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All managers make mistakes; good managers acknowledge and repair

(terriblesoftware.org)
308 points matheusml | 1 comments | 22 Aug 25 12:50 UTC | HN request time: 0.209s | source
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giancarlostoro ◴[22 Aug 25 13:22 UTC] No.44984357[source]▶
I think this goes for Engineers as well. In fact, I say the biggest skill I want from a SENIOR developer regardless of years of experience is humility. Someone who "cannot do wrong" and is a toxic about it will poison the rest of the team with their toxicity. But the seniors who are more open to feedback even from Junior developers, those are the ones everyone else follows to hell and back because they're there with you through it all so you're there with them through it all too.

We are all humans, not robots. Heck, even the LLMs mess up.

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1. Esophagus4 ◴[22 Aug 25 16:16 UTC] No.44986375[source]▶
Well said - most people don’t realize there is a lot of overlap between good management skills and good senior engineering skills.

Specifically, getting people to follow your direction, giving and receiving difficult feedback, growing people, being able to engage thoughtfully in stressful conversations…

Engineers that don’t have these and believe their technical chops are the only thing that matters are extremely limited in their careers.

I have bounced a technically excellent staff level engineer off my team for this reason.

There are very few roles in tech for people to sit in a corner by themselves and write code, especially as you get to more senior roles.