[nostrademons]

You are describing bad management. You don't need skills to be a bad anything. There are plenty of bad programmers going around who don't actually have any useful skills either.

There is a particular set of skills involved in not getting fired even though you don't actually have any skills. However, this skillset will not save you if the company institutes blanket layoffs or goes out of business, nor if you ever need to look for a job with no skills. And if you're getting by without any tangible skills or output, chances are everyone else around you is doing the same. This makes the chance of the company going out of business and you needing to find another job quite a bit higher.

YMMV, but I've found it's a significantly less risky strategy to just go learn the skills, practice them, and refuse to work with people who are obviously faking.

[vinceguidry]

Most companies have bad management. I would go so far as to call it the norm.

You're obviously better off with skills. I never said you weren't. But you don't absolutely need them to be an effective manager of other people's efforts. In fact one of the best ways is to just get the hell out of their way.

[saraid216]

> In fact one of the best ways is to just get the hell out of their way.

One of the fundamental purposes of management is to help other people get the hell out of your way. In software, the purpose of a manager is very often to stare down requests and reject them on your behalf because you're busy doing something more important.

[Agathos]

> just get the hell out of their way.

That is a skill.

[vinceguidry]

Not one you can learn from any textbook or 'theory of management'. That's what I meant. Just because there are skills involved doesn't make it a skilled profession. That would be like saying collecting baseball cards is a skilled profession just because it takes a certain amount of knowledge to know which ones to collect. Sure, but that's doesn't make it a skilled profession.

[nostrademons]

"Skilled profession" isn't defined by what you can learn from any textbook or theory. Just try mentoring a fresh CS grad out of MIT or Stanford - they will know all the theory and textbook algorithms, but there will still be huge gaps in their knowledge of how that translates to solving practical programming problems.

A skilled profession is one that involves skills, i.e. things you can practice at to get better in. Retail clerks and fast food workers are generally not considered skilled professions because no matter how much you practice or improve, the customer will generally not care. Management or even something like professional basketball is a skilled profession, because there are large differences in the performance of workers based on their level of experience and practice.