Informal Poll WAS RE: [geeks] Laid off blues

[Kurt Huhn]

> Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that internal promotion is a Bad
> Thing[tm]. Promoting the clueful internally is damn good as long as that
> person wants to go. I was mocking the ablities that some middle and upper
> managers seem to have for promoting people who are grossly unsuitable for
> the posts they're raised to.
>

nod.  I wholeheartedly agree!  Some geeks are not cut out to be managers,
some managers aren't cut out to be geeks, and some managers aren't even cut
out to be managers.  Once in a while you find someone who can understand
"business needs" as well as "technological reality", and can effectively hop
between geek and manager.  They're rare, but we do exist...

>
> I was about to say "In an ideal world *all* management would have a solid
> grounding in the field they're managers in" but I'm not sure if that's too
> sweeping a statement or not.

I think you've hit the nail on the head.  It's just like demanding that all
sysadmins should have a solid founding in hardware support.  It helps them
understand the underlying problem, and helps in root cause analysis.
Otherwise you just go on replacing hard drives without worying about *why*
or *how* they failed.  YMMV, of course.

Kurt