Can a Manager Be a Techie and Survive?

theodp writes "Some say that good managers should not be technical at all. Over at Computerworld, 'C.J. Kelly' takes a contrarian position, arguing that managers should keep their hands on the technology. The ability to tell the difference between fiction and reality, says Kelly, is priceless." From the article: "If you don't know the difference between fiction and reality, you've got a problem. By being technically informed while managing people and projects, no one can blow smoke up my skirt. I can tell the difference between a lame excuse for a delay and a legitimate reason why something can't be done." Where do you fall on this issue? Is it nice to be able to flim-flam the boss once in a while? Or is the valuable input of a boss with a technical background worth the occasional all-nighter?

Comments

It depends on your perspective

[Amehcs]

Of course it's "nice to be able to flim-flam the boss once in a while," but that doesn't make them a good manager. I'm sure that the their boss wouldn't see it that way if they knew what was going down.

Re:It depends on your perspective

[iocat]

Good managers should be able to tell when they're being flim-flammed, regardless of their technical expertise, by the way their team responds to them. That said, they should also be able to suss out when they should let something go, because they're being flim-flammed for a reason (such as: the original request was retarded, and it's easier to flim-flam than actually implement something dumb, or some other reason).

Not at all saying I'm a good manager, but I once asked someone to do something, and they explained to me very earnestly that it couldn't be done until some other guy did something (and that guy was gone for the weekend). Since "other guy" was way more junior, and this guy was very talented and generally very eager to tackle any task, I knew something was up, and it was -- his girlfriend was coming in from out of town about 20 minutes later and he wanted to get out of Dodge. That was when he was new (now he'd be like "dude, gf coming to town, can't do it now") but it does illustrate the scenario I'm presenting.

On the larger issue, I always like it when my managers have at least a vague clue about what I'm talking about. They don't need to know details, but they should get the general idea of what we do and how we do it.

Re:It depends on your perspective

[ray-auch]

Say what ? You hire techies who have girlfriends ?

Why ? Why take the productivity hit when there's such a massive pool of talented geek labour* that is never going to have this problem ?

*large parts of it reading right here...

Re:It depends on your perspective

[ray-auch]

No no no, _married_ is the best of all worlds.

Not only are they (for the most part) not going out looking for it, but the fact that the other half _is_ local (and waiting for them at home) actually seems to make them more likely to want to pull all-nighters.

[ me, cynical, nah ! :-) ]

Obviously, Yes!

[aneeshm]

Does this even need to be said?

I mean, come on! How much easier the lives of techies would be if their boss was one of them, if he would actually understand?

Re:Obviously, Yes!

[pcraven]

I've found bosses that are good at tech, or think they are, to sometimes be guilty of micro-management. If they were good at tech, fine. But if they are spending all their time keeping up with technical stuff, then they aren't spending that time learning how to do their management job. Usually those people micro-manage and are good at neither tech nor management.

Management and programming/system administration are two totally different things. If you are a manager, do you job and manage.

Re:Obviously, Yes!

[brad-x]

I've been here. My experience is the same - when a manager is technically minded, he or she involves himself far too deeply in the details of projects they should simply be overseeing.

Sometimes, in the case of managers with particularly stunted emotional makeup, you'll find them attempting to use their managerial position to prove themselves as technical geniuses, to the detriment of the people on their team.

While it may be beneficial in theory to have a technically savvy manager, in practice it's very dependent on the person. Most tech people don't have the emotional makeup required to successfully manage.

Re:Obviously, Yes!

[griffjon]

I've been nodding my head to almost every contradictory post so far, and that means there's something more here. I think it's obvious that you can have a good manager who's clueless at tech, or a horrible manager who stays afterhours to rebuild his kernel. I'll take a manager who matches my in brains with whom I can establish a mutually-trusting relationship, regardless of their area of expertise, any day. I should be able to explain my problems and such to someone that smart, and our trust and relationship should let us both fudge a bit on whatever side we feel needs to be fudged, with tacit and/or even explicit knowledge of the other. Most importantly, I want an advocate who can and will go to bat for me at the managerial/executive/funding agency levels. Now, it's nice if I don't have to show them how to do column-sums in Excel, but not necessary.

Could be wonderful, could be a disaster...

[nigel_q]

I think it depends on what kind of background the boss has, specifically. If they were formerly a member of your development group, then they would likely make a good manager. If they came from another product group, it could be disastrous. For example, there's nothing more annoying than someone offering unqualified technical solutions that they encountered in their former world that don't apply to yours...

Who says that?

[khasim]

Some say that good managers should not be technical at all.

Who says that? Some people say that if you shove your fingers up your nose and blow, you'll increase your IQ. Some people say ...

Can we just stop with the "some people say ..." crap?

If you're a tech manager and you lack the technical knowledge, how will you be able to determine which approach is viable or even realistic?

And don't tell me that you'd rely upon your staff. How do you know if your staff is any more technically proficient than you are? What happens when two people on your staff have contradicting approaches to a situation? Do you just flip a coin? Or do you go with the one that's been kissing your ass the best in the past week?

If you're a manager, it means that you have the responsibility to understand BOTH aspects. The technology and the business. That's why you're paid more. That's why you were hired.

If you can't handle both, then turn the job over to someone who can and find yourself a job more appropriate to your skill set.

Do we really need another article on this when Dilbert cartoons have been around for so long?

Re:Who says that?

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you know if your staff is any more technically proficient than you are?

They're all Microsoft Certified Professionals?

Re:Who says that?

[jollyplex]

Words of wisdom coming from a suspiciously low UID.

Stepping onto campus, I had little interest in management roles, as they did not seem interesting (and presumably did not require technical ability). After several co-ops, I developed a respect for those who had both an extensive mastery of a technical field as well as the ability to earn the trust of and successfully coordinate teams of engineers, scientists, etc.

It's hard work IMHO, to manage an intelligent team. You have to dive in the psyche of each member and figure out what motivates them, what they are good at, what they want to learn more about, etc.

One example

[laing]

I remember hearing this story from some senior engineers I worked with about 20 years ago. I'm pretty sure that it's true.

They were all working hard down at Cape Canaveral getting ready to launch a satellite (an old HS-376). The boss came by and asked how things were going and one of the guys said that they were stuck on a problem and needed some parts. The boss eagerly got involved because this was something that he knew he could handle. They sent him to Radio Shack (Titusville) and had him ask for some polarized resistors. He took it in stride and did not get too upset when he came back (red faced) without them. It must have been very humbling for him.

JSL

Re:One example

[Anonymous Coward]

That's dangerous as hell. If you sent someone to Radio Shack for a polarized resistor today, he'd come back with a cell-phone charger and insist that you install it in your satellite.

Sad State

[CyberLife]

Is it nice to be able to flim-flam the boss once in a while?

I'm sorry, but the fact that anyone would even consider this paints a very sad picture of society.

Yes

[daeg]

If my manager doesn't know the technology that I'm using, he will inevitably agree to something that cannot be done (either impossible or not feasible). Haven't we all had bosses come down and dish out a nearly impossible task that sounds simple when he explains it, but really isn't? When that happens, a few things can happen: a) you get stuck doing it anyway, putting other projects behind schedule b) you fail to do it and look bad (and your boss is insulated from it: "I thought he could do it!") or worse.

I don't expect my bosses to know how to program Python, but they at least have to know what the technology is, how it works, and preferably at least how to read/interpret it.

Of course, in smaller teams, your manager is probably coding with you. Not every group can have a hands-off manager. However, if this is the case, the manager does need to ensure his role is maintained as manager, and not simply a developer. Managers need to insulate their team from stupid ideas, demands, and pet projects from higher levels of management.

Best of all, a manager that really does know the underlying technology will protect his job better. He might not have to program, but he could if he wanted to. Then he is telling the truth when he tells a manager that the "Project was possible, we just didn't have the talent for it."

Ideally managers should be very blunt, too, but that's just a personal preference. Where I work now, for instance, the managers are all-but-silent except during your yearly review. They then present a binder (not just a folder...) of your performance through the year. You may have sucked for 8 months, but they won't tell you til that review, and by then it is probably too late. I'd rather know that I suck sooner than later. Tech-savy managers could make that happen easier.

Technically competent managers are needed by all

[onyxruby]

You have to be in order to be effective. While the manager can't be expected to get in the trenches to do the work, they have to know how the trenches work. And for far more than knowing if a tech is blowing smoke. The techs need a manager that is technically competent to at least a certain level.

Incompetent managers can cause dilbertesque levels of insanity in technology just as much as anywhere else. I've seen managers so incompetent that they have led multimillion dollar projects straight into the ground through sheer ineptitude.

I recall one 100 million dollar plus project I was brought in on where a manager believed the vendor when they said you didn't need a single desktop technician to migrate tens of thousands of desktops. Needless to say that manager lost their job and the vender was sued for millions.

The manager needs to know enough to know what's needed for the department to do it's job, to know what to ask for it from venders and upper management. I've seen an it manager approve money for expensive inkjets because they like the pictures without leaving any money in the budget to replace a five year old server on it's last legs. I shouldn't have to explain to a manager that tape drives really do cost much and that a failed unit really needs replaced /now/!

Upper Management needs someone that can make that kind of decision correctly, they rely heavily on management's opinions for purchasing. The user base needs someone that isn't going to be snowed by a vendor with a dog and pony show. The techs need someone that knows what tools they need to do their job.

The job of management is to be an abstraction layer that interfaces between workers and upper management. They need to know enough about the job being done by their employees to do that.

Yes and no

[tttonyyy]

I've been managed by non-technical managers and technically-aware managers, and also been a technically-aware manager myself for a little while.

It's a double edged sword. Non-technical managers might not understand the importance of technical details/problems, but technical managers might end up micromanaging. Personally I believe it all comes down to trust (and hence personality). The best managers are those that are technically competent but trust their team to make the correct judgements without the managers input. The worst are managers that are technically competent but want to make every decision for the team. Engineers *need* to have creative input and make decisions in order to be happy in their roles. Non-technical managers are in-between - they are forced to trust their team, but might not understand the pros and cons of important technical decisions.

Like it or not, those "difficult to quantise" aspects of running a technical project (such as personality) can make or break it. Surviving as a techie manager depends 100% on your personality. Put your trust in your team.

Here's an example

[broothal]

I'll stand up. I have a masters in computer science. I read slashdot. I'm a manager. I'd say it helps me a lot in my daily work to have the same mindset as the developers and architects I manage. Of course, most of my guys could out-code me any day of the week. Luckily, it's not a competition. I'm glad their java-fu is better than mine. I use my background knowledge of developing to ask the right questions and find the right answers, based on their skills.

By being technically informed while managing people and projects, no one can blow smoke up my skirt. I can tell the difference between a lame excuse for a delay and a legitimate reason why something can't be done. That ability is priceless.

If your people blows smoke up your ass then you need to work on your management skills. Regardless that you can detect their lame excuses - if they feel the need to give a lame excuse then it's not only them that's doing a poor job - you are as well.

Re: a Tech Mgr or Mgr of Tech??

[imadork]

I've found the exact opposite. In my experience, a "Mgr. of Tech" is more likely to be bamboozled by bright, shiny schedules that bear no resemblance to reality (and by people who are better at smooth talking then getting their work done), while a "Tech Mgr." is more likely to create reasonable schedules because they've done the death march before, and can smell bullshit a mile away because they've slung some themselves at tome point.

It's all a matter of personality, I think. A good techie is not necessarily cut out for management, and not all managers are cut out to understand the underlying technology they're managing in any real depth.

Re:unavailable

[ScrewMaster]

You've heard the expression about people "being promoted to the level of their own incompetence"?

Yes indeed, "The Peter Principle", from Dr. Laurence J. Peter's 1968 book of the same name. Technically, this has nothing to do with some managers being dicks but in practice it does seem that way.

Re: a Tech Mgr or Mgr of Tech??

[shirai]

If you are managing tech and either of these describes you, you could use improvement:

You are a manager with little tech knowledge

You are a techie with little management knowledge

The problem with the tech managers you had is that they just didn't know enough about how to manage or had enough management experience. They believed that all techies are just like them. That TRAIT, is a problem. And while it may be beneficial to be managed by a non-techie, the company may suffer overall because the manager does not know how to drive his team.

I am CEO/owner of a 25 person (successful, profitable and fast growing) Internet company and my best managers are both comfortable being in a management role and are very smart in the area they manage. A good manager knows the capabilities of his/her team and also knows what they don't know and helps them learn it. Instead of resigning ourselves to be as weak as our weakest link, we teach that we need to be as strong as our strongest link and we have created a teaching and learning environment. This doesn't work if the manager doesn't understand much of the tech him/herself.

The result? Many people think our company is 2-4x as large as it actually is. We have an environment where everybody loves coming to work. There is a huge amount of respect for our managers and there is constant praise both from managers, from the teams and across team boundaries. We love our work, we work hard and in our case, our tech managers were actually all techies first but they have received guidance on how to be a good manager. I don't think a really good manager can be just either/or.

This is a philosophy I have personally taken throughout my life. I came out of business school from marketing (though most of my best marketing knowledge I learned through books), but also am a programmer (wrote most of our original code), graphic designer (owned a design co) and was CTO for another Internet company. The more I know about my business as a whole, the better I can run my company.

The boss shouldn't do the coding.

[khasim]

A little bit of a problem there: the microsecond the boss lifts his hand to actually perform any technical task, the rest of the management team classifies him with the toilet-cleaner and never listens to him seriously again.

The manager should be sufficiently aware of the organization's culture to know that ahead of time.

It isn't necessary for him to do any of the actual coding. But he needs to be able to explain to the other managers why, with the current people / money / time / equipment / deadlines / other projects, the IT team will not be able to hit the deadline of the new project.

Then it gets into negotiating with the other managers for more people / money / equipment ... or pushing out other deadlines ... or dropping requirements (for the new project or existing projects) ... or re-prioritizing the projects ...

The manager's job is to understand the business and the technology sufficiently well that he is able to communicate the business's IT requirements to the coders and provide them with the resources necessary to achieve those requirements in the time allocated.

It's a simple definition, but it's been useful for me. It also allows you to see where the "bad" managers have problems.

#1. They don't understand the business and the team gets stress for delivering tech that isn't appropriate.

#2. They don't understand the tech and over-promise what can be delivered.

#3. They don't understand the business or the tech.

#4. They don't communicate the requirements to the coders.

#5. They don't provide the resources the coders need.

etc.

It's difficult to fail if your manager is competent at each of those steps. But not impossible. There can still be personal issues that cause conflicts/problems.

But the chance of failure goes up dramatically with each step that the manager fails.

Hi, Sys Admin to Director over here...

[ellem]

I have 2 HUGE problems as a manager who was a tech.

1) I side with my "guys" (who are .33 women!) too often.
2) I have a nagging feeling I could "do that better" than they're doing it.

Sounds fun, or funny but it's not. It's a pain in the ass. It literally triples my stress levels.

There is no doubt in my mind that being a Sys Admin was a MUCH easier job.

Definitely true on the most senior levels.

[DancesWithBlowTorch]

I don't know much about the big corporations in the States, but over here in Germany, it is actually rather common for CEOs of big technical firms (and, being Germany, most of our big companies are technology producers) to have an education in natural sciences or technology.

• The CEO of the national rail system, Hartmut Mehdorn, is a Mechanical Engineer.
• famously, Ron Sommer, the former CEO of Deutsche Telekom (think T-Mobile in the states) is a very gifted Mathematician.
• Dieter Zetsche, the CEO of Daimler Chrysler has a PhD in Engineering (hence "Dr. Z.").
• Ferdinan Piech, the head of Volkswagen, studied mechanical engineering in Zurich and is a grandson of the archetype of the German Engineer, Ferdinand Porsche (who, before anyone corrects me, was, arguably, Czech, Austrian or German).
• Speaking of which, the CEO of Porsche, Wendelin Wiedeking has a PhD in Mechanical Engineering.

The list continues for companies like the chemistry and pharma giant BASF (Jürgen Hambrecht, a chemist), SAP (all its founders, Hasso Plattner, Hans-Werner Hector, Klaus Tschira and Dietmar Hopp are either Physicists or Mathematicians), ThyssenKrupp (Ekkehard Schulz, a mining engineer), Robert Bosch Inc. (Hermann Scholl, an electrical engineer) and so on. Bear in mind we're not talking about people who directed their companies as startups like Microsoft or Apple, but CEOs of companies who already where global players before they joined (or were even born).
So, although these people probably qualify more as "leaders" than as managers, it is obviously possible to be a good techie and run a big company at the same time.

Re:Anecdote

[TapeCutter]

A senior manager who wants a genuine estimate would ask the technical lead for it, but large consultancies often don't care about the team leaders reality. More often than not their budgets are designed to spend $X in time 'T' with 'P' people to get to stage 'S'. From this they expect to make back $X + $X1, similar financial practices are used to build things as diverse as houses and battleships.

With large consultancies (or incestous corporate "partnerships") your project is often part of a multi-million dollar contract that basically says "we will look after your IT needs for five years in return for skimming the cream from your expenditure", for the deal to work the money MUST be spent in such a way that it lasts five years. From memory, the ideal "estimate" for a project comes in at -5% to +15% of the "real cost", ouside of that range too often and the PM is out of that nice corner office. This leads to the bizzare situations I have witnessed where one executive gets into deep shit for saving millions in costs and another gets a fat bonus for shuffling account numbers and playing solitaire.

I used quotes for "real costs" since the "real" part is only in the minds of accountants. Even the PM's I have admired would spend a considerable amount of time shuffling account numbers to ensure their projects come within the acceptable range regardless of reality. Without all this accounting bullshit a large chunk of the population could be doing something more usefull, OTOH, without it we wouldn't have built the pyramids in the first place.

You don't manage engineers - you lead them

[bwanagary]

Techies do not respect "managers" who are not at least as smart as they are. A manager who knows what questions to ask, and where to drill down, is a valuable asset to the organization and mentor to the team he leads. A manager that could, if need be, sit down at a keyboard, help the team debug, troubleshoot, brainstorm, and even code a problem that the team is struggling with is priceless. The team will follow him to the ends of the earth. As long as the manager isn't on an ego trip. Its about the team. This technical manager, with humility and servant-leadership doubles a team's value for the employer and the personal and professional development of the individuals that comprise it.

Doubt that? I am no "Apple Groupie" (I'm a *nix head), but you need to look no further than Steve Jobs for living proof of its power.
Thanks for listening.
G

For what its worth...

[anubi]

Since this forum is about one's experiences with managers, I'll post mine. This is for what its worth, likely redundant.

My most memorable experience in engineering came upon joining a group of people, all very techie, who were a group of radio amateurs doing what they liked to do - namely - tinkering with RF.

It was a helluva "job", if you can call it that. "Lifestyle" was more the word for me.

It was the kind of thing you couldn't wait to get to the lab. I bought my house really close so I could minimize the time I had to do such nuisance things like eating or sleeping. All my "toys" were at the lab. The house was more like somewhere I went when I had to go to sleep. I would have gladly slept at the lab if there were somewhere to do it. Yeh - true-blue nerd. I was just as addicted to my RF toys as gamers are to games.

I had the best boss imaginable. A wizard of all things. That guy knew everything. But he just had one set of hands and that was a severe limition to him. I'd gladly be his hands if he would just show me how all this stuff worked. He had a really uncanny understanding of how stuff worked. I almost say I had religious experiences just talking to this guy. Its just the way he could explain fields and energy flows in such a graphical nature.

A big corporation bought us out one day.

They brought in their Masters of Business Degree managers, well schooled in the motivational theories and executive management skills, but didn't know much of a damn about how anything worked. Working for them was hell.

I soon found I anxiously awaited going-home time and weekends. I soon found why they called it "work". It wasn't fun anymore. It was hell.

I found myself surrounded by people making far more money than anyone I had ever seen make, yet they were completely ignorant of what we did. Only thing they seemed to care about were schedules and what software and tools we were going to be allowed to use. They set themselves up with altars and the rest of us now had the onus of paying homage to these altars, telling the holy priests of the altar what they wanted to hear, or we would be excommunicated as "not being a team player". The old paradigms of knowing what one was doing did not seem germane anymore. We were just supposed to "point and click". A lot of us had to go. I was financially insecure, so I hung on a bit longer and got laid off.

I see two schools of thought here. Whether one aligns himself with the ability to do or the ability to control.

I guess its like supplying water to a city....are you a pump or a valve?

Companies with an overabundance of creativity may want to throttle it back by hiring people to tell the creative people that they can't use the tools they like.

Newly forming companies may want to open the creativity spigots wide open and clear our all obstructions to generate the most possible throughput.

Its a cycle seen in all of nature - things get old, and are replaced with new things. Millions of seedlings are nourished by the rot of one big dead tree.

I am quite aware that quite a few very innovative companies arose from our "corpse".

I am of the belief that in younger growing companies, the manager is a mentor, that can do everything, yet due to time constraints, has to bring in more hands to do the work, and he personally mentors them.

In larger, more mature companies, which do not need the growth, the manager does not need to know what the people do. By now, its a commodity thing, he just has to look at numbers. Who can make the cheapest aspirin...