ago
    On the flip side, if everyone is working from home with the heating and lights on, cooking their own lunch, then energy usage is much less efficient than having everyone in the same building eating lunch in the cafeteria. I have no idea whether this outweighs the environmental benefit of having fewer cars on the road - just saying that you need to consider all the trade-offs.
    - lapcat 4y ago
      > if everyone is working from home with the heating and lights on Speaking as a Wisconsinite, you can't just turn off the heat in your home in the winter when you leave. Also, most homes tend to have more windows and natural lighting than office buildings. And even if you need light at home, you can just turn on the lights in the room you're working in, whereas in an office building the lights are generally on everywhere all the time during office hours. > cooking their own lunch Probably more environmentally friendly and healthy than the junk food that office workers would have to buy at chains.
      - ljf 4y ago
        Even in the mild UK it is the same. My energy usages is roughly the same since I've been at home compared to working 5 days in an office.
NikolaNovak 4y ago
You kinda lose me by repeatedly mixing up "asking questions" with bad management. I now believe the opposite. In my 3rd year of computer science degree, I took a management course on a lark. Scariest sentence I heard at the time was "a good manager need not be subject matter expert". And first decade of my career I believed that was a horrible idea. Now I don't. A team lead needs to be domain expert. I want a manager to be good at management - risk analysis, planning, stakeholder communication, etc - and willing to ask questions, seek input and learn. I don't need my manager to know how to create new indexes in db2 or troubleshoot Weblogic or set up integration broker. I need them to ask questions, interact with and listen to the team, keep us informed, fix as much politics crap as possible, ensure we are well integrated with other teams and projects, etc. (note that this is orthogonal from office vs wfh. You can ask questions and engage team remotely easily enough if you choose to, and you can do it tactfully and productively if you try).
- yunohn 4y ago
  > I want a manager to be good at management - risk analysis, planning, stakeholder communication, etc - and willing to ask questions, seek input and learn. Yeah… OP wasn’t talking about questions like those. The managers being discussed are ones that rely on those questions, and don’t build up knowledge, to do /all/ of their job. Also, I’ve yet to meet a manager who was actually good at “risk analysis & planning”. I guess most of them are good at communicating, that’s usually how they got the job in the first place.
- mox1 4y ago
  Just so you know, a non-zero portion of F500 doesn't really believe in or have a "Team Lead" role. Its Managers and Individual Contributors, no overlap. I would argue that (in general) a first line manager should be a Team Lead. Otherwise you now have 2 managers (a work product manager and a HR / performance manager). My (F500 size, but private, Fintech / banking / insurance company) company has 2 "tracks". Individual Contributor (labeled P1-5) and Manager (labeled M1-5). HR does not have any room or space for a "Senior Engineer who is also a Manager." I am currently a P5, If I wanted to move over to management, I would have to take a large pay cut (down to a M2, maybe M3). To keep an equivalent pay and move into a M4 role, I would have to be a manager of managers (aka director or 2nd VP I suppose). This company desperately needs a Tech Lead type role, but there is no space within their HR playbook. I suspect at a lot of older companies (outside of FAANG), you will find a similar breakdown or "wall" between ICs and Managers.
rrrrrrrrrrrryan 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Management_by_wandering_around https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Management_by_wandering_around MBWA is an actual management style taught in business school, and before the pandemic, was considered highly effective.
noasaservice 4y ago
I find that many managers follow the school of thought as "Being abusive gets people to work because they inherently do not want to work". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kczJJXk-dw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kczJJXk-dw The above YT video is about the Checkers/Rally's CEO masquerading as a worker and being yelled at and watching abuse by a shift supervisor to workers. The Shift supervisor then makes the above justification, that workers wouldn't do anything if they weren't abused. Naturally, this video has instant karma happen. But in the real world, you put up with it, you get fired, or you leave. The saying "Go to work because you believe in the company, but leave because of the manager." is precisely because of this abusive school of thought. And this applies in tech as much as it doesn't. In tech, this is how you get return-to-work, massive spyware on devices (sometimes even your own devices if the company refuses to provide equipment), and other abhorrent and illegal-in-not-USA policies. Quite honestly, in more professional positions, being told the strategic plan is more than enough for us to realize what needs done, how to do it, and execute it. Then again, I also argue for more democratic workplaces, rather than the top-down authoritarian method.
kkfx 4y ago
Issues at a certain scale are well beyond reactionary and incompetent beancounters: just imaging a mass exodus from cities to nice place in nature: - for remote workers: connectivity issues, home issues (secondary homes with bad heating since they was designed to be used only in summer, badly equipped, ...), mobility issues "hey roads here are damn small for the new-present amount of people!", "holy crap! Where I can get pizza at 4am here?"; - for workers around city offices: well, they simply need another job... - for food delivery: they need to design a new logistic network, something that can't happen fast nor easily - property values change who will benefit some much but also ruins others. Oh, let me say: I'm a remote worker who flee a big city years ago and very happy of my choice. Back than some many have told me I'll lost many opportunities (true, to a certain extent, in person meetings/conference put different people with something in common together, something absent in a remote scenario) and I'll face so many issue that I'll not last more than few months... Now they regret to have not done the same back then. And that's not really positive in general: simply too many are not ready for a significant "life change" and in a society in deep crisis for many reasons adding another one is not that good. It can be if done well, with a bit of organization and planning, something I still not see. I see partisans of both sides stating all the good of their side, ignoring the issues or their side, ferociously classify "opponents" as the worst crazy cancer of the humanity etc. Something sometimes nice to see with a bag of popcorn but not really positive for the society.
valand 4y ago
As someone who watched a company grow from 15 to 400 people in a rushed time, I found that distinguishing good manager from the bad ones is easy. Good manager cares and bad manager don't. Bad manager asks questions, but then discard the part that is not important to them, even though the team needs the manager to understand it. Good manager asks questions and understand (at least try to) if this is important for the team, for the project, and for the company. When they ask about deadlines and estimate, they ask why, and they try to deduct, and they remember. Good manager that works in the business selling technical product attempt to understand the technical part of the product instead of blindly "delegating" it and demanding things done. Good manager tries to improve all aspect in the team. The process efficiency. The communication blockers. I've seen first hand a manager, having no technical background, getting capable of reading C++ code over time to help the struggling team, and yet does not realize to have been so technical. Kind of having an impostor syndrome. Because they care so much. I've also seen first hand a manager that only cares about deadlines and presenting good stuff upwards. They don't care about details unless asked by their superior. And once asked for details, they act like messenger owls and echo servers.

kemiller2002 4y ago

>>This is not a problem managers who are experts in what their workers are doing have. You're more or less right, but I don't think this is exactly the case. A good manager shouldn't need to be an expert in what their staff is doing. The manager should be there to help them let them do their jobs and stay out of the way. I always say the same thing around this, "If you have to constantly watch your employees either, why do they still work for you, or why are you the manager?"

PeterisP 4y ago
Managers play very different roles in different jobs. There are many jobs where your direct manager is a foreman who is doing pretty much the same job but is expected to be an expert in that job and has the responsibility of teaching the others how to do it and doing quality review/supervision to ensure that they're doing it properly.
maxsilver 4y ago
> A good manager shouldn't need to be an expert in what their staff is doing. The manager should be there to help them let them do their jobs and stay out of the way. It's not an either/or, it should be both. A good manager must be at least good at anything their staff is doing and a good manager should be there to help them, let staff do their jobs, and stay out of the way. If the manager isn't really good at (or an expert in) the role under them, then by definition they can't be a good manager, because they couldn't actually help their staff. But a manager shouldn't be doing their staff's job (they shouldn't be micromanaging), they should have trust in their staff to do good work, and only get involved when explicitly asked, or when something has gone too far off the rails. --- It should be a "trust but verify" situation. You should trust your team to do work, and stay out of their way to let them do it, but also know enough of the specifics to be able to verify any of it and correct when necessary.
- dagw 4y ago
  A good manager must be at least good at anything their staff is doing Completely disagree. I've never had a manager who was as good as me at doing my particular job, even when I was the most junior of developers and that has not once been a problem. Even the bad managers I've had weren't bad because they could help me with my day to day job. If I needed help with those aspects of my job I spoke to the project lead or one of the senior developer.
  - maxsilver 4y ago
    > I've never had a manager who was as good as me at doing my particular job. If I needed help with those aspects of my job I spoke to the project lead Ok sure, but a "Project Lead" is just another title for a manager. Calling your managers something else, doesn't make them not-a-manager.
    - dagw 4y ago
      Maybe it's just semantics and terminology, but I consider those two very different roles (that admittedly are sometimes done by the same person). A manager has personnel and admin responsibilities, and ultimately is the one that decides which projects I work on and how I spend my time. My manager can fire me, while my project lead cannot. My manager is the person I go to talk salary and related issues. I can be working on 3 different projects with 3 different project leads, while still having the same manager.
hammock 4y ago
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- marcosdumay 4y ago
  As a manager you don't get to say "it is not my responsibility" unless you are claiming the responsibility rests above you. You can delegate the task, but if you do it, the responsibility is now shared. It never leaves you.

deeptote 4y ago

> The truth is a significant portion of managers, in my experience, are not particularly well suited to the task or are incompetent on some level. Competent managers are few and far between, Steve Jobs said/did a lot of stupid crap but one cogent point he made was that the best managers are the ones who never wanted to be a manager, they just went and did it because they were sick of dealing with incompetent managers.

Loughla 4y ago
I count myself as a good manager, and I believe my staff would agree, from what I can tell. I know I'm not perfect. I'm slow to act, I'm way too able to see both sides of every argument, and I want to make sure all of my ducks are in a row before I make noise across the institution based on what my team needs. But, my secrets: 1. I didn't want to be the boss, I just absolutely HATE being told what to do. The only way to not be told what to do, then, is be in charge. 2. Be open and honest in everything. If you don't know what they're saying to you, say that out loud. If you can't get any traction for whatever the thing they need at the institution, tell them and troubleshoot what comes next. If you really, genuinely understand the individual's complaints, but know that it won't go anywhere, be up front about that, and the reasons for it if you are able. 3. Let the experts be experts, support them, believe them, but also ask questions and do your research so you can (a) call out their bullshit if necessary and (b) not sound and act like a complete moron. In other words, trust, but verify. 4. Do not ignore inter-personal conflict. It will only fester, it will never get better. Your job is to manage the people, including their relationships. Nobody says you have to be friends, but you better f**ing believe you have to work together. 5. Buy drinks if the office does an after-hours, and then leave so they can shit talk you if they want. Even if you're great, they'll shit talk something about you; it's human nature. Again, I'm not perfect, but these things are 99% of successful managing. I see my job as insulating my staff from the bullshit that flows down from on-high, that way they can actually do the important work. I loved WFH. My staff were happy, they were productive, and they were productive in FAR less time. But, alas, the executive team here is stuck in a 1950's factory mindset of 'presence is productivity'. It's infuriating.
- htrp 4y ago

brnt 4y ago

Management without domain knowledge is there for other reasons. One of them probably includes speaking to the outside world: customers, people who certainly don't have domain knowledge. It's not strange that this kind of job may require as many FTEs as doing actual work. Maybe what is strange is calling it 'management', and implying a hierarchy. I've experienced corporate cultures in a few places, and Americans do love their hierarchies! If that bothers you, you could consider a job in a place where this is less so.

marcinzm 4y ago
In my experience talking to customers without having domain knowledge tends to not end with the best outcomes. edit: Which is why you've got sales engineers, solutions engineers and so on at most competent companies that do external sales. Internally you've got product and project managers with technical backgrounds.

otabdeveloper4 4y ago

Truth is a significant portion of employees, in my experience, advocate for work from home because they want the chance to slack off. P.S. Someone has to say this.

granshaw 4y ago
Truth is most humans are only capable of 4 hours of deep work a day, even less if some of that was really mentally taxing work such as debugging or figuring out nasty trade offs involving multiple codebases, domains, and tools P.S. Someone has to say this.
- kranke155 4y ago
  This is super important. I am often more productive at home because I get the change to recharge.
EncomLab 4y ago
In my experience, the only people who "look behind doors" are those who stand behind them. If you have time to determine who among your co-workers is slacking you either do not have enough work to fill your own job description or should be in HR.
marcinzm 4y ago
And a significant portion of being in the office isn't actually doing work but pretending to since management often values that more than actually getting work done.
dleslie 4y ago
As long as they deliver on schedules they commit to and are agreed to then it's not a problem to have down time. Even when I worked in an office I would take long walks or leave early, because a rested and happy mind is a productive mind.
NAHWheatCracker 4y ago
I agree with you, but I'll also put in that some people want to slack off because of their managers' discourage them. That's my situation, at least.

registeredcorn 4y ago

I would argue that not all managers necessarily need to be experts at whatever it is I do all day, as long as they can get me what it is that I need to do my job effectively. I do find it incredibly frustrating when I need to explain repeatedly what it is that I do, or when I tell them what I need and they don't make it happen. Or, try to sidestep it by repeatedly asking for "just one more meeting" on the topic. The worst is when I raise a concern, they raise a counter, and I have a series of counter-counter points to support my concern, but it is still ultimately dropped because they "don't agree". This predictably leads to issues months later, which leads into the very same people asking, "Why didn't anyone bring this up?" where I can then either mention it and humiliate them, or pretend that it never happened and make myself look like a fool. Basically, the way I see a good manager is someone who doesn't necessarily need to know the in's and out's of how my job works, but is able to trust my assessments and support my requests, when it comes to getting things done. A manager who is an expert in that subject might be able to draw the same conclusion, but if that trust and support are fulfilled, their level of personal expertise on the subject is largely irrelevant from my perspective. As long as they can fight to get that thing supported, and don't do so in a way that undermines or ignores professional assessment, I don't care what they do or do not know about the topic.

JoeAltmaier 4y ago

Rings true to me. The OS group I was in at Convergent Technologies didn't have a group leader, a director nor a VP-level software manager for 4 years, and we did fine. We turned out multiple important releases fully supporting hardware and innovating software. But we were all very senior people in the group

mhss 4y ago

> One way to mask that incompetence and lack of domain level knowledge, in my experience is to come by the workers and look over their shoulders and ask questions. Nothing wrong with asking questions. I'll take a manager that asks questions 100x over a paper pusher that is not curious about what I do and makes dumb decisions due to lack of information. The difference is more nuanced. How you ask and what you ask is what makes a difference. As a manager with a long dev career before, I know better than asking random questions at random times without context. I need to provide context about why I am asking and what I'm hoping to achieve and why sometimes educating me is good for everyone in the team. You also not need to ask "over the shoulder" when you have source control, tickets, design docs and presumably other artifacts to track progress of what's being done. Domain knowledge is a big advantage, but if you're a good manager eventually you'll find yourself leading teams in domains you had not worked on before. Unless you're talking about the domain here being "sw engineering", it is almost inevitable you end up leading teams in an area where you're not the expert. It requires a more skilled manager to be successful at leading a team where you cannot rely on your domain expertise.

ivan_gammel 4y ago

Operational awareness <> domain knowledge <> professional expertise <> leadership skills. Operational awareness can be low if you have a lot of trust in your team. You only need some control checkpoints, at which you can interfere if something goes wrong, but the team can deliver autonomously the rest of the time. In fact, very high OA can be a sign of micromanagement or of a too high cognitive load on the manager. Domain knowledge can be low if you have domain experts in the team and/or good documentation, so you could delegate sharing and accumulating the knowledge. Professional expertise can be low if you have senior people in the team and you gained authority by other means, so team can trust your decisions. The only skill that a good manager must demonstrate is the leadership, which I define as a collection skills to organize collaboration, build trust, optimize processes, enable, motivate and grow people. That skill is indeed often missing, especially in startups, where promotions to management positions often happen based on ownership, not on leadership.

marcinzm 4y ago
>That skill is indeed often missing, especially in startups, where promotions to management positions often happen based on ownership, not on leadership. In my experience many startup founders also get defensive if someone else shows more leadership than they do. And since often startup founders aren't great leaders that's not a high bar.

omginternets 4y ago

From what I've seen, managers can also ask for updates via Slack to great effect. Moreover, that conversation/status-report can take place asynchronously, which avoids distraction. So I have a hard time believing this is the main motivating factor behind the push to return to the office.

heliodor 4y ago

On top of that, many industries and politicians are pushing for society to return to the office because of the ecenomic negatives of not doing so. Think of all the commercial real estate sitting empty, think of all the dress clothes and makeup that is not being sold, etc. Lots of industries are very interested in workers going back to the office and lobbying their politicians to push for it.

BlargMcLarg 4y ago
Ironic considering car usage makes up a huge portion of emissions, and this would be the easiest way to cut it with very little negative impact to mental health.
- whoooooo123 4y ago
  On the flip side, if everyone is working from home with the heating and lights on, cooking their own lunch, then energy usage is much less efficient than having everyone in the same building eating lunch in the cafeteria. I have no idea whether this outweighs the environmental benefit of having fewer cars on the road - just saying that you need to consider all the trade-offs.
  - lapcat 4y ago
    > if everyone is working from home with the heating and lights on Speaking as a Wisconsinite, you can't just turn off the heat in your home in the winter when you leave. Also, most homes tend to have more windows and natural lighting than office buildings. And even if you need light at home, you can just turn on the lights in the room you're working in, whereas in an office building the lights are generally on everywhere all the time during office hours. > cooking their own lunch Probably more environmentally friendly and healthy than the junk food that office workers would have to buy at chains.
    - ljf 4y ago
      Even in the mild UK it is the same. My energy usages is roughly the same since I've been at home compared to working 5 days in an office.

NikolaNovak 4y ago

You kinda lose me by repeatedly mixing up "asking questions" with bad management. I now believe the opposite. In my 3rd year of computer science degree, I took a management course on a lark. Scariest sentence I heard at the time was "a good manager need not be subject matter expert". And first decade of my career I believed that was a horrible idea. Now I don't. A team lead needs to be domain expert. I want a manager to be good at management - risk analysis, planning, stakeholder communication, etc - and willing to ask questions, seek input and learn. I don't need my manager to know how to create new indexes in db2 or troubleshoot Weblogic or set up integration broker. I need them to ask questions, interact with and listen to the team, keep us informed, fix as much politics crap as possible, ensure we are well integrated with other teams and projects, etc. (note that this is orthogonal from office vs wfh. You can ask questions and engage team remotely easily enough if you choose to, and you can do it tactfully and productively if you try).

yunohn 4y ago
> I want a manager to be good at management - risk analysis, planning, stakeholder communication, etc - and willing to ask questions, seek input and learn. Yeah… OP wasn’t talking about questions like those. The managers being discussed are ones that rely on those questions, and don’t build up knowledge, to do /all/ of their job. Also, I’ve yet to meet a manager who was actually good at “risk analysis & planning”. I guess most of them are good at communicating, that’s usually how they got the job in the first place.
mox1 4y ago
Just so you know, a non-zero portion of F500 doesn't really believe in or have a "Team Lead" role. Its Managers and Individual Contributors, no overlap. I would argue that (in general) a first line manager should be a Team Lead. Otherwise you now have 2 managers (a work product manager and a HR / performance manager). My (F500 size, but private, Fintech / banking / insurance company) company has 2 "tracks". Individual Contributor (labeled P1-5) and Manager (labeled M1-5). HR does not have any room or space for a "Senior Engineer who is also a Manager." I am currently a P5, If I wanted to move over to management, I would have to take a large pay cut (down to a M2, maybe M3). To keep an equivalent pay and move into a M4 role, I would have to be a manager of managers (aka director or 2nd VP I suppose). This company desperately needs a Tech Lead type role, but there is no space within their HR playbook. I suspect at a lot of older companies (outside of FAANG), you will find a similar breakdown or "wall" between ICs and Managers.

rrrrrrrrrrrryan 4y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Management_by_wandering_around https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Management_by_wandering_around MBWA is an actual management style taught in business school, and before the pandemic, was considered highly effective.

noasaservice 4y ago

I find that many managers follow the school of thought as "Being abusive gets people to work because they inherently do not want to work". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kczJJXk-dw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kczJJXk-dw The above YT video is about the Checkers/Rally's CEO masquerading as a worker and being yelled at and watching abuse by a shift supervisor to workers. The Shift supervisor then makes the above justification, that workers wouldn't do anything if they weren't abused. Naturally, this video has instant karma happen. But in the real world, you put up with it, you get fired, or you leave. The saying "Go to work because you believe in the company, but leave because of the manager." is precisely because of this abusive school of thought. And this applies in tech as much as it doesn't. In tech, this is how you get return-to-work, massive spyware on devices (sometimes even your own devices if the company refuses to provide equipment), and other abhorrent and illegal-in-not-USA policies. Quite honestly, in more professional positions, being told the strategic plan is more than enough for us to realize what needs done, how to do it, and execute it. Then again, I also argue for more democratic workplaces, rather than the top-down authoritarian method.

kkfx 4y ago

Issues at a certain scale are well beyond reactionary and incompetent beancounters: just imaging a mass exodus from cities to nice place in nature: - for remote workers: connectivity issues, home issues (secondary homes with bad heating since they was designed to be used only in summer, badly equipped, ...), mobility issues "hey roads here are damn small for the new-present amount of people!", "holy crap! Where I can get pizza at 4am here?"; - for workers around city offices: well, they simply need another job... - for food delivery: they need to design a new logistic network, something that can't happen fast nor easily - property values change who will benefit some much but also ruins others. Oh, let me say: I'm a remote worker who flee a big city years ago and very happy of my choice. Back than some many have told me I'll lost many opportunities (true, to a certain extent, in person meetings/conference put different people with something in common together, something absent in a remote scenario) and I'll face so many issue that I'll not last more than few months... Now they regret to have not done the same back then. And that's not really positive in general: simply too many are not ready for a significant "life change" and in a society in deep crisis for many reasons adding another one is not that good. It can be if done well, with a bit of organization and planning, something I still not see. I see partisans of both sides stating all the good of their side, ignoring the issues or their side, ferociously classify "opponents" as the worst crazy cancer of the humanity etc. Something sometimes nice to see with a bag of popcorn but not really positive for the society.

valand 4y ago

As someone who watched a company grow from 15 to 400 people in a rushed time, I found that distinguishing good manager from the bad ones is easy. Good manager cares and bad manager don't. Bad manager asks questions, but then discard the part that is not important to them, even though the team needs the manager to understand it. Good manager asks questions and understand (at least try to) if this is important for the team, for the project, and for the company. When they ask about deadlines and estimate, they ask why, and they try to deduct, and they remember. Good manager that works in the business selling technical product attempt to understand the technical part of the product instead of blindly "delegating" it and demanding things done. Good manager tries to improve all aspect in the team. The process efficiency. The communication blockers. I've seen first hand a manager, having no technical background, getting capable of reading C++ code over time to help the struggling team, and yet does not realize to have been so technical. Kind of having an impostor syndrome. Because they care so much. I've also seen first hand a manager that only cares about deadlines and presenting good stuff upwards. They don't care about details unless asked by their superior. And once asked for details, they act like messenger owls and echo servers.