> You can't lead developers if you have no clue about developing. Sorry.
Yessss. So many companies dont understand that. Every time I was a part of project that struggled it was due to terrible middle managers that did not understand anything and could not decide.
They often try to dispatch ALL their work to someone beside status meetings and forwarding emails.
Useless leeches. If you are this kind of Project Manager do everyone a favor and leave.
Team will most likely not even notice you are not there.
> You can't lead developers if you have no clue about developing. Sorry.
Laissez-Faire Leadership.
I've been on several massive teams where the project managers had no idea about the tech stack, but worked so well with the dev teams that they relied on the devs to give them input on tasks and proper expectations and allowed them the ability to have a stake in the game, not just sitting there taking directions from people who know nothing about their tech stack.
I think its disingenuous to say you can't lead developers without having an intimate knowledge of the tech stack they're using. I've worked on small teams and massive teams and in only a few cases ran into non-technical managers who thought they could strong arm developers into hasty releases and poorly coded prototypes. Most of the managers I've worked with who were not technical, went out of their way to build a more affable relationship with developers since they knew we were the key to the project's success.
I've had good software engineering managers who couldn't code anything beyond simple shell scripts.
It's possible to be a great developer manager without having been a developer yourself, but it's much harder and much less common.
In my experience, the managers who excel despite not having an engineering background usually get promoted through the ranks quickly, so you may not see them much anyway. Being able to effectively manage people without completely understanding their work is a valuable (and rare) skill.
in my experience, good managers of any kind will be there to push on issues that block me or help communicate/coordinate across the company whenever my work needs. Everything else should be hands off
Isn't the thing that non-technical managers lack, perspective? Like how long is it going to take and what is the LOE? You don't get that by being able to write a shell script. You don't always get it from being technical either.
I was in a technical role for 5 years before I started managing a team and I still lack perspective sometimes. I don't always see the big picture. I don't always understand the LOE on my asks. I try to be clear with my team that this is one of my limitations and to please call me out on it if I'm missing the mark, etc.
You need to know the product and if the product is software, you should be familiar with its quirks or can chat with developers at that level.
You don’t have to know how code works to know something about how it works. Ideally, you should be able to give directions to your QA person on how to get started interactively testing new features, etc.
Leading developers requires tech knowledge, leading product managers requires strong product knowledge as well as an understanding of what’s possible and what might not be possible, which one develops over time learning an app.
Might not align well with the above statements, but I recommend the following books for product folks:
Yessss. So many companies dont understand that. Every time I was a part of project that struggled it was due to terrible middle managers that did not understand anything and could not decide.
They often try to dispatch ALL their work to someone beside status meetings and forwarding emails.
Useless leeches. If you are this kind of Project Manager do everyone a favor and leave.
Team will most likely not even notice you are not there.