[deepGem]

I really don't get managers whose timetables have 100% meetings. Weekly 1:1s is at the max 10-20 hours assuming a 10:1 engineer to manager ratio.

If a manager is not technical enough to delve into an issue within their team, should they even be leading that team ? They may choose not to do so, but if a problem is not getting solved and they can't act in such a time of need, their existence is totally questionable.

[ebiester]

A manager with 100% meetings is often one of a few cases:

1. They use useless meetings as shields for their time. That is, I can put myself on a meeting that I never attend so that I am less likely to be booked for that time. I will often have time blocks on my calendar because I work in functional workplaces for me, but this can be useful in toxic environments.

2. They have additional project/product management responsibilities. This is common for platform teams that they don't have PM support and have to wrangle people themselves.

3. They're really working 50+ hours a week and do their real work afterwards or before. This is common in places that oversubscribe managers. (I've hat 15 and even 25 reports before. I've even seen 50.)

4. They don't know how to say no and guard their time. This is common with younger managers.

[johnnyanmac]

>If a manager is not technical enough to delve into an issue within their team, should they even be leading that team ?

From my experience, this type of manager is more like that of a producer, merely called manager. Their job leans more on the lead to understand the technical planning, while they themselves coordinate between leads. In addition, they are also the direct contact for (often non-technical) stakeholders, so their strengths may lay more on securing deals/clients as opposed to developing/maintaining the product.

Lots of hats being worn in such a role between "kinda tech", PR, sales, and producing, so these happen semi-often in smaller companies, and almost never in a sufficiently large company.

[deepGem]

Oh yeah, you are describing a leader here. They are hustling for the next best project to take on for their team and/or for the company. They have moved beyond solving today's problems and spend most of their time on tomorrow's or the next year's problems.

[koreth1]

Wouldn't maintaining that standard make it effectively impossible to ever find any manager able to lead a team whose members have deep specialized expertise, especially if the team has expertise in more than one area?