Metadata
- URL:: https://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/37-years-ago-steve-jobs-said-best-managers-never-want-to-be-a-manager-science-says-he-was-right.html
- Author:: Jeff Haden
- Publisher:: Inc.
- Published Date:: 2022-12-02
- Tags::
Highlights
The original video in which Steve Jobs says this (great individual contributors are best managers - steve jobs in 1985 interview - YouTube):
(Jobs) We’re going to be a big company, we thought. So let’s hire “professional managers.” We went out and hired a bunch of professional management, and it didn’t work at all. They knew how to manage, but they didn’t know how to do anything. If you are a great person why do you want to work for somebody you can’t learn anything from?
(Jobs) You know who the best managers are? They’re the great individual contributors who never, ever want to be a manager, but decide they want to be a manager, because no one else is going to be able to do as good a job as them.
And it turns out that a 2015 study (Boss Competence and Worker Well-Being by Benjamin Artz, Amanda H. Goodall, Andrew J. Oswald SSRN) agrees with this:
… a boss’s technical competence is the single strongest predictor of a worker’s well-being.