> let them suffer
I agree to that. If management doesn't feel pain of its mistakes it does not have an incentive to improve.
I agree to that. If management doesn't feel pain of its mistakes it does not have an incentive to improve.
Having said that, I think a good compromise would be to make sure that the people who get assigned to managerial positions have formerly had the job of the people they manage. That way they're likely to understand the pinpoints and the frustrations and be motivated to eliminate them. Obviously not all programmers will qualify for this job, but some certainly will.
I strongly advise everyone to read the Putt's Law, where this phenomena is broken down in great depth.
Its not uncommon for someone straight out of college, working as an "ideas" man to manage programmers.
People without technical knowledge in the roles of technical managers are in a league of their own when it comes to suck.
Good managers will balance out good technical people in terms of skillset, and help their team to do their job, while also coaching them in the areas where they are weak (and if the manager is weak technically, then obviously technical coaching is not in scope). Good managers will filter what reaches inside their team from the outside and protect their team from crap while captaining the ship forward. They know their weaknesses and also know that good leadership requires hiring people who are smarter than you are, and then helping to facilitate the magic that can happen when good people get together.
Having managers who are strong both technically and in a business sense is rare. There are only so many Elon Musks in the world. But when you work with one, your work becomes very enjoyable.
At the end of the day, team members don't have visibility as to what managers do every day. This blog is great for understanding this stuff: http://randsinrepose.com
Not so sure coders trump managers in the intelligence dept. After all, managers tend to earn more, and do less; I'd say they're brilliant in this respect ;-)
>I agree to that. If management doesn't feel pain of its mistakes it does not have an incentive to improve.
This makes sense, but how do you do that without hurting yourself?
Shit hits fan, you have issue documented as you alerted your manager and got response not an issue so you booked holiday and not there. With that you can not be blamed. Also ALL IT people worth there salt work above and beyond what there contract states - so if your contract is for DBA work, that is not sys admin work, that is not crawling under desks networking or desktop support - but you help out and do those things. So with that if it is outside your scope of your work contract then again you have the ability to ignore it as well. But the holiday approach is the best.
But there are 3 types of managers - those that can do your job, those that think they can do your job and those that will admit they have no idea. Then ontop of that there are those that can balance dealing with you and sheilding you from HR and the other crap and then there are those that just look after themselfs and smile to your face and say all sorts behind your back. As a rule a manager that can do your job is one you will get on with, ones that can not do your job are less likely to be good managers I have found, though have met some that are and there is no hard and fast rule or way to single the good from the bad sadly until your few months into a job.
But, for example, if you keep telling your management (as in writing e-mails with CC to higher management or have it written in the meeting minutes) that we need more file servers because we might run out of space and they ignore it, then when it happens and you're not around to fix this next time they may think twice before ignoring your advice. On the other hand if you resolve the issue yourself it can happen that no-one will notice.