If your manager has no power to decide what you work on, who gets promoted, what deadlines you should have, who is to blame when things go wrong, who to fire etc, then sure he doesn't need to be technical. Otherwise he will just promote and listen to the popular guys and fire the unpopular ones.

Maybe he might, but she might not.

If that was truly the case, then why do so many engineers complain about having a non-technical manager? Thinking that a manager does not need even a little bit of domain knowledge is something managers tell themselves to feel good about themselves, but it is not actually true.

Both the people part _AND_ the technical parts are the hard parts of technical management.

Thanks for some sanity.

Of course some domain knowledge is needed.

My anecdotal experience with manager is either : they are useless and will rubber stamps things. Or they are actually involved, then, you want someone that has a vague idea of the process of doing the work. I vastly prefer someone who has produced code at some point. It’s fine if it was 10 years ago the last time it happen.

Tech lead vs manager. A manager isn’t managing tech. It’s people and process. Classic HN. I am not saying they shouldn’t have domain knowledge. That would be silly wouldn’t it. You know, context and all that.

They need to build and facilitate a team to be run by itself and arbitrate on difficult decisions, sell team, etc, etc.

Engineers complain about everything

That has been a divide I've experienced between senior devs and tech leads vs product owners and managers who were not technical. The former tend to be pessimistic and the latter optimistic.

It's easy to say that something that seems simple when explained in simple terms is easy or quick to implement, but the people 'at the coal face' are often all too aware of the implicit complications of the task.

If you’re a manager and not technical you’re not going to understand what your people are doing, you’re only going to understand what they tell you.

Also, you’re going to be manipulated and hoodwinked by the managers around you who are technical.

Lastly, the engineers you’re managing are going to laugh at you behind your back.

I’ve seen all of this happen before.

You are talking about a bad manager. Not a good one.

Hmm, am I writing posts in my sleep?