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Comment by dahart | Hacker News Reader

I am intrigued by your comment but a little confused as well, could you elaborate? What do you mean by ‘best manager’? Is that one who’s valuable and good for the org, or one that’s good at getting raises and promotions for himself and nobody else? If it’s the former, I’d love to hear more about why being clueless is helpful.

And what does one do if caught in the situation you describe of not ever being let into the fold? How do you manage up in that situation? Leave?

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I suppose the "best manager" in this sense protects his/her team from the upper echelon politics, and, being clueless, does not bother meddling with technical decisions, letting the team do their work. Their worldview is captured in the famous quotation: «You can domesticate programmers the way beekeepers tame bees. You can't exactly communicate with them, but you can get them to swarm in one place and when they're not looking, you can carry off the honey.»

wow what a quote. where is that from?

An attributed source: https://www.netjeff.com/humor/item.cgi?file=DeveloperBees

> I’d love to hear more about why being clueless is helpful.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge

As management roles go higher, the ability to align with other managers on the “big picture” is a key priority. This often involves believing and communicating generalities about the enterprise which are inaccurate. Having too much expertise about a given field will prevent you from aligning in this way, e.g. The Curse of Knowledge. Precision and accuracy in the enterprise come second to the political struggles fought to achieve consensus among management.

This was my conclusion after a year at a fortune 100 financial company’s information risk management department. Toeing the line and fitting into a mold are natural fits for the clueless and those who oversee them. How far you advance depends more on presentation than expertise.

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