We live in a society with a lot of specialization. If you stop and reflect you will see that it is fundamentally impossible to have people all of the way up who know more than the people they manage. Were that possible then the CEO would have to know as much as the whole company!

That isn't realistically going to happen in any company of reasonable size.

Yeah, it is nice when your manager understands your needs. But it isn't going to always happen, and when it doesn't you have to live. That is when it is important to know how to communicate with them and vice versa. You have needs. They don't need to know how to do your job if they know enough to understand your requirements.

However personally I would prefer a capable manager who did not understand programming to a capable programmer who did not understand managing. Managing people well is a subject in its own right. And not a particularly easy one. To get some sense of how much there is to know it is worth turning on JavaScript and skimming some articles by Jim Collins. (I recommend the article on Level 5 leadership as a good sample.)

Now this is not to say that there are not special concerns with managing software development. Of course there are. And it is good for developers to be aware of what some of them are. (Starting with The Mythical Man-Month and working onwards.) But it can be done with a non-developer at the helm - if it is the right non-developer. And it can fail drastically with a developer at the helm if they don't know anything about management.

So ask yourself, is your manager competent? Does your manager appreciate that you are bringing specific expertise to the table that deserves to be listened to? Do you appreciate that there is more to successful development and running a business than just producing good software? What are your working conditions like? Does the company use standard good development practices like version control? Can you talk to your manager about personal issues?

The answers to these questions are likely to be more relevant than the detail of whether your manager has done your job in the past...

In reply to Re (tilly) 1: OT: Tech Managers vs. Non-tech Managers.. by tilly
in thread OT: Tech Managers vs. Non-tech Managers.. by LD2

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.