[watwut]

Absolutely worst managers I had have zero technical background. They both treated people badly and also were incompetent and did not understood our work. Which led to absurd processes, being simultaneously under pressure and having nothing to do, social issues in teams and so on.

The worst thing about outside managers is that they generally don't understand teamwork and peer cooperation. They are too used to relationships based on hierarchy, negotiation and competition. And they don't have experience of actually cooperating with same level peers.

[andirk]

I worked at a company that almost only hired [nationality omitted] engineers. Seemed their goal was to become one of the managers so they could rule the others with an iron fist, much like they had been ruled for years. The very bad code proved that the engineering part of the job was mostly nominal. As a defensive measure, they knew to never hire good engineers. I was hired by one of the directors.

So in that case, the managers _were_ kind of technical but it would have been better if they weren't.