“Engineering mindset” is a thing. You don’t actually have to be an engineer to manage an engineering team, but you have to understand what engineering is and engineering culture, as well as grasping the basic fundamental concepts of the field. None of that is particularly hard, but there are a remarkable number of people who have never actually built anything that wasn’t a completely structured and pre-planned/pre proven product. If you’ve never had to figure out a “novel” solution to anything in your entire career, you are going to have a bad time managing engineers.

▲

rwmj 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It works both ways though. Engineers can become enamored with making something novel, when what the customer actually wants is something else or already exists. Or maybe what the budget or market allows won't let the engineers make the best possible product so they're going to need to make something a bit less novel. A (good) manager will negotiate these issues.

▲

thatguy00 an hour ago | parent [-]

That seems to go counter to the widely held idea of "innovate or die". If your company just wants to clone the market leader, what value are you to the customer? Management often wants "safe" so no fingers can be pointed at them. I consider that a failure in leadership.

	▲	rwmj 42 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		There are different types of companies, and even within companies there are different levels of innovation needed depending on context. Take a current darling like Anthropic. Even though their main product is innovative, a lot of the nuts and bolts are source code adjacent tooling that is as old as the hills.

▲

wreath an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Engineering mindset” is a thing. You don’t actually have to be an engineer to manage an engineering team, but you have to understand what engineering is and engineering culture, as well as grasping the basic fundamental concepts of the field

I wish this was more common but every time I had a manager without an engineering background or one who was a weak engineer, the ride was not smooth to put it kindly.

	▲	swat535 43 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		At a minimum managers need to understand the basics of software: code debts, release cycles, team workflows, infra basics, security, etc. They don't need to be software engineers but they should have an overview of the industry.

▲

sublinear 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

How is the "engineering mindset" different from that of any other role requiring problem solving?

My experience has been that those who are too precious about the only role they've ever had (an "engineer") are difficult to manage precisely because of their inflexibility and lack of curiosity. It's ironic isn't it?