
Employees are happier when led by people with deep expertise - reactor
https://hbr.org/2016/12/if-your-boss-could-do-your-job-youre-more-likely-to-be-happy-at-work
======
sage76
At a unicorn I was working at, MBAs were being hired to be engineering
managers. I did not see a single engineer promoted to management, it was
mostly all MBAs. The few I had direct contact were really useless at helping
engineers out, all I ever heard from them was "Just get it done.". If I asked
for help, they'd say "Well who else is gonna do it then?".

I felt demoralised and lost some of my confidence. But the company was
bleeding talent at the engineering level, plenty of engineers called out this
crap and asked the CEO for answers. CEO would make excuses and not do much.
Now the company is not doing well at all, even the senior leadership is
leaving in droves, the CEO has even been replaced, the valuation has also
declined quite a bit.

I am not in silicon valley, so not sure about there but over here, it seems to
be a trend to have MBAs in all management positions above engineering and even
CTOs of startups who are MBAs.

I had no interest in an MBA until I saw this trend. Now I am seriously
considering that route, because it seems there is a serious glass ceiling.
Doing an MBA might be necessary for me to move up the ranks.

~~~
thisisit
While I can't speak for what happened at this company. I think the problem is
not "MBAs or engineers being managers" rather them not being good listeners.

And that is the point the HBR article is also missing. In my previous job, I
had manager (ex-engineer) who would often say - "I don't even understand what
are you talking about". But he would always listen patiently to us and even
spend some of his personal time after office or weekends on google trying to
understand the issue in depth. If he came across articles/links he thought
could help us, he would email us. If he couldn't do that, he always approached
the upper management to provide us training or help as required.

while in my recent job I had a manager (ex-engineer) who tried his best to
come across as someone with "deep expertise". He would often google topics we
wanted to discuss with him. The end result wasn't pretty. Lot of times he
would make an assertion that he read somewhere that the design we were
presenting was unworkable. Example: while talking about a design on "messaging
queues" (MQ) using RabbitMQ he insisted on using Microsoft Outlook. It can
handle so much daily load of message (email) volume he said.

~~~
PaulKeeble
That clearly isn't an example of a manager with deep technical expertise, its
a poor engineer who has been promoted and is faking it. By the measures in the
study he would not have counted as a deep knowledge engineer.

Just because he was an engineer doesn't mean he has any deep skills.

------
bognition
>The benefit of having a highly competent boss is easily the largest positive
influence on a typical worker’s level of job satisfaction

This is one of those great discoveries that is hardly surprising and makes you
wonder why it hadn't be seen before.

Honestly some of my worst work experiences were getting jerked around by a
superior who completely failed to understand the work required to do my job.

~~~
zzalpha
_This is one of those great discoveries that is hardly surprising and makes
you wonder why it hadn 't be seen before._

Well, the traditional view of "management" is that it's a distinct job from
"doing". Therefore, so the thinking goes, there is a distinct difference in
skillsets, and thus the manager should be good at the managing bit, and the
doer should be good at the doing bit.

The reality is that in order to effectively manage, you have to understand
what the doers are actually doing.

Interestingly, this relates to a topic that came up yesterday about product
managers (who are not "managers" in a traditional sense). Every time I see
complaints about PMs, the root cause often starts with the PM not
understanding how software is built and how developers work. Thus they
disregard practical technical realities. Those folks describe as a "good" PM
are often those with a technical background... who could, as it happens, do
your job if needed.

~~~
bluGill
> The reality is that in order to effectively manage, you have to understand
> what the doers are actually doing.

Actually it is not. One of the best bosses I ever had had no clue what I was
doing. He was smart enough to admit that he didn't know how to do my job. He
was excellent at his job though: figuring out who were good people and
removing roadblocks from their way. He identified a few good programmers to do
the technical interview part while he focused on are the people he was hiring
good fits for the people he already had.

If you cannot have a great manager who will get out of your way, then a
manager who understands what you are doing means at least when he tells you to
do something it was probably what you were going to do anyway.

The worst boss I've ever seen took some programming classes as a door into
management - he knew enough to be dangerous when telling programmers what to
do, but not enough to be helpful.

~~~
zzalpha
_Actually it is not._

Well, the HBR studies cited, here, indicate a _correlation_ between a manager
who could do their direct report's job and job satisfaction of that direct
report.

It does _not_ claim that this is _necessary_ for direct report job
satisfaction, only that it makes it more likely.

So, my comment could have been better phrased as:

The reality is that in order to effectively manage, it helps if they
understand what the doers are actually doing.

 _If you cannot have a great manager who will get out of your way_

I claim that knowing how to "get out of your way" is a necessary but not
sufficient skillset in a "great" manager. Understanding how you do your job
will better enable a manager to remove impediments and provide you with the
right environment (both physical and technical) and right motivators to help
you perform even better.

No one would claim that a football coach should try to handle the ball
themselves (as per the manager you described in your last paragraph). But a
coach that just stands back and lets the players play is only doing half their
job (at best).

~~~
TallGuyShort
Yeah I think there's a balance here. One of my favorite managers also didn't
understand my project (although he did understand software engineering in
general) and I later found out everyone else hated him. I've seen what I
suspect is similar later: managers who just see their job as defending their
team. Someone needs something from the team? Push back. Their teams needs
something? Hound those responsible. Team has an opinion? It's undisputed truth
now. No ability to mediate or help with the bigger picture. Just like a lawyer
for their employees.

What you need is someone who will take care of the employees and jump on
grenades of distraction so they can focus on their job. But you also have to
have enough context to step back and say, "hmm... doing this would be best for
the greater good - my team should take a look at this." It doesn't need to be
the ability to do it themselves, but they have to have some.

~~~
vorg
You'd be lucky in software engineering if your non-technical manager sees
their job as just defending their team. Someone needs something from the team?
Push the team to give it to them. Their teams needs something? Give excuses on
behalf of higher management but take all the flak from your employees for the
excuses. Team has an opinion? Promote upper management's opinion as undisputed
truth. Does have ability to recognize the bigger picture of their next
promotion or new job. Just like a lawyer for their own CV.

~~~
TallGuyShort
Agreed - I guess what I'm trying to say is if you have a boss who doesn't
understand the technicalities and won't understand them, this kind of manager
is the best-case scenario. Certainly there are worse managers, but there are
fundamental limitations preventing them from becoming better.

------
abawany
I skimmed the comments and didn't see the following perspective so thought I
would add it: one thing that makes it great for me to work with people with
deep expertise is the ability to learn amazing things. I am willing to put up
with a lot of 'management personality/quirks' if it comes with learning that
is invaluable. I believe people who work with 'interesting' (sometimes
abusive) chefs such as Gordon Ramsay may also share this motivation. However,
this is just my opinion and I can't say that there is a general trend for this
sort of thinking.

~~~
dkarapetyan
Nothing more annoying than an incompetent co-worker or boss. I don't think
you're alone in that regard. If someone is competent that means I can trust
them to do the right thing. If they're incompetent it's a crapshoot and causes
unnecessary stress. I guess that is not necessarily the same as deep expertise
but it's hard to imagine someone with expertise who is also incompetent in
that domain.

~~~
SticksAndBreaks
Lets not forget- every lousy software architect needs a demolition crew to
clean up behind him. ;)

------
lordnacho
Is anybody surprised by this? A boss who can do your job can:

\- Fill in when the team is busy. Ever seen the manager at McDonald's flipping
burgers or frying fries? Some goes for any other manager, sometimes, they have
to step into the code or read legal docs, or operate the machines.

\- Provide a perspective that's likely to be relevant to you. He knows what it
was like doing your job, and has a good guess as to where it's going. As
opposed to simply imagining what you do.

\- Understand push-back. A boss who isn't an expert will require explanation
that an experienced boss will not. "We can't add this feature because it
breaks our database schema". "Uhm what's a database schema?". Only so many
times you can hear that from someone who supposed to be deciding things before
you lose faith.

\- Guess what the team wants. Better experience -> better guesses. Even if the
boss hasn't done the work for a while.

\- Give feedback beyond "work completed/not". Because they can see where the
hurdles are before you complete, and they have an understanding of how big the
problems you've solved are on the way to completion.

Looking at my experience, anytime I worked with someone who didn't have the
technical understanding, the worst drops in morale happened when I felt
something was obvious, but the person needed it explained. It would have been
fine for a new staffer to ask, or a graduate, but not a decision maker.

The main annoyance was the issue of where costs could be cut. Some people I've
worked with seemed to think that just by asking enough questions, some piece
would show up that could be cut from the solution with no harm. And so they'd
keep asking around about whether this-or-that was "really" necessary. And
perhaps when you're not an expert you can't come up with new pieces or
processes, so your line of questioning is inevitably towards slimming whatever
is already there.

------
HerraBRE
This is very interesting, and rings true on many levels.

For one, it takes a certain level of competence to be able to differentiate
between good and bad work. If your boss can't tell the difference between the
two, workers will be rewarded/punished/promoted/fired based on some other
metrics, which are likely to be unfair or even arbitrary.

Another, is that bosses and managers are responsible for providing guidance.
If you have two ways to do something and aren't sure which is best, it's
natural to go to your manager for advice. If you get the feeling that the
advice you get is worthless (or even harmful), then you'll feel lost and
unsupported.

And finally, in many organizations, the boss sets priorities. If he doesn't
understand the work, he is likely to have unrealistic or actively harmful
expectations. And you'll feel like you're wasting your time.

All of these things are terrible for morale.

~~~
quantumhobbit
There is nothing more demotivating than realizing that the person in charge of
making technical decisions has no idea what he is talking about. You have no
authority to make good decisions or hope of explaining things to willfully
ignorant management. All you can do is quietly implement their stupidity and
hope to avoid the fallout.

~~~
mmatants
I think one of the biggest saps of motivation in that situation is that even
_successes_ are meaningless. Because one instinctively doubts the whole thing
then (even a broken clock is right twice a day, but it still doesn't make one
feel great).

------
nateberkopec
What's with HN editors changing the title on this one from the actual title of
the article ("If Your Boss Could Do Your Job, You’re More Likely to Be Happy
at Work") to " Employees are far happier when led by people with deep
expertise"? The original title was far more descriptive.

~~~
amirmc
I agree with your comment. The new title seems to be taken from the article
itself though (as opposed to just made up by someone).

 _" Using these three measures of supervisor competence, we found that
employees are far happier when they are led by people with deep expertise in
the core activity of the business."_

------
saosebastiao
Amazon still has pockets of very deep expertise with highly technical leaders
that make for very productive and profitable teams. I've personally worked
with some OR and Economics teams that consistently deliver exceptional results
for the bottom line. And I know that many of Amazon's best businesses have
come (originally) from organizations like these: AWS, Kindle, Echo, etc.

But it very quickly is moving away from that idea and toward a world in which
MBAs with half baked ideas that don't pass basic sanity checks are allowed to
commit to impossible (P=NP!) ideas on behalf of their teams. And it destroys
morale: nobody wants to work on a project that is known from the start to be
impossible to deliver as specced. So they churn out.

And when you talk to the goon that is in charge of it all, the problem always
magically seems to be that they can't hire fast enough.

------
icanhackit
It works both ways. In my first job I had the most intelligent and insightful
boss I've ever encountered but I was too young and cocky to notice and the
same went for my coworkers. We insulted him behind his back, ignored his
suggestions to improve our work, ignored the fact that he was a truly
interesting person who had some incredible stories to tell (his background was
consumer electronics and radio comm's systems) and it wasn't until I left the
company, travelled, grew wiser and older that I realized we as a team made him
a pretty unhappy person and he wound up leaving the company to take a more
junior role to save his sanity. The only reason he couldn't get rid of us was
he wasn't respected by the owner of the (quite small) company and thus no real
power beyond supervision. Work went out the door on time so everything was
dandy.

Be careful judging others abilities through the lens of your own role in a
company. Now that I've had two managerial roles I can see things from his
perspective and often long to take a job where I'm simply judged on my own
work rather than the sum of a collective.

------
pdimitar
Right now I am 36. I had a team- and tech-lead position for the first time in
my carreer back when I was 28. All other programmers loved me (except 2
slackers who hated being asked for statuses, even if it was twice a month). QA
was much better than before, frontenders were happy to receive clear
directions and tasks while having some freedom in choosing designs. The devs
from other teams loved interacting with me, I almost always had something
interesting to share on how I do things, people were learning from me.

Things were swell. It was an extremely positive environment.

But I got demoted 7 or so months later simply because the other managers hated
me. I didn't talk about charts showing increased amount of tickets per sprint
resolved, about increased productivity, about how to make people more
efficient via some BS measures that never really work (except maybe in a
Chinese factory or in a pyramid-scheme marketing organization?). I knew how to
make my people efficient and I was doing it. On the managerial meetings I was
bored to tears and eventually I just told everybody in the room (including the
CEO) -- "People. Why are we here on this meeting? I only see this as an excuse
for everybody to congratulate themselves on how awesome you are. Speaking of
which (at this point I pointed at 2 other managers) the only thing you ever
managed to do was impede me by imposing waiting in inter-team communication
for weeks while your devs are telling me they are idle and have nothing to do
-- and you're also criticising my managerial techniques no matter the fact
that in this 150+ people organization my team is the only one not behind
schedule". Or something like that.

Needless to say, I got demoted -- and left the place -- shortly after.

Thinking of it 8 years later, I'd absolutely do the same but I'd use even more
brutal language.

Management needs less BS. It doesn't deserve its current breed of slackers who
licked bottoms most of their conscious lives to get to such a position and
then they figured they'll unofficially retire at 40 while officially leeching
salaries into their 60s (read: show up at the job but practially do nothing).

As any human system, inertia and credentialism are a huge problem. This has to
change.

~~~
blister
This is just my perspective. I've been in (increasingly) challenging
engineering leadership roles over the past 5 or so years.

When I first started, I felt exactly like you do. That my job was to enable
and empower my engineering team to build awesome product and that all the
"management" stuff was a huge waste of time.

I received some advice from my boss that I was missing 50% of the job. You're
being paid and expected to do the engineering leadership side on top of being
the interface with the company for progress and business objectives. Any
talented engineer with a modicum of people skills can usually do a halfway
decent job of leading a small team to build a product, but it takes some
business acumen to understand how your team fits into the bigger operating
environment of your business.

That was the skill they expected you to bring to the table, and you not only
despised it, you blew up at them in a meeting.

Granted, that company may very well have had a terrible meeting process and
been looking at all the wrong KPIs for how things should work. But knowing how
to positively influence that process inside the environment and doing so in a
political way that preserves culture and existing team dynamics is crucial.

I hope you give that type of role another shot. The world needs better
engineering leaders that can help businesses understand the value of a strong
engineering culture.

~~~
pdimitar
Appreciate the feedback, thank you.

I had a pretty good idea on what was expected of me even back then. Truth be
told, I would have cultivated the more business-oriented skills with time if
the management environment wasn't so full of self-congratulatory practices and
people patting themselves on the back -- while all of them know perfectly well
they contributed no more than $500 to their employer's bottom line at the end
of the month.

I plan on doing a small business of mine so I have no choice -- I will learn
everything necessary from this point of view with time.

But in that particular environment I didn't care about helping those people at
all. They were all there because the job was stable, well-paid and expected
almost nothing of them. The CEO was an idiot who bought a very cheap "success
lingo" all the time. These people didn't want any changes; that meant they had
to work more which was the exact thing they were strongly against (and were
sabotaging everyone who tried to introduce a more positive change like myself
and one girl who was leading team of designers and frontenders).

Thank you for your kind words. Even being strongly dismissive of my own
abilities (which IMO is important if one wants to always evolve and improve
himself) I believe I would indeed be a valuable addition to a managerial
roster but quite frankly, I don't want to be involved in politics and fighting
with people who despise change.

~~~
blister
I had to trick my brain into just enjoying it as a strange engineering
discipline. I like to go through life imagining everything as a system to be
programmed, so to me, business politics was just a different type of system in
a programming language I had yet to learn.

Now I like to think that I can bend those systems to my will as well. :)

Good luck with your small business endeavors.

------
PaulHoule
I remember being taught how to mop a floor by the store manager at a
supermarket. It's a very small thing but it added to my positive feeling about
the company.

------
CodeSheikh
Hiring MBAs at tech companies as managers directly managing engineers has not
proved to be effective. MBAs have traditionally worked in finance, oil and
other Wall Street companies and everyone thought that bringing in MBAs to tech
world (partially pushed by investors) would be a good idea. As with any new
experiment, you just have to wait and let the time decide the results. And it
has been few good years now since MBAs have flooded tech industry and as many
like minded engineers have experienced, MBAs with no technical background are
a bust as your decision making managers. Sure they can thrive at duties such
as managing supply chain management of a large tech companies such as Apple or
Amazon. Or dealing with international clients where your "prized" skills such
as charisma, emotional intelligence and thinking on the feet matters.

------
CarpetBench
The most surprising part about this to me is that this matters at the top.
Sure, for a middle manager it makes sense that it matters quite a bit. I'm
pretty surprised that it matters much at the top, though.

If Elon Musk decided to head a major grocery chain I wouldn't stop to consider
whether his lack of experience in retail groceries mattered much. But maybe it
does?

Really interesting to see the analogy extend to sports, too. Professional
sports teams, even successful ones, are almost universally run (coaches, GMs,
etc.) by people who didn't play at a high level. Without actually pulling the
numbers up, I'd estimate with high probability that the number of "all-stars"
either managing or running teams is countable on one hand.

I mean, hell, this year's superbowl is being lead by two coaches who played D3
football, and one GM who played football for a Canadian university. One of
said coaches is pretty universally considered one of the greatest coaches of
all time.

For the most part these coaches/GMs absolutely could not do the job of the
players on the field, nor could they ever.

~~~
midgetjones
Did Elon Musk have a lot of experience in self-driving cars or space rockets
before Tesla?

~~~
mifeng
But if you listen to his interviews, it's clear the guy has a nuanced, clear
understanding of the technology and business model behind both Tesla and
SpaceX. He may not be able to do every job, but he can do the job of his
direct reports.

In contrast, there's the "professional manager" archetype, who Musk is
definitely not.

~~~
tokipin
obligatory Elon Musk SpaceX tour:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xahiWQQKw7Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xahiWQQKw7Y)

------
baursak
I've had a boss who was very competent technically, but was completely
incompetent as a people manager. Somehow he rose to a VP level, but still
wanted to micromanage everything down to individual code reviews. It was
comical at times. Eventually he was fired.

~~~
quantumhobbit
Successful managers need both people and technical skills. That is why it
isn't an easy job.

~~~
wageslave2
Actually technical skills and then people skills and in that order.

~~~
tabeth
I disagree. A manager is not an individual contributor. It's important for
them to have technical skills, but I don't think it's necessary they be on par
with an average developer _, let alone better than the best.

_ * The developers they're managing.

------
briantakita
This may be true for an developer/administrator/maintainer in a "Scientific
Management" (Taylorism) design process.

[https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Scientific_management](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Scientific_management)

This is not true for a creative/synthesis/multi-functional/unconstrained
design process.

I've been basing my career on acquiring skills/knowhow on being unique in my
ability to synthesize different crafts together with a defined worldview
(similar to a Meta Model in NLP).

Having a boss be able to do my job has often led to bike-shedding & lack of
space to explore novel ideas. Since I have taken on clients that aren't able
to build what I build, I have had room to perfect my craft & my process wilst
learning how to communicate with others who do not share my knowledge.

It's been more satisfactory to find people that share my worldview but don't
necessarily share my skillset. It's kindof like a tribe of ideology or spirit.

------
midgetjones
By the same token, you're probably more likely to be happy at work if your
boss knows nothing of your job, rather than a little.

------
andy_ppp
I think it's probably a bit like Uncanny Valley this one; it goes from no
understanding at all, slowly to increasing understanding but just before you
get to "boss can do my job" you have "boss knows enough to be dangerous and
counter productive"...

------
mifeng
This is why, all other things being equal, it's better for an engineer to work
for an engineering driven company (Facebook) rather than a sales driven one
(Oracle).

The opposite is probably true for a salesperson.

------
taneq
I thought that was one of the nice touches in Better Off Ted. It turns out
that Ted probably _could_ fill in for any one of the team if he needed to, and
the reason he didn't interfere more technically was just that (as a good
manager) he was avoiding micromanaging.

~~~
cableshaft
Except the scientists, I don't think he could replicate their job. Otherwise,
I can see it.

Such a great show. I rewatch it about once a year. Really wish it had at least
one more season, though.

~~~
taneq
True, their actual expertise is left kind of hand-wavey. On the one hand they
can genetically engineer exploding pumpkins, on the other hand they can't fix
their lab door alarm keypad. Maybe they're more biochem-based, but I
digress... I don't think we ever learn enough about their skills to know what
they can and can't do.

------
throwawayboss
So does this mean 'professional managers' are the root of most unhappiness at
work?

Certainly that's been my experience.

A company that doesn't hire MBAs is one I want to work for.

~~~
forgetsusername
> _A company that doesn 't hire MBAs is one I want to work for._

Can you point to all the successful companies that make a conscious effort to
not hire MBAs? Tough slog. Maybe these companies know something you don't?

But any company that eliminates candidates based simply off their degree is
_no_ company I want to work for.

------
temp246810
I'll throw in an alternative perspective:

I don't care so much about expertise, but about just raw intelligence.

Talk to a really smart person about your engineering problem, and even if they
are not an engineer they will give you good advice.

Ditto for sales, marketing, etc.

I've always been happy when I can tell the person that is managing me is a few
steps ahead of me, allows me to learn from them and actually makes my job
easier.

To me, it's only a bonus if they can do my job better.

~~~
collyw
A really smart person would probably admit that they weren't the best person
to deal with a problem outside of their own area of expertise.

------
sshrinivasan
Considering this is HN, I'll stick to the software/hardware field. While there
is some truth to this, I disagree with the assertion that in order for a
manager to be good, he "should be able to do your job". I fully agree that a
manager for a technical team should have a technical background, and more
specifically in the same broad field as the employee. Taking my own case, I am
a scientific software developer, with lots of experience in Python, C etc. But
as a manager of a team of software developers in different fields, I have no
clue how to do web application development or devopsy type stuff, JavaScript,
Kubernetes, Go and the like, which we use as well. However I hope I can still
be a good manager because I understand the process of software development, I
understand people and their needs (technical needs, motivational needs,
professional development needs etc), and I can recognize good people when I
see them, who can be leaders in their respective technical roles and mentors
to others.

Or maybe I suck at my job and I don't know it!

------
xexers
I agree, but this is very tricky in the software development industry where
things change so quickly. I went from senior to leading a team of 5 people. As
soon as I started to lead, my technical skills started to atrophy. I've now
switched companies and dropped back down to a Senior position because I need
to build my skills back up. How do you navigate this?

~~~
eternalban
If you know fundamentals things do not change that quickly. True paradigm
shifts (such as FP) that require ground up revisit of internalized knowledge
happen at a fairly stately pace.

------
jderoner
It seems many take the negative perspective of this finding - anecdotes about
moments where management "doesn't get it" and tying that back to their lack of
technical expertise.

What's missing from the discussion is the underlying foundation of the
finding: in an average case, if your manager has technical expertise in your
field, you're likely to learn a lot from them - that learning (and growth) is
a major driver of job satisfaction. It creates closer relationships through
shared understanding/experiences as well.

I'd also argue that simply being able to do the job and not developing the
team in technical expertise yields similar job satisfaction as not having deep
technical expertise at all.

------
matt_morgan
This is really interesting. I don't know if it reaches the level of detail
necessary to understand how it influences lots of tech work.

E.g., "employees are far happier when they are led by people with deep
expertise in the core activity of the business." Well, I have deep experience
in IT and building websites, but I'm not a great programmer and I have had
devs reporting to me who were concerned about that (so I've worked on
supporting them in other ways).

------
ryandrake
I guess I have to be a little bit contrarian. Of course we want our managers
to have good technical fluency and to not have to have everything explained to
them. It's necessary but insufficient. The skill set of a good manager is
different from the skill set of a good individual contributor. I've worked
with way too many engineering managers who were great engineers but needed a
lot of coaching in order to manage well. At lots of tech companies, you get
managers this way: Roger is "smarter than the average bear" and we want to
reward smart people, and the only promotion we know is management, so
congratulations: Roger is now a manager! Go manage people, Roger! Go
understand the business implications of your team's work. Go communicate
effectively with execs. Go write a project plan. It's not that Roger is stupid
--far from it, its that he is now in a role that requires a totally different
skill set.

------
viswanathk
If you're talking about Flipkart, then it's not really a tech company as much
as it is a retail company these days. So it is expected to have more MBAs in
important positions, or in places where they can prioritize like an MBA.

No wonder Amazon is kicking their ass, and their last few product launches
were nothing short of a disaster.

------
michaelbuckbee
I think that startups are particularly susceptible to this, everyone else is
sharing stories of MBA's in charge of software dev, but it happens in other
areas as well.

I do work in performance marketing (very data driven, analytics, testing,
etc.) and the new Chief Marketing Officer was someone from a big ad agency. He
had worked with some really big names and bragged constantly about how he had
had an ad play in the SuperBowl, etc.

Which was all great, but none of those skills translated down to a budget
1000X less than what he was used to dealing with. He was unprepared to think
about things like a website's "Devcenter" as having a purpose beyond a
branding exercise.

He wasn't a bad person or actually incompetent, but he didn't have the deep
expertise in startup marketing that it would take to really see them succeed.

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jaysprout
Oh my gosh, that's all I've wanted for years: a boss who knew at least as much
as I did. Trying to persuade -- to be an agent of positive change or even just
get anything done -- is all but impossible when you have to explain everything
to someone before you can even begin a dialogue.

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nunez
Well, yeah.

It's not that they _can_ do the work (they shouldn't), it's that they can
better relate to the people they're leading. They know, for example, that
asking engineers to complete an arbitrary development task in two weeks
without regard to scope, value or other work is completely unreasonable.
They've been there. Managers without that experience (or even knowledge of
that experience) can never relate, so when their managers ask for a thing and
ask that it be done in two weeks (because we're doing "Agile"), they'll more
than likely pass the buck down.

But as long as businesses are run by professional C-executives that don't even
understand the business they're managing, this will be a problem.

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maxxxxx
This not exactly surprising but yes, it's nice to be able to talk to your boss
about the subtleties of my work. This is what makes work interesting. I hate
when it's clear that all he is interested in are deadlines and budgets.

~~~
b3lvedere
The only thing my manager is interested in, is if i solve their customers
problems correctly. Most of them have little to no knowledge of computer
systems. This usually applies to both the customer and the manager.

There are virtually no any other meaningful rewards than the paycheck.

It pays the bills, which is about the only reason i have this job anyway.

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droopybuns
When leaders don't have expertise, we burn time educating them on fundamentals
just to orient them on a decision that needs to be made.

A better title would be "businesses aren't truly agile until their leaders
have deep expertise."

------
collinmanderson
I was just thinking about this today. I'm usually happier when I'm doing
things that I know my boss nearly-fully understands and when I know that
they're able to work on it themselves if needed.

------
tudorconstantin
A manager should be just a facilitator.

Our department manager at a previous company that I've worked for had economic
background, while we were a Perl dev department. Basically, his job depended
on our productivity, while our job depended on his ability to win projects. We
had to trust each other that we were doing our jobs properly.

While we made sure he could make the customers happy with our work, he
screened us from interactions with pesky customers and got us all we needed so
we can focus entirely on the projects.

I worked with him for 5 years and we've been totally happy.

------
mrfusion
I actually think you get more respect if your boss (or his nephew) can't do
your job.

At my last offfice job the programmers doing graphics/OpenGL stuff got way
more respect than the web developers.

~~~
throwawayboss
You would think so, but that's mostly not the case in practice.

A lot of people that don't know what you do will assume it's simple enough.

It's just not worth their time. That's why they never learned to do it.

For instance, I used to think sales and marketing were easy until I had to do
it.

~~~
mrfusion
Yeah it probably depends on what the job is. If it's generally seen as skilled
and prestigious then you'll get respect but if it's skilled but seems easy
then you won't.

------
chrisabrams
Is it really about whether your boss can do your job or not, or whether your
boss thinks your job is difficult or not?

------
gdledsan
A leader has to lead, it does not matter if the leader knows or does not know
how to do the team's job. Those MBAs were not leaders, as simple as that.

However, a company does not need a lot of MBAs to function, 1 or 2 should be
enough, dedicated to improve the business in general. That unicorn was very
sick.

------
benmarks
From the comments: "I'd bet a lot of workers who are unhappy for other reasons
end up judging their supervisor to have low technical competence, making
causality hard to determine."

Curious to see how competence is objectively measured in this case.

~~~
fpig
In my opinion, if the people who work with someone consider them incompetent,
they likely are. I would even go so far to say that the opinion of coworkers
might be the best predictor of someone's competence, better than any
"objective" measure.

At least if the people you're asking are themselves competent in the skill
they are judging (asking the dev team whether someone is good at sales might
not be predictive).

------
stevefeinstein
So people like it better when the people in charge know what they're talking
about. But people keep putting the ones that tell them what they want to hear
in charge. And the two sets don't usually overlap much.

------
yalogin
I thought this has more or less been identified in the software world. That
also probably was the reason to grow people organically for management than
bringing from the outside, more so for lower management positions.

------
BeetleB
Having worked with a boss who had never done our work, and one who had, I can
assure everyone: There's a world of a difference!

------
mverwijs
First it states that business knowledge is most important. Than it states that
deep tech knowledge is most important.

Which is it?

~~~
TallGuyShort
I think there's 2 different questions: Which one makes people happier? Which
one makes people more successful? I was at a company where a CEO with deep
experience in our field effectively stepped aside as they hired a CEO with
deep experience in business. A lot of people didn't like it, even though the
old CEO stayed around and was very involved. But looking back, the new CEO
helped the company do very well. As I stated in a different comment, you need
a balance. You need technical leadership and business leadership, and
sometimes they need to be different people working together on the same team.

------
Magi604
“People don’t quit bad jobs, they quit bad bosses"

Looking back, this is the actual reason why I left my previous jobs.

------
owly
This is core to human leadership and has been detailed as far back as ancient
Greece.

------
z3t4
i think managers should be good at observing and linking cause to consequence.
and use that experience to make good decisions. in the future we might be able
to replace managers with AI.

------
pacaro
There's probably some CAP theorem of management

------
keeganjw
So with Donald Trump as prez, I guess we're all gonna be very unhappy...

------
Zork212
especially when they are flying on a plane.

------
fowse
this is a good article!

------
edblarney
Missing from this study is the fact that we tend to project confidence,
intelligence and wisdom on those that we like.

A staffers perception of the competence of their boss may mostly be a function
of how much they like their boss.

Also - staffers may have no ability to judge the competence of a boss.

Example: boss is highly technical, nice, gives you good feedback, stays 'out
of your hair' \- and 'let's you do your job'.

Problem: you're all way behind schedule, and he's afraid to be unpopular by
steering you and the team in the right direction. From a management
perspective, he's failing, and causing the whole company to fail.

~~~
ZenoArrow
>"staffers may have no ability to judge the competence of a boss"

They often do. The biggest indicator is one you touched on... 'let's you do
your job'. A good manager sets clear but fair expectations, and then works to
shield you from roadblocks so you can get the job done as promptly as
possible. In my experience it's easy to see this in action.

~~~
edblarney
I agree that a worker can often reasonably evaluate their boss.

But unless you've been a director level person - with 'managers of people'
working for you, it's easy to see how a 'well liked boss, who lets's their
workers do their jobs' is often not the best manager.

Team staffers may think their job is to do ABC, but really it's XYZ. A dev may
think it's his job to write 'quality software'. But the business objective may
call for 'a quick iteration for demonstrative purposes'.

The staffer thinks he's 'doing his job', his boss lets him, but the business
objectives are totally off.

~~~
ZenoArrow
>"But the business objective may call for 'a quick iteration for demonstrative
purposes'."

Most developers I've worked with are smart enough to know quick hacks are fine
in small doses, but if they become the norm you end up with a great deal of
technical debt, which can ultimately cripple the productivity of a company.

From the perspective of managers who aren't familiar with technical debt, the
'quick win' is always going to seem like the best option. It's up to the
development team to strike a balance between 'the quick way' and 'the right
way', and whilst some managers may get frustrated on the occasions when 'the
right way' wins out, in the mid to long term they benefit too, though they may
not understand why.

