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Comment by kpil | Hacker News Reader

Having worked 20 years, I'm getting me and more tired of one thing: a meeting that includes a manager that you need to explain every obvious thing to.

It's no problem with clients, stakeholders, new hires, or even unreasonably thick coworkers, but a manager that having less than a minimal domain knowledge trying to 'summarize' or 'weigh together' a lot of things they do not understand is just so utterly unmotivating.

I have the research on my side: the most influential factor on job satisfaction is if your manager can do your work. https://hbr.org/2016/12/if-your-boss-could-do-your-job-youre...

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The flip side is that it seems very difficult to find competent coders that are both competent at and interested in managing other people.

Good coders are expensive and rare; paying an even larger premium for a good technical manager is so painful for the bean counters that they inevitably push non-technical people into that middle management role.

I'll wager to say that a good technical manager need not be a stellar coder. I've worked with people who were "business" people on the face of it - went to business school, had a career of management/administrative positions etc., but who had a deep technical understanding. All of them had at some point veered in the direction of becoming a programmer, but then changed course. I'm sure they would have become fine programmers, but they just chose not to.

Think you might be talking about founders here.

I wonder how much of that might be people who realize they will never be a truly world-class technologist, and so try management as a path where they might make their next career progression. (IOW, a scheme on the part of the new manager not the bean counter, or at least a symbiotic scheming.)

Even worse than a non-technical manager is a mediocre developer turned mediocre manager.

> [...] a manager that having less than a minimal domain knowledge trying to 'summarize' or 'weigh together' a lot of things they do not understand [...]

Sometimes managers need you to check their summary for correctness ("Can you say it like that?"), because they in turn have to supply it to their bosses or consumers.

Every project will always involve people with little technical understanding who still need or want summarisation of technical decisions.

I could do your job. If I learned how to code. But as a product manager my duty is to act as a bridge betweeen you and my bosses and my customers and my customer service etc.

How skilled do you want me to be? It's very difficult dancing this dance. Fighting for resources.

I think the difference is most managers can be ignorant uncaring assholes.

Having a manager trust and listen to you and fight for you and defend you when necessary is far more important.

I'm my opinion the only non technical part of me is that I haven't learned how to code.

But the proof of the pudding is in the eating. I eat.

> I could do your job. If I learned how to code.

All that means is that you can't, though.

In any case, I don't think the point is actually being able to code. To me, the point is knowing enough to not be a burden in the conversation. If you can follow the high level technical details of what people are saying, you're good.

I have managers like that, and I love them. You sometimes need to explain some things but it doesn't take more than a sentence of "we can't do this because it would break the other thing".

You're totally correct. But I never wanted to. I do love technology and certainly try not to ignorant of current and future technologies. I respect the art of the programmer. But to be slightly rude just to make a point: an average or above average coder is a commodity. In theory many many people could do your job. But a great manager is not a commodity. They are highly prized and compensated. They can break down barriers and fight fight fight.

You are right not to be a burden in the conversation. You need to kill your Ego - talking endless confusing bullshit to make yourself seem important is a nightmare. But my MD could be accused of the same the way he had to realign my priorities with that of the company.

But when you understand that some of the people on the board of the company I worked for never even use a computer, a bridge is necessary.

You compared great managers to average coders. My experience with managers is like many people's. The "average" manager is pretty bad. The average coder is also pretty bad. Both the average manager and the average coder can be replaced pretty easily. The great manager and great coder can not. I can only speak for the programmer side of that though having been involved in interviewing and seeing how hard it is to find people to pass the simplest of questions. But, given my experience with managers I suspect it's just has hard to hire great managers.

I think it's easier to find a great coder than a great manager.

I could be wrong and totally appreciate your distinction.

Edit- and I say that having worked with great coders but not many, if no great managers

Hm, being a bad manager is more visible, and even a good manager will attract more criticism.

A mediocre developer can hide behind the team or other circumstances that can be more or less hard to evaluate.

The same can be said of bad managers hiding behind a good team of direct reports. We've all had the bad manager who the owners or higher ups loved to death yet everyone on the team can tell they are incompetent. I'm not talking about the boss you hate but the truly incompentant ones.

The place I work now doesn't really care about competence only a body filling a vacancy. Maybe it's time to find a new job...I digress.

I've worked with both, and let's agree that they are about equally hard to find, or more precisely hard to hire.

To the untrained, though, above average coders and managers may appear great. But only once you've met an actual great one, you can really have perspective.

I mean, almost by definition and in ANY profession, most people will be average and good people will be scarce. If everyone was good, then everyone would be average and only the outstanding ones would be good.

So, I respectfully disagree. I think it's as hard to find good coders as it is to find good managers, good opera singers, or good baby sitters.

> an average or above average coder is a commodity. In theory many many people could do your job. But a great manager is not a commodity.

I generally agree with greggman here, in the "average vs great" distinction.

However, this also reeks of "my job is more important than your job" bias. Everyone is a commodity (and jobs are too). It's just about how hard it is to find someone to replace them.

Sorry it sounds like that. Especially at HN. The coders are the most important. No doubt. But if you honestly think that all will be solved by having technical people in most positions, then that goes against my experience unless you are a pure technology company, started by technologists.

The company I worked for morphed into a juggernaut from retail beginnings. So the company was staffed with people so technically illiterate that it was amazing anything ever got done.

There should be a balance in everything. And generalists are sometimes just as important as specialists.

> But if you honestly think that all will be solved by having technical people in most positions

That's not what I said, though. I said that, if your job is to know things about the product, it helps if you are somewhat technical.

I think it's the individual that matters. An intelligent, the right amount of humble, responsible, and motivated person that is broad enough to grasp the bigger picture while understanding enough of details, and is interested in managing other people will do well as a manager, regardless of background.

>You're totally correct. But I never wanted to.

We don't care why you can't code. We care that you can't, and therefore are unable to understand the work of people who do.

Again: the reason for your technical incompetence is not the issue. We're not passing a moral judgement on your inability to code. We're passing a professional judgement to the effect of "you are unable to understand our work and therefore cannot make sound judgements about it".

The fact that you confuse these two things is a succinct example of everything that is wrong with non-technical management.

> my duty is to act as a bridge betweeen you and my bosses and my customers and my customer service etc.

Obligatory 'Office Space' Movie Meme => http://weknowmemes.com/generator/uploads/generated/g13847403...

The only thing, is that you can't code? By that do you mean your ability to type stuff into a computer? Being able to engineer software is quite different from "coding". This is typical case of not knowing what you don't know.

The manager is basically a group resource that _developers_ use. Instead of thinking of yourself as a boss of developers, think of yourself as a secretary that serves the developer team. For that you don't have to be very skilled, you just need to be able to communicate basic things, and know a little bit of lingo, which I'm sure you've been able to master.

If you were trolling I'd rank this as medium to high quality bait.

I've never intentionally trolled in 25 years on the internet so apologies again. I just know that I fight and deflect for the technical side, listen to their issues and do my best to let them do their jobs, while also have have to liaise with completely and utterly technically illiterate people, marketing especially. As a manager you are also managed. This is in the UK however, which is still relatively in its infancy in this regard.

>I could do your job. If I learned how to code.

You lost me here. If you can't do my job, you can't manage my job. Period.

This lax attitude towards manager competence is little more than forced, groupthink subjugation to the Peters Principle [1] and has created a 'management class' that is little more than a means to undermine the 'technical class' with bullshit, and it is a cancer on our industry.

[1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle ]

> If you can't do my job, you can't manage my job.

Nonsense. Managing people is a whole other bunch of skills distinct from the skills you need for coding. I won't disagree that a good manager who can code is a bonus though.

I didn't say they're not mutually incompatible, just that if all you've got is so-called "manager skills", and you still can't do the job of the people you're managing, then Peters Principle is well and truly in effect and the situation is dire - whether you like to think of yourself as a special human for having special management skills or not.

Manage me, by all means, using the newest-fangled management psychology you think is necessary, but if you can't do even the most basic of my tasks, you're simply not qualified for the job and should quit.

Seriously, this factor is cancerous on the industry and is, I believe, one of the most significant causes of the loss of productivity, revenue and ultimately success in our industry. Its time for this attitude to die.

The only problem I have with what you are saying is that there do exist good or great coders who go into management and become average or even poor managers. To me this phenomenon would imply the existence of some tangible management skills, separate from technical skills.

Huh... I think you're actually talking about the Peter Principle, where skilled programmers are promoted to the point where they stop being skilled. The parent topic seems to be closer to the Dilbert Principle - people being placed in management who would never have gotten the job below theirs.

Unfortunately, both of those things are pretty common. Promoting "up the ranks" gets you Peter, and hiring "for management skills" gets you Dilbert. Avoiding both at once seems to be an almost unsolved problem.

Obviously so.

I can think of three distinct dimensions; technical, planning and political/coaching. Maybe it's four but I think the last two are sides of the same coin.

You need all of them to some extent.

"Management" skills and "Technical" skills are neither all-inclusive, nor exclusive, nor does the presence of one imply the other, but the most optimal scenario is simply where an individual is capable of competence at both.

> if you can't do the job of the people you're managing, then Peters Principle is in effect

Wait, Peter's Principle? If that's "promoted to their level of incompetence", shouldn't it describe managers who can do their subordinate's work but not their own?

This sounds closer to the Dilbert Principle, honestly - people who get hired as managers but could never have held the job below theirs.

They are incompetent managers, promoted up the 'management chain' to a position of incompetence, which is due to the fact that they can't do the job of the people they are managing. They are 'management people' who have gone as far necessary to be outside their competence level.

Managers at GameStop used to be the non-managers working there. Same in a whole host of other professions, where it is expected and required that you actually understand and have experience doing the work of the people you manage. Cos, you know, in those trades, managers often have to step in and do the work. Customer service managers have usually worked as CSRs. They know the work they manage. It has always baffled me that anyone ever accepted the idea a non-technical person could or should manage teams of developers without having written code, shipped an application, or even setup a server. They have no intrinsic experience or domain knowledge to inform their management of the coders, devops, or sysadmins. And they need it. You simply cannot manage people very well when you don’t understand the experience of doing their job. You can be the nicest, greatest person when it comes to dealing with people, but when it comes to hearing conflicts that are getting in the way of getting things done, when your team is blocked by things that you can’t understand, and you can’t actually see the way through the problem yourself, that’s not good management.

I want you to be skilled. Very skilled.

I've learned software development, software security, machine learning, data analysis, calculus, physical sciences and engineering, technical report writing, photography, the basics of design and colour theory, financial instruments, how to manage projects and people, and the basics of economics and law.

It is not too much to expect that a technical manager learn at least one real programming language and use it to ship one real app before they start to try to understand and coordinate developers and designers.

This is not too much to expect.

I've been learning Russian for over a year and I expect it will be at least another year before I can comfortably have a conversation.

You can at least do a Ruby or Objective C over a eight week bootcamp.

As a product manager, do you have developers formally reporting to you? That seems like a bad idea. If a PM doesn't have formal authority over developers but thinks of themselves that way, that's also bad.

No. They were not (although lines blur when an emergency happens!) But I was certainly managing them. It was my roadmap, so with nearly everything they worked on the buck stopped with me. I was the one who signed off on all their work, including testing. Including signing off on imperfect work in order to ship! I don't want authority over anyone, I want to work in a creative, sane and pleasant atmosphere. And I love to learn from people. Hopefully they can learn from me.

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