Jason Cohen

They have to be great at writing code.

They basically describe an architect or something.

And they're completely wrong.

Now, it's not true that a non-technical person should be an engineering manager.

Of course they need to speak the language, of course.

But their job is not to be the best engineer.

Hopefully you have that already.

Their job is to build the team, and to work on conflicts, and to figure out these priorities, and to work with other teams, and so on.

Especially engineers, they don't interview for this ever.

If you ask an engineer when they interview their manager what they ask, they never ask this stuff.

It's always like coding questions, right?

They don't get it.

You may not get it either if you're a founder and you're not used to this and you're not used to building teams.

So this is something where you have to change your mindset.

So do others.

The more interesting problem, though, or puzzle is managers of managers or executives because, again, the things change a bit.

And in particular, especially as a C-level person or founder, everyone you hire has to be better than you or else the company is not progressing.

And certainly, again, if you're scaling fast, you're going to outscale how anyone can grow.

You have to get that talent.

That means that person has to be better than you.