Comment by BobaFloutist
1 day ago
Also makes for a poor metaphor, because coaches in sports are supposed to be absolute experts in absolutely everything about the sport without the physical ability to implement it.
Imagine if a football player told their coach "I'm not sure how to deal with this specific opponent's strategy" and the coach was like "Well have you tried thinking about it more?"
there are lots of sports coaches that were not good players, but they are absolute experts in their sport. For some reason we've let agile/life coaches convince us that "management" is the event and someone with customer service management experience has a lot to say about software development management. Ted Lasso is a great show, but it's not gonna happen IRL.
Though the Diamond Dogs would be a great peer group for Engineering Managers...
https://larahogan.me/blog/manager-voltron/
They might suck at the sport, but then they think about it and learn why they suck, then they can be a good coach, compared to someone who is very good and thinks the reason is because they're smarter, rather then being on the right place on the right time, with the best genes.
And plenty of great coaches that WERE very good players. Steve Kerr for instance had 5 NBA Championships as a player and is up to 4 as a Head Coach.
The point is that being a good teacher of anything is not the same skillset as being good at it. The Venn diagram overlaps, but not entirely.