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Comment by pydry | Hacker News Reader

I see it mostly as a refutation of the idea that MBA style management-as-a generic-function works - nothing more.

I have come to the conclusion that management is not a profession. Engineering, law, medicine, teaching are professions, that is, occupations that require considerable training or study. Manager is a role in a team that requires you not to be deficient in social and organizational skills.

In settings where the people being managed are professionals, I have come to think that there should be a vote of no confidence option where a majority vote of the team can immediately remove the manager.

> there should be a vote of no confidence option where a majority vote of the team can immediately remove the manager.

Like in a band. Best projects I've worked on have been like bands. Each engineer skillfully playing their instrument, while the manager secures the gigs, promotes the band, listening and acting on feedback from the members.

My metaphor for my current team is a basketball team. Each player knows their role, how to pass the ball to the right person at the right time, and the team collectively adapts to challenges in real time. The manager's role is to look at the big picture, get the team the resources they need to succeed, and make strategic decisions to allow the team to succeed.

it's the opposite really, a good manager is rare because being a good manager is very very hard and takes an enormous amount of both study and experience. Being a good manager is like being a therapist for a dozen people with deadlines on mental health. The soft skills required cannot be acquired from reading the documentation.

When the work is managed well there's never need for escalations, defusing, death marches and therapy.

But I think the parent comment's point is that this can be a very challenging job. A good manager's task is to absorb the chaos of the outside world, and give the team a calm, structured workflow. It's easy to see where a manager is failing, but if they're doing their job right their work is invisible.

What is creating the chaos outside the "developer bubble"? Is progress well managed, or not.

So we reward visible work. The higher flames in Ops the better, to not be invisible.

This is why manager must have domain knowledge.

This comment should be upvoted to the moon. Such a VALUABLE idea.

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