SvN: 'Do it yourself first'
You should never hire anyone for something you haven’t first struggled to do on your own. It’ll teach you most of what you need to know to actually interview candidates, it’ll allow you to understand the nature of the work better (do I even need to hire or can we outsource?), and you’ll know exactly what a job well done will look like. It’ll also give you a sense of whether the job is big enough for a full-time hire yet or if you can skimp by on your own (the latter is preferable if possible).Sounds quite sensible. He also talks about the benefits for managing the roles and being able to empathise when the going gets tough.
I think that's the ideal situation, but it's not always practicable. I also think that a really good manager has to have empathy even if he/she has no idea about the nitty gritty details of a job being performed by a junior staffer. If you can empathise only with people performing jobs that you've performed in the past, then that's a whole lotta people you can't empathise with as a manager. Not a good position to be in, I would have thought.
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