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I think this is a really good point. Management is a skill just like software engineering, and from my experience there appears to be a wide spread of manageme

I think this is a really good point. Management is a skill just like software engineering, and from my experience there appears to be a wide spread of management ability among the ranks of those who call themselves managers. If managers create a toxic atmosphere workers are going to leave regardless of how many xboxes, espresso machines, travel opportunities or whatever.

hkmurakami 14y ago
There's a whole range of "management skills" that are pertinent to being a manager. This is what really complicates things. My former manager was extremely gifted at salesmanship (selling our "product" to the C level) and was deft at dealing with interdepartmental politics (including posturing to make our product/team more important in the company) for us. But he was a squeezer, and honestly just didn't care about the well being or mental sanity of each of his team members. This made him (in my view) a good or even very-good manager, but far from a great one.
- hkarthik 14y ago
  This is the classic case of someone who excels at "managing up" but is deficient at "managing down". The way most of corporate America is structured today, most managers are incentivized to manage up. That's why great managers are so rare.
jfb 14y ago
Keep in mind too that many managers of technical teams are upjumped engineers; this is one of the worst antipatterns I've encountered. Not only does the organization pay the opportunity cost of losing engineering talent to the duties of management; the skills of management are orthogonal to those of engineering.
- hga 14y ago
  "Not only does the organization pay the opportunity cost of losing engineering talent to the duties of management" In my experience a lot of these managers were essentially failed engineers, they never demonstrated they were at all good at engineering, so no loss like the one above you've seen, and of course they make terrible managers due to poor technical judgement and envy of those who can do it.

hkmurakami 14y ago

There's a whole range of "management skills" that are pertinent to being a manager. This is what really complicates things. My former manager was extremely gifted at salesmanship (selling our "product" to the C level) and was deft at dealing with interdepartmental politics (including posturing to make our product/team more important in the company) for us. But he was a squeezer, and honestly just didn't care about the well being or mental sanity of each of his team members. This made him (in my view) a good or even very-good manager, but far from a great one.

hkarthik 14y ago
This is the classic case of someone who excels at "managing up" but is deficient at "managing down". The way most of corporate America is structured today, most managers are incentivized to manage up. That's why great managers are so rare.

jfb 14y ago

Keep in mind too that many managers of technical teams are upjumped engineers; this is one of the worst antipatterns I've encountered. Not only does the organization pay the opportunity cost of losing engineering talent to the duties of management; the skills of management are orthogonal to those of engineering.

hga 14y ago
"Not only does the organization pay the opportunity cost of losing engineering talent to the duties of management" In my experience a lot of these managers were essentially failed engineers, they never demonstrated they were at all good at engineering, so no loss like the one above you've seen, and of course they make terrible managers due to poor technical judgement and envy of those who can do it.