That's true. It's also the case that, if you polled people here, you'd find no shortage of people with zero respect for managers without technical backgrounds.
> I wished many times that they just hired people with management skills from some field completely outside of science, a manager doesn't really need to know the intricacies of the work to do their job well.
Having been there too, I feel like this is another recipe for disaster. Technical management needs to be able to make calls on escalations — that's in fact one of their main jobs — and when they don't have the depth of knowledge to make the call on merit, they make it on rash impulse, or favoritism, or (perhaps worst of all) don't make the call and let issues fester.
Re:How a startup loses its spark
by mattkrause on Saturday August 12, 2023 @02:22PM
(#37102833)
> I've seen this in science as well.
Academic science is pretty much designed this way.
You get a faculty job based on your brilliant work as an IC (i.e., first author papers) but running a research group is a totally different skill set—-and often one people get very little training for.
My last industry job saw the company implode from this cycle as everyone got pissed off and left the company. My old ex co-worker sent me a letter from the CEO last week saying layoffs were starting because revenues were down and they keep losing clients...