[SLL] faking Unix knowledge? pretend to know open source Unix?

[Glenn Stone]

On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 01:21:45PM -0500, Bryan McLellan wrote:
>Let's pretend we're talking about having 30 minutes worth of
>knowledge, rather than faking any knowledge. Which is not ethically
>appropriate and makes for really terrible managers.

Actually, if a manager has good people he can trust to do the techie bits,
and is willing to devote himself to *just* fighting the political fires and
being an advocate for his team, it can work.  I had a manager like that at
Boeing... it was great because we could implement something *our way*, and
he'd sign off on it.. knowing that it was *us* that would get beeped at 0430
if the fit hit the shan..... sort of a "loosely coupled" interface.  

OTOH, promoting from within works *if* the engineer has good people skills,
because s/he groks what it takes to do something, and can double as an extra
grunt in crunch time.  

It's people that *think* they know what they're doing but don't quite really
that cause bother.... you're left managing/training the manager *and* trying
to do your job.  

(obLinux:  Linus is a really good exmple of engineer turned
manager... partly because he keeps his hand in.  It's the ones who let their
skills get rusty but don't think they have that.... become unpleasant.)

-- Glenn