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It's interesting. I agree with everything in that article. At the same time, I also agree with similar but opposing articles complaining about people who did

It's interesting. I agree with everything in that article. At the same time, I also agree with similar but opposing articles complaining about people who did train to be managers (by going through university program) now leading technical people without having a clue on what those people are doing, how their problems are solved, etc. I think this is a generalized class of frequent hiring / placement problem: I have two orthogonal skillsets I need. Which one is core, which one is trainable? In other words, do I hire person with A and train them on B? Or do I train a person with B and train them on A? (As somebody who was a techie and is now in a management role, I'll lead through the entire series and see what help I can gain from that. But note there exist MANY useful, structured and helpful resources for those who want to improve their people managing/supporting skills. The key part though is acknowledging you want/need to improve those skills - for many of us, learning SQL or C++ or JavaScript is perceived as a "hard skill", useful and pragmatic; whereas "people managing", "coaching", "negotiation" etc are seen as "soft skills" and not worth. If this article helps some people convert their thinking and acknowledge we need to work just as hard on people skills as on tech skills, awesome:)

mettamage 3y ago
The thing is: soft skills aren't that needed at the entry level. I've noticed that no one cares that I trained a lot of soft skills by doing a psych bachelor, an honors program based on soft skills, hundreds of hours of meditation. They just want to know: - Can you code according to the requirements of the business? Sometimes soft skills are needed for that, but not nearly to the level that I trained them at. So, the skills languish. I might get picked up to become a manager at some point and they might be relevant again, I'll retrain them. For now though, I've noticed my soft skills aren't that relevant. My ability to code and push features out as fast as possible (with good code quality) is.
- BeetleB 3y ago
  > I've noticed that no one cares that I trained a lot of soft skills by doing a psych bachelor, I don't know about your school, but at my undergrad they didn't teach soft skills for a psychology degree.
- tnel77 3y ago
  I feel like soft skills are critical for things like networking or standing out during the interview process. They aren’t as important in my day-to-day work, but they have helped land me interviews (especially as a student at career fairs many years ago).
iamdbtoo 3y ago
Some the absolute worst managers I've ever had were the ones who were also "management coaches" or trained by them. They just read a bunch of books and blindly applied it to everything and taught others to do the same.
- Propelloni 3y ago
  I guess I understand your point, but please consider that competent managers do not fall fully formed from trees. Sure, some are better suited to the role then others, but an average person can become an average manager with time any time. Managers, like programmers or any other professional, start out as novices and get better through experience. Applying book-knowledge to real life and seeing what works and what does not is actually a solid way to learn. It's basically what we do when we learn coding, with the difference that feedback circles are much shorter in coding. Maybe you could help managers learn faster by giving them feedback?
  - NikolaNovak 3y ago
    Agreed; I think that's the key point - we often don't consider "Manager Skillset" the same way we do "Technical Skillset": 1. It takes a lot of learning 2. It takes a lot of practice 3. It's a complex landscape of skills (coaching well-performing employees, coaching under-performing employees, planning & managing a project & timelines, obtaining & managing a budget, managing client expectations, reporting at executive level, supporting technical design, etc etc are all wildly different skills and not every manager will have all of them at same level, just like not all techies will be expert in database and front end and back end and data analytics and enterprise architecture and infrastructure and networking etc:)
  - iamdbtoo 3y ago
    > I guess I understand your point, but please consider that competent managers do not fall fully formed from trees. I agree. But in my experience the one quality that makes a good and bad manager is simply considering the humanity of your employees when making decisions. > Applying book-knowledge to real life and seeing what works and what does not is actually a solid way to learn. I also agree, but I think you're assuming these managers did this and they did not. If the team was failing it was because the team wasn't following the teachings closely enough and had to be re-educated. > Maybe you could help managers learn faster by giving them feedback? These managers are not interested in feedback or learning. Why would they? They already read all the books.
giantg2 3y ago
"In other words, do I hire person with A and train them on B? Or do I train a person with B and train them on A?" The real question is where are these places that are supposedly training people? The companies I've seen don't do any real training and expect people to just be proficient at everything.
- NikolaNovak 3y ago
  Depends on company and team I suppose; note there are many aspects to "training": 1. Formal training classes, internal or external - many large companies do offer them 2. "Self-serve" internal training - videos and documents etc; again, many large companies do offer them 3. Informal coaching and mentoring - e.g. my boss is constantly providing feedback and mentoring, sometimes in tiny bitesize chunks you can easily miss and not categorize as training, sometimes in larger nuggets of wisdom. In turn, I do dedicates sessions when a person joins my team on what project is about overall, what their role and place is, what are the challenges and expectations; and then provide feedback and mentoring on continuous basis 4. Self-learning. As individuals we too have responsibility / ownership to train. Just like in my techie days, I'd devour e.g. Oracle DBA or AWS books for fun & profit, in principle, as a manager now, I should similarly read books on coaching and management (I must admit I find them less exciting; but other people feel differently:)
  - giantg2 3y ago
    Number 1 seems to be getting less common over time in my experience. Number 2 is basically worthless if they don't give you time to do that training and provides you with an actual mentor to discuss things. Number 3 is interesting. Oftentimes the feedback of managers is tainted by politics or anterior motives. Informal mentors can be found, but it seems very rare to me. In many cases in my past, it seems two mentors will offer you two conflicting pieces of advice. Number 4 seems to be the main method of learning companies are moving to. It does suck though because usually they treat personal project experience or school experience and no experience at all. Even if you can self train in 9 different listed tech in the job ad, there seems to always be a 10th that you don't know but they require.

mettamage 3y ago

The thing is: soft skills aren't that needed at the entry level. I've noticed that no one cares that I trained a lot of soft skills by doing a psych bachelor, an honors program based on soft skills, hundreds of hours of meditation. They just want to know: - Can you code according to the requirements of the business? Sometimes soft skills are needed for that, but not nearly to the level that I trained them at. So, the skills languish. I might get picked up to become a manager at some point and they might be relevant again, I'll retrain them. For now though, I've noticed my soft skills aren't that relevant. My ability to code and push features out as fast as possible (with good code quality) is.

BeetleB 3y ago
> I've noticed that no one cares that I trained a lot of soft skills by doing a psych bachelor, I don't know about your school, but at my undergrad they didn't teach soft skills for a psychology degree.
tnel77 3y ago
I feel like soft skills are critical for things like networking or standing out during the interview process. They aren’t as important in my day-to-day work, but they have helped land me interviews (especially as a student at career fairs many years ago).

iamdbtoo 3y ago

Some the absolute worst managers I've ever had were the ones who were also "management coaches" or trained by them. They just read a bunch of books and blindly applied it to everything and taught others to do the same.

Propelloni 3y ago
I guess I understand your point, but please consider that competent managers do not fall fully formed from trees. Sure, some are better suited to the role then others, but an average person can become an average manager with time any time. Managers, like programmers or any other professional, start out as novices and get better through experience. Applying book-knowledge to real life and seeing what works and what does not is actually a solid way to learn. It's basically what we do when we learn coding, with the difference that feedback circles are much shorter in coding. Maybe you could help managers learn faster by giving them feedback?
- NikolaNovak 3y ago
  Agreed; I think that's the key point - we often don't consider "Manager Skillset" the same way we do "Technical Skillset": 1. It takes a lot of learning 2. It takes a lot of practice 3. It's a complex landscape of skills (coaching well-performing employees, coaching under-performing employees, planning & managing a project & timelines, obtaining & managing a budget, managing client expectations, reporting at executive level, supporting technical design, etc etc are all wildly different skills and not every manager will have all of them at same level, just like not all techies will be expert in database and front end and back end and data analytics and enterprise architecture and infrastructure and networking etc:)
- iamdbtoo 3y ago
  > I guess I understand your point, but please consider that competent managers do not fall fully formed from trees. I agree. But in my experience the one quality that makes a good and bad manager is simply considering the humanity of your employees when making decisions. > Applying book-knowledge to real life and seeing what works and what does not is actually a solid way to learn. I also agree, but I think you're assuming these managers did this and they did not. If the team was failing it was because the team wasn't following the teachings closely enough and had to be re-educated. > Maybe you could help managers learn faster by giving them feedback? These managers are not interested in feedback or learning. Why would they? They already read all the books.

giantg2 3y ago

"In other words, do I hire person with A and train them on B? Or do I train a person with B and train them on A?" The real question is where are these places that are supposedly training people? The companies I've seen don't do any real training and expect people to just be proficient at everything.

NikolaNovak 3y ago
Depends on company and team I suppose; note there are many aspects to "training": 1. Formal training classes, internal or external - many large companies do offer them 2. "Self-serve" internal training - videos and documents etc; again, many large companies do offer them 3. Informal coaching and mentoring - e.g. my boss is constantly providing feedback and mentoring, sometimes in tiny bitesize chunks you can easily miss and not categorize as training, sometimes in larger nuggets of wisdom. In turn, I do dedicates sessions when a person joins my team on what project is about overall, what their role and place is, what are the challenges and expectations; and then provide feedback and mentoring on continuous basis 4. Self-learning. As individuals we too have responsibility / ownership to train. Just like in my techie days, I'd devour e.g. Oracle DBA or AWS books for fun & profit, in principle, as a manager now, I should similarly read books on coaching and management (I must admit I find them less exciting; but other people feel differently:)
- giantg2 3y ago
  Number 1 seems to be getting less common over time in my experience. Number 2 is basically worthless if they don't give you time to do that training and provides you with an actual mentor to discuss things. Number 3 is interesting. Oftentimes the feedback of managers is tainted by politics or anterior motives. Informal mentors can be found, but it seems very rare to me. In many cases in my past, it seems two mentors will offer you two conflicting pieces of advice. Number 4 seems to be the main method of learning companies are moving to. It does suck though because usually they treat personal project experience or school experience and no experience at all. Even if you can self train in 9 different listed tech in the job ad, there seems to always be a 10th that you don't know but they require.