职业与工作方法hbr.org
老板懂行，员工更快乐
Employees are happier when led by people with deep expertise
2017 — 2021，它一次次回到首页
黑点是上首页（≥ 50 分）的那次投稿，空心点是没冲上去的投稿，点越大分数越高。
导读
这篇文章介绍一项研究：如果上司具备能亲自完成下属工作的专业深度，员工的工作满意度更高，称职的上司是影响满意度的重要正向因素。文章围绕“老板懂不懂你的活”讨论专家型管理者的价值，以及管理者选拔中专业能力与其他管理素质的关系。
为什么经久不衰：它戳中几乎每个人都有的上下级体验：懂业务的上司能补位、理解难点、给出有效反馈，而不懂业务的管理者会迅速消耗士气；这也是“专家型管理者 vs 通才管理者”的长青争论。
HN 评论精选
懂行的老板能在关键处补位、理解反馈和评估难度，减少无效解释带来的士气损耗。
老板能替你做这份工作有什么奇怪？他能在忙时补位（就像麦当劳经理也会翻汉堡、炸薯条）；能给出与你工作相关的视角；能理解你的反对意见，不需要你反复解释术语；能更准确地猜测团队需求；也能给出“完成/未完成”之外的反馈。以我的经验，士气最差的时刻往往是我觉得某事显而易见，而非技术背景的决策者却要你解释。
lordnacho查看英文原文
Is anybody surprised by this? A boss who can do your job can: - Fill in when the team is busy. Ever seen the manager at McDonald's flipping burgers or frying fries? Some goes for any other manager, sometimes, they have to step into the code or read legal docs, or operate the machines. - Provide a perspective that's likely to be relevant to you. He knows what it was like doing your job, and has a good guess as to where it's going. As opposed to simply imagining what you do. - Understand push-back. A boss who isn't an expert will require explanation that an experienced boss will not. "We can't add this feature because it breaks our database schema". "Uhm what's a database schema?". Only so many times you can hear that from someone who supposed to be deciding things before you lose faith. - Guess what the team wants. Better experience -> better guesses. Even if the boss hasn't done the work for a while. - Give feedback beyond "work completed/not". Because they can see where the hurdles are before you complete, and they have an understanding of how big the problems you've solved are on the way to completion. Looking at my experience, anytime I worked with someone who didn't have the technical understanding, the worst drops in morale happened when I felt something was obvious, but the person needed it explained. It would have been fine for a new staffer to ask, or a graduate, but not a decision maker. The main annoyance was the issue of where costs could be cut. Some people I've worked with seemed to think that just by asking enough questions, some piece would show up that could be cut from the solution with no harm. And so they'd keep asking around about whether this-or-that was "really" necessary. And perhaps when you're not an expert you can't come up with new pieces or processes, so your line of questioning is inevitably towards slimming whatever is already there.
非技术背景管理者空降工程管理会打击士气并造成晋升天花板，甚至影响公司表现。
在一家独角兽公司，公司招MBA做工程经理，我没见过工程师被提拔到管理岗，几乎全是MBA。我直接接触的几位在帮工程师方面很没用，只会说“做完就行”；我请他们帮忙，他们回“那还有谁来做？”。我感到士气低落、自信受损。工程层人才流失，很多工程师向CEO反映，CEO只是找借口。后来公司表现很差，高层也大批离职，CEO被换，估值大跌。我不在硅谷，但这里似乎趋势是工程之上的管理岗甚至创业公司CTO都由MBA担任。我以前对MBA没兴趣，现在认真考虑，因为晋升有明显玻璃天花板。
sage76查看英文原文
At a unicorn I was working at, MBAs were being hired to be engineering managers. I did not see a single engineer promoted to management, it was mostly all MBAs. The few I had direct contact were really useless at helping engineers out, all I ever heard from them was "Just get it done.". If I asked for help, they'd say "Well who else is gonna do it then?". I felt demoralised and lost some of my confidence. But the company was bleeding talent at the engineering level, plenty of engineers called out this crap and asked the CEO for answers. CEO would make excuses and not do much. Now the company is not doing well at all, even the senior leadership is leaving in droves, the CEO has even been replaced, the valuation has also declined quite a bit. I am not in silicon valley, so not sure about there but over here, it seems to be a trend to have MBAs in all management positions above engineering and even CTOs of startups who are MBAs. I had no interest in an MBA until I saw this trend. Now I am seriously considering that route, because it seems there is a serious glass ceiling. Doing an MBA might be necessary for me to move up the ranks.
专业能力是成为好经理的常见路径而非硬性要求，管理还需要同理心与对非技术职责的投入。
我认为结论略微偏了：它聚焦于好老板的一个表征——他们从理解任务要求出发关心任务，对挑战有同理心，并尊重完成工作的人才。亲历过这份工作显然是获得这种视角的最容易路径，所以有相关性，但我不认为这是必要条件。我也不认为这否定了把优秀工程师提拔到管理层，而是说不应盲目、不应把它当唯一标准。我最好的经理都是前四分之一而非前5-10%的工程师，因为他们也在意管理所需的非技术职责，而这会消耗顶尖工程师不愿投入的精力。
skeeter2020查看英文原文
I think the conclusions miss the mark slightly and focus on a symptom of good bosses: they care about tasks from a state of understanding what is required to do them well, they have empathy for the challenges, and respect for the talent in completing them. Obviously the easiest way to get to this perspective is to experience it first-hand, hence the correlation between those who could do the job and being good managers of the job, but I don't see this as a requirement, just a common path. I also don't see this a refutation that we shouldn't hire good engineers into management, rather we shouldn't do this blindly and as the single criteria. My best managers were all top quartile engineers but probably not top 5-10%, because they also cared about the non-technical requirements that a good manager needs to cover, and this inevitable consumes focus, effort and time that your best engineers don't want to allocate. I'm a relatively new engineering manager (~3 years) and wrote about the traits of a good development manager from my perspective here: https://www.codeleadmanage.com/articles/20200204-four_qualities.html
“老板能替你做工作”的相关性随层级变化，越基层越明显，越到高层越不现实。
你越初级，越可能不仅老板能做你的工作，而且做得比你好；越资深，越不可能。有多少CEO能同时做CFO、COO、CTO和总法律顾问？零。有多少编程团队负责人能做初级程序员的工作？基本上/希望所有都能。
sokoloff查看英文原文
The more junior you are, the more likely it is that not only can your boss do your job, they can do it better than you can. The more senior you become, the less likely that is to be the case. How many CEOs could do all of the CFO, COO, CTO, and General Counsel's jobs? Zero. How many programming team leads can do the junior programmer's job? Basically/hopefully all of them.
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