能干经理、平庸经理、以及工程师

On good managers, mediocre managers and engineers

It's always interesting to debate about good managers, mediocre managers and engineers. I was involved in such a debate some time ago. The following excerpts keep the record of my points of view:

wave.forest

Good managers are rare now because the stereotyping of the society discourage a technical guru to take on a managerial role. Imagine in an engineering department, if the head of department does not know much of the engineering projects, it’ll be very hard for him/her to manage projects efficiently. A sharp technical manager with good managerial skills can foresee potential risks and take action early. A mediocre manager, on the other hand, is scared of taking any responsibility and has to exercise his/her “managerial skills” or political means to cover up his/her ignorance. This actually causes many other issues in a department such as teamwork, trust and so on. "The only way to finish sooner is to start sooner." is true when the project is managed by a sharp techy manager. It may be a death-march project if it is in a mediocre one’s hands.

Sheetal.Pandey

well said.. actually project management is an art and not all are good at it. It involves taking decisions and lots of multitasking.

Frank Eory

In defense of managers, sometimes the difficulty in managing risk and taking early action is not an issue of capability, but a lack of authority. Only the person with budgetary and resource allocation authority can take action -- all those other managers who report to him or her can only make recommendations. Sometimes the "big boss" will follow those recommendations and sometimes not...and usually for good reasons.

I think one of the toughest management decisions is to kill a project in which the organization has already made an investment. But some projects do need to be killed rather than completed.

wave.forest

You are correct in terms of decision making. It is very true for those "front-line" managers who are constrained by many factors. I think the discussion here is about on normal circumstances, why some managers succeed but some fail.

One thing I’ve noticed is that a front-line manager shall be able to dissect a given complex task into small operable modules, maybe with his/her senior engineers’ help, to allow his/her team to complete the task under given budget. He/she also is able to convince his/her management to allocate enough resource to support this task. This kind of managers is very rare now. Most of managers, who engineers are dealing with daily, do not have such capability. They either over-commit or are very unrealistic. Worse, some of them exploit their teams for their personal gains. This seems the cause of many problems.

Bob Lacovara

Good managers are rare for this reason: they are rare. The skills involved in managing a group of engineers: eccentric, individualistic, driven, impatient, egocentric, and sometimes just plain old neurotic are not common. Engineers work towards mitigating technical risk; managers mitigate schedule and economic risk. Naturally, these two drives don't always run in parallel. I've had a number of pretty good managers; one superb manager, and a handful of real losers. You try to avoid the losers, and work for the better guys: when you can. I don't know that educational programs can make good managers any better than engineering courses can make good designers: in each case, I think you have to have the right set of innate skills and inclinations.

wave.forest

hahaha ... Well said on engineers! Can't agree more!