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Comment by q7xvh97o2pDhNrh | Hacker News Reader

This is an interesting perspective. Out of curiosity, are you describing some profession other than software engineering?

At least in the context of SWE, I think all of those points are exactly the opposite:

> Top performers need less management.

Any halfway-competent engineering manager knows she should spend more of her time with her top people, because anything she can do to improve their performance is that much more impactful for the business.

> Top-performers may be competing for your management job.

SWE at the higher-levels tends to be "dual track" (and frankly this is a model that should be applied to more professions). A strong IC is better off being given more breadth/depth for their IC impact, rather than being forced into management -- and that's usually what they prefer, too.

> Top performers are more likely to annoy colleagues and/or make them feel threatened.

What a horrifyingly insecure company culture that must be.

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> Any halfway-competent engineering manager knows she should spend more of her time with her top people, because anything she can do to improve their performance is that much more impactful for the business.

I guess the point is that to improve their performance the best managers can do is "get out of their way", not "spend more of her time" with them.

Yeah, that's my point though -- that's a common belief, and it doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

Consider some common scenarios:

If you have a tech lead who's cooking up some new architecture, some new idea, whatever -- it's valuable to both of you to spend time together on it. The manager can make connections to work going on with other teams/customers, can help pressure-test the business reasoning for particular design choices, and can help line up the right people to work on it alongside the TL. Meanwhile, the TL benefits by having their design strengthened up front and getting connections to the right people, without having to spend tons of time meandering around the business.

By contrast, a junior engineer isn't going to benefit from a doubling or tripling of the manager's time. Their work is straightforward. The manager's only job is to ensure they have good tickets, make sure they have a nearby mentor in a mid-level/senior engineer, and then get out of the way.

Tying back to the article, the top/senior people are exactly the ones who are going to be doing new and creative things, so they -- and therefore the business -- benefit the most from the manager's time.

I'm not sure you understand what it means to be a senior engineer.

A senior engineer can generally do every single role involved in the process, from PM all the way down to developer. They often don't because they don't have the time to fill 3 or 4 roles, but they _can_.

One of the roles they can fill is manager and reaching out to others in order to coordinate and facilitate work amongst others.

A senior is _not_ a junior who can program faster or better. A senior is someone who has a much broader set of skills than a junior.

Exactly getting top people improved would take a lot and mostly would get in the way.

Getting lower performers to higher level should take less effort to achieve nice results.

Also low performers need to be controlled because if they don’t show signs of improvement it requires quick decision to let them go. You don’t let go your top performers unless they are really shitty people or done something really bad.

I think GP means less management in the sense that you give them guidelines and goals, and then let them do their thing. Of course you should remove impediments and in general make it such that they are distracted less. But less performing IC often needs to be managed much more. They need guidance selecting work, they need guidance to help prioritising, estimating, structuring, and taking important things into account. Dependable top performancers rarely need that.

Agree with your second and third points, but doesn't your first one clash with your second?

In my experience, top perfomers/good dev will spend a lot less time with their own middle managers than average ones, except where the culture is terrible. But they might spend more time with managers for other teams and low-level executives.

What he wrote perfectly applies to SWE, too.

Top performers do need less management (and what you describe is not management) and they are threatening. These are 'natural' consequences of high competency and human nature.

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