Love/Hate - Mgt/Tech

This is an insight from a while ago. First, tho', to all my manager friends (who, coincidentally, are all excellent managers): please don't be indignant until you've read this.

Historically techies and managers have always been opposed to each other. See Dilbert for an example of this meme's entrance into pop-culture. I think the two views are a little like this:

• Managers see techies waste money by doing things in a roundabaout way. The solution to most problems can be solved in some much simpler way.


• Techies see managers as demanding corners be cut to deliver to a timetable which sould never have been rigidly set in the first place.


• Techies think managers don't have enough technical knowledge (little knowledge is dangerous, etc).


• Managers think techies live in some other-world where time/money don't matter.

Now, I've worked in a company with (practically) no management, by design. The idea being that techies don't like management, so we won't have any. The, 'freedom of freefall', was often referred to. I didn't get on with it at all, and with a little distance between me and it now, I can think of reasons why.

I'm a techie, so I make a crap manager. I think about the perfect solution, and the best technical answers. I don't like administration or politics - too floppy, no real answers. I think managers see things completely diametrically opposite from this. Admin and politics are the 'game' and there is no such thing as a perfect solution - only one that is on time, within budget (or close enough given the 'game').

So, managers need techies to answer their problems - obviously. Techies also need managers to keep the admin and politics flowing while they formulate the answer. Techies need to be reigned in to budget and time constraints, but managers need to be reigned into the realities of answering the question.

Managers need techies as much as techies need managers..

I just thank god there are people willing to be management for me.