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Do Engineering Managers Need To Be 'Technical'? (increment.com) 155

Will Larson has been an engineering leader at Digg, Uber, and Stripe, and last May published the book An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management.

Recently he wrote a thoughtful essay asking, "Do engineering managers need to be technical?" exploring the industry's current thinking and arriving at a surprisingly thoughtful conclusion:
Around 2010, with Google ascendant, product managers were finding more and more doors closed to them if they didn't have a computer science degree. If this policy worked for Google, it would work at least as well for your virality-driven, mobile-first social network for cats... [N]ow the vast majority of engineering managers come from software-engineering backgrounds. This is true both at the market-elected collection of technology companies known as FANG (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google) and at the latest crop of technology IPOs, like Fastly, Lyft, and Slack.

While engineering management has not prioritized its own measurement, there is evidence that expert leadership works in some fields... If this is the case, modern technology companies are already well along the right path. This is where the story gets a bit odd. If we know that managers with technical skills outperform others, and we're already hiring managers with backgrounds as software engineers, why are we still worrying whether they're technical? If these folks have proven themselves as practitioners within their fields, what is there left to debate? This is an awkward inconsistency. The most likely explanation is that "being technical" has lost whatever definition it once had...

It's uncomfortable to recognize that a distinction I relied upon so heavily for so long no longer means anything to me, but comfort has never been a good reason to get into management.

With the term "not technical" unusable, I instead focus on the details. Is there a kind of technology that a given person is not familiar with? Were they uncomfortable, or did they lack confidence when describing a solution? Would I care about them knowing this detail if I didn't personally know it? Given their role in and relation to the project, was the project's success dependent on them knowing these details...?

Looking forward to the next 30 years of management trends, only a few things seem certain: Managers should be technical, and the definition of technical will continue to change.

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Do Engineering Managers Need To Be 'Technical'?

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  • by Jzanu ( 668651 ) on Sunday January 19, 2020 @09:13PM (#59636088)
    Language and technology both change, but it this pace is brand new. Technical once meant not computers but chemistry as during the early 20th century organic compounds gained greater and greater usage. 100 years earlier it was the same due to the increased use of boilers and other revolutionary technology. 150 years later, it was still the same in select industries due to the increased use of combustion engines. But by that time the shift to electronic expertise as the default meaning of technical had gained dominance. The current default interpretation of technical as meaning "computer skill" is very recent, transitory, and has nothing on chemistry. At the same time, chemistry is barely considered technical by most now.
    • by HiThere ( 15173 )

      What technical means depends on what the company does. If it does building construction, it means architects and civil engineers. If it's computers, then it means computers in whichever way the company is selling it's products. If it's selling chemicals, then it means chemists.

      That said, there's a real problem because most companies are blending varieties of expertise. The manager has to be able to judge which expert to listen to about what. And when, say, software guides a plane, then knowing how to w

    • Funny enough, my 25 year old niece says I (her almost 60 year old uncle) am "not technical". I wire-wrapped my first computer in high school, my current workstation runs Gentoo, I design electronic hardware for a living, write smartphone apps, and can explain in detail the protocols involved in getting a text from her phone through the network to her boyfriend's phone. However, I have neither the time nor the inclination to post on Facebook, yak-yak on Instagram or see any need to communicate other than by

    • At the same time, chemistry is barely considered technical by most now.

      That's a load of crap. Chemists and chemical engineers most definitely are considered to have a technical background by anyone except the "no true STEM" ignorant crowd.

  • Enough to Call BS (Score:5, Insightful)

    by chill ( 34294 ) on Sunday January 19, 2020 @09:21PM (#59636110) Journal

    A manager needs to know enough about the technical details of the field they are in to know if those they're managing actually know what they're doing or just baffling them with bullshit.

    I've met too many people, from staff all the way up to top executives, that constantly mistake a confident attitude mixed with buzzwords makes someone an expert. A good manager needs to be techincal enough to recognize this.

    • Absolutely. I'm kinda surprised this was described as "surprisingly thoughtful." I would have thought it would have been blindingly obvious.

      Don't get me wrong, a project manager -- understanding that this is not the traditional manager described above -- doesn't need to be able to read 17 programming languages to run a software development project, but they should know some basics like client side vs server side or cloud vs on premise. A manager who has a team reporting to him absolutely needs to be more
      • by joe_frisch ( 1366229 ) on Sunday January 19, 2020 @10:11PM (#59636224)

        You are probably someone with technical skills, so its obvious to you. You might be surprised at how many managers believe that "a good manager can manage anything". Most probably don't realize how much their employees laugh at them behind their backs. (Yes, I'm sure mine laugh at me, but hope its for different reasons).

        The level of detail can be appropriate to the manager's position: someone managing software developers should be pretty familiar with the language that they are using, and its pitfalls. Someone high up the chain may no need to know anything about say Python syntax, but they should be aware of the types of issues that arise when software is used to compensate for aerodynamic stability issues in aircraft, and what types of testing are appropriate, and evaluate the risks of a software fix vs a hardware re-design.

        • You are probably someone with technical skills, so its obvious to you. You might be surprised at how many managers believe that "a good manager can manage anything".

          I'm surprised there are a non-trivial number of managers that believe that because modern MBA programs teach exactly the opposite. That a manager must understand the products, how they operate, how they are used, how they are made, what the workers do, what tools and methods workers use or need, etc. That the best place to get information on some of these things is from the workers directly.

          MBAs are taught that the notion you quote is a debunked idea from the 1950s. Like so many other bad business and ec

    • Agreed, it's amazing how far a bit of confidence and a lot of buzz words can carry someone when the person in charge is not technical.
    • You've nailed it. Don't need to be the biggest expert, but has to know enough to push back when needed, and my favorite quality of my current manager, have the confidence because of that knowledge to defend their staff making technical decisions that upper management is unsure of.
    • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      Buzzwords, brown nosing (and lets not pretend otherwise) and spreadsheets that show how cuts will generate more profits and the downsides are too complex to put in a spreadsheet and are ignored, until those complex downside come back to bite those corporations on the ass, as the incompetent managers with their spreadsheets wander off with the bonuses to cause havoc at another company or ride the company to death making sure they get there golden parachutes.

      There are plenty of stupid ways for corporations to

    • A manager needs to know enough about the technical details of the field they are in to know if those they're managing actually know what they're doing or just baffling them with bullshit.

      I've met too many people, from staff all the way up to top executives, that constantly mistake a confident attitude mixed with buzzwords makes someone an expert. A good manager needs to be techincal enough to recognize this.

      True. In addition, I believe the role pf a manager is to:

      Make sure the team has the resources it needs

      Act as an interface between other teams to be sure everything works well

      Keep things on schedule, which sometimes means saying no to that neat cool thing or a way to make something that already works fine work "better." technical folks have a tendency to want to fiddle with things. Sometimes good enough is good enough."

      Fire someone who is causing problems within the team no matter their skill level. No one

  • Ask Boeing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jfdavis668 ( 1414919 ) on Sunday January 19, 2020 @09:27PM (#59636126)
    They seem to be working well since the merger with McDonald-Douglas when they got rid of the engineer-trained managers.
  • by deodiaus2 ( 980169 ) on Sunday January 19, 2020 @09:32PM (#59636134)
    Even though a manager might have been a programmer before, to be a manager means that you have to understand the technical aspects of a project. Just because you have been a programmer [follower], to be a manager means that you have to make an assessment of decisions. Maybe you can learn technical stuff on the fly, but it really helps if you started out with this as an early goal.
    Steve Jobs was not a technical person. He did manage to lead a technical company. A lot of his success was that his ideas were right for the time. However, he was an ass and selfish, mostly as narrated by Woz. Jobs was good at manipulating his peers and short changing them in many ways, mainly in getting a fair share of their options, especially Woz. His peer were spineless cowards who should have left him when doing so would have caused real damaged to Jobs' plans and accomplishments. Life is about knowing when to hold your ground. The programmers did not use their position to extract concessions from Jobs. Jobs was good at playing this game, but sometimes his people should have been bolder.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Jobs was at least minimally technical, which is a reasonable baseline for a manager.

      The alternative is a pure MBA type. While this type of person might be excellent at managing a spreadsheet with cost controls, or running meetings by the book, or creating dashboard metrics for the project... that isn’t really what defines a successful project or a successful manager.

      A successful project (and manager) must first and foremost meet the client’s needs, preferably on-time, and on-budget. The most t

      • Jobs was at least minimally technical, which is a reasonable baseline for a manager. The alternative is a pure MBA type. While this type of person might be excellent at managing a spreadsheet with cost controls, or running meetings by the book, or creating dashboard metrics for the project... that isn’t really what defines a successful project or a successful manager.

        There is no "pure" MBA. A person with an MBA is basically the same when they exit the program as when they entered. An accountant still an accountant, an engineer is still an engineer. Guess what, the engineers outnumber the accountants in business school these days, and have for quite some time. An MBA program doesn't turn people into "bean counters", they have had maybe three accounting classes. Neither does it make a person an expert in anything. An MBA program is just a survey, you very briefly study th

  • by 110010001000 ( 697113 ) on Sunday January 19, 2020 @09:32PM (#59636136) Homepage Journal

    How can you manage anything if you don't know anything about it?

    • Short answer - you can't.

      MBA's and peons will tell you otherwise.

      Intelligent people knew the answer to this question before it was asked.

      Flame-bait.

    • How can you manage anything if you don't know anything about it?

      You just have to make sure the measured numbers all go to 0 or 100, as appropriate. Doesn't matter what you're making -- hot dogs, Important Movie Stars, computer software, or Spam. You just have to measure the right numbers and somehow get them to move in the right direction. THERE: now you don't have to pay for that MBA -- unless you want to "rub skin within your network". (I'll expect a check from you soon.)

      For example, see Politics for just how well that's working out.

    • How can you manage anything if you don't know anything about it?

      That's an instant trap you fell into. The point of the engineering manager is to manager the people who do know something about it, very diverse people from many different disciplines.

    • If the manager is good and and the people under him are trustworthy then no he doesn't need to understand the technology. However that combination is rare.

  • Technical fields are constantly changing. If you are a manager with no current technical skills you may be able to succeed but you may not be able to outperform managers that understand what their staff actually do as you can't easily call bullshit on bullshitters and you don't have the skills to know when your staff are being overconfident or underachieving. My current boss worked in my role and various similar technical roles for 20 years before becoming purely management, after 6 years in management she
  • by Futurepower(R) ( 558542 ) on Sunday January 19, 2020 @09:37PM (#59636152) Homepage
    Do Engineering Managers Need To Be "Technical"?

    To me, that is an amazingly ignorant question.

    Managers need to understand EVERYTHING about their business. Many business decisions depend on having a deep technical understanding.

    Here are stories about wildly incompetent managers: Boeing Employees Mocked F.A.A. and ‘Clowns’ Who Designed 737 Max [nytimes.com] (New York Times, Jan. 9, 2020)

    You can download "Internal Boeing communications about the 737 Max [nyt.com]". (PDF file, 35 megabytes) Quote from the next story: The PDF file is "117 pages of damning internal communications".

    I Honestly Don’t Trust Many People at Boeing: A Broken Culture Exposed [nytimes.com]. (New York Times, Jan. 13, 2020)
    • In my experience (which is considerable) most engineering managers are complete disasters. However, they bring home a paycheck and that continues unless the company implodes through accumulated incompetence (excellent example: Yahoo). So if bringing home a paycheck is your metric, then no, a manager can be completely incompetent and still succeed. It's the norm even. Succeeding at completing projects is a whole nuther story.

    • That's a great story but "technical" is not the reason these guys failed. Managers need to understand everything and they do that by employing experts to do it for them. If you get a manager with a technical and detailed enough background to sit down and understand the risk and coding problems of the MCAS system, the analysis of function of redundant instruments and how to build highly reliable control systems, you will have solved one problem. Just one. Out of the many 10000s of problems that arise in the

  • by joe_frisch ( 1366229 ) on Sunday January 19, 2020 @09:45PM (#59636170)

    At least in my experience its been vital for managers to really understand what their employees are doing, or they will make poor project and personnel decisions. They don't need to understand every detail, but without substantial techincal knowledge they can't know what to do if a project goes off the rails: Is the engineer screwing up? Was the project mistakenly underfunded? Did an issue arise that could not reasonable have been foreseen?

    A non-technical manager may not be able to recognize which of their engineers are talented and which are just experts at BS. That can lead to retaining the wrong people.

    I have knowledge of a large project where technical managers were largely replaced by non-technical managers. Guys who know how to stand with their hands on their hips, and provide *strong leadership* by demanding *top performance from everyone*. Mangers who tell their workers to work "smarter, not harder" without having any idea what those workers were doing in the first place. Tetrahedrons of excellence have been presented. Well, everyone was kept "on budget and on schedule" until the project was almost finished - then it wasn't.

    There is an old Russian joke about the bureaucrat who visits a science lab where they were tasked with turning [mud] into butter. He asks how the project is going and the scientist reports "we have made great progress sir - see how well it spreads".

    Without technical knowledge a manager cannot easily know if the key technical issues have been resolved - and may only find out late when, for example, their airplanes start falling out of the sky.

  • Yes (Score:4, Insightful)

    by richardtallent ( 309050 ) on Sunday January 19, 2020 @09:51PM (#59636186) Homepage

    Yes, if by "managing" they are making technical decisions rather than simply being a people-manager.

    But, perhaps more importantly and universally, they need to know how to *lead* technical people. As in, knowing how to trust their technical advice while keeping them aligned with business needs and challenging them to rethink assumptions baked into their designs.

  • by LatencyKills ( 1213908 ) on Sunday January 19, 2020 @09:56PM (#59636190)
    I've worked at companies where the program manager is also the technical program manager - they track budgets and schedules, and are the technical lead of the program. Obviously this person needs to be technical. I find this model works well for smaller programs, perhaps under $25M. For big programs, I've worked at companies where a program manager is assigned to a program along with a technical lead (also sometimes called a program engineering manager - PEM). The PM does the finance and paperwork, and the PEM makes all the technical decisions. The PM then doesn't need to be technical at all, as long as they give the PEM enough financial lead to run the program correctly.
    • by Tough Love ( 215404 ) on Sunday January 19, 2020 @11:03PM (#59636316)

      I've worked at companies where a program manager is assigned to a program along with a technical lead (also sometimes called a program engineering manager - PEM). The PM does the finance and paperwork, and the PEM makes all the technical decisions.

      This falls apart when the (nontechnical) program manager gets the idea that the tech lead reports to them as an underling, usually supported by their own manager. Which happens every. single. time. With the expected result.

      • I almost completely agree, but very occasionally, the program manager will recognize the technical manager as the actual lead. Usually requires that the technical lead have a very well established reputation with upper management.

        Most of the time though, you are right

  • That doesn't mean they have to be subject matter experts in everything or even anything. But they need to be competent enough with the basic tools and techniques to understand what is or is not possible and reasonable. Invariably, the worst managers I have worked for have been those who have no idea what the actual job entails, and thus push nonsensical/arbitrary requirements that never work and usually end up costing more time/money in the long run. Now all that being said, that doesn't mean engineering
  • The summary is jumping around between the terms "product manager" and "development manager" multiple times and I have no idea which of these two *very very different* job roles they are discussing.

  • Managers dont necessarily need to have deep level knowledge of what they are managing but they need to understand enough to know when to make changes and when not to make changes. And how to recognize when someone below them makes a suggestion that is worth implementing rather than just implement BS policies and forcing them on everyone.

    • Those traits generally take a lot of time to acquire for a non-technical manager. A lot can go wrong to get to that point; generally they need a technical mentor (as well as a business mentor) to grow into the position.

  • Obviously it's not always possible or applicable, but at my work I put in a suggestion that all of the managers come down from their high horses and work with the peons one day every six months or so. Fill in for someone who is sick, etc... A lot of the managers already do help out and do real work, but the ones who can't remember how or never could to begin with weren't fond of the idea. I do understand where it isn't applicable though for certain positions. I'm a DBA. My boss doesn't know SQL. I really do
  • One must understand their skillset and utilize people that compliment those. Nobody can be good at everything. If the manager is really good at managing resources, but not that technical, then that manager needs a trusted technical lead to drive the design, and the manager must have the skillset to know if that person has the right stuff. It, on the other hand, the manager is technical, then the manager needs a trusted management lead to manage resources. I fall into the second category. I am good at wr

  • by hey! ( 33014 ) on Sunday January 19, 2020 @11:55PM (#59636396) Homepage Journal

    that people are generally unaware of their own ignorance. This is a huge handicap for a non-technical manager. But note this is an *effect*, not some kind of behavioral *law*. You *can* learn to overcome your ignorance of your own ignorance.

    And it's a two-way street. Being an engineer doesn't mean you automatically know how to manage people and projects either.

    If not being officially credentialed in everything you need to know means you can't manage to learn enough to get by with the help of other people, we're all screwed.

    • In many companies today it goes beyond that. The "mobile-first social network for cats" isn't really a tech company, any more than Yellow Cab is an automaker. The tech does need to be there, but there's no reason it has to be good, and even less reason for it to be groundbreaking. It's 10% putting together off-the-shelf parts and the other 90% is marketing to get people onboard. That's why "tech" managers don't need the background, because they mostly won't use it. The few coders and leads will do an amazin

  • I got so sick of that corporate mindset that is someone has managed a department before they can manage any type of department. Saw that corporate mentality screw up too many department that were running well. One large ISP I worked for after a big merge started shuffling people, I got reassigned to newly created tech department with a department manager who had never managed tech before. I hated the whole mess and decided leave if they don't reassign me. So they have me go to a meeting with th

  • They should be former engineers. Forget CS degrees, frankly that isn't even a necessity for the workers the practical assessment is all that matters for actual engineers for project managers and managers overseeing engineers they should have background experience. I work with project managers who don't know what a firewall is beyond parroting back a paragraph from some training material at me, they certainly can't properly track the progress of the firewall change sets I give them for six pairs of firewalls

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Silly question. If your job involves knowing and selling the product or service, be it to externals or internals, then yes, the manager bloody well have the background or affinity to learn about the service or product.

    If it is trully a management position only, where project management and a bit of engineer herding is all you do, then no, technical background is not necessary if you're capable to stow your ego and listen to your engineers (AND notice when they try to bullshit you to get something shiny nobo

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • This story is a great illustration of the dysfunction in corporate leadership.

    Managers exist to sustain the status quo. Taking someone who is good at a task and putting them in charge of other people doing that task does not make them a leader. A leader motivates, trains, inspires and mentors their team - you can go to specialized school to learn fundamentals of leadership, just like you can go to a specialized school to learn how to do a given profession.

    It is crushingly depressing to see how few leaders

  • Why do engineering teams need management in the first place? Most of the communications and organization work that a manager would do can be absorbed on a rotating basis by the team. Due to outsourcing and working with vendors many technical people are already managing people. Often, technical staff are already supporting customers and have a better customer working relationship than the sales staff do. A nontechnical MBA type offers little that the customer facing staff are not already doing. So why d
  • I don't need a manager who can do my job, but I need one that can plan it, who understands enough of it to not get steamrolled in meetings and assigns impossible tasks because he doesn't know better and promises things I cannot deliver.

  • I've had non-technical engineering managers, and it's a nightmare.

    They won't come out and say it, but the strongest engineer was of course the person who made the best slides and presented the best. The person that looks the most confident is always right in technical debates. Doubling the number of engineers means the project will get done twice as fast. Things like that.

    One day my manager raves about a "genius" they met inside the company and how I needed to get them involved with the project. I
    • Ive been through this.

      Had a boss who came in as the VP of IT at a large company. Former IBM drone. Failed as a network manager elsewhere. Was third hiring choice because management at the company could not make a decision fast enough and lost other prospects.

      When she first started she did an intro interview with all the IT staff. The interview went like this:

      VP: We've got a mandate and funding to make this a world class IT department... we are going to have fun!

      ME: Great! That's really interesting though- w

  • by dtmos ( 447842 ) * on Monday January 20, 2020 @09:02AM (#59637076)

    With a shiny new MSEE, I went to work for a large multinational electronics company as a junior engineer. I was almost immediately baffled by the seemingly random decisions made by management. (The management chain, up to and including the CEO, were ex-engineers.)

    Figuring that I just didn't know anything about management, but feeling compelled to understand what was going on, I took advantage of a company program and got an MBA by going to school nights at a local university.

    The MBA turned out not to help at all: The decisions being made by management *were* random, and didn't follow any of the theories I had learned getting the MBA -- and frequently contradicted them outright.

  • I got my CS degree in 93. Did technical things for a while (scripting and testing) but eventually wanted to try management. First experience was a shit-show, startup-ish type company where nobody knew what the hell they were doing in upper management. I reported to the COO. That company thankfully died. But it gave me some experience, a lot in how not to do things.

    If you change industries, and are around long enough, technology changes. But if you have some technical background and acumen, it makes it

  • by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Monday January 20, 2020 @09:42AM (#59637154) Homepage Journal

    Their particular background doesn't matter - it's how they approach problems.

    You do not want a studio artist or English major managing a technical team. A chemist, auto mechanic, or mathemetician may be able to make the leap.

    People who can't think first-principles or decompose problems won't understand why their staff does and they will therefore set unreasonable schedules and fund projects incorrectly.

  • Based on my career, I can tell you that the two worst managers I had were not technical. Well, it would be more accurate to say that they weren't technical with current state of the art stuff. They both knew some mainframe things but we weren't a mainframe shop in either case. In the case of the 2nd manager, because she had no up to date technical knowledge, she couldn't fact check people. So she made a few really bad hires when applicants lied to her and she just trusted that they told the truth.
  • Their does not seem to be much conscientious on the role of a manager. And measuring their productivity is even harder than nailing down their purpose. The most universal definition would seem to be the guy who yells at you if you are not at your station on time, or are watching porn instead of working. You definable do not need a software engineer to do this.

    If your company is using managers as technical leads. Someone to drive, focus, and leader dev work, then of course they need technical knowledge, they

  • If we know that managers with technical skills outperform others, and we're already hiring managers with backgrounds as software engineers, why are we still worrying whether they're technical?

    What does technical mean in this sentence? What is a non-technical software engineer and how does ti differ from a technical one?

  • I've had senior VPs with zero programming experience tell marketing flakes that something is possible without asking anyone doing the work if it was. That's very insulting.

  • by wired_parrot ( 768394 ) on Monday January 20, 2020 @11:20AM (#59637446)
    A good engineering manager has to have a broad technical knowledge, but he does not need to be a specialist in his field. He needs to be a generalist that understands well how all the specialties underneath him integrate together, and how these disciplines interact with other groups. It is key that he has a good enough technical knowledge of those working under him so he can communicate their needs and requirements to upper management. It is also important to have a broad understanding of the overall field he is working in so he can understand the impact any engineering change from other groups will have on his or her own department.
  • "Manager" can mean everything from team lead up to C-Suite, so the answer is really going to vary according to what the specific duties of the roll entail. I've had managers come in from non technical fields and do a fantastic job because all their duties involved management tasks not technical ones. I've had others where their duties dipped into understanding the technical aspects and for them such skills were critical. So I do no think there is a blanket answer.
  • by Kryptonut ( 1006779 ) on Monday January 20, 2020 @04:51PM (#59638918)

    between someone who actually has a real background (not necessarily an expert or fully on top of industry trends)....and someone who is just a "Manager" for a department. So, so, different.

    For example, my current manager actually asks questions and understands for the most part what I'm saying, and trusts my judgement. My previous manager had us move everything into IaaS despite me giving valid reasons why full blown IaaS wasn't the right thing to do. Our yearly costs are now about triple what they would have been had what I proposed been listened to and to add insult to injury, we're locked in a 3 year contract with the provider.

    Not long after that project was complete, that manager left - but now she has IaaS migration on her resumé, which I still believe was the real goal all along.

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