Engineering managers must be the best developer on their team
Fabien Pinckaers · Fabien Pinckaers, CEO @Odoo: The Billionaire Founder Who Doesn’t Care About Money | E1259 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Feb 12, 2025 · at 21:44
Fabien Pinckaers is the CEO of Odoo. He outlines his management thesis that team leaders must lead by high individual skill rather than traditional people management.
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“There is no way you can Make a team of developers become a better developer if you are not the best developer of the team yourself.”
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“I think our product is years ahead of the competition. There is no way they can do what we do.”
Giving budgets to employees encourages irresponsible spending
“If you give budget to people, they will just spend the budget. They won't have any responsibility or whatever. If you don't give them budget, they will have to spend responsibly.”
IQ tests are the second best predictor of job performance
“One thing I noticed is that we also do an IQ test, and it's the second best predictive KPI on the performance of the person.”
Odoo bans recurring meetings to avoid traditional managers
“I forbid the recurring meeting at the company. They can do meetings. But on the job, or for specific tasks, or trainings, but not recurring meeting. I mean, recurring meeting is a way to manage people, and we try to avoid managers. We want team leaders that wo…”