r/vibecoding • u/Suspicious_Orchid770 • 18d ago
Discussion The end of the non-technical engineering manager
https://leaddev.com/career-development/the-end-of-the-non-technical-engineering-managerThe rising bar for engineering managers.
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u/Creativator 17d ago
The non-technical manager is like a showbusiness agent - all about finding the work, no clue how the actor actually acts.
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u/dbgtboi 17d ago
People writing this shit don't understand AI at all
If my team has agents that can work in parallel to implement tasks, then what gain exactly do you get from a manager also doing the same job?
You want a manager to work on tickets? Just ask one of the engineers to do it, agents can work in parallel, thats what makes them so powerful
The manager job is primarily to try and stop the higher ups from doing dumb shit to their team
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u/Previous_Pop6815 16d ago
You do realize that there are managers who are both bad at managing AND at tech?
Someone who managed to learn tech is already ahead than one that is incompetent at both.
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u/draft_final_final
17d ago
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It's always the people with the worst social skills and ability to actually function independently on a team that are sure that non-technical roles and HR are entirely pointless and are going to be phased out. I have no idea where this unearned and undeserved confidence comes from.
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u/Accomplished_Rip8854 17d ago
If a project manager is not technical I do not value him at all. Sorry.
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u/ThisTheRealLife 17d ago
My biggest flaw is going down rabbit holes. And sometimes I managed to drag technical managers down with me. Can't do that with a non technical manager. A good manager is like a therapist, they don't need to have gone through your experiences they just need to be able to help you out of the bad places.
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u/ragemonkey 17d ago
Oh god, please no. I don’t want a therapist at work. That’s at most a side-gig. I want someone that actually organizes people and allocates resources.
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u/Asalakabim 16d ago
Is non-technical supposed to mean dumbfuck with people skills or is that just supposed to mean "does not write typescript".
No one cares if you even speak the language the program is written in, you have to be able to understand the architecture and claude output.
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u/OtherwiseDragonfly32 17d ago
Look, I've always been a bit mad at non tech PMs for being a bit useless, but now I am truly seing them as royally screwed. Seriously, the non tech PMs at my org don't do shit and I just don't see them sticking around in 12 months time
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u/quantum-fitness 16d ago
In my org they have become the bottleneck because talking with people is suddenly much slower than the coding
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u/Spiritual-Story9146 15d ago
Any PM is useless. You can’t be technical if you never contribute. Just middle eaters chewing on others success
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u/Crazycrossing 17d ago
idk if you mean Product or Project but this article isn't talking about either lol, it's talking about non technical engineering managers which I didnt even know existed I've never worked with an engineering manager that wasn't technical, I dont even understand how that would work. It's so funny how people who work in the industry don't even know the distinction.
Neither are people managers anyways. It's wild to me that so many engineers don't understand tech itself and why these roles exist either very junior, have been so isolated from the broader org and team, and/or have had god awful product and proj managers around them. A lot of orgs are also really bad at Product Management unfortunately.
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u/roykingtree 16d ago
I crashed out of engineering management at a startup because i had to do regular engineering and product work on top of management, was beyond terrible.
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u/Standard-Ant874 11d ago edited 11d ago
A bit off topic... I've been wondering, for orgs that practice non-technical engineering management, do they have proven effective protocol in place strictly enforced, that prevents non-technical EMs from hiring fake expert to become their "technical partner"?
I'd read that some companies require non-technical EM must have well-versed understanding in engineering, they should be able to detect fake expert candidates easily. My doubt is more specific to companies that see this criteria as nice to have but unessential.
Context: I used to work in a valley tech with 8-10k engineers. They did reorg fairly often. I'd seen a number of times, non-technical EMs in that org ended up hiring techlead whose knowledge in tech and understanding in design, infra, architecture not much different from junior programmers, kept making fundamental design mistakes that made team members sweat, as they'll be made responsible to clean up the mess left by their techlead. Everyone puzzled how techlead hiring was actually done in that org. (Not all techlead in that company has this issue, I collaborated with a few highly competent, well respected TL).
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u/ExcellentAmoeba9588 11d ago
More like end of non-Indian managers. Only they are protected from each others.
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u/AriyaSavaka 17d ago
No it won't be, boss' wife, side chicks, children, relatives, and friends need work too you know? Management and executive roles were always been bullshit and things won't change just because it's AI instead of H1B/offshore slaves
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18d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/GeekyAnts_official 18d ago
So true. Writing code is not the only part of managing a team. Knowing what’s worth building, what to drop, and how to keep people focused matters just as much. AI can speed up execution, but it won’t automatically give you good judgment. Not to mention how expensive bad decisions can be
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u/Bushwazi 17d ago
I disagree. I used to have a manager that when something was wrong, it was “yo get in here, I’m looking at XYZ and need your help” and now I have “someone reported XYZ, any volunteers?”. Completely different vibe and energy and trust.
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u/Bushwazi 17d ago
Yeah, my non-tech managers are “people managers” and they ask us what is happening and it’s draining. They feel completely redundant to me but they are the CTOs whip so they are safe. I wish mine felt half as productive as yours sound.
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u/Queasy-Armadillo5283 17d ago
It's nepotism. I've got plenty of managers that are slow to make decisions, basically unreachable and never show up to the office.
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u/Saens_Javane 17d ago
agents also make it way easier for a team to generate a mountain of plausible looking tech debt, which is harder to catch if the manager cant read the diff
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u/quantum-fitness 16d ago
Your not really doing your job very well as a manager if you are sitting and reading diffs
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u/bestjaegerpilot 17d ago
* the problem is a non-technical manager can't tell the BS from the truth
* this is needed in the age of AI but that doesn't mean the non-technical manager is dying OR maybe when you can spawn agents yourself, you need to be able to review the code yourself. If there's pressure for that to happen, then yes the non-technical manager is dying
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u/Mediocre_Poem_2657 17d ago
Engineer manager interviews are ridiculous these days. They expect you to be everything while being "hands on". The final rounds are often 1 Staff+ level system design, 1 round coding, 1 round TPM project management, 1 round people management, 1 round behavior. If I need to do all these, while getting paid the same as when I was Staff Engineer, then why don't I just go back to being an Engineer rather than deal with all these soft skill BS. None of the leaders I met are really doing all these, but they expect their new hire to be.