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Comment by SmellyGeekBoy | Hacker News Reader

If your work is "laughing off" your suggestions and putting you down I'd seriously consider finding a better employer.

Managers always think that they are smarter than coders. Lets face it if they admitted that we could make business decision well there wouldn't be much need for them.

Works just as well the other way around. Every time managers are mentioned at HN, some programmer is sure they can do a better job than their/most/all managers.

That's because programmers can do management. It's not unusual to see engineers get tracked into management. I have certainly never seen it go the other way (partially because managers usually make more than engineers I'm sure.)

To add to that, you can't be a human being on this planet without some sort of management skills.

Yeah, and most of the time (at least at places I've worked) the managers are former coders. So arguing that all managers are stupid just seems silly to me.

Also, yes - anybody can do management, and anybody can do coding. Learning to do either effectively is a skill.

> Lets face it if they admitted that we could make business decision well there wouldn't be much need for them.

Are you just making these decisions off the top of your head? Or are you talking to people, having research done, soliciting feedback, etc? In the latter case, congrats, now you're a manager! :p (If you're at a small company, you've probably still got enough time to do some hands-on work too...)

IME bad technical managers don't occur at any higher frequency than bad engineers; I haven't worked in other industries to know what it looks like there.

But you get a lot more immediate pain working for a bad manager than next to a bad engineer...

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