Technical vs non-technical IT managers
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As a technical person, do you prefer to report to a technical or non-technical manager? I have had good and bad experiences with both. On the up, I appreciate the freedom and trust extended by good non-technical managers, as well as the guidance from good technical managers. On the down, some non-technical managers try too hard to be involved in the detail and often make bad calls based on their insufficient understanding of a problem or situation. I found that technical managers, on the other hand, can be very authoritarian, really just giving commands, these are often the ones who have the highest staff turnover (among coders) as well. From my experience, I prefer reporting to non-technical managers. I found that the technical know-how and guidance I used to seek from technical seniors is mostly available from any diverse group of peers and juniors, each with unique interests and strengths. Whichever you prefer, I'd like to share this snippet: SARS gives clarity on e-filing collapse - YouTube[^] (forwarded to the best part) ...and ask for a moment of silence for the IT people who work for this company. It's a month-old interview with the "Chief Officer for Digital and IT" of SARS (South Africa's revenue collection services). :laugh: Enjoy!
(Note: this a govt IT dept) My team's immediate manager is completely non-technical, though our director, when hiring him, led us to believe he was very knowledgeable. As it turns out, he is not. At all. I don't think he could use a calculator effectively. It grinds my gears that the status report we are required to update constantly lists him as "manager" on all our projects, and that he makes more $$ than me, the team lead. Amongst ourselves, we refer to him as "meatloaf". Having status meetings with him is an exercise in futility as I have to explain things multiple times and I'm sure he still does not understand anything. I find non-technical managers tend to focus on the idiotic things they can control and grasp, like "some of your people were late punching in this month" (yeah, we punch in/out, like we work at a supermarket). Yeah, OK, they're late. They're also very talented and productive, and turning out excellent work every day, so give it a rest. I guess, in my case, it's not so much meatloaf is non-technical, it's that he's stupid. But, that's the plague of working in government. Sometimes I wonder what the hell is gonna happen here when I'm gone... (edit:grammer)
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As a technical person, do you prefer to report to a technical or non-technical manager? I have had good and bad experiences with both. On the up, I appreciate the freedom and trust extended by good non-technical managers, as well as the guidance from good technical managers. On the down, some non-technical managers try too hard to be involved in the detail and often make bad calls based on their insufficient understanding of a problem or situation. I found that technical managers, on the other hand, can be very authoritarian, really just giving commands, these are often the ones who have the highest staff turnover (among coders) as well. From my experience, I prefer reporting to non-technical managers. I found that the technical know-how and guidance I used to seek from technical seniors is mostly available from any diverse group of peers and juniors, each with unique interests and strengths. Whichever you prefer, I'd like to share this snippet: SARS gives clarity on e-filing collapse - YouTube[^] (forwarded to the best part) ...and ask for a moment of silence for the IT people who work for this company. It's a month-old interview with the "Chief Officer for Digital and IT" of SARS (South Africa's revenue collection services). :laugh: Enjoy!
The best bosses I have worked with had genuine humility. And it didn't matter what their level of technical knowledge was. The worst bosses I have worked with were arrogant. And it didn't matter what their level of technical knowledge was.
Cheers, Mike Fidler "I intend to live forever - so far, so good." Steven Wright "I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me before we met." Also Steven Wright "I'm addicted to placebos. I could quit, but it wouldn't matter." Steven Wright yet again.
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The best bosses I have worked with had genuine humility. And it didn't matter what their level of technical knowledge was. The worst bosses I have worked with were arrogant. And it didn't matter what their level of technical knowledge was.
Cheers, Mike Fidler "I intend to live forever - so far, so good." Steven Wright "I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me before we met." Also Steven Wright "I'm addicted to placebos. I could quit, but it wouldn't matter." Steven Wright yet again.
My current manager is both arrogant and uses an authoritarion management style. He neither shields us from outside abuse nor does he do anything to help work efforts. The problem I that I have had is that I have worked for truly worse and keep sticking my neck out. I have had great managers both technical and non-technical and have found that although it may be a factor, it doesn't determine which is the better boss or manager.
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My current manager is both arrogant and uses an authoritarion management style. He neither shields us from outside abuse nor does he do anything to help work efforts. The problem I that I have had is that I have worked for truly worse and keep sticking my neck out. I have had great managers both technical and non-technical and have found that although it may be a factor, it doesn't determine which is the better boss or manager.
Agreed. (I truly hope your current manager doesn't frequent The Lounge. ;) )
Cheers, Mike Fidler "I intend to live forever - so far, so good." Steven Wright "I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me before we met." Also Steven Wright "I'm addicted to placebos. I could quit, but it wouldn't matter." Steven Wright yet again.
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As a technical person, do you prefer to report to a technical or non-technical manager? I have had good and bad experiences with both. On the up, I appreciate the freedom and trust extended by good non-technical managers, as well as the guidance from good technical managers. On the down, some non-technical managers try too hard to be involved in the detail and often make bad calls based on their insufficient understanding of a problem or situation. I found that technical managers, on the other hand, can be very authoritarian, really just giving commands, these are often the ones who have the highest staff turnover (among coders) as well. From my experience, I prefer reporting to non-technical managers. I found that the technical know-how and guidance I used to seek from technical seniors is mostly available from any diverse group of peers and juniors, each with unique interests and strengths. Whichever you prefer, I'd like to share this snippet: SARS gives clarity on e-filing collapse - YouTube[^] (forwarded to the best part) ...and ask for a moment of silence for the IT people who work for this company. It's a month-old interview with the "Chief Officer for Digital and IT" of SARS (South Africa's revenue collection services). :laugh: Enjoy!
Good managers put people in a position to succeed; bad ones throw people at projects without doing analysis of what skills the project needs. Good managers hire smart people and trust them to make good decisions, or to raise flags if they don't have the skills/experience to make a good decision. In that latter case, good managers find the right resource to be another opinion (which may be themselves, if they are technical and experienced in that area). Bad managers don't trust their employees, or are unwilling to consider alternatives. All that being said, I prefer an at-least-somewhat technical manager. By that I mean, someone who understands data and relationships, and can have that sort of conversation, even I they don't know the nuts-and-bolts of schemas, application development, etc. If we model the data well, we've got a good foundation on which we can build the application layers.
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As a technical person, do you prefer to report to a technical or non-technical manager? I have had good and bad experiences with both. On the up, I appreciate the freedom and trust extended by good non-technical managers, as well as the guidance from good technical managers. On the down, some non-technical managers try too hard to be involved in the detail and often make bad calls based on their insufficient understanding of a problem or situation. I found that technical managers, on the other hand, can be very authoritarian, really just giving commands, these are often the ones who have the highest staff turnover (among coders) as well. From my experience, I prefer reporting to non-technical managers. I found that the technical know-how and guidance I used to seek from technical seniors is mostly available from any diverse group of peers and juniors, each with unique interests and strengths. Whichever you prefer, I'd like to share this snippet: SARS gives clarity on e-filing collapse - YouTube[^] (forwarded to the best part) ...and ask for a moment of silence for the IT people who work for this company. It's a month-old interview with the "Chief Officer for Digital and IT" of SARS (South Africa's revenue collection services). :laugh: Enjoy!
In my experience they are all terrible, rude, authoritarian, arrogant, and in general stupid. However, there is one rare exception; non-technical managers who know they are non-technical and as result stay out of the technical details letting me do the project properly... However, as I said, this has been a rarity...
Steve Naidamast Sr. Software Engineer Black Falcon Software, Inc. blackfalconsoftware@outlook.com
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Agreed. (I truly hope your current manager doesn't frequent The Lounge. ;) )
Cheers, Mike Fidler "I intend to live forever - so far, so good." Steven Wright "I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me before we met." Also Steven Wright "I'm addicted to placebos. I could quit, but it wouldn't matter." Steven Wright yet again.
His background before this position was hardware and he barely knows our industry. The odds are stacked deeply in my favor that he would never visit Code Project at all.
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As a technical person, do you prefer to report to a technical or non-technical manager? I have had good and bad experiences with both. On the up, I appreciate the freedom and trust extended by good non-technical managers, as well as the guidance from good technical managers. On the down, some non-technical managers try too hard to be involved in the detail and often make bad calls based on their insufficient understanding of a problem or situation. I found that technical managers, on the other hand, can be very authoritarian, really just giving commands, these are often the ones who have the highest staff turnover (among coders) as well. From my experience, I prefer reporting to non-technical managers. I found that the technical know-how and guidance I used to seek from technical seniors is mostly available from any diverse group of peers and juniors, each with unique interests and strengths. Whichever you prefer, I'd like to share this snippet: SARS gives clarity on e-filing collapse - YouTube[^] (forwarded to the best part) ...and ask for a moment of silence for the IT people who work for this company. It's a month-old interview with the "Chief Officer for Digital and IT" of SARS (South Africa's revenue collection services). :laugh: Enjoy!
I have found the best success in having 1. A non-technical manager 2. A technical lead. The non-technical manager is an HR manager, the time off manager. They can help with sprints, and planning, but not costing, and not how to do something. Has one-on-ones. Keeps team unity. Plans activities. Helps keep communication open (especially with a bunch of introvert engineers) Tech lead - Is the mentor technically. Has technical one-on-ones to make sure each team member is increasing their skill level. The problems with a technical manager is that most engineers: 1. Don't have the skills to be a good manager, because it is hard, and takes a lot of training, and they are never trained. So it takes them three to five years to be any good and by then, they already have a bad rap. 2. Many will never have social skills to be a good manager. 3. As always there are exceptions to the norm. Great technical managers and great non-technical managers exist. But on average, I find the best harmony when a non-technical manager is combined with a tech lead.
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As a technical person, do you prefer to report to a technical or non-technical manager? I have had good and bad experiences with both. On the up, I appreciate the freedom and trust extended by good non-technical managers, as well as the guidance from good technical managers. On the down, some non-technical managers try too hard to be involved in the detail and often make bad calls based on their insufficient understanding of a problem or situation. I found that technical managers, on the other hand, can be very authoritarian, really just giving commands, these are often the ones who have the highest staff turnover (among coders) as well. From my experience, I prefer reporting to non-technical managers. I found that the technical know-how and guidance I used to seek from technical seniors is mostly available from any diverse group of peers and juniors, each with unique interests and strengths. Whichever you prefer, I'd like to share this snippet: SARS gives clarity on e-filing collapse - YouTube[^] (forwarded to the best part) ...and ask for a moment of silence for the IT people who work for this company. It's a month-old interview with the "Chief Officer for Digital and IT" of SARS (South Africa's revenue collection services). :laugh: Enjoy!
Thanks for the SARS clip. O M G . . . I guess it depends on the size of the department. I am the technical manager, and I'm reasonably successful. Myself I prefer a non-technical manager, my boss is an accountant, but he is technical enough that he can back me up sometimes. I call on him when I need people help, when we have policy issues that require conformance or if I am trying to schedule something big - and of course around budgeting projects. In a bigger company, I have seen mixed results from a non-technical CIO. The problem with that is that the honchos put the person in the area to achieve a business goal, not really aligned with operations. So she was there for a little while on the way to another position. It's not her fault exactly, but the corporation outsourced all of IT as of 1/1/2000. It was a nightmare. My entire team and I left over 6 months. (Me: After I rehired for my position of course) Chasing "shareholder value" can be destructive. It was the non-technical managers who bought the crack the salesman was selling. :wtf:
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As a technical person, do you prefer to report to a technical or non-technical manager? I have had good and bad experiences with both. On the up, I appreciate the freedom and trust extended by good non-technical managers, as well as the guidance from good technical managers. On the down, some non-technical managers try too hard to be involved in the detail and often make bad calls based on their insufficient understanding of a problem or situation. I found that technical managers, on the other hand, can be very authoritarian, really just giving commands, these are often the ones who have the highest staff turnover (among coders) as well. From my experience, I prefer reporting to non-technical managers. I found that the technical know-how and guidance I used to seek from technical seniors is mostly available from any diverse group of peers and juniors, each with unique interests and strengths. Whichever you prefer, I'd like to share this snippet: SARS gives clarity on e-filing collapse - YouTube[^] (forwarded to the best part) ...and ask for a moment of silence for the IT people who work for this company. It's a month-old interview with the "Chief Officer for Digital and IT" of SARS (South Africa's revenue collection services). :laugh: Enjoy!
I would love to have manager that has technical abilities. Unfortunately I get some people who are looking at log files and are screaming WITCHCRAFT - BURN IT. If you can read log file and decide that you don’t need to involve whole team and ask everyone around to participate you are gold. If there is some configuration issue because someone forgot to change setting or add setting to a file, and don’t have to involve 5 people to fix it you are gold. If there is small irrelevant code issue that slipped past through code review, and QA and you can fix it on your own before demo for stakeholders instead of screaming that there is issue bringing end of the world you are gold. For such person it is easier to maintain faith in your team because they know small issue in config is not some hidden dragon. It is a lot easier for technical person to grasp possibilities of technical team. Maybe it is only my ego but I really get annoyed when people make fuss over stuff that I can fix in 2 minutes. Especially when they go around screaming that sky is falling and reality is that when you read log files it is perfectly understandable issue. Even more annoying when they send log statement with exception to you and it is perfectly literal exception message like “cannot connect to 3'rd party X” and 3'rd party X is down, but somehow their comprehension goes wild…
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(Note: this a govt IT dept) My team's immediate manager is completely non-technical, though our director, when hiring him, led us to believe he was very knowledgeable. As it turns out, he is not. At all. I don't think he could use a calculator effectively. It grinds my gears that the status report we are required to update constantly lists him as "manager" on all our projects, and that he makes more $$ than me, the team lead. Amongst ourselves, we refer to him as "meatloaf". Having status meetings with him is an exercise in futility as I have to explain things multiple times and I'm sure he still does not understand anything. I find non-technical managers tend to focus on the idiotic things they can control and grasp, like "some of your people were late punching in this month" (yeah, we punch in/out, like we work at a supermarket). Yeah, OK, they're late. They're also very talented and productive, and turning out excellent work every day, so give it a rest. I guess, in my case, it's not so much meatloaf is non-technical, it's that he's stupid. But, that's the plague of working in government. Sometimes I wonder what the hell is gonna happen here when I'm gone... (edit:grammer)
There's gotta be a Dilbert comic in there somewhere.