Hacker News Reader

A good manager must be at least good at anything their staff is doing

Completely disagree. I've never had a manager who was as good as me at doing my particular job, even when I was the most junior of developers and that has not once been a problem. Even the bad managers I've had weren't bad because they could help me with my day to day job. If I needed help with those aspects of my job I spoke to the project lead or one of the senior developer.

View on HN

> I've never had a manager who was as good as me at doing my particular job. If I needed help with those aspects of my job I spoke to the project lead

Ok sure, but a "Project Lead" is just another title for a manager. Calling your managers something else, doesn't make them not-a-manager.

Maybe it's just semantics and terminology, but I consider those two very different roles (that admittedly are sometimes done by the same person). A manager has personnel and admin responsibilities, and ultimately is the one that decides which projects I work on and how I spend my time. My manager can fire me, while my project lead cannot. My manager is the person I go to talk salary and related issues. I can be working on 3 different projects with 3 different project leads, while still having the same manager.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com