[jkaplowitz]

I've had a primarily technical career so far and am working on switching to engineering management in the foreseeable future.

Once I'm done with that switch, I don't want to be frequently making technical decisions, rational or otherwise - that should be the job of the tech lead on my team, with input from everyone else.

I will, of course, need to remain technical enough that I can understand whether my tech lead is making good decisions, as you say. I'll also need my team to respect my credibility enough to know that I relate to what they're dealing with, and to be able to effectively keep them unblocked.

But none of this requires sustaining continued technical contributions within my day job past the initial transition period, at least not once the company is above a certain size.

One of the best managers I've ever worked under (indirectly) was not technical and didn't pretend to be. What she did know was people and organizations.

When have you ever heard of a large org making a re-org to solve real problems after substantial consultation and with anything close to universal buy-in? She managed that, and well enough that she correctly used arguments from the rank and file to explain the re-org to other parts of the company.

That's the kind of mentor I'll want to learn from as a manager.

[PopeDotNinja]

> I will, of course, need to remain technical enough that I can understand whether my tech lead is making good decisions, as you say

A lot of stress has been created for teams I'm on by semi-technical managers chiming in. By telling yourself you'll remain technical enough, I'd encourage you to define what that actually means. Thinking you know stuff that you actually don't is going to be a huge pain in some one's ass.

I once had a boss who kept pushing for us to to do things in a certain way using a remote API, but the API client didn't support the features needed to do the things my boss insisted we use. The boss wouldn't allow for a discussion on extending the API client because he was 100% certain he was correct when he was in fact 100% wrong. I started looking for a new boss after that.

[jkaplowitz]

Completely agreed. Knowing the limits of one's knowledge and accepting feedback when one is misinformed are important skills. I believe I already do that and I certainly don't plan to stop.

If I have a competent tech lead under me, I wouldn't be pushing for a certain technical way to do things except if the requirement came from some external constraint like the business or another team, and I would accept the limits of technical possibility.

I might share my technical input if it happened to relate to my area of expertise in a way that wasn't otherwise sufficiently present, but I want my team to know their stuff, not to defer to my technical knowledge out of some personal need to be the expert. Also my input != final decision, with respect to technical decisions, if I'm not tech lead on the task.

Even if I had to push for or against something, I'd do my best to defer to my tech lead (i.e. not me) to actually come up with and lead the solution. It's not a manager's place to prevent a tech lead from conducting a discussion on technically how to achieve the goal within the applicable constraints.

[pm90]

> One of the best managers I've ever worked under (indirectly) was not technical and didn't pretend to be. What she did know was people and organizations.

I don't mean to create a debate around sexism in the workplace, but could this be because in general in the US, we expect males to have a big ego while for women its OK to be not have one? As a male, I've had trouble with my ego getting in the way pretty often but I try to recognize that and be better about it.

[jkaplowitz]

You're right about the general pattern in the US, but that isn't the explanation in this case.

She made sure there were plenty of technical managers under her (she was a VP). The problems that really needed fixing were organizational, not technical, and she did something that a manager with a more technical skew of skills might not have known how to.

The managers in that company who tended to be good and well liked didn't have a big ego regardless of gender, even if (as in her case) she was appropriately aware and confident of the areas in which she was strong.