Tech Expertise Not Important In Google Managers 298
Hugh Pickens writes "For much of its 13-year history, Google has taken a pretty simple approach to management: Leave people alone but if employees become stuck, they should ask their bosses, whose deep technical expertise propelled them into management in the first place. Now the Economic Times reports that statisticians at Google looking for characteristics that define good managers have gathered more than 10,000 observations about managers — across more than 100 variables, from various performance reviews, feedback surveys and other reports and found that technical expertise ranks dead last among Google's eight most important characteristics of good managers. What Google employees value most are even-keeled bosses who made time for one-on-one meetings, who helped people puzzle through problems by asking questions, not dictating answers, and who took an interest in employees' lives and careers."
So people skills win again... (Score:2, Insightful)
No shit (Score:5, Insightful)
News Flash: Non-Autistic spectrum people better at dealing with people!
Be honest with yourselves Slashdot - would you *really* want the average slashdot commenter managing *you*? An autocrat who only can see things in black or white and cannot work with other people - well, that is last on my list of wanted bosses.
Also, I would not want to be "modded down" in the workplace for my political views. Slashdot people love free speech - as long as it agrees with theirs.
Duh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, yes. Being a good manager is like being a good engineer--you help people solve problems they come across, encourage good work, discourage shirking by inspiration and competitiveness more than by punishment and threats of recrimination, etc...
It's good to have an expert to go to when I have a problem. It's better to have someone who knows ten experts and can understand or walk through the general problem.
Re:So people skills win again... (Score:3, Insightful)
most of the time I wish this wasn't true.
The real trick is to fhttp://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/03/13/1856240/Tech-Expertise-Not-Important-In-Google-Managers?from=fb#ind someone technically skill who is also good with people. Admittedly this is a very rare combination.
I hate people who are good at handling people (Score:4, Insightful)
Be honest with yourselves Slashdot - would you *really* want the average slashdot commenter managing *you*? An autocrat who only can see things in black or white and cannot work with other people - well, that is last on my list of wanted bosses.
I've worked with both kinds, and I'd rather have a boss that understand how the business works than a boss who has a great ability to manipulate people.
The absolutely worst type of boss is one who's always demanding I do something in the most ineffective way because that's the consensus that was reached by everyone in the meeting, a meeting where no one understood what it's all about but a smooth talker convinced everyone that it must be done that way.
The best kind of boss is one that was promoted due to his technical skills and hates managing people, so he lets everyone work the way they know how to.
Huh? you think successful teams just happen? (Score:5, Insightful)
The biggest problem is that you can't test for management skills. Either you have it or you don't. It doesn't appear to be something you can take a class in, or get a qualification in. Even worse: it doesn't show up at interview. It does appear to grow (or sometimes diminish) with experience: a poor manager can grow into a half-decent one, given the right supervision and advice (presuming they're willing to take advice) but you can't measure it or compare two managers to see which one's best - not without extensive and time consuming field trials.
So if you find a good one, keep hold of them.
The hardest transition (Score:4, Insightful)
You're in luck (Score:3, Insightful)
You're in luck. This is another case of #statisticsfail.
If all of their managers are selected to have deep technical expertise, it isn't going to correlate with success any more than "having two ears" will. This is a well known phenomenon called "sample bias" and is dearly beloved by everyone who wants to lie with statistics.
-- MarkusQ
Re:Huh? you think successful teams just happen? (Score:3, Insightful)
There is no surplus of good technical people and there is no surplus of good managers. You can test for both skills (what do you think Google is doing? and both categories have their fair share of posers. Both skills are necessary for success. The only difference is that managers set the salaries of both groups, because people with people skills will always rise above other people. That's also why techs get fired when they screw up and managers get a promotion if their mistakes become evident late enough (or the golden parachute otherwise). THAT's why techs don't like that people skills are so highly valued.
Good Coaching (Score:5, Insightful)
Essentially what is being described in the article is good coaching. A good coach doesn't necessarily have the skills or abilities of a star athlete, but he knows how to manage his players to get the best performance out of them. The best manager I ever worked for summed it up in one glorious line: "You're the expert, that's why I hired you." He would basically tell us what he needed done, and then would get out of our way so we could do it. He was technically savvy enough to understand the basics of what we were trying to do, so we could discuss a given project with him if we were stuck. He would simply ask questions on various aspects until we began to bring light on why things were stuck. He also had a great attitude that went with "Do what it takes to get the job done." As long as we were getting the work done, he had no problems with us sitting around and shooting the breeze when things were slow. To be quite frank, some of the best ideas that went on to become products came out of those bullshit sessions. For the record, his background was Marketing.
Another company where I was employed, Lechmere, originally had a great management style. The mantra of managers was, "It's my job to manage the environment in which you make money for the company." The company was doing great. So well, that a buyer popped up and bought them. Well, the new management's mantra was, "You are mindless, idiot drones are a bunch of pions who are only good enough for boxing or selling the crap this company sells, and you clearly aren't as qualified as we are—being MBAs—for the pittance we are paying you." That company is now out of business. They went out of business after two years of doing everything they could to get rid of long term employees with expertise whom they thought were overpaid. By the time they were done with the company, it was so worthless it wasn't even worth trying to sell it—not that they could have found any buyers for it. If anyone came to my company and their resume showed they had mid- or upper-level management experience with Lechmere, I would drop their resume into the shredder.
Just a little bit of history repeating (Score:4, Insightful)
You could be commenting on the culture change at DEC after Ken Olsen or hp after Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard.
Re:Division of labour. (Score:5, Insightful)
"At best they're coordinating things so that the employees can focus as much on production as possible."
Managers exist to ensure employees work cooperatively instead of chaotically following their own whims. Managers exist to ensure the cooperative work being performed is on track with corporate expectations. Managers exist to ensure that expectations are reasonable so that deliverables can actually be delivered. In a perfect world, they also do what they can to ensure the people they manage are happy, not just because that's better for the bottom line, but because they're decent human beings.
I mean, it's RIGHT THERE IN THE NAME - they 'manage' resources. They are useful and necessary on any sizeable task.
Re:I hate people who are good at handling people (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why don't they just google for an answer? (Score:5, Insightful)
Google is known for hiring very smart, very technical people, then abusing and humiliating them
You've posted something similar a few times in this story, but that doesn't reflect my experiences with them. Admittedly, I've not worked there, but I know a few people that do and I've visited their London and Zurich offices a few times. I'd definitely say that Google has problems, but those are not the ones that I've seen. Their biggest problem is that their hiring process is focussed entirely on finding people who are good at solving problems, but doesn't find enough people who are good at determining which problems are worth solving. Their second problem is that they're falling into the same trap as Netscape, and hiring people who are there because it's a great place to work, not because they want to build something exciting. Netscape and Google both started with employees from the second category, but gradually became filled with ones from the first. We all know what happened to Netscape after that...
There are no pointy-haired bosses at Google (Score:5, Insightful)
What everyone seems to be forgetting is that this is Google's data. What I mean by that is that the data does not even remotely imply that you do not need technical expertise to be a good manager. All of the managers at Google had good technical expertise, or they wouldn't have gotten there (because, remember, Google valued technical expertise in their managers). There are no pointy-haired bosses at Google.
What the data is really saying is that after you have passed a threshold level of technical competence, how you manage becomes more important than how good you are at coding. In other words, if you're technically competent enough to apprehend what's going on and make informed decisions, it matters more what decisions you make and how you arrive at those decisions, not that you're the best coder in the room.
How is that surprising? As soon as you start hiring hundreds of pointy-haired bosses, then the data will rank technical competence as the first priority. The data is only a reflection of existing conditions. People are saying, "technical competence is good enough, but here's what isn't". Don't take this as a sign that technical competence is not important.
Misleading Headline (Score:5, Insightful)
If technical expertise is the 8th most important among a large number of traits, it is hardly "not important". It is, well, one of the most important.
Leaders, managers and clerks. (Score:5, Insightful)
I wasn't in the Navy. I was in the Army. Same basis, different implementation.
The problem in the corporate world is primarily semantic.
Everyone wants to be called a "leader". Even when the situation requires a competent clerk.
1. Leaders will lead you into new fields.
2. Managers will make manage the people, equipment and time to achieve the goals of the leader (or the manager above them).
3. Clerks process the paperwork needed to acquire the people and equipment requested by the managers.
4. And then you have the individuals (aka "the talent").
A task that requires a competent clerk will be a complete mess when handled by a competent leader with a deficiency in clerk skills.
On the other hand, an extremely capable clerk can perform almost as well as a competent manager.
Too often, corporations claim "leardership" by trying to "manage" through emphasizing paperwork (clerk skills) and records.
My corporate experiences (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll probably piss off a lot of management types, but this is what I observed my during years working with corporate IT America. The pure management types are almost viral in corporate culture. Once you get enough of them, they tend to take over because much of the office politicking, style over substance brand of leadership gets you moved up bigger, faster, and longer. As long as a company has enough gearheads in leadership positions to call BS on John "Paradigm for technology change" Doe, you can keep the ship on the right course. But, once a company goes public, you're now dealing with the pressure of PR over performance which behooves CEOs to recruit more slick salesmen in suits than bureaucrats.
It's just like politics. A guy spewing easy-to-digest bumper sticker slogans gets his point across (however inaccurate it might be) faster than a guy trying to explain the issue to you in depth. The slick sales type who knows how to schmooze with the execs at the holiday party puts himself in a better light than Mary Busybee down in networking who actually *knows* how to best upgrade your servers. Look at how many worthless CEOs in the mold of Carly Fiorina there are endless being promoted up regardless of failure (including one recent President, ahem!).
And, it's a stereotype that techies are a bunch of socially-underdeveloped goofballs. Look at all the techie founders who've turned over billion-dollar enterprises to the suits after they cash in. It's a cultural problem. We've somehow lost the patience to listen long enough for the right answer instead of the easiest answer.