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.
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.
Meanings (Score:3)
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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
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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
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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)
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.
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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
Re:Enough to Call BS (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Manage anything - NOT taught that in MBA (Score:3)
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
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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
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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)
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yes (Score:3)
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.
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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
More MBAs come from engineering ... (Score:2)
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
Short answer - YES. (Score:5, Insightful)
How can you manage anything if you don't know anything about it?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
need no, preferred yes (Score:2)
One example of lack of full understanding: Boeing (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
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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.
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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
Yes, they do need to be techincal (Score:4, Insightful)
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)
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.
Depends on how the company/program is structured (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Depends on how the company/program is structure (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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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
Absolutely yes (Score:2)
Summary is very confusing (Score:2)
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 need to have technical knowledge (Score:2)
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.
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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.
Do the work of the people under you! (Score:2)
As a CTO in a Company... I would say, it depends. (Score:2, Interesting)
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
Dunning-Kruger effect tells us (Score:3)
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.
Re: Dunning-Kruger effect tells us (Score:2)
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
YES They need to have a technical background (Score:2)
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
Short answer YES (Score:2)
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
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That would depend on the individual job (Score:2)
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
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Management vs. Leadership (Score:2)
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
Who Needs Them? (Score:2)
They need to be technical enough (Score:2)
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.
OMG Yes They Do (Score:2)
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
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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
Having an MBA doesn't help (Score:3)
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.
Yes... and no. You need both. (Score:2)
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
Think Like an Engineer (Score:3)
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.
Yes they do (Score:2)
Manager is ill defined, and hard to measure (Score:2)
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
What is Technical? (Score:2)
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?
Duh (Score:2)
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.
Technical knowledge but not a specialist (Score:3)
Depends? (Score:2)
The difference is night and day (Score:3)
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.
Re:Short answer - NO. (Score:5, Interesting)
I became a manager, and big mistake. I don't really have the skills for it, I want to go back to just designing and building.
Re:Short answer - NO. (Score:5, Funny)
I became a manager, and big mistake. I don't really have the skills for it, I want to go back to just designing and building.
I was essentially forced into management. I don't have any interest in it and basically ignore half of what I'm told to do.
What's really amazing is that I'm a few years into this and nobody really seems to notice. I assume it's because nobody else has any idea what they are doing either.
Re:Short answer - NO. (Score:4, Insightful)
Being a manager takes completely different skills than being a technical expert in a certain field.
Being a manager is more about knowing who does what and what's realistic given the available resources. As a worker I'll rather tell my manager to fight the budget battles than having to do it myself, but how to solve a certain software problem is my headache.
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What's really amazing is that I'm a few years into this and nobody really seems to notice. I assume it's because nobody else has any idea what they are doing either.
Careful, there is this new thing called "evidence-based management" (kind of like "evidence-based medicine") where they try to identify those that just fake it. Of course, since that seems to be 95% or so of all managers, they cannot simply fire them all, but still.
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Well, of course the job sucks if you want to do it right. That's the issue with people from engineering switching into management. A real MBA learns early on that the world revolves around him and he doesn't need to do shit.
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The second to last manager I had at a customer (not really a manager for me, just a formal requirement for them) did exactly that and went back into embedded system design. I think he was never happier than on his last day as a manager and he had no problems finding that engineering job.
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And that's the important point, the primary skill for being a good manager is... being a good manager. You don't need to be that technical, you can delegate that to subordinates, but you do need to be a good manager. Two of the best managers I've worked with were both not overly technical, but good at sorting shit out, good at managing people, and above all good at taking advice from the people who worked for them. With one of the two you could, if the situation merited it, actually say "this is a really
Re:Short answer - NO. (Score:5, Interesting)
You forgot the irony tags. I've found that every person with the MBA suffix is barely capable of managing a McDonalds. Managers and more senior management needs to have a clue about what's going on in their spheres of influence, they don't need to be experts but I've found that you can tell the MBA anything and they'll believe it.
Re: Short answer - NO. (Score:2)
This. I think the OP was making a joke, though accurately reflecting the attitudes of some upper managers I've had.
Re: Short answer - NO. (Score:2)
I have an MBA and I still managed to get this first post!
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I have an MBA and I still managed to get this first post!
Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while...
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Re:Short answer - NO. (Score:4, Interesting)
IMHO, the MBA who can manage anything is like end-state Communism. It's great on paper, but it doesn't exist in real life.
The omni-manager works provided that you have some level of area expertise and management authority figures that reports directly to the manager. Basically preventing the manager from ever making technical decisions, yet with people who have the authority to make technical decisions but without enough authority to turn them into business decisions.
What seems to happen in real life, though, is that the technical/managerial layer in the middle winds up being seen as an excess cost. They're not full managers. They're not technical executors.
What you end up with is an MBA type hired by senior management because he's culturally compatible with senior management. The techno-managerial team he should work with are eliminated for cost reasons or as a potential threat to the MBA. So you wind up with an MBA making too many technical decisions, usually biased by their own financial interests and/or ignorance.
The other option is no upper level management representation, and a "do-er" who can't manage well nominally in charge but usually with zero business influence, and the whole thing being distantly "managed" by someone in finance or accounting who has management credibility and their cost consciousness as their first choice.
Re:Short answer - NO. (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a gallingly bad answer, believed only by those with MBA's who think they can manage anything. You know what? Lots of MBA's don't think they can manage everything, because domain competence is critical to being able to handle escalations and make critical decisions.
The best engineering Director I've ever worked with had never been an engineer (came up through customer service and shipping), but he learned how to code and worked very hard to shore up that gap. By the time he left the group, he could have served as a productive engineer on our team. If he'd just pitched things to the group and hadn't known how to call balls and strikes, we could have taken some really bad directions.
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'known how to call balls and strikes'
Which pretty much says it all. A good manager just needs to be able to attract and direct the best talent available for the tasks at hand. Specific tallent directed to the specific tasks to create the best product or service available. Managers let the talent do the task, hold them accountable and put out the fires that distract from the mission.
So no.
Re:Short answer - NO. (Score:4)
'known how to call balls and strikes'
Which pretty much says it all. A good manager just needs to be able to attract and direct the best talent available for the tasks at hand. Specific tallent directed to the specific tasks to create the best product or service available. Managers let the talent do the task, hold them accountable and put out the fires that distract from the mission.
So no.
That means having the ability to spot bullshit.
So yes.
Re:Short answer - NO. (Score:5, Insightful)
How are they going to recognize the "best talent" if they have no technical knowledge themselves.
I built an amplifier that operates at room temperature, but has an input noise corresponding to 50 degrees Kelvin.
Is that awesome? Impossible? A high school project? Something you can buy off the shelf a few bucks? Useless even if it works?
How about synchronizing 2 radio sources to better than a picosecond? or better than 10 femtoseconds?
Lawyes, architects, civil entineering, not softwar (Score:4, Insightful)
A legal project (like a case) is always managed by a senior lawyer, probably a partner.
A building design, is always managed by a senior architect, probably a partner.
Civil engineering projects are managed by an engineer that, long ago, did indeed know how to use a slide rule.
Medical practices may have a non-technical manager, but they report to medical doctors.
But software projects don't need technical expertise. They can be managed by MBAs. And still be successful. Occasionally.
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The way I answer this is to ask if when hiring a sales manager for your business would you consider applicants with zero sales experience or expertise.
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A "Technical Manager" is often also not a people manager. Technical managers are often expected to resolve disputes between engineers with differing opinions on design, and then relay that design to upper management to make sure it fits in with the overall product.
Some folks on the management track where I currently work are expected to assist the more novice teams as part of their responsibilities, as well as technical mentoring and traditional people management.
A bullshitting salesman is a good choice (Score:2)
If they can convince me that they are good, they are good. Experience would help but is not necessary.
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Any idiot can get an MBA, which is why most idiots have one. It does not make them good managers. It also makes them completely unfit to manage anything technical, building software is NOT the same as building a house. But if you asked a NON technical MBA he would disagree, and that is when the problems start. On the flip side, most technical people suck at managing, which is why when you do find a technical person who can ALSO manage, you pay him a lot of money and make sure he i
You seem ill-informed regarding MBAs (Score:5, Informative)
Any idiot can get an MBA, which is why most idiots have one. It does not make them good managers.
An MBA doesn't make you a manager. You exit an MBA program the same as when you went in, engineer in, engineer out. An MBA program is not like other master's degrees where you do a deeper dive on the fundamentals and then a really deep dive on some topic. An MBA program is more of a survey of all the different pieces of an organization, not just the departments but humans and their psychology as well. You take one to three classes on various topic. You are not an expert on any of these but you now have a better understand of other department's and other people's perspectives.
So an engineer that goes through an MBA program now better understands the perspective of executives, marketing, operations, etc. And when these non-engineering people have an idea this engineer is now better prepared to communicate the engineering department's concerns in a more effective and persuasive manner. Similarly when these non-engineers have an important point this engineer can better communicate their concerns to fellow engineers. You have a better chance of different departments getting on the same page if someone is around to "translate" what the other is saying.
It also makes them completely unfit to manage anything technical ...
Except for the fact that about 1/3 of MBAs these days are coming from scientific and engineering fields.
But if you asked a NON technical MBA he would disagree, and that is when the problems start.
Probably not, today MBAs are taught that it is essential to understand your product, your team, their work, etc. Like so many business and economic ideas from the 1950s, the idea that a professional manager can manage anything is debunked and modern MBAs know that. They are taught to get and value information from the workers who are doing the job of building/making the stuff. And this is not exactly a new idea. Many legendary managers from the "old days" spent a bit of time on the factory floor with the workers and foremen to make sure they knew the truth regarding the state of things.
Yep, liason / communication between groups (Score:2)
I think you pretty much hit it. Business people aren't technical engineers, engineers aren't business people, generally. If you're an engineer, do you know what your team's annual budget is? Likely not. The engineers probably don't know that the project they are working on is anticipated to return X% on investment, while a different project is projected to return Y%. Those considerations are just as important as things engineers know about; doing a great job implementing the wrong project is failure.
What'
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Re: Short answer - NO. (Score:3)
Would you make as the Captain of a ship someone who had never held a position on a ship before?
For example....let us say....someone with an MBA who had some previous supervisory experience of some kind?
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We got trolled. Masterful :-)
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If a person has an MBA, they have demonstrated the skills and knowledge to basically be able to successfully manage anything
Haha, you are quite the comedian! Will you be here all night?
technically no, but it sure helps a whole lot. (Score:2)
If you just use the whip without understanding who you need to use it on then your operation is going to get fcked.
Also highly relevant in a field where theres a lot of startups that are started by hucksters or mba's to do something that isn't even technically(physically) possible.
if the "manager" is just a secretary position, sure why not, you don't need to know anything. you can't effectively work as a sales guy either then though and all you can do is just send the bills and shit which as a manager you s
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If they have an MBA they haven't demonstrated anything more than an ability to waste time and money. The value of an MBA is only slightly higher than one from Devry- mainly because the higher quality paper its printed on makes it better to wipe with.
Now does a manager need to be a great programmer? No, its not necessary. But they need to understand the basics of the field they manage enough to tell when someone is bullshitting and to understand high level the issues their subordinates are talking about.
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You are wrong. I know that MBAs believe that, and believing that they drive companies into bankruptcy.
HOWEVER. It's not really required that the manager be a technical expert. But it *is* required that they use and trust technical experts, and if they aren't, themselves, technical experts, then it's harder for them to figure out how much to trust which expert.
Right answer: Boeing (Score:2)
Boeing-in-name-only is what happens when you replace an engineering culture based managerial system with a McDonnel Douglas coroporate management style.
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Yes, that's true. But then the MBA can easily fall victim to another curse, management theories. Chasing after those is just as detrimental to an organization. Also, MBAs are not driven to manage, they are driven to climb the corporate monkey ladder until they reach a point where further failure gets recognized and they stall out to become embittered control freaks.
Re: Understatement (Score:2, Insightful)
Virtually all /software engineers/ pare not engineers at all. They are just software developers at most, and most likely just software coders.
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Then I realized otherwise.
Re: Understatement (Score:2)
My point was that most people calling themselves a XXX Engineer have no idea what âoeengineeringâ is.
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My best managers were ones who could step in, and do the work of the people they were managing. They don't have to be the best at doing it, but quickly understanding what's going on when there's a problem, usually meant that they could very quickly and easily interact with the people they report to.
An aside is, even though I have a low sample size, technically competent managers, in my experience have given credit where it's due, whereas incompetent ones, tend to be the type who praise themselves when thing