Comment by maroonblazer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by maroonblazer | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I like his comment at about the 2:06[0] mark where he says "They knew how to manage but they didn't know how to do anything..."

However...a dynamic I see happening in my professional world is that the 'how' of doing things is changing so rapidly that managers aren't able to keep up and so might find themselves in a position where when they first started managing they were an expert in their domain but over time the domain has changed so much that their expertise has fallen behind. At that point I think a manager can still have value by performing classically managerial tasks:

- setting/reinforcing/communicating the vision (as Jobs notes in the video)

- recognizing great work by individuals on the team (both within the team and across the org)

- minimizing uncertainty within their span of control/removing 'blockers'

- providing autonomy to their staff

- facilitating collaboration

- striving for fairness and transparency in management decisions

[0]https://youtu.be/rQKis2Cfpeo?t=2m6s

Ya even at Apple during the end of the Jobs era, Bertrand Serlet, the head of software engineering would go through top and find processes that he thought were using too many threads (instead of lib dispatch) or using too much memory.

At that stage Snow Leopard was already a year behind schedule for what was meant to be a free maintenance + performance release.

So I’d agree that it cuts both ways. A good manager knows to trust his employees.

I had a manager recently say not to use a new flask server to host a tiny one client config wizard, but to use the existing one (elsewhere in code base that hosts a customer facing Gui), severely concerned about memory usage.

I feel like sometimes managers create abstractions in their mental model rather than simply relying on their engineers to perform that role at a much greater level of detail. So to this individual, web server == heavy.

I wonder if Craig was really involved in this: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/project-zero/issues/detail?id=83...

I have only once worked under a manager who could actually do my job and it had plusses and minuses. I wouldn't say it was a better or worse experience than being under a non-technical manager who exhibited all the traits you mentioned.

The problem however is that no one I have ever worked under embodied all of those traits.

that's why often you have architects and managers together leading teams. The architect is an engineer working at the blueprints/source code. The manager coordinates communication channels, team defined goals, integration with sales, etc. If I need a raise or sit in another office, I talk to the manager. If I need a different API, I talk to the architect.

> managers aren't able to keep up and so might find themselves in a position where when they first started managing they were an expert....

Reminds me of this. The value is in the audio but the animation is entertaining.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqmdLcyES_Q

I should note that these are things good leadership does in general, not just management - it also applies to technical leadership as well as management.

Sometimes you're leading, sometimes you're managing but you should know which is which.

Just like sometimes you're mentoring, coaching or teaching.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com