[evolve-maz]

I've been a manager for some years. Without sounding too up myself, what made me good at management was the fact that I knew how to do the things I asked people to do. It allowed me to critically evaluate the work, set realistic timelines, and champion the contributions up the chain. I also maintained the ability to perform this work (by design and happenstance sometimes, since we could be understaffed due to sickness etc).

The good managers I saw also had this ability. The managers I didn't enjoy working with / saw struggle were ones who either never had that ability, or had lost it a long time ago.

Note I'm speaking about line management. There's a world of difference between managing a dozen or so individual contributors vs managing senior managers / directors. However, managing LLMs is analogous to line management.

[voncheese]

> There's a world of difference between managing a dozen or so individual contributors vs managing senior managers / directors.

I agree, but in my opinion, your point about needing to know how things work still holds. It's less relevant as you move up to managing managers and larger orgs, but it never goes to zero if you're going to be successful.

[drewbeck]

I think it holds true throughout if you scope it to knowledge about your reports’ domain. If you’re managing managers you should have a good handle on what a manager does and different ways to do it.

[Ciph]

There's two huge aspects of management that gets diluted when it's compared to "managing" an LLM: - labor laws. You need to know those in the country where the employee has their contract, because this will restrict what you can (and must) do in your managerial role - Empathy. Managing humans is extremely messy and requires a ton of EQ to do well (parents have first-hand experience of this).

So, i.e: comparing being a manager to real humans vs instructing a next-token generator dilutes the skill of being a good manager and leader.