Last week someone asked me this question, ‘How important are management skills vs. the rest of it?’
They continued, ‘Like, shouldn’t we be able to hire people into these engineering management roles if they have management skills, but not necessarily any software engineering skills? Why do we treat one skillset as non-negotiable, and the other as easily learnable? And since we’re always telling managers not to write code or do technical work – since what managers actually do all day is go to meetings, write emails, and other managerial things – shouldn’t it be management skills that are non-negotiable rather than engineering skills?’
I have thought long and hard about this; not least because our profession has a long and inglorious history of treating technical skills as innately superior to other skillsets (and engineers as superior to other professions).
