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Geeks in Management?
The Other Side of the Coin asks: "I've been doing a relatively interesting job until now, but they've pushed me into management recently. Although the new position is pretty boring (I manage normals), I do still have time for all the geeky stuff I used to do before. My problem is: I have no formal (or any other, for that matter) management training. Sure, I'll read a lot about it (and take some education), but what are your experiences as geeks in management? For example, I naturally started to use Borgish management methods, and this wasn't received well by people, to say the least. What are the most difficult hurdles for a manager geek to jump, and can our personality be used as an advantage in management?"
I asked the same question to a former manager of mine and his reply was that managing a business or people is a lot like managing complexity in software design. Of course you can't treat people like objects(pun intended) but principles of modularization, etc. still applies. Just as you don't put all your logic in one method, function, or object, you shouldn't do everything yourself. Delegate stuff out and have some people concentrate on certain things. The old *nix philosophy of doing one thing and doing it really well still applies. Trust your employees to do the right thing without you micro-managing it. In the end, you become the thing that brings all these pieces together.
Good programming practices/philosophy goes beyond CS. It's all managing complexity after all.
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It's kind of funny, but our personalities do, generally, suck! I have finally given up fighting it, though, and realize that by becoming a decent manager I can actually improve my people skills and better my life in general.
If your company is behind you and realize you are a geek but have intelligence, they'll help you. See if they can give you a psychological profile. It sounds worse than it is, and you need to be open to it. they'll tell you what you are like (although you should already know) and what is desireable in a manager/leader. But most importantly, they'll tell you what to do to go from here to there.
I also reccommend reading the books by Geald M. Weinberg, such as "Becoming a Technical Leader: An Organic Problem-Solving Approach" and "The Psychology of Computer Programming: Silver Anniversary Edition." Good luck, you'll appreciate the effort and so will your boss.
My user name was a mistake. Input wasn't restricted, my bad.
You couldn't be more completely wrong. The best manager I ever had, had no idea how to do my job. He didn't need to know that, there were senior engineers who did know how to do the job that he turned me to when I needed technical leadership. However he did an excellent job of running interference for me so that I could work. I didn't have to worry about went on over my head because he did all the political fighting, and reported back to me what happened. He was smart enough to find out what would be an issue in the future, and start the political process to solve them now, before they became a big deal.
While working under him I was under some of the worst upper management I've ever seen, but my day to day job was a pleasure because I was only vaguely aware of how bad things were.
Management's job is not to get things done, it is to get others to get the job done. Sometimes management must jump in and hands on get things done, but even then the manager must never forget that the first duty is to get the others to do the work.
Well, that's not right.
The vast majority of people actually do want a structured environment that removes responsibility for decisions from them. Or at least puts their decision-making power firmly subordinate to a value framework that validates any decision that may come their way.
Cf. "religion". Also "political party". Et cetera.
The trick is to provide the framework of assumptions within which people will make decisions voluntarily that serve your ends. And, of course, to get that provision labelled positively as esprit de corps instead of negatively as cultish.
May as well.
I've got no management experience, but I've worked for enough people, good (rarely) and bad (mostly) that i've identified what i like.
The superhero of middle management is my former boss, Ron, at a now-utterly-defunct embedded linux vendor.
Ron was Not A Programmer. He wasn't even technically speaking a geek, except in the strict jargon file definition. He was an old HAM operator and a former QA manager for various semiconductor fabrication facilities. He was managing a bunch of software QA people, me among them.
So, this was the basis of his attitude:
"As your manager, I am a man who is not competent to do your job, someone who, in fact, has only a cursory understanding of how you do your job.
What i need from you is for you to get your work done. How i intend to make that happen is by making sure:
a: You know what your job is
b: You know what your priorities are
c: You have everything you need to get the job done
d: Nobody will get in the way of your doing it, even if i have to jump in front of the bullet for you."
It was great. If people from other departments interfered with my work, Ron got on their case for it and hasseled their supervisor about it - so people from other departments rarely hassled me.
I knew exactly what my #1, #2, and #3 projects were, when they were due, and what was expected from them.
This rocked. If you've ever caught flack for not delivering something that you were never given any sense of urgency about, you can appreciate this.
If i needed anything - a particular cable, a memory module of a certain type, more clarification from marketing or engineering exactly what they wanted from me, an OK to take the rest of the day off if i was getting nowhere fast, heck, a sandwitch, Ron was on it.
I probably could have asked to take his daughter out to dinner and he wouldn't have said no right away.
Ron wouldn't make me work late unless he was working late too. Often this meant that he was in the office doing nothing important, so he'd fetch dinner and send flowers to the significant others. I'm serious.
If Ron was cutting out early before a holiday, he'd send me home first.
So, it was like this. I was certain - absolutely certain - that Ron would do whatever it took to make sure i could do a good job at what he'd asked me to do.
And, lets face it, that's what job satisfaction is all about.
I was entirely sure that Ron wouldn't ask me to do something unless it honestly needed to be done. That he would never bullshit me or sell me out.
I had no doubts about the fact that if upper management asked him to have us do something that he felt was unreasonable, he'd do whatever he could to talk them out of it.
So, whatever Ron wanted, Ron got. He treated us like princes and in return we exaulted him as our king. I'd work for him again in a heartbeat.
I'm not sure I'd even ask what the job was.
This is just like television, only you can see much further.