[Joeri]

The thing with managers is that they have to understand the work being done well enough to make decisions about direction and resource allocation, while also having tons of people skills. In tech you either get a manager who doesn't have a technical background and just doesn't understand the thing they're managing, or you get someone with a technical background who stereotypically doesn't have the necessary people skills to manage well (it's a stereotype, but I find it to also be true, including about myself).

Part of it is also that as a programmer you learn to micromanage what the computer is doing, to be very precise with your instructions so the program won't fail. When managing people for the first time the instinct is to do the same: give very precise instructions even an idiot could follow. That's exactly the wrong approach to manage effectively (except for a few rare circumstances). That's why programmers tend to make bad managers who micromanage, they've been trained wrong by their prior work.

[tomp]

AFAIK many hospitals have a "MBA manager" and a "doctor manager" - I don't know exactly how they relate to one another (who's the "boss boss"), but the idea is that they each bring their part of superior skills to the table.

Would the same idea work for IT? Or, another idea would be, to take a look at how traditional (non-IT) engineering companies work (although the main difference between both medicine and engineering, and IT is that the former are both very high-risk industries that move much slower than IT).

[goliatone]

Ive worked at places with a Product Manager and Engineering Manager, at the end of the day after adjusting for company “culture”, product etc what makes a difference is the individual

[geekbird]

A good technical manager needs to be able to switch modes - from maker to manager - and back. A person can be a good technical manager even if they don't know the exact technology if they know how to ask good questions of multiple sources and listen (and synthesize) the answers. Nobody teaches this.

[illumin8]

Great points, and I see the same thing in myself, which is why I don't want to be a manager - I'm great with technology, but I don't have the people skills to be a successful leader.