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Comment by AllegedAlec | Hacker News Reader

Should a minister always have hands-on experience with what they are minister of, though?

Yes, always. A minister of a diplomatic department should have diplomacy experience. A minister of a justice department should have justice experience. Anything else is ludicrous.

> "But Mr Sakurada responded that other officials had the necessary experience and he was confident there would not be a problem."

Then why is he the one taking the job?

A minister is a manager. We don't expect our managers to be good at programming, because that's what they hired us for. I expect them to be good at managing their ministry and relegating to their subject knowledge and specific members' experiences on subject matter.

Actually, I do expect my manager to be good at programming. How could he reasonably manage me otherwise?

So far I haven't been disappointed.

I suspect you will continue to be disappointed with that expectation. Management of resources, motivating employees, and political savvy are all very distinct skills from writing code.

"motivating employees"

I don't think it's possible to motivate somebody in a discipline that you have never tried. If anything, it is hugely demotivational.

It reminds me of a dialogue I had once with a manager of technical writers. She said that she wanted to be a manager because she was bored as a technical writer, in order to motivate people. Really? She couldn't even motivate herself to stay!

So, feel free to claim that managers need different skills. But to motivate people, who can do something you don't know or don't like? Don't kid yourself, please.

He states that he isn't disappointed so far.

Same for me, all my managers so far have had engineering knowledge or held computer science degrees. It's not always been pure coding, but at least compsci.

A minister isn't a pure people manager though. They also make important decisions. And how are they supposed to know which of their staff to delegate to if they have no subject area expertise?

I think there’s a delta between “good at X” and “reasonably familiar with and knowledgeable about X.” If you know nothing about X, you can’t speak the same language as the people you’re managing, nor understand the issues they’re tackling, reasonable priorities, reasonable obstacles, etc.

You don’t have to be an excellent pulmonologist to manage pulmonologists, but if you have no experience in healthcare, you’re going to make terrible decisions. You won’t know what’s realistic and what isn’t.

But a Scrum master can do scrums without knowing anything detailed about the project.

I was for a project ( some backend server stuff ) in a company. The scrum master was a former gardner who did a scrum course. He was good, could solve a lot of issues and keep us on track. But he had no idea of the technologies and IT in general.

> But he had no idea of the technologies and IT in general.

Leaders must have the respect of the team in order to be effective. With no knowledge or experience, earning this respect from the team is a tall order.

I think that this a question of basic computer literacy, and not expertise in technology.

Right? If anything someone in this position needs basic familiarity to avoid social engineering, reminds me of a scene in Hackers:

Security guard answers phone: Security, uh Norm, Norm speaking.

Date: Norman? This is Mr. Eddie Vedder, from accounting. I just had a power surge here at home that wiped out a file I was working on. Listen, I'm in big trouble, do you know anything about computers?

Norm: Uhhmmm... uh gee, uh...

Dade: Right, well my BLT drive on my computer just went AWOL, and I've got this big project due tomorrow for Mr. Kawasaki, and if I don't get it in, he's gonna ask me to commit Hari Kari...

Dade proceeds to get Norm to read him the number off of a modem at the TV station

One can argue that it is possible to successfully delegate what one cannot understand. But organizations in which managers have an understanding of the problem they are delegating are always going to have an advantage over organizations with managers who do not.

This is just a bad idea. It's a pretty massive part of what's mostly wrong in the world today. The idea that people who are functionally incompetent should be managing people who are is just pretty fucked in the head.

You don't need to be expert, but at least be related to the thing you head... Would it be ok for minister of finance to say "Never went to a bank, never had an account. I have staff and secretaries they somehow get me things I want"?

> Anything else is ludicrous.

Usually, ministry posting is about politics, not competency: a minister post would be proposed to political allies in exchange for support during the campaign. It's how, in France, we ended up with Taubira as minister of justice (here called "guarde des sceaux") under president Hollande, in exchange for the support of her radical left party during the 2012 elections. And she was mostly incompetent in that role, since she had no prior qualification, other than being a politician.

So you're saying politics in France are ludicrous?

Yes. I used that example because of how it's clear example of a political nomination.

No, people are being silly. Often people are kept away from their 'home turf' in an effort to make sure that when they absorb the brief (which they're usually given by political and civil advisors) it is in a way which is appropriate to the level they're working at. They're executives, not (eg) healthcare workers or train drivers etc. Their job is not to have a technical grasp of how to perform operations or drive trains, their job is to understand how to measure and influence the system they inherit.

In principle, this might not actually require that much pre-existing domain knowledge.

Agreed, hands-on experience does not equate to understanding. Should architects necessarily be skilled bricklayers, etc? Let alone housing-policy advisors.

And as others have pointed out, politicians are not known to be the most careful users of computers, so perhaps he is rather wise to abstain.

For the architect metaphor to work out he'd need to be a programmer, which I doubt because he'd likely mention that if he was. Also hard to be a programmer if you've never used a computer.

What he's saying applying to architect is "Never been in the building"

For finance minster: "What's a bank?"

For science minister: "I don't need to be able to read, staff can read for me"

For healthcare minister: "Homeopathy all the way, forget everything else".

Um, with things as technical as cyber security, yes.

What makes technical subjects different from, let's say, education, or defence, or the ministry in charge of environmental business?

All of those things you've listed as examples should also be managed by someone with a technical understanding of them.

I wouldn't want someone with no understand of the concept of inflation for example in charge of interest rates.

Equally I wouldn't want someone in charge of nuclear weapons that doesn't understand that if you let of a bomb in the next country you'll get covered in your own fallout.

it's harder to micro bullshit (be hands on) than macro (feign competence using "models") bullshit. If you are clueless about infosec or the hardware it relates to (using a computer) why are you a leader in the ministry of said field for a country?

He doesn't need to be an expert, but NEVER having used a computer, and not knowing what a USB drive is, is notably below what the average citizen knows.

This is akin to the minister of defence not knowing what a bullet is for. It's okay if he's never used a gun, but not knowing what a bullet is, is just way too much.

Should a project manager of a technology project know something about the technology? I had one once (in place where PMs were essentially dictators) who said "I don't need to know technology, I manage people"--and then made all the technology decisions without input.

Yes! A hundred times yes! Don’t let the fact that it’s common hide the fact that it’s absurd to have people with no relevant experience run departments (of governments and businesses).

Should a minister of cyber-security be able to answer questions about USB drives?

They should if USB drives are a vector for cyber attacks.

It's 2018, they should be allowed to drive if they want to and are trained.

It doesn't hurt to have hands-on experience, but it definitely isn't necessary.

The job of a department head is to navigate government bureaucracy and attain the budget, gather resources and hire experts for his department's needs.

The value of a minister of anything is his contacts/professional network, knowledge of government bureaucracy and his ability to marshal them for his department's needs.

It's why in the US, we've had Secretary of Defense who have never fired a gun or been in the military. Obviously most have had military experience, but it isn't a requirement.

People are mistakenly thinking that a minister of cybersecurity is a cybersecurity job. It isn't. It is a government bureaucratic job.

Given a choice between a cybersecurity expert ( with no bureaucratic experience ) and a bureaucratic expert ( with no computer experience ), it's a no brainer to go with the latter as minister of cybersecurity. Ideally, you want bureaucratic expert who is also a cybersecurity expert. But you only have 24 hours in a day.

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