Hacker News Reader

Comment by skrebbel | Hacker News Reader

When a coder asks another coder whether a boss is technical, it just means “can they code?”. There’s not much more to it. You may not like this, but it’s how the word is used, and language is defined by usage. I don’t like that y’all use the word “crypto” for get rich quick schemes either, but I suck it up, the ship has sailed.

This whole hair splitting about the real meaning of the word “technical” adds little. Yes, people who are good at what they do, whatever it is, are good at it and thus have technical skills. This doesn’t change anything about what the coder means when they ask if the boss is technical. We all know what they mean. They mean “can they code?”

View on HN

I would also add that what the question really really means is "Do they understand what we and I are doing here? Do they understand what they are asking of me? Can they emphasize with me?"

That's really important. It's annoying to constantly have to explain and justify basic things because people in power don't understand what the workers are doing. I'm also pretty sure that's true regardless of who you are, which company or industry you work in and what you do, you'd prefer to be lead by people who understand what you are doing.

It’s important for a technical manager to be able to effectively advocate for their programmers. Otherwise you just get constantly railroaded by the high priests of sysadmin or devops into technical decisions that make no sense.

My manager is not technical. The work environment is shit. Just a constant stream of brotherhood decisions that don’t work you are supposed to deliver systems into. The whole thing is bloody stupid but if our manager had a clue it wouldn’t happen. Before you ask, yes we try but the stupid bugger can’t stick to a script despite how easy we make it because the other managers constantly pull him into the suck of what suits everybody else rather than what works.

I hate the bastard.

Yes, this is it. The goal of the question is "Do they understand what we and I are doing here? Do they understand what they are asking of me? Can they empathize with me?". And the meaning is simply if they have programming skills.

The article makes it sound like it the usage implies some devaluing of those who are not technical which is not the case (outside tech bro culture)

It’s not even a tech thing, there has always been a distinction between a leader who climbed the ranks and someone who jumped directly into leadership (whether from education, nepotism, whatever).

It is important to know which kind you are working under.

For example the military: enlisted vs commissioned officers.

At least that's the meaning in a generic software company context, yes.

More generally, I would declare anyone who does anything with engineering or numbers in it to be 'technical' in this vague sense. But details depend on context. Eg if you work in a bank, some quants might be very technical (and be seen as such) without necessarily programming.

The same mentality everywhere, really, not just software.

Doctors ask "have you ever treated a patient?"

Pilots ask "how many flights have you flown?"

With pilots it’s flight hours, type ratings, kinds of planes flown.

Have they been in your trenches, and lived to tell the tale?

correct. I've always used and heard other people use this word with this meaning.

In this context I have seen more than once that it's more often a cargo cult thing

"is this person one of us or is he an outsider not understanding how great we are, and how do we make sure we convince him our skills are better than his".

Programmers are often very proud. Too proud to accept other people's skills. That's arrogant and unintelligent. Stupid even.

Non-programmmers are also often very proud, and also devalue things they can't do, so even if there's no technical issues that the boss needs to understand (e.g. if there's conflict or trade-offs) then this could be an issue.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com