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Comment by ajcp | Hacker News Reader

You might be right, but that might be because they're just really bad managers.

A good engineering manager shouldn't be there to herd engineers. A good engineering manager is there to protect their engineers from the organization, ensure they have the resources required to do the work, and to make sure their organizational goals, development, and wellbeing are being advocated and cared for. Scrum masters shouldn't care about that. Managers should.

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I feel some people have never had a good manager, and so they don’t realize just how much bullshit they can insulate you from.

Maybe also some had good managers but didn't realize it because you don't notice the lack/lessening of bullshit.

The classic so good you don't notice them problem.

In work, always selectively take time off when it's somewhat important. So your skills aren't taken as the norm.

As an engineering manager, my team doesn’t know half the crap I keep off their shoulders. But that’s the part I play these days if we want to get things done.

Yeah, but... isn't that kind of strange? Most managers who didn't know half the things their reports were doing, would conclude that their reports were useless. So is it surprising that developers who lack visibility into the things going on above their paygrade, tend to conclude that their managers are useless?

It is kinda funny. I will admit this is the first time I thought about it in that way.

I've had managers that were good at "protect their engineers from the organization, ensure they have the resources required to do the work" and in general doing a good job at deflecting bullshit. But I have never had one "make sure their organizational goals, development, and wellbeing are being advocated and cared for." In fact I'm struggling to recall any conversation I've ever had with any manager about my goals or development that was not a perfunctory one in an annual review.

Most managers are not good, that’s the problem.

That'll depend heavily on the company, and whether the company's hiring process selects for them.

Yes it depends on those things, nobody is denying it. But most managers are still useless, that's statistically observable, just chat with any random programmer outside of SV.

Most engineers aren’t good either. See Sturgeon’s Law. :P

Yeah, I'm a little baffled by HN's contempt for engineering management. IME, whether the manager is any good is one of the most important factors in whether the team is any good; it's one of the things I'd be most concerned about if I was moving role.

A good engineering manager should be like a warrior in a garden; mentoring and fostering the engineers, and ready to go to "battle" for them at a moment's notice.

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