Yes. If a doctor is working in a hospital, there are most certainly managers. Obviously not "technical" managers in that they're doctors themselves or the doctor's "boss" but in that there are managers who are co-ordinating workforce, priorities, staffing, supplies etc etc. This is very much a thing and is more broad than engineering managers but is an incredibly important task so the daily admin work does not come to a doctor who is probably prioritising saving lives and helping people
> The 'communicate with customers' nonsense is delegated to lower-paid clerical staff, not 'managers.'
This is incredibly demeaning of people in hospitals who actually have to do these jobs. There's a massive amount of work required here and it is by no means "clerical". When "customers" literally have their lives in a doctor's hands, the complexity increases hundredfold. There's legal sensitivities, paperwork, spending, collections and so much more stuff involved and this is not even counting the kinds of things they need to do which involves interfacing with patients and their kin about sensitive matters. This is not simply "admin work". This is critical, life saving stuff
Instead they have to force doctors to break bad news to patients' relatives or do it themselves, get signatures from both parties for procedures, coordinate in/out patient streams, listen to doctors demand equipment and medicines and face upper management denying them their requests and tons of other such bullshit. Medical insurance and its intricacies is a whole big ball game that they have to constantly play with so that's fun
People who have a high level view can direct the folks down in the trenches quite productively.
This shouldn't be middle managers. technical leader is better for that or most senior on the team. An actual leader on the team.
Maybe some places. In the US, most doctors are independent providers for hospitals, they don't have a traditional 'manager'. Outside of a hospital setting, this is also true.
> This is not simply "admin work". This is critical, life saving stuff
It may be, but it's lower skill work delegated to people that are subordinate to doctors, not their managers.
You are putting a round peg in a square hole. As I already stated, these are not the kind of managers we see in development where your manager is your "boss". Even as independent providers, doctors will have someone they are interfacing with who will see to the admin and other work so they are focused on medicine. Less than half of all practicing doctors in hospitals in the US are independent. Most of them are employed by the hospital. You are grievously misunderstanding the role of the "manager" here. There are certainly far fewer managers in independently practicing medical facilities like clinics but that's because the volume is far lower and the doctors themselves wear many hats
> but it's lower skill work delegated to people that are subordinate to doctors
Again, this is very insulting to the people working these roles. They are not "subordinate" and the work in not "low skill". These are parallel roles to doctors. Leaving this kind of work to doctors would result in a failure of the medical profession in its entirety because of the sheer volume and sensitivity of it
We're talking about the kind of managers software engineers have. Doctors don't have those kind of managers, that's entirely my point.
> Again, this is very insulting to the people working these roles. They are not "subordinate".
They are definitely subordinate in any patient-care scenario. Anyway, I feel like you're missing the point of the analogy, analogies aren't perfect, and you know well what I meant.
If you want to argue lawyers and doctors have managers, fine, give engineers that kind of a manager. IMO, these are subordinate clerical people.
Your analogy is bad only because you have no idea what you're talking about. Technical people need managers because technical people will do things other than their actual jobs and I say this very frankly as a developer. It is remarkable how similar doctors and engineers can be in that they are lost if left to their own devices. Just as an experienced engineer will wear many hats and can manage themselves, experienced doctors also successfully set up their own practices where they can manage themselves. But a good hospital manager can literally save and change lives
Many lawyers do work on separate projects: Alice drafts my will, Bob handles your divorce, etc. Since these can usually proceed independently, there's not much to manage. However, bigger cases/projects usually do have a structure: someone, perhaps a partner, interacts with the client, develops a strategy, and delegates its implementation to associates.
Likewise, the doctor who manages your blood pressure in a private practice is fairly independent. On the other hand, hospitals, especially teaching ones, often incredibly hierarchical, with med students at the bottom and layers of interns, residents, chief residents, fellows, and attending, with a department chair on top. Attendings can treat patients individually, but they also oversee the work of the more junior staff; they're even called "supervising physicians" in some places.
If any project has more than a few people, I'm not sure how a "team" can proceed without at least a de facto organize/leader, and if that leader spends most of their time leading....well, that's a manager.
A partner in a law firm, who oversees a large case, is a lawyer. A doctor overseeing med students, etc. is .. a doctor.
These are competence and seniority hierarchies. That is very often not the case for eng. managers (and so inherently more dubious and less useful).
Try telling a surgeon, that his new supervisor is basically a glorified clerk, who will tell him what to do and in what timeframe. Having worked with doctors, I can vividly imagine a hilarious scene.
This is from a 20 year dev who's spent a few of those in management, but enjoys development more.
> frankly just don’t have any idea what the job is for
We know what the job is for, but maybe there's no actual value there.
Do doctors have managers? Do lawyers have managers? No, they might report to some administrative body, but they mostly work on contract or in teams. The 'communicate with customers' nonsense is delegated to lower-paid clerical staff, not 'managers.'
What engineers need is low-level clerical people to handle the day to day comms with others outside the org. We don't need managers, unskilled labor needs managers.