I’ve been a SWE for 21 years. Over the last 4 years, there’s been such an erosion to where engineering managers do nothing technical and have no oversight over product management. This is happening because they’ve been laying off managers, and the survivors have to manage more people. Therefore the technical part goes out the window. You have to constantly explain over and over why things are more complex than it appears on the surface, and they don’t absorb where projects are. Non-technical managers are complete dead weight.
2 weeks ago (edited)
| 68
One big challenge with a non tech manager is career growth. How can you convince your manager that what you're doing is the work of a Sr sde, or how will they help you grow into that role? I used to work at Boeing and now at Amazon is this is one area that makes a huge difference for me.
2 weeks ago
| 30
A major part of management is resource allocation. To do that effectively you need to know the strengths and weaknesses of each engineer on your team. To be able to do THAT you need to at be able to understand the output of what your team members actually do.
2 weeks ago
| 2
Sales managers are supposed to know about sales, finance managers are supposed to know about finances, HR managers are supposed to know about HR. But having engineering managers that know about engineering, that would be crazy right?
2 weeks ago
| 14
While I don't expect an engineering manager to have the same deep technical expertise as an individual contributor, a working understanding of the systems they oversee is essential. This is critical for effectively translating technical concepts and requirements to a non-engineering audience.
2 weeks ago
| 7
I am a fan of military history, and what I noticed is that most of the greatest generals had direct battle experience while in low ranks in their formative years. They knew the problems and the fears of their soldiers, but they also knew when they were lying or hiding things, because they were on their side in the past. Software engineering is not that different from a battle, it's chaotic and stressfull
2 weeks ago | 5
It's good to remember that even a technical manager can be a bad manager. They might understand enough to think they know it, and therefore not think to ask questions when they really only have surface level knowledge
2 weeks ago
| 4
Being able to understand how long things take and having an appreciation for complexity is so important. Especially if a change needs to be made it can help you stand up for the team, instead of the classic “oh can you just add this?”
2 weeks ago
| 2
You can’t be a good engineering manager if you don’t deeply understand what problems your dev team can have, and that is something you can see if you’ve been a developer in the past. It’s like being a basketball coach and never played basketball in your life, you can have some logical idea on the surface, but you will probably won’t understand deep issues if you never been there
2 weeks ago
| 5
If your manager doesn't, then you have to convince them your blockers. Dev back ground managers understand difficulties of coding but non technical managers/pm often goes like I need this feature by X.
2 weeks ago
| 1
better than not but they’re usually so out of touch it mattered less that you’d think. typical question you get is why does X take so long when it’s much more complicated than when they were doing it 10 years ago
2 weeks ago
| 3
Yes, definitely. In my opinion you have to be at least a middle level dev(above junior) to be promoted to management If your senior officers have never been soldiers themselves, the war will likely end in your capital 😅
2 weeks ago
| 2
So 59% of this poll is comfortable with having an EM that does not have a complete understanding of the thing they own? How are you having conversations about technical details then? Worse yet, good luck having this EM clearly articulate your strengths and product impact in calibration 😅
2 weeks ago
| 1
My least technical managers have provided me with the best career growth advice and feedback by far. What a team, org or individual needs is highly contextual. Sometimes more process and people oriented EMs are what is needed and sometimes deep technical knowledge is better. A one-sized fits all approach to this question misses a lot of nuance.
2 weeks ago | 0
Coding experience or not, atleast they should have the expertise to understand the code by themselves
2 weeks ago
| 2
A Life Engineered
Do you think that engineering managers should know how to code?
2 weeks ago | [YT] | 47