Newt Gingrich and Jon Huntsman to debate

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Management types tend not to be the brightest people, though. Certainly the managers at an engineering firm would be utterly helpless in trying to design jet engines or suspension bridges or whatever else it is that the actually intelligent workers at the company are doing. Unless you are talking about a food court pizza joint that only employs unskilled labor, the typical manager would not be capable of doing their employees' jobs.

You've been reading too much Dilbert. There are a lot of managers out there with enough of an engineering background that they understand what an engineer is saying.

I wish. The manager of my department has never worked in a laboratory, though he's managed several with his office in another part of the hospital; his background is that he was a radiology tech decades ago. He couldn't draw blood safely to save his own life, much less ddraw an ABG; he certainly couldn't get any results from the blood. In fact, his ignorance and heavy-handedness, and unwillingness to listen to lab staff about lab issues, are causing some pretty extreme morale problems in the laboratory, but no one feels free to tell him what the problem is because the problem is with his entire attitude and not a single, concrete issue.
Here's where I halfway hope that my computer traffic isn't being monitored by the hospital, because I'm at work right now. Otoh, if they are monitoring my traffic, maybe they'll fix his attitude for my co-workers after they fire me for insubordination...

wrt. the topic at hand:
http://www.salon.com/2011/12/08/why_sma ... hate_newt/
quote:

There are even arguments to be made for having managers who aren't capable of doing the job. Provided that they respect the people who report to them.

That and they are competitent at doing the job they are supposed to, which is to make sure everyone gets the job done.

@ LKL

I couldn't care less if the media hates Newt, in fact I can see why they hate him after he's made several of them look like idiots and exposed them as being partisan hacks and Obama's press secretaries.

Having a person who doesn't really understand science and/or technology make decisions about the same is often a bad idea; but, one of the functions of the free market is to ensure that businesses that repeatedly do stupid things fail. Poor managers generally only keep their jobs for a short time unless they work for the government or a "non-profit" agency.

As someone who has a better than even chance of becoming a department manager in the near future, I've put a lot of thought into this, and i think the key element - aside from not being a drooling moron, a micromanager, or a lazy asswipe - is respect.

I've done a short stint as interim manager of my department. It largely came down to communication, but a big part of that was knowing who needs to hear what, and how to approach people who might not want to hear what they need to be told.

Which means having to maintain a positive rapport with everyone you and your direct reports have to interact with, even if you loathe them.

You have to understand the nature of the work your people are doing, but you don't need to be able to actually do it.

The best software quality assurance manager I ever knew was a veteran of semiconductor fabrication quality assurance. He could improve your yields on memory chips but he'd never tested software.

And he was GREAT, because his philosophy was that everyone working for him needed him to provide resources, priorities, and goals, and for him to keep the rest of the company out of their way so they can actually do their job.

It turns out that if your team is successful, the manager looks successful. And if the team is not successful, the manager looks like a failure.

I know from experience that Engineers can have serious ego problems where they think just cause someone is not an engineer that they don't know what they are talking about, so it wouldn't surprise me if often the manager understands more than the engineer thinks they do.

Having worked with engineers for 11 years, I'm gonna point out that the really good engineers - the ones who walk on water so to speak - are egoless.

They are so secure in their abilities that they have absolutely nothing to prove, and often are able and even eager to explain any aspect of their job to even a small child.

Those guys are admittedly rare.

I have no problem with ordinary Joes making big bucks, because they'll have all the more buying power, which is the engine of the economy.
And yes, I do have outrage against incompetent boobs running the economy into the ground, then getting a golden parachute, because their bad decisions costs people work, which in turn does nothing but hurt the buying power of Americans- which in turns hurts us all.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

It's called crony capitalism, you see most often in places like Chicago, Illinois.

Washington is worse. That is where Gingrich and Herman made their millions.

Dude, you really have not done any research...

Have you done any research beyond listening to Fox, Limbaugh, Beck, or reading all the fringe right wing periodicals?

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Actually I have thank you kindly.

Oh, really? Can you provide a brief summary?