[DustinOfDenver]

Non-technical managers... needs to be a thing of the past.

No one considers a guide for "Managers who cannot read, but must supervise writers" as meaningful article worth writing.

Being "non-technical" should be synonymous with being illiterate (if you are in a technical field that includes supervising technologists). The topic is no longer something to be assigned to "nerds in the basement" is is the language of business and life.

[Spivak]

If you're equating 'management' with 'supervision' then it's no wonder you feel this way. All of our managers are non-technical and they really have no reason to be. Their skills are with people, process, and logistics and I wouldn't have it any other way. They have to deal with all the bullshit so I can sit in my office and actually do work.

You are supposed to be your management's bullshit detector. Sure, in an ideal world everyone in your office would be perfectly knowledgeable about all relevant topics but I would rather have management that's actually good at management, knows nothing about tech and knows they know nothing about tech over one that knows just enough to be dangerous.

[benchaney]

If you look at the advice in the article, it is quite clear it is for people providing 'supervision', not managing logistics.

[DannyB2]

I was going to write something similar.

A manager of anything, including technology, should have an understanding of what they manage. Not having that understanding is the fundamental problem. Any kind of "guides" to help such ill equipped managers is only a band aid that doesn't fix the actual underlying problem.

Technical managers may cost more an be harder to find. That might just be the cost of not screwing up things in major ways. Including potentially business destroying ways.

An additional clue: Not just the immediate managers of the worker bees, but going up the chain of management there should be people who understand the technology.

Nobody would accept the idea of a manager that didn't understand the business they are in. If technology is part of your business, and you don't understand technology, then you don't understand the business you are in and shouldn't be a manager.

[sokoloff]

> An additional clue: Not just the immediate managers of the worker bees, but going up the chain of management there should be people who understand the technology.

There's a natural (and I think fundamental) inversion that happens as you go up the leadership chain. The first level of supervision almost inevitably knows more than the most junior employee about their area of work. (Think a senior developer mentoring a new college hire.)

That may hold for two levels, but at some point, management is about breadth and not depth. The head of technical operations probably came from networking or systems or storage or database or communications, but probably didn't come from ALL of those, so is unlikely to know more about networking than the head of networking AND more about databases than the head of databases, etc. In fact, they may know next to nothing about some particular field of ops and yet still be the right choice to lead operations. (I was in this position in a prior role.)

So you get this weird situation where at the junior levels, the supervisor knows more than the supervised. At the more senior levels, that's usually inverted. And then you get people who determine that the senior person is clueless because they know more about their specialized field than the boss.

IMO, it's unreasonable to expect the CEO of Boeing to be an expert in finance, operations, aerodynamics, manufacturing, supply chain, engine design, certification rules, avionics, landing gear, radar, flight controls, and the 100 other disciplines needed to make Boeing work. I see no reason to think that technology is extra-special in that all managers of technologists need to be world-class technologists.

[orclev]

Fair enough, but at the same time when you start getting to the level where they don't know about the details they need to start trusting the people below them to make decisions and take their advice. Far too often you see technically incompetent CEOs making far reaching decrees about technical issues they know nothing about because of some random brain fart they overheard on the golf course with one of their buddies.

[DustinOfDenver]

I wish I could disagree... but is more like: they heard something they thought sounded like the tech they have and they could sell quickly.

[Bartweiss]

> So you get this weird situation where at the junior levels, the supervisor knows more than the supervised. At the more senior levels, that's usually inverted.

And on some level, this makes sense. A completely junior employee may well need substantial guidance, and if they aren't reliable that won't necessarily be easy to predict - so you get them a supervisor who can evaluate their work in full. A midlevel or upper-level manager ought to be competent enough to perform reliably, and it's more useful to have someone above them with skills they don't have.

(Of course, hiring is a mess, and "senior staff ought to be qualified and reliable" is not the same as "senior staff are...")

[DustinOfDenver]

I think you are correct and incorrect.. I am not suggesting "expertises". I am suggesting "Literacy"... at least enough to "detect B.S." of his immediate direct reports (and that part is also key).

In 4 levels of management the CEO is not to be the BS detector of the 1st level but most def. be "technical" enough to detect B.S. at the 4th and (maybe) the 3rd levels of management.

Those I admire and have studied: Disney, Elon, and Jobs (many others) could maybe detect down to the 2nd and 3rd levels. To do the impossible - you must have a grasp of the "possible"

[Bartweiss]

> A manager of anything, including technology, should have an understanding of what they manage.

Sometimes I think software people are lucky in this. Sure, non-technical management is too common, but mostly it just makes our lives harder. Talking to friends who work in process chemistry, civil engineering, and other high-stakes fields suggests that this is rarer, but nowhere near rare enough.

Obviously software has consequences, but usually mistakes can be caught in testing or otherwise mitigated. After hearing stories like an unqualified manager deciding that a pressure release valve is 'optional', it sounds like this still happens in settings where even the test suite can kill you.

[DustinOfDenver]

Excellent follow up!

I know a few product managers who think that managing a technical product can be reduced to entries in a backlog... and features are somehow separate from the technology that drives them. What the miss is... Technology "IS" the product.

[DustinOfDenver]

If what you directly manage is technical... then you must be technical and be able to communicate those opportunities up. I don't think anyone is suggesting that the entire management chain must be technical.

[thehardsphere]

"If you are in a technical field" Well, there's the rub, right? Not every organization that employs technologists is actually in a "technical field" and thus doesn't have the resources to aquire and deploy technical managers everywhere where they might be useful.

Unless your company's core business is software, eventually there will be someone who is non-technical who will be required to make business decisions.

[DavidWoof]

What's interesting is that there's nothing in the article that's actually specific to "non-technical" managers. In fact, reminding one to ask "what's the customer value here?" is advice that's probably more suited to highly technical managers rather than non-technical ones.

[DustinOfDenver]

I agree... but it all depends on the role. Ideally, "management" can span the two buckets well. But, without understanding the technology, management is left standing on one leg.

[tboyd47]

Sometimes there just isn't anyone on the team with both the technical knowledge and management skills. In that case I would actually rather be supervised by a non-technical person who is nevertheless a skilled manager than a smart developer who is terrible at management.

Edit: since I'm downvoted, allow me to explain- a good manager knows how to delegate and stay out of people's way, so I don't necessarily care if that person is technical or not, but a bad manager who is also a developer is going to insist on coding all the most critical parts of the application him- or herself and leave you to clean up their messes when they're stuck in meetings all day. That person is really more like an individual contributor with special privileges and I've worked with quite a few of them.

[DustinOfDenver]

So I think what you are saying:

(Good Manager + No Tech Skills) > (Bad manager + great tech skills).

I don't think that is the argument... I think it is:

(Good Manager + No Tech Skill) < (Good Manager + great tech skills)...

and on that point no one would disagree.

It is interesting how so many have tried to frame the argument the first way - perhaps they are more of a unicorn than one would hope... but it would still be better to have BOTH skills.

[tboyd47]

It is truly rare to find a person with both skills.

Usually what happens is the best coder in the bunch gets asked to manage the team but 1) doesn't know anything about management and 2) doesn't want to be a manager but likes the power and fancy title. So this person just keeps on coding but with less accountability to the other team members.

What the tech world needs is more skilled managers, not more technical managers. People overvalue the notion of calling developers' bluff because there is a basic level of trust that is missing.

[DustinOfDenver]

+1 on the missing trust... needs to be addressed.