Ask HN: Tech Managers, how do you keep up with the latest tech?

12 points by somtum 8 years ago | 7 comments

You're busy managing/leading your team during work hours. How do you find the time to keep up with the latest tech? Do you code in your spare time?

cookiecaper 8 years ago |

I question the premise. What does it mean to "keep up with the latest tech"? People trying to "keep up" and get the latest buzzword as a feather in their cap has caused a roaring avalanche of stupidity in this industry over the last decade.

Ultimately the corporate entities hiring these buzzword-happy pretenders end up paying the price. If a manager cares about using reliable tools to do a good job for his employer, how does "keeping up with the latest tech" serve that end?

xstartup 8 years ago |

My managers use Hype to figure out what's latest. That's the only thing they know, chasing the hype is what they call it.

muzani 8 years ago |

It's actually a lot easier to keep up with tech as a leader than developer. Devs are deep in tech and usually only have time to improve on what they know instead of picking up a new framework.

Managers don't have the space to focus on something, but their job is to simply be available to communicate and handle the overhead. They can even justify experimenting with new tech as part of the job.

mattbrewsbytes 8 years ago |

Simple trick: you are a manager and probably spend > 50% of your time in meetings. Schedule yourself some meetings to spend time keeping up with tech.

I also found when I was a manager that there are some natural downtimes that occur when a lot of PM's or your peers are out, take advantage of those intervals since you'll have less meetings.

Also also, tech doesn't change that quickly. You can probably get to a level of understanding of some new tech by just reading up on it. This is just to understand if it is applicable to your area w/o having to go through the download/config/install/frustration loop.

dbish 8 years ago |

I still try to spend some time coding during the week on work related items (small tasks with time set aside once a week) and code in my spare time on my own projects. I don't know if I'm able to "keep up" with the latest, but I am able to dive into areas of interest.

bsvalley 8 years ago |

You mean busy going to meetings? Yeah it takes most of my time. Leading the team is an on-demand thing... Though I don’t code anymore, I simply keep up with the latest technologies without coding. Simply read tech forums, news, etc. I think architects can teach us a lot more on that. They keep up with the latest tech and they don’t code anything.

bryan11 8 years ago |

Prioritize time carefully, read, and stay in tech. Use agendas to control and limit meeting time. Work with tech at a high level involving architecture and directions, then hand off sub-projects to your direct reports.