Are You a Manager or a Leader?

Don't Say You're Good at Both... The Data Shows Otherwise

"Let me tell you something. In the Oval Office, in the West Wing, in this White House, you can have all the procedures and processes you want - heck, I've seen enough of them to paper the Rose Garden. But at the end of the day, leadership isn't about managing systems. It's about inspiring people.” —Barack Obama

Friends, we stand at a crossroads in software engineering leadership. On one side, we have the managers—the systematic thinkers, the process optimizers, the individuals who can tell you the exact technical debt ratio down to the third decimal place. God bless them, we need them.

On the other side, we have the leaders - the visionaries, the culture builders, the ones who look at a garage in Palo Alto and see the next trillion-dollar company. We need them too.

As I wrote this article, I instinctively realized, in my bones, that AI is going to completely disrupt both of these cohorts. Before Claude Code takes these personalities through the blender, it is vital to understand them.

But here's what I've learned from studying the great technology companies of our time, from the systematic excellence of AWS to the cultural dynamism of Spotify, from the transformation of Microsoft to the cautionary tales of WeWork and Theranos:

The most successful organizations don't choose between management and leadership. They synthesize both, deploying each approach with the precision of a Swiss watchmaker and the wisdom of, well, a President who's read his Plutarch.

The personality chasm between leaders and managers exists in every form of leadership, from a Boy Scout squad leader to the leader of the free world. However, for today’s article, I will apply the lens of software development, while analogizing with both our real and fictional presidents.

The Great Philosophical Divide: Technical Debt as Moral Choice

Let me start with technical debt, because how a company handles its technical debt reveals everything about its character. It's like Tocqueville examining American democracy - you want to understand the character of an institution? Examine how it fulfills its obligations.