While I can't speak for what happened at this company. I think the problem is not "MBAs or engineers being managers" rather them not being good listeners.
And that is the point the HBR article is also missing. In my previous job, I had manager (ex-engineer) who would often say - "I don't even understand what are you talking about". But he would always listen patiently to us and even spend some of his personal time after office or weekends on google trying to understand the issue in depth. If he came across articles/links he thought could help us, he would email us. If he couldn't do that, he always approached the upper management to provide us training or help as required.
while in my recent job I had a manager (ex-engineer) who tried his best to come across as someone with "deep expertise". He would often google topics we wanted to discuss with him. The end result wasn't pretty. Lot of times he would make an assertion that he read somewhere that the design we were presenting was unworkable. Example: while talking about a design on "messaging queues" (MQ) using RabbitMQ he insisted on using Microsoft Outlook. It can handle so much daily load of message (email) volume he said.
That clearly isn't an example of a manager with deep technical expertise, its a poor engineer who has been promoted and is faking it. By the measures in the study he would not have counted as a deep knowledge engineer.
Just because he was an engineer doesn't mean he has any deep skills.
That's the difference between a manager trying to be the grease between all the gears of the team, and a manager who wants to provide a little extra force himself on every gear.
Both management styles help the gears turn, but with the latter method you end up with more friction between the gears.
I think the latter manager is a somewhat common example of a poor engineer who escapes engineering by moving to management, but then also makes a poor product/people manager to.
Not that you have to be good at one to be good at the other, but some people just aren't good at either.
The reason for the phenomenon this article is about is that deep expertise correlates with being a good listener when an engineer is describing a problem. But it isn't a necessary condition.
Agreed. The best manager I have had was non technical but at the end of the day he knew that his job was to defer to us on technical matters and make sure that there was nothing hindering us from getting things done, while ours was to get things done and making sure that we kept him updated on progress and blockers.
And that is the point the HBR article is also missing. In my previous job, I had manager (ex-engineer) who would often say - "I don't even understand what are you talking about". But he would always listen patiently to us and even spend some of his personal time after office or weekends on google trying to understand the issue in depth. If he came across articles/links he thought could help us, he would email us. If he couldn't do that, he always approached the upper management to provide us training or help as required.
while in my recent job I had a manager (ex-engineer) who tried his best to come across as someone with "deep expertise". He would often google topics we wanted to discuss with him. The end result wasn't pretty. Lot of times he would make an assertion that he read somewhere that the design we were presenting was unworkable. Example: while talking about a design on "messaging queues" (MQ) using RabbitMQ he insisted on using Microsoft Outlook. It can handle so much daily load of message (email) volume he said.