41 ms·

I agree they shouldn't be writing code, but they should probably have a fair degree of knowledge about writing code. Otherwise, how do they decide which people

I agree they shouldn't be writing code, but they should probably have a fair degree of knowledge about writing code. Otherwise, how do they decide which people to hire to write the code?

omoikane 4y ago
They tell their engineers to interview those people, then make hiring decisions based on aggregated and distilled feedbacks from those engineers.
- Hermitian909 4y ago
  Anecdotally, this is basically always worse than having someone with significant coding experience. Two thoughts come to mind immediately: 1. Making key hiring decisions is hard: coding experience lets you better see how a potential hire's technical strengths, weaknesses, and opinions intersect with personality traits to produce value or dysfunction. 2.Coding experience helps you understand different kinds of value - it's very hard to explain to non-technical folks that while a developer is brilliant and productive, he's not careful enough and six months down the line we're going to be buried in tech debt if he's allowed to keep going.
- spangry 4y ago
  So now they have to adjudicate the technical opinions of their engineers. Engineer #1 says they should hire person X for various technical reasons. Engineer #2 says they should hire person Y for various other technical reasons. How does a non-technical manager decide which opinion is 'better'?
  - querulous 4y ago
    they don't. you ask the team to come to a consensus on their own and if they don't just pick someone to make the decision and then pick someone else the next time you have to pick managers thinking they know better than their reports is the source of basically all team dysfunction in tech
    - kcplate 4y ago
      This always sounds good in theory but in practice is a disaster. At least in my experience.
  - mnsc 4y ago
    And a technical manager is either one of engineer #1 and #2 and can hire X or Y depending on their own biases without consulting anyone else. Is this 'better'?

I agree they shouldn't be writing code, but they should probably have a fair degree of knowledge about writing code. Otherwise, how do they decide which people to hire to write the code?

omoikane 4y ago

They tell their engineers to interview those people, then make hiring decisions based on aggregated and distilled feedbacks from those engineers.

Hermitian909 4y ago
Anecdotally, this is basically always worse than having someone with significant coding experience. Two thoughts come to mind immediately: 1. Making key hiring decisions is hard: coding experience lets you better see how a potential hire's technical strengths, weaknesses, and opinions intersect with personality traits to produce value or dysfunction. 2.Coding experience helps you understand different kinds of value - it's very hard to explain to non-technical folks that while a developer is brilliant and productive, he's not careful enough and six months down the line we're going to be buried in tech debt if he's allowed to keep going.
spangry 4y ago
So now they have to adjudicate the technical opinions of their engineers. Engineer #1 says they should hire person X for various technical reasons. Engineer #2 says they should hire person Y for various other technical reasons. How does a non-technical manager decide which opinion is 'better'?
- querulous 4y ago
  they don't. you ask the team to come to a consensus on their own and if they don't just pick someone to make the decision and then pick someone else the next time you have to pick managers thinking they know better than their reports is the source of basically all team dysfunction in tech
  - kcplate 4y ago
    This always sounds good in theory but in practice is a disaster. At least in my experience.
- mnsc 4y ago
  And a technical manager is either one of engineer #1 and #2 and can hire X or Y depending on their own biases without consulting anyone else. Is this 'better'?