Comment by greesil
2 years ago
It's a different set of tasks and skulls but having a background in the relevant domain is in my opinion required. Working in ML, having a manager that doesn't understand statistical significance, or even key metrics like precision and recall is a recipe for unhappy employees and bad decisions.
I think that this has been somewhat nullified by the changes over the last few years where managers are supposed to be people managers exclusively, while high level ICs supposed to create direction and evaluate technical merit.
It is a difficult balance.