Comment by saghm

I'm not sure, mostly because it's hard for me to feel confident in figuring out what to attribute to that versus other facets of how he did things. Overall, I have an extremely positive view of how he ran things, but I also personally found him great at a lot of the other things that go into a technical leadership position (making good decisions about what to prioritize, having a consistent vision of what our long-term goals were, not falling into the trap of micro-management, having enough technical skill to be able to help out with the higher-level issues while still respecting the areas where others were more knowledgeable, going out of his way to try to address issues that people raised with the idea that retaining talent long-term was hugely important, etc.), so I honestly don't know how much things would have been different if he didn't also have this level of retention of details. It was impressive still though, not in small part because I don't have any trouble imagining someone in his position just genuinely not caring enough to do it even if they were capable.

Maybe the genuineness that it seemed to come from really is what made the difference in the long run; I obviously don't know how everyone else felt about it, but in other jobs I haven't found it particularly difficult to notice when the general perception of higher-level managers is a lot more positive or negative than my own, so my instinct is that most people probably also liked him, and I do think that makes some amount of difference. Having a "glue" person who is more detail-oriented is probably fine if the reason the actual authority figure doesn't retain the details is just not having that particular skill, but if it's because they genuinely think that the people beneath them in the org chart are just resources they can use to solve problems rather than actual people who will work better in the long term if treated well, then no, I don't think it would be as effective.