I am beyond sick of this type of sentiment: "Because a non-technical person in a technical role is going to be ineffective helping that team grow as a technical team." There is plenty of evidence of *technical managers* not helping their team grow as a technical team. My assertion is technical skills of the manager are uncorrelated to team effectiveness and team growth, technical or otherwise. What we need to be talking about is effective management, not "technical skills" or having managers do coding tasks. Effective management has always been a degree or more decoupled from the actual work.
To be clear, managers must be deeply engaged, informed, and savvy about the work they are managing. Don't @ me with stories of ignorant managers. There is a vast spectrum between ignorant managers and I-used-to-be-a-coder managers, and many in the balance can be very effective. A manager can deeply understand the process of effective engineering by observing and listening to different engineers and developers over a period of time. A manager can absorb the engineers' assertions on what is hard, why it's hard, and can co-create solutions with them. Highly technical managers may have a leg up when starting as a manager, but a dedicated, engaged, critical thinking "non-technical" manager can rapidly close that gap. I have seen far more ineffective "technical managers" than "non-technical managers." And don't get me started about what "non-technical" even means. Lastly, I will leave here this oldie-but-goodie on glue work and why "non-technical" skills are critical--especially at the manager level https://noidea.dog/glue enjoy!
I agree with you. It comes down to what the team actually needs to grow, and most of the time its not a "super tech lead". Its about understanding the needs of the organization, the priorities, and how the team and continue to drive impact. This is a skill that the used-to-be-coder managers tend to lack. It all comes down to what are you trying to optimize for and how do you want your organization to operate. To be successful you really need someone to understand the politics but also be able to sympathize and understand the technical problems from the team as well. Its a hard balance that a lot of people cant seem to find.
I am beyond sick of this type of sentiment: "Because a non-technical person in a technical role is going to be ineffective helping that team grow as a technical team." There is plenty of evidence of *technical managers* not helping their team grow as a technical team. My assertion is technical skills of the manager are uncorrelated to team effectiveness and team growth, technical or otherwise. What we need to be talking about is effective management, not "technical skills" or having managers do coding tasks. Effective management has always been a degree or more decoupled from the actual work.
To be clear, managers must be deeply engaged, informed, and savvy about the work they are managing. Don't @ me with stories of ignorant managers. There is a vast spectrum between ignorant managers and I-used-to-be-a-coder managers, and many in the balance can be very effective. A manager can deeply understand the process of effective engineering by observing and listening to different engineers and developers over a period of time. A manager can absorb the engineers' assertions on what is hard, why it's hard, and can co-create solutions with them. Highly technical managers may have a leg up when starting as a manager, but a dedicated, engaged, critical thinking "non-technical" manager can rapidly close that gap. I have seen far more ineffective "technical managers" than "non-technical managers." And don't get me started about what "non-technical" even means. Lastly, I will leave here this oldie-but-goodie on glue work and why "non-technical" skills are critical--especially at the manager level https://noidea.dog/glue enjoy!
I agree with you. It comes down to what the team actually needs to grow, and most of the time its not a "super tech lead". Its about understanding the needs of the organization, the priorities, and how the team and continue to drive impact. This is a skill that the used-to-be-coder managers tend to lack. It all comes down to what are you trying to optimize for and how do you want your organization to operate. To be successful you really need someone to understand the politics but also be able to sympathize and understand the technical problems from the team as well. Its a hard balance that a lot of people cant seem to find.
Thanks for the awesome comment!