[samblr]

In interview what appeared to be a potential-hire's strength - became a real nuisance when we hired him. We wanted someone who could do both android and iOS. He was a senior, had enough to showcase and plenty to 'talk about software architectural things'. It turned out, he was jack of all trades (python, java, objective-c) but he really-really struggled at designing software but he could talk through people and walls. And then he formed a bad habit of mailing in out-of-hours to group that somebody's else code has this problem - how to fix, so on and so forth. Initially we didn't know of what to make of it. He could small bug-fixes ok. Then we assigned a good chunk of work in new project. And boy, did he create a mess of it. Since he was lagging behind from dates assigned - we sat for a code-design-review. I sat in horror that day on how confidently he was presenting to what was not even a freshman's work. He didn't have a clue on why blocking calls should not be made on UI thread. We didn't give any good work to him later. He left us soon and last time I checked - he was a CTO of a mobile development shop! N

[Spooky23]

Sometimes people like that are better in leadership roles. Knowing a little about a broad scope of things is very useful in those roles.

[late2part]

Managers that can't do are generally shepherds. Only sheep follow them.

Yes, it's good that managers can know a lot about a broad amount, but they should be skilled enough to dive fairly deep and realistically be expected to jump into anyone's job.

Otherwise, you're hiring an administrator or a non-technical manager.

And there's a place for that, but not one I want to be near.

[scarface74]

I see nothing wrong with a manager who is technical but can't take a deep dive into the code.

A manager's role could be to decide strategy, priorities, budgets, inter team communications, working with the customer etc. the biggest thing I want from a manager is to hire good people and to trust them with the "how". My manager decides the "what" and "when". He leaves it up to his team to decide the how.

[late2part]

"strategy, priorities, budgets, inter team communications, working with the customer" is 90% of how. Your manager just presents these things as if they're not.

weak e.g. http://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/5-ways-to-ask-the-perfect-ques...

[late2part]

Sadly, in some places, it's not what you know, but who you can bullshit.

Why didn't you guys fire him? Why did you just let him stagnate until he quit?

[samblr]

Office was in a small town, plenty of work/projects at hands and no resources.