{"id":152795,"date":"2022-12-14T01:25:15","date_gmt":"2022-12-14T07:25:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/12\/hate-elon-musk-all-you-want-but-hes-got-one-management-trick-that-every-boss-should-emulate"},"modified":"2022-12-14T01:25:15","modified_gmt":"2022-12-14T07:25:15","slug":"hate-elon-musk-all-you-want-but-hes-got-one-management-trick-that-every-boss-should-emulate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/12\/hate-elon-musk-all-you-want-but-hes-got-one-management-trick-that-every-boss-should-emulate","title":{"rendered":"Hate Elon Musk all you want, but he\u2019s got one management trick that every boss should emulate"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Balancing management ability and technical expertise is an active debate in the software industry, where, depending on whom you ask, an engineering manager\u2019s interest or ability to code is dependent on whether the team is able to operate without<\/em> them. Scott Berkun, the author of \u201cMaking Things Happen: Mastering Project Management,\u201d told SD Times<\/a> he believed the two disciplines were somewhat oppositional: \u201cCoding requires intense uninterrupted concentration, while management requires dealing with constant interruptions and context switching.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing able to do both is not something that a lot of people can do in practice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Berkun isn\u2019t wrong \u2014 the incredible focus and discipline one must have to constantly write, test, <\/em>and execute code in production are very different attributes to those of a manager. And just because someone is a high-performing employee doesn\u2019t mean they can or should become a manager. Being in charge of employees is a unique skill that requires its own form of training and knowledge. Switching between producing valuable work for the company and leading a team of employees is not for everyone. As I\u2019ve suggested before<\/a>, the ratio of managers to the people they manage should be much larger if<\/em> the manager isn\u2019t doing the actual labor \u2014 but even then, the lack of practical experience will make it harder for them to be effective. But because the managerial class has become the only avenue for real advancement at many companies, many organizations end up with a jumble of disconnected or micromanaging bosses who aren\u2019t right for the job.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Balancing management ability and technical expertise is an active debate in the software industry, where, depending on whom you ask, an engineering manager\u2019s interest or ability to code is dependent on whether the team is able to operate without them. Scott Berkun, the author of \u201cMaking Things Happen: Mastering Project Management,\u201d told SD Times he [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":556,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2019,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-152795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-elon-musk","category-engineering"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/556"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152795\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}