[arh5451]

The tech industry and business in general has an enormous challenge in how management is hired and selected. Currently it is either. 1. Selected by MBA or some management certification 2. Engineers who perform well/are more visible. Both are really poor choices for technology related management roles and inevitably lead to unethical/poor management practices regardless of the firm in many cases.

The best manager traits are usually soft skills which are nearly impossible to measure and more impossible for HR to find (HR departments are largely lost in tech hiring). I think if you want to see examples of excellent run large companies you need to look in the places where there is an internal culture of up-skilling employees whether its rotational leadership programs or learning credits. Often my experience is they are much better run and invested in the people and it is reflected in the managers/management.

[travisgriggs]

One of the interesting things about the tech industry (to me) is the presence and massive success of open source movements. OS does some things well, and others not as well, but it does it with 1/100th of the familiar management institutions we’re used to in the workplace. I don’t know what the answer is, but it makes me wonder if we haven’t somehow mis-arranged the whole thing. I’m old enough that I recall a time when organizations had secretaries, sometimes many. Now days it feels that management is really just the above, getting paid “higher than the rest of you” salaries to do what more equal secretary/clerk functions used to do.

[diarrhea]

I suppose the difference is money. Open source needn’t be free of its involvement, but it often is. Add money to open source and you get either a functional org, but with the usual overhead, or dysfunction and corruption.

[shrimp_emoji]

Money is the root of all evil.

Often, nobody would be doing the closed source stuff they're doing without the cold incentive of money, unlike free software which is inherently decoupled from a profit motive. Maybe there's an externality to pay in herding and keeping the cats committed to the profit motive.

[kibwen]

Spot on. The only difference between a manager and a secretary is that one is above you on the totem pole and the other is below.

[travisgriggs]

I want neither. But I recognize the need. Why can’t we have “secragers” or “manataries”, who fill this need in a more co-equal fashion (and no, that is demonstrably not what product managers usually end up being)

[koliber]

It’s possible to develop those soft skills. Management concepts can be taught. It’s possible to teach a good engineer how to use existing management frameworks.

Trouble is, often the learning materials are written in a way that does not “land” for people with an analytical technical background.

Translating management tools and concepts into tech speak for engineers on the management has been my job for a good part of the past decade. It can be done.

[Yeul]

I don't think so. Lots of people went into IT because they don't have those soft skills. If you're in management you need to be a people person.

I think HN underestimates the amount of petty bullshit that managers have to fix in order for a company to function reasonably well.

[bsenftner]

HN also underestimates the level of pettiness in the non-people-persons who became managers in tech. I was recently down voted for commenting that the typical tech manager does not want their engineers to have communication skills such that they can push back on unreasonable demands. My experience has been that is absolutely true; sure, they will say they want quality communications, but only as long as those communications are in agreement with whatever that manager and management want. Try telling them the truth that the overall architecture is bad, or there are these fundamental negative issues that were never addressed and are now consuming larger and larger resources to continue to "ignore"...

Actually being a material operator in a company that makes a difference is exactly what many, the majority, of middle managers simply can't handle. It scares them. It is too large, too aggressive, and demands too much upper level communications they can't handle. Not rocking the boat is the only game most managers know how to play, as the management above them appears simply untouchable to them.

[P_I_Staker]

Yes, I think part of the problem is we view social skills, charisma, etc. as givens, or even as virtues.

We forget that these things actually take a lot of brain function, it's an ability. It's something we do effortlessly, but there's actually a lot going on.

For example, struggles of people with ADHD and ASD can be hard to understand because many things that we take for granted are harder and more nuanced than people realize.

[sauwan]

Can you speak more to this? Any suggested resources for companies struggling with teaching management skills?

[koliber]

Things like personal development, organizational design, team maturity, marketing, and selling seem like strange and foreign soft skills and concepts that your either have and understands, or not. There are models, mental frameworks, playbooks, and tools bring structure and rigor to these seemingly soft concepts. Engineers tend to have more analytical minds, and once you connect these things with the analytical “engine,” it becomes easier to understand and apply these concepts to management. In a way, the soft skills become more like hard skills.

Management learning is best done through a combination of theoretical learning, deliberate practice, and hands-on coaching. The theory comes from books and other reading maerials (see below). Deliberate practice comes from using that theory in everyday situations. Coaching comes from an experienced manager via one-on-ones, or an external coach.

If you go with the "external" route, find someone who seems to "speak your language" and understands your business challenges. I offer such coaching for companies who want help developing their engineering managers and would be happy to connect (see my HN profile for contact info).

Here are some resources for new engineering managers that I routinely use:

https://themanagershandbook.com/

Book: The Making of a Manager

- A first person account of what you may discover and learn as you grow as a manager.

- Lots of concrete tips intermingled with personal stories.

- Great for discovering what you don't know that you don't know about management

Book: High Output Management, by Andy Grove

For those that got the basic hang of things, and want to go to the source. Don't let the fact that it was written in the last century turn you off. The book is somewhat dry and academic. At the same time it is dense with information and advice that largely stood the test of time. This book is concrete, clear, and to the point.

[bsenftner]

Look into Cognitive Distortions, the fancy words for "how people play themselves". I've found that poor management and impostor syndrome are both manifestations of self deception. For managers, self deception takes the form of not listening or not taking seriously to developer concerns, trusting their management's every word rather than using critical analysis in all interactions with their management, and generally "playing the Cover-Your-Ass game" rather than actually being their upper management's objective communication channel to developers and the objective voice for developers back such that both are functionally optimally in respect to the other.