Sometimes, engineers have ideas that can truly revolutionize everything, but management is too dumb to understand it. Once upon a time, I was that engineer. For a while now, I’ve been in management and at times, I am dangerously close to being too dumb for my engineers. I try hard not to let that happen.

Early in my career, I worked as a systems engineer. Back then, everyone installed operating systems directly onto server hardware. Then in the early 2000s, a new type of technology became available: the x86 hypervisor, known as VMware ESX. In the early days, no one in management took this technology very seriously and only looked at it as a novelty for development labs.

I had the privilege of working alongside an early expert in this technology, Jarrod Swetland. We both saw the immense possibilities for this to revolutionize the way all data center computing was managed. I partnered with Jarrod to install the very first production workload in Minnesota on VMware ESX back in 2003. It took another ten years before hypervisors would be universally accepted as the ubiquitous management technology for all x86 workloads.

Mindset

I put myself back in that mindset. I remember what it was like. The technology was new. VMware was a small, scrappy tech startup. IT management didn’t take it seriously. Established technology vendors and consulting companies scoffed at it.

As engineers, we had our doubts on whether or not the technology was ready for prime time. The proven production workload gave us all the confidence we needed, yet we continually ran into IT managers that just couldn’t wrap their minds around it and resisted change to the status quo.

Fast forward 18 years

I haven’t been an engineer in a very long time. Every piece of tech that I am qualified to work on has been on the scrap heap for many years. I’ve watched hypervisor tech go full cycle from emerging to mainstream to legacy. My engineering teams talk to me about Infrastructure as Code platforms like Terraform, serverless technologies like Lambda, and data pipeline technologies like Kafka.

As a technology leader, it’s hard to admit, but I barely understand these technologies. Some of the engineers reading this article could easily say to me, “Zach, those technology examples you just mentioned aren’t even new!”

Here’s my point:

Technologies with funny names come out every day. It’s impossible for tech leaders to keep up, but we must implore our engineers to do so. Even more importantly, tech leaders must remain open to possibilities. We should be paying attention to what excites our engineers long before the technology hits the cover of CIO Magazine.

Why is this important? Can’t engineers just do the smart stuff and let the managers play with budgets and make boring speeches? No. Here’s why: If tech leaders become out-of-touch, they become well-intentioned barriers to progress. I know this is true because I remember what it was like 18 years ago. It’s a natural progression and we must be intentional to create a different outcome.

Leaders must remain interested and curious. I try to remind myself that everything I hear about may very well be the next VMware. You never know.

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