Comment by Aurornis
13 days ago
> Most of management, past first-gen if the company was founded by engineers, is non-technical.
Comments like these make me remember that the tech world is very big and companies come in many different shapes.
I haven’t had non-technical management below the CEO level in many years.
It's multilayered. I've had technical and non-technical bosses at large and small companies, and the universal thing that made them "good" or "bad" was whether they gave me sufficient context and trusted me to get the work done. The best ones challenged me in good faith and provided honest feedback.
Even stranger was the experience of my company being acquired by a large name-brand tech company. My manager (Director) and their manager (VP) were the worst kind...non-technical and second guessing everything in silly ways. Meanwhile, the co-founder and CTO popped into our tiny office one day because they were in town, rolled up to my desk and said "hey, you're fatnoah, right? I have some questions" and then pulled me into a conference room where we went deep on our entire tech stack. He got everything the first time and understood the how and why of what we built and why.
I would love to work for a company like that. It seems like my experience with companies that have “people” vs folks with engineering experience is worse overall. My favorite jobs had all engineering talent, and management was smart enough to stay out of the way.