Re:Soft Skills in Engineering Leadership
by thdc on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @11:51AM
(#26168476)
My last engineering manager came from a technical background but ended up being a people manager after a decade of managerial duties.
He was a nice guy but useless in that he could not relate with problems the engineers were experiencing and advocate time to fix them - kind of like a black hole for complaints. Engineers by themselves had virtually no say in what they actually worked on here.
This, coupled with a non-technical PM, meant we were constantly adding features on top of a weak foundation which created plenty of fires. And for each fire we were only given time to wave away the smoke rather than put out the fire.
So I'd agree having true empathy and being able to act on it is important for managers - they don't necessarily need to code but they still need enough technical experience to fully relate to what the engineers are doing.
He was a nice guy but useless in that he could not relate with problems the engineers were experiencing and advocate time to fix them - kind of like a black hole for complaints. Engineers by themselves had virtually no say in what they actually worked on here.
This, coupled with a non-technical PM, meant we were constantly adding features on top of a weak foundation which created plenty of fires. And for each fire we were only given time to wave away the smoke rather than put out the fire.
So I'd agree having true empathy and being able to act on it is important for managers - they don't necessarily need to code but they still need enough technical experience to fully relate to what the engineers are doing.