An interesting reply to the GP comment. I finished reading the GP and immediately thought "so how do you learn to effectively manage people with more experience than yourself?", and then I read this comment.

Hmm. I certainly don't want to end in the position of the manager you're referring to. I'm scared about/by the quantity of things I don't know, though, across the board, so there's that. (One of those things that are hard to sum up as good or bad, heh.)

I guess the worst-case I can think of right now, is ending up in a situation where I might think the 10% I know _is_ 100%, and the social dynamics make it difficult for those around me to show me otherwise without treading on my toes, even privately. I wonder how I might counter for situations like that.

My understanding of management is of owning a summarized, superset overview of a bunch of areas that I'm (ostensibly) coordinating. To do that effectively I need to be able to discern the difference between "implementational or otherwise safely 'losable' detail" and "piece of data I cannot effectively manage without" (literally).

This can be very tricky, especially as the analysis rules change per domain...

    > My understanding of management is of owning a summarized, 
    > superset overview of a bunch of areas that I'm (ostensibly)     
    > coordinating. 

I would most definitely agree with you. A manager doesn't need to have more "in the trenches" knowledge than those that report to them. In fact that's probably not even possible or even desirable. Most of my really good managers have been less technical than me.

    > Hmm. I certainly don't want to end in the position 
    > of the manager you're referring to. I'm scared 
    > about/by the quantity of things I don't know, though, 
    > across the board, so there's that. (One of those things 
    > that are hard to sum up as good or bad, heh.)

If you're concerned about it, that's probably an excellent sign that you'll do what it takes not to fall into that trap.

Actually I'll be really specific about the trap our manager fell into. It's SUPER avoidable. Here's what he did:

1. He or his management would present a problem or challenge

2. He would design a solution with his very incomplete knowledge, down to the technical details

3. He would break it up into tasks

4. He would assign those tasks to us

You can see the problem there. The people with the actual in-the-trenches knowledge were completely shut out of the design process and his solutions were often terrible.

Furthermore, WE were the ones made to look bad by this process. HIS management thought he was this uber-competant guy who could not only manage but architect solutions as well! And even break them up into little bite-sized chunks for the engineers to execute!

And WE looked like "negative nancies" who were like, slowing him down by pushing back against these solutions and tasks he handed out. He was like a poor general who was always getting his troops killed, that managed to convince the higher-ups that he was just constantly given bad troops or something.

His favorite retort was "well, what's your suggestion?" when we challenged his poorly thought-out solutions. And it was like... I don't know, Ben. I just got handed your shitty solution five seconds ago and you still haven't even told us what you're even trying to accomplish here. We haven't had three hours or three days or three weeks to come up ideas like you have.

Obviously, the process ought to have gone like this:

1. He or his management would present a problem or challenge

2. He should present the problem to his team, explaining the technical goals as well as how those goals fit into the big picture of the business

3. The team collectively should have designed and discussed possible solutions.

4a. Through that process he should have acted as advisor and sounding board. He should have recognized our greater domain knowledge.

4b. Of course, that street goes both ways. He should have recognized our greater experience and domain knowledge, but we should have also recognized the need for to prove the viability of our solutions to him before implementing them, just like we'd do with any manager regardless of relative age or experience -- the relationship would not work if we expected him to simply "take our word for it" because we we older or more experienced.

(Apologies for the delay - forgot that I hadn't replied!)

I think I now understand why micromanagement seems to be discussed so often with implied cringe. Ouch :/

It sounds like this person conflated coordination with (for want of better words) inspiration or direction. Or perhaps this person found their job, uh, insufficiently fulfilling and convinced themselves it would be okay to try and do something about this by being able to pat themselves on the back for the actual invention and inspiration process. Sounds like they unfortunately nailed looking like they knew what they were doing :/

I've read some sentiment on here to the effect that a good manager is the real catalyst to productivity and positivity. Perhaps the second level of good management is an accessible chain of busy but available ears - so weak links can be objectively identified and then fixed.

Of course, this is one of those mechanisms that only ever exists to convey bug reports - you implement it, suddenly the "problem report" count goes through the roof, with nothing else to counterbalance it. But I'd bet that if you tracked team productivity after said bug reports were followed up on... heheh (why does nobody do this ._.)

This is me right now. I'm on sabbatical while I work some stuff out, but I'll go back to that problem unless I leave the company. Most management is ~10 years younger than I am.