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The Case Against Non-technical Managers

Posted by samzenpus on from the do-you-know-what-we-do-here? dept.

Kelerei writes: Lorraine Steyn, owner of a small software development company in Cape Town, has published an opinion piece that may hit too close to home for some: making a case against non-technical managers. She writes about the all too common disconnect between IT staff and the boardroom table and states that 'one of the ways to solve this, is to bring managers closer to the coal face. Technical training programs are critical for your development team to keep apace with change, and investing the time for IT management to do the training too can pay dividends... [if a manager feels he doesn't] have enough time to get that close to the detail of what your department does, think about whether you would appoint a non-financial manager to handle your money'.

13 of 152 comments (clear)

  1. It's not just IT by Duckman5 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I work in pharmacy and I can't tell you the number of people over me who aren't even certified as a pharmacy technician. They either came up through the retail division or through some MBA pathway and they sit there and make decisions about how a retail pharmacy should run without having worked in any sort of pharmacy. It's how you get stupid stuff like a 15 minute guarantee that prioritizes speed over patient safety.
    It's difficult because the executives at the top don't understand why it's a problem. How are you supposed to bring your issues to someone who has no idea how those issues impact your daily life? I mean, how long does it take to put a sticker on a bottle and fill it with pills? I can imagine it's the same in IT. In a previous life I'd fallen into a couple of IT positions (by virtue of "knowing computers" better than the other people at the small business) and trying to explain security to them is like trying to explain an egg shell to a brick wall. I can only imagine what IT people in a dedicated department must go through trying to justify themselves to 20 layers of management. Good luck.

    1. Re:It's not just IT by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I can only imagine what IT people in a dedicated department must go through trying to justify themselves to 20 layers of management.

      The path of least resistance is to change jobs while still employed. Maybe 20 layers of management can get a clue by the high turnover in the I.T. department. Or maybe not. Great I.T. techs walk in the face of insurmountable B.S., leaving behind the lousy I.T. techs who should be wearing red shirts.

    2. Re: It's not just IT by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      How about an example with Mechanical Engineers? I've had both technical and non-technical managers. In both cases I've had good luck and bad luck. A good manager doesn't have to be a technical person, they have to listen to their subordinates. When you tell your manager that something can't be reasonably fine or shouldn't be done their job requires them to listen to the technical experts on the project. No one person can be an expert on the whole project, so you might get a guy that is a good medical engineer, but no experience in industrial design.

      In my opinion, a good manger is one who knows he isn't the expert. Listen to your people. A technical guy full of preconceptions of how things should be done is a huge hindrance. While a non-technical guy that can bring multiple ideas together and just make a decision, at the end if the day, is invaluable to a project.

    3. Re:It's not just IT by Njorthbiatr · · Score: 4, Informative

      You're about half-right.

      A noncertified tech does as you describe, but these people don't touch pills at all.

      A certified technician has to pass an exam. You've got to know more than how to read labels, since they're the ones often filling prescriptions. It's important they know how drugs work, their mechanism for action, the routes of administration, not to mention the test requires you to memorize around 200 of the top drugs used (and all of their properties, naturally). Some pharmacy techs do not even work in a retail pharmacy and will be preparing IV and other kinds of medication in a more laboratory like setting in a hospital (or otherwise).

      It's far from the unskilled labor you're making it out to be. A lot of people even go to school to become a pharmacy tech.

    4. Re: It's not just IT by NeoMorphy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There are a couple of problems with that.

      A company, especially a large one, would have multiple levels of management. A vice president has meeting with his directors, they can't answer until they talk to their direct reports who can't answer until they talk to their direct reports who actually know something. You end up with high latency for even simple topics.

      If the intermediate managers have no technical background, you will end up with a grapevine effect. If you don't understand what you are getting from your direct reports how can you effectively write it down in preparation for the upcoming meeting?

      "The application has a high turn rate and the high latency on the network is causing it to be slow"

      "He said the network was too slow."

      "I was told that we doubled the bandwidth on the network. What are you talking about?

      "Upper management said it can't be the network, they had the bandwidth doubled."

      "It's not a bandwidth problem, it's a high latency problem.

      "I don't understand. Should we have networking check to see if there is a problem with the network? I''l setup a meeting with the networking group."

      They have to understand the technology, otherwise the grapevine effect will kill you. The bigger the company, the worse it will get.

      Finally, if you have multiple direct reports, how do you resolve a conflict of ideas when you have no idea what they are talking about? Put it to a vote? An experienced manager with a technical background would be able to ask the right questions to determine the pros and cons of each idea.

    5. Re: It's not just IT by mopower70 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      A good manager doesn't have to be a technical person, they have to listen to their subordinates. When you tell your manager that something can't be reasonably fine or shouldn't be done their job requires them to listen to the technical experts on the project.

      I've been on both sides of the managerial fence, and in my experience, you can't have one without the other. A good manager can't listen to their subordinates if they can't understand what they're hearing. It's like explaining color to a blind man. One of the primary responsibilities of a manager is communication. He or she has to be technically savvy enough to not only understand the decisions his direct reports are making, but be able to translate those decisions into the appropriate level of technical detail to the people he or she reports to. And that coin has two sides: a manager must also have enough business savvy to understand the decisions of his superiors and be able to translate them to his direct reports.

      A manager who makes decisions on the say-so of his subordinates without being technically conversant enough to actually understand and explain why it's a good decision, isn't a manager at all: she's a proxy. The same goes for a manager who just tells his reports what to do without understanding why his own managers want him to do it.

    6. Re: It's not just IT by chipschap · · Score: 5, Insightful

      When I was managing multiple groups and couldn't possibly understand everything about everything that everyone did, I handled the "grapevine" problem in a very simple way. When I had a meeting with my bosses, I brought along the person on staff who knew the topic. Sometimes I had to do a little coaching, reminding them that the next level up really had no background in his or her area, but it nearly always worked out and we avoided the delays and miscommunications otherwise encountered.

      Generally, the staffer liked the idea of being trusted and getting positive exposure with executive management. And in giving a voice and giving credit to the people who actually knew the topic, I definitely looked good in front of my bosses. It was almost always a win-win.

  2. Not just a technical management problem. by CraigCruden · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I see this as a wider problem, not just with managers.

    It is no different than the problem I have seen with many developers/programmers who are unwilling to learn (to the point of fighting it) the business that they are developing software for. Most developers develop software for some business other than for other developers and refusing to educate yourself about the business that you are developing for limits the usefulness of those resources.

    Similarly, Managers managing technical people should learn what they are managing - though they don't necessarily have to worry about the details of it. Of course the smaller the company the more knowledge technically that manager should have since there is less room for specialization.

  3. The are on both ends of the scale by Kjella · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The non-technical manager who understands his job is the best, they stay out of the decision-making while getting the necessary high level information they need.
    The technical manager who understands his job is second best, he can get too involved in low level design and decisions but overall he'll make sound decisions and play his part in office politics.
    The technical manager who doesn't understand his job can be a pretty terrible manager of budgets, estimates, schedules, deadlines and that short of thing but at least the results are technically sound. The non-technical manager who doesn't understand his job is absolutely worst. You get management by some silly theory with metrics that don't make sense and estimates that don't exist with the accuracy they want.

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  4. Case study: Volkswagon. by quintessencesluglord · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Does anyone believe that VW didn't have technical managers? In the end, did it really make a difference?

    I'd also argue requiring manager to come up from the ranks, while helpful in some respects, precludes the idea non-technical managers shouldn't have been attending bootcamps and the like in the first place. I'm expected to keep current in my field. Why should the bar be set so low for management not to learn about the department they are managing from day one?

    That this is even under discussion highlights how utterly worthless most management is.

    And in a even grander scheme of things, it makes me question the very notion of meritocracy. This is not the best and the brightest. This is barnacles on the engine of progress.

  5. Skip the whole Peter Principle by goodmanj · · Score: 3, Funny

    I think the logic is: thanks to the Peter Principle, managers will always be incompetent. So why not just hire incompetent people from the get-go?

  6. It depends on the state by Duckman5 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It depends on the state. Neither Ohio or PA required anything back in 2008 (not sure about now). Here in Florida, we just started registering the technicians a few years ago. Prior to that, there were national certifications like the ExCPT and the PTCB which could help you land a job (and hopefully get payed better) but was NOT required. You literally just had to have a high school diploma and some semblance of competence. Now you either got grandfathered in (with like 1000+ hours) or you complete a board approved training program (which can be completed on the job as long as it's done within 6 months of hire).
    But when I started many years ago as a pharmacy tech, I spent two days in a computer room doing training then I was counting pills and helping patients.
    You are right, however, about IV compounding. In most hospitals it's done by a tech. The FDA has gotten crazy strict about it lately after a lot of mishaps, so now you need to take a lot of training in USP 797 before they will even let you in the clean room.

  7. The problem lies in numbers by Kokuyo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    As others have mentioned, whether a manager is technically inclined or not doesn't have all that much impact on whether he's good.

    As a German psychologist and management trainer once said, most people either have people skills or organizational/technical skills. A good manager/boss needs both. And guess what, only about 10% of the population have an affinity for both.

    This basically means that for every nine employees, you can have only one manager! And since you usually have more than one layer of management, you need beyond nine people per lowest management body to make that cut. I don't know about the US but in Switzerland, we sometimes designate a teamleader to a two man team.

    There are just not enough competent people in existence to fill that many management roles. Simple as that. Simplify management structures. Use only those managers who actually can manage and weed out the donkey droppings. But seeing as, obviously, 50% of people are below average and some of those suck massively, that's going to be hard.