Leadership versus management

Summary

DevCast is a podcast its hosts, Rossen Genchev, Boris Simandov, Georgi Ivanov and Vladimir Tsvetkov, wanted driven by the community: this first official episode takes its topic from polls in their group, leadership versus management. The guests are Maria Rashkovska, a product manager who started at Telerik, worked at the Financial Times and co-founded Product Tank Sofia, and Vasil Popovski, who was on VMware's leadership team as it grew from 180 to nearly 700 people, then sold his startup Connecto to Leanplum, where he is VP of Product.

Rossen Genchev opens the topic. A leader, as people understand the word, is not the smartest or the strongest but the one who puts the group's interests above his own, which is rare in large companies where people climb the ladder. And a leader, unlike a manager, stops being one at the first letdown: it is a broken jug, while a manager simply has a title and functions. Asked whether he would promote someone better than himself in every respect, he answers that he tries to be honest with himself: it is not an easy decision.

The others bring the rest: Georgi Ivanov on the respect a technical leader earns by doing the work in front of the team; Boris Simandov on separating people management from engineering leadership, the Peter principle and culture-fit interviews; Vasil Popovski on Getting Things Done, Pomodoro and Google's Project Aristotle, which interviewed more than 200 teams to find what makes one work. Genchev's life hack for founders is to learn to make a good omelette, three minutes; his question for the panel, which he calls a troll topic, is corporate diversity policy, and company values, he says, are often a hollow manifesto over a mess. The episode ends with his joke.

Key moments

1. 09:06A leader is the one people see putting the group's interests above his own, which is rare in large companies.
2. 10:00A leader stops being one at the first letdown, like a broken jug; a manager just has a title.
3. 17:20Boris Simandov on the Peter principle: people rise to their level of incompetence.
4. 19:48Georgi Ivanov: a technical leader earns respect by doing the work in front of the team.
5. 23:12Boris Simandov: people management and engineering leadership should be different people.
6. 46:56Vasil Popovski on Getting Things Done and Pomodoro.
7. 1:00:38Would he promote someone better than himself? He tries to be honest with himself: it is not an easy decision.
8. 1:06:16His life hack for founders: learn to make a good omelette; it takes three minutes.
9. 1:07:34Google's Project Aristotle: more than 200 teams, and what a good team needs.
10. 1:11:57His troll topic for the panel: corporate diversity policies.