<story><title>John Carmack on Developing the Netflix App for Oculus</title><url>http://techblog.netflix.com/2015/09/john-carmack-on-developing-netflix-app.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>omouse</author><text>John Carmack is a good role model for any techies that move up to management. If you want to keep in touch with the base tech that your devs are using, you have to dive into a project like this where all your tech knowledge is brought to bear on a problem and you learn lots of new things.&lt;p&gt;None of this &amp;quot;well I guess I knew a bit of C++, let me find another engineer to work on this Netflix app and offer micromanaging style tips and tricks&amp;quot; which is what I&amp;#x27;ve seen from a lot of managers who used to be technical.&lt;p&gt;He&amp;#x27;s also an amazing role model for regular programmers; figure out the requirements, take a crack at it with a prototype and then iterate. The iteration doesn&amp;#x27;t have to be an overtime week affair.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Pyxl101</author><text>Why do you say that Carmack is in management? I don&amp;#x27;t get the impression that he&amp;#x27;s a people manager. A CTO does not necessarily have people reporting to them in a people management sense. From what I&amp;#x27;ve read, I would assume he does not. (I could be wrong - I don&amp;#x27;t really know.)&lt;p&gt;High judgment individual contributors often take on responsibilities that can be considered management, like deciding business and technical strategy, designing products, prioritizing roadmaps, etc., but while these are management functions, taking on these responsibilities does not mean that one is in management.&lt;p&gt;From the blog post, it sounds like Carmack is a highly productive, high judgment individual contributor with the responsibilities you&amp;#x27;d expect of a CTO (technical strategy). I would say that someone is &amp;quot;in management&amp;quot; when their chief function is managing other people. From this post, Carmack seems to be delivering work as an individual contributor and (very senior) technical lead.&lt;p&gt;Along the same lines, I recommend we discourage phrasing like &amp;quot;move up to management&amp;quot;. Management is a different job, not a better or superior one. In well-run technical companies there are managers and individual contributors at all seniority levels, such that one does not need to become a manager to &amp;quot;move up&amp;quot;, even to CTO level.</text></comment>
<story><title>John Carmack on Developing the Netflix App for Oculus</title><url>http://techblog.netflix.com/2015/09/john-carmack-on-developing-netflix-app.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>omouse</author><text>John Carmack is a good role model for any techies that move up to management. If you want to keep in touch with the base tech that your devs are using, you have to dive into a project like this where all your tech knowledge is brought to bear on a problem and you learn lots of new things.&lt;p&gt;None of this &amp;quot;well I guess I knew a bit of C++, let me find another engineer to work on this Netflix app and offer micromanaging style tips and tricks&amp;quot; which is what I&amp;#x27;ve seen from a lot of managers who used to be technical.&lt;p&gt;He&amp;#x27;s also an amazing role model for regular programmers; figure out the requirements, take a crack at it with a prototype and then iterate. The iteration doesn&amp;#x27;t have to be an overtime week affair.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jlas</author><text>I wonder what Carmack&amp;#x27;s managerial responsibilities are like. I imagine if he&amp;#x27;s developing&amp;#x2F;designing for most of the week, how much time does he really devote to being a CTO&amp;#x2F;manager?</text></comment>