[HN Gopher] Middle managers fear they've become irrelevant with ...
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Middle managers fear they've become irrelevant with work from home
Author : ozfive
Score : 151 points
Date : 2022-04-09 16:04 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (fortune.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (fortune.com)
| kkfx wrote:
| IMVHO there are various issues, as anything "new for most people"
| (even if is not something really new) and that's not just on the
| administrative, middle-man, side:
|
| - working by targets is not easy, because fixing targets is not
| easy. Formally we design everything up front so we know what to
| do at any point in the future, in practice we do design something
| up front but not all, especially not much "ordinary things". That
| means that control work progress is not easy and many feat to
| discover too late that someone is behind the schedule. Not all
| WFH jobs produce code that can be seen in a common repo every
| day;
|
| - people who do not know each other sometimes have issue to act
| as a team and effectively communicate and interact as needed,
| most tend to communicate just the bare minimum and others too
| much;
|
| - being really remote means no real geographical constraints so
| potential economical issues for workers (a new job market with
| workers from very different countries with very different cost of
| living), administrative issue (different laws, contacts etc) and
| practical issues for all (different time zones etc);
|
| Meanwhile there are many advantages like for the employer no
| office space expenses, just furniture and hw for workers, for
| them the possibility to live in lovely and cheap places, no
| commuting, less fatigue and more free time having erased the
| itinere part etc. BUT to elicit those advantages we need a tested
| setup that's new and unknown for most, witch means a challenge
| with potentially long pain while experimenting. Most people still
| live nearby their offices in cities and there they do not have
| much space at home for a proper setup etc.
|
| In the end the worst part: hybrid works that force in-office
| workers to work as they are at home and makes people at home less
| visible, disadvantage them, makes them feeling guilty to be more
| in comfort etc + all the issue of double/movable office setup
| from home to office and vice versa.
|
| Long story short IMVHO:
|
| - part of management, not just middle-man fear for their role
|
| - part fear the challenge of completely change work paradigm
|
| - part are simply not ready nor they can't be quickly to really
| WFH
|
| That's why some like WFH and some do not. Of course techies tend
| to like it the most, because they are those already more
| organized and perhaps WFH since years, others are less organized
| and others are just old to feel well in digitally-centered
| environments.
|
| I honestly think that around 30% of jobs can be done from remote
| effectively but just 10% of these 30% can be done now. Because
| only a small percentage is ready in humans and paradigms terms.
| To spread this percentage we need time and incentives...
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| "I have people skills!"
| throwaway93982 wrote:
| Really there are just too many managers doing too little work.
| They _seem_ busy because they 're in meetings 40 hours a week. 40
| emails would be about as productive, and free up half their week
| (so they could do twice as much, hence we would need half as
| many).
| hinkley wrote:
| Middle management got obliterated in the recession in the 80's.
| It'll happen again in the next recession.
|
| I often wonder at the parallels between military chain of command
| and civilian chain of command. Line managers and NCOs are down in
| the trenches, and most of them stay there. Everyone else is in an
| "up or out" situation. They are not stable titles and you'll get
| burned if you aren't incredibly lucky.
|
| If you took a title for more pay, my advice is always to recall
| that it's for more money but that money might go away. Save it.
| Spend it on incidentals. But don't take out loans on it. In the
| next downturn you'll be fucked. Spend like you are one job title
| behind where you currently are - so either don't spend it, or
| keep climbing.
| bfung wrote:
| Title on HN doesn't match the article's original title, which is
| VERY different: Fed-up managers declare WFH is
| over, as 77% say they'd fire you or cut your pay for not coming
| back to the office
|
| Nothing about middle managers becoming irrelevant, moreso
| highlighting the dynamic between trying to bring workers back in
| office and worker leverage.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I have wondered if there is a chance inflation will wane due to
| cost efficiencies related to WFH. One cost saving is from lower
| real estate expenses. If a chunk of employees are made/revealed
| to be redundant, that could be another cost saving.
|
| That doesn't guarantee that companies will lower prices -- they
| may choose to try for higher profits. But it reduces the pressure
| for them to increase prices YOY in order to account for
| inflation.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| Sorry but global remote work didn't need to prove the Dilbert
| principle and Gervais rule. I'm willing to bet more people will
| leave jobs purely because they feel stuck behind an incompetent
| manager. Who wants to waste years of their life not growing?
|
| ICs have virtually the most power in most companies at higher
| levels of seniority. The demand demonstrates that, but more
| importantly, more people should stand up for themselves when they
| have a shitty manager. Life isn't long enough to be a doormat.
|
| There are good managers out there. They are very rare. If you
| have one, keep them. If you don't, look for one. Your mental
| health will thank you later.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilbert_principle
|
| https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
| lormayna wrote:
| My company (an F500) has made the inverse process: before
| COVID-19 there was just 2 levels of management between me and the
| C-level executive. Now I have 4 level of management. I don't
| think it's bad to have middle management, if they cover you from
| the shit coming from the top. If they don't, they are just
| unuseful.
| Jemm wrote:
| Yes. Yes they have.
| [deleted]
| trentgreene wrote:
| This headline isn't supported by the article at all
| bckr wrote:
| Yeah, this is heavy editorializing
| patrick451 wrote:
| As an IC, having an immediate manager that coordinates what my
| team works on and shields us from getting whipsawed by ad-hoc
| requests is really valuable, remote work or not. I may be a
| little biased, because all of my managers so far have been very
| technically competent. But having somebody above me who is both
| politically and technically savvy is a godsend. During times when
| my team has had no manager, everything was more chaotic and
| nothing went as smoothly.
| galoisscobi wrote:
| That's awesome! As an IC, I have a supportive manager but a lot
| of ad-hoc requests are just taken on, some of them don't make
| sense, and then I have to push back. When I push back, my
| manager supports me but a lot of time is wasted in meetings and
| slack messages to keep protecting my time to do actual work.
|
| On the positive side, I'm not a confrontational/assertive
| person. So, I had to learn how to say no and to articulate well
| why I push back.
| insulfrable wrote:
| This is a bad title to an other unsurprising article.
|
| Managers don't fear they will become irrelevant. It's bad
| managers who are having trouble figuring out how to manage
| without seeing people at their desk.
|
| What's mind blowing to me is that despite two years of being
| forced to evaluate people by their impact rather than by their
| physical presence, so many managers still don't have a clue how
| to do this right.
|
| Meanwhile, healthy remote teams are thriving, and competent
| middle managers there provide incredible value, from managing
| execution to keeping the social tissue of their teams together.
| trentgreene wrote:
| Side note, I don't know if some of you have actually been key
| players in a large org without management, but I have, and it
| SUCKS. If you think random slack pings are bad, try random slack
| pings plus 5+ hours of meetings a day you need to decline,
| justify declining, communicate about async, just to have time to
| get your work done. It's my experience that without management,
| top performers are easily looking at 80+ hour work weeks
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Also, being a middle manager isn't much fun either. Basically
| all meetings and bullshit, and you get shit from people below
| you and above you. Upper management blames you for anything
| going wrong and workers blame you for, well, everything. You
| need to motivate, teach and provide resources while dealing
| with all the bullshit from above and a lack of resources.
|
| But as you pointed out, it's necessary otherwise everyone has
| to deal with the bullshit.
| ThalesX wrote:
| > You need to motivate, teach and provide resources while
| dealing with all the bullshit from above and a lack of
| resources.
|
| What would a middle manager _need_ to teach me? Genuinely
| curious, as a person that enjoys learning, and have been
| doing it on my own for awhile.
| slv77 wrote:
| How to navigate organizational power structures to secure
| what is needed to get something done (both the formal and
| informal structures). How to establish organizational
| boundaries so that a teams capacity isn't redirected. How
| to navigate upper management culture to communicate in a
| way they expect. How and why teams are organized the way
| they are and the pros and cons of different structures. How
| to position a team for growth and how to position a team
| during a period of consolidation. How to be therapist,
| mentor, mediator or executioner depending on the day.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| I mean, in small enough orgs they're typically workers who
| have been promoted so they can teach the required skills. I
| guess in bigger orgs there's another layer...
| chrisdhoover wrote:
| Director is the worst position in a company. You aren't
| really a VP working on big plans and you still have nagging
| line manager duties.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Hah I could see that...
| brightball wrote:
| When a middle manager is removed, all the communication goes to
| the most senior member of the team instead keeping that person
| from being able to actually get things done.
|
| The middle manager's time is a lot less expensive in most
| cases.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Those aren't _middle_ managers. Removing a middle manager
| entails an existing end line manager reporting to someone
| higher up.
| j4yav wrote:
| A middle manager should have managers reporting to them, not
| ICs.
| closeparen wrote:
| Staff+ engineers generally report to middle managers, and
| are expected to work across that middle manager's
| subordinate teams.
|
| In upper management it might be one very senior "right
| hand." In the lower tranches of middle management there
| will be more and more hands-on technical-track leaders.
| [deleted]
| VariableStar wrote:
| I am not surprised. I don't know how this plays out across
| different cultures, regional or corporate. I only witnessed how
| it went in the circles I work in here in Europe. My impression is
| that the group of people that clearly reacted mostly negatively
| to the work-from-home-during-the-pandemic period were indeed
| middle-managers, lowly heads of units, project managers, and
| those that populate the middle ranks of organisations with funny
| and unclear job titles. Perhaps these people are by nature of the
| extroverted people-person type that need extra social interaction
| to feel good. Or perhaps they found that their need to control
| others was more difficult to satisfy at distance. In my country
| it was also discussed at a point that many people were confronted
| during the pandemic with the meaninglessness of their jobs. I
| really believe it can be the case for many people, and not not
| only those middle-managers with funny job titles.
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| OK but the meaningless of a job is supposed to be compensated
| by a paycheck -- I don't mean that as some patronizing middle
| manager -- but rather I've done loads of jobs I thought were
| meaningless, but did them anyways, because I needed to pay my
| rent.
| ip26 wrote:
| We can get a sense of how an IC's productivity changed during
| lock down. But it's harder to tell how the effectiveness of
| management or leadership might have changed over a one or two
| year period.
| bonecrusher2102 wrote:
| That's interesting that you mention Project Managers, mainly
| because my experience has been just the opposite. We've been
| leaning much harder on those folks to manage the increased
| communication and coordination overhead that comes from WFH.
| yakak wrote:
| From what I've seen those people are leaned on to continue to
| give management a sense of purpose. They need to organize
| lots and lots of video meetings with lots of unwanted
| participants showing up.
| bonecrusher2102 wrote:
| My take here (as a T.PgM) is that I really see my role as
| doing the opposite of what you describe. We really do try
| to think quite a bit about if a meeting is necessary, can
| it be moved to async communications (whitepaper, email,
| ticket, slack conversation, etc.), and most certainly who
| are the minimum possible amount of people needed to resolve
| a given issue.
|
| And this is certainly not to be directly contrary to your
| post -- which does raise a great point. In fact, it is many
| peoples' (warranted) criticism of and aversion to pointless
| meetings that helps me and my colleagues keep _minimizing_
| communication and coordination overhead at top of mind.
|
| And everyone's interests tend to dovetail in this regard
| when these things are done well anyway: folks spend their
| time in meetings sparingly and efficiently, which in turn
| speeds up and makes more efficient the
| project/launch/program/whatever.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| There is a "hollowing out" of middle management - not from Covid
| or work from home, but software. It's still eating the world.
| Accountancy, or rather bookkeeping went first in the 1960s with
| rooms of people pulling levers on adding machines to the first
| IBMs. And now the data that those pounds and pence proxied for is
| actually being sent up the chain aggregated and compounded into a
| single straight through connection from the coal face to the
| board room. As Larry Ellison said "if you don't design it, build
| it or sell it Inwill do everything I can to automate you"
| 2ion wrote:
| This is pretty accurate as an observation I believe. "My"
| middle manager does a lot more and acts more like a PO/PM
| combination fixing things in a horizontally integrated manner,
| whereas most typical PO/PM roles do their PM/POeing in a
| vertically integrated manner, on a product/product team basis.
| He's very good at that and therefore far from feeling
| irrelevant. Instead, he's drowning in useful work.
| 2ion wrote:
| > Eric Schmidt even recently weighed in about the return-to-work
| debate, [...] "I don't know how you build great management [with
| remote work]. I honestly don't," he said. And about half of
| managers, 51%, genuinely believe that their workers want to
| return to the office.
|
| Instead of believing, perhaps ask them?
|
| In general, I find this article to say almost nothing. The
| headline is the clickbait bringing in a Fortune of clicks, I'm
| sure.
| Bud wrote:
| Much as I agree with the complete spin-doctor rewriting of this
| headline, we don't really do that on HN, do we?
| jrockway wrote:
| The title in the <title> and <h1> tags on the actual article
| are also very different. I think they are playing some
| optimization game to get more people to click. It's possible
| that the HN title was once the title of the actual article.
| mattkevan wrote:
| What we should do right, hear me out, is build a really big
| spaceship, put all the middle managers on it and fire them into
| space.
|
| We'll tell them it's to escape the giant mutant star goat or
| something and the rest of us will be along later, but they don't
| need to know we're not going to.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| Except it turned out the telephone sanitisers can stay.
| mvkel wrote:
| "Middle managers" are certainly needed as part of a corporate
| hierarchy. What is being exposed with WFH is -ineffective-
| managers.
|
| Ineffective managers are at every level, including the C-suite.
| Middle managers just have a higher probability of being
| ineffective due to lack of experience/resources, so they get the
| headline.
| newsclues wrote:
| There is also an excessive number of middle management, even if
| all of the were competent.
|
| Technology has made it possible to be a more effective manager
| and leader.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| > Technology has made it possible to be a more effective
| manager and leader.
|
| How so?
|
| I've built a few different organizations now and each time
| I've found that I need to introduce a middle management layer
| somewhere around 18 and 24 engineers.
|
| The limit is always things that are really hard to automate
| or replace with technology like 1 on 1s, keeping a pulse on
| how the team is feeling, coaching people on career growth,
| etc.
| newsclues wrote:
| Cars and planes made multi site management more effective.
|
| Phones, cellphones, email, etc have all made management
| communication more effective. Address book in your iPhone
| is faster than your secretary, a Rolodex and the
| switchboard.
|
| Automate the easy stuff, and have the management do the
| human leadership tasks.
|
| I'd ask the engineers what else can be done differently but
| maybe you have implemented lean leadership already.
| kkfx wrote:
| Beware a thing: the classic production of the '900
| manufacturing industry do just require organization
| because anything is done on the assembly line, but
| creative works (witch means anything not already designed
| and now in mass production stage) is another thing. You
| can't subdivide a problem in tasks effectively until you
| figure out how to solve it in the first place, you can't
| easy share ideas quickly without "work's social life"
| etc.
|
| To be more precise, it's doable but demand years of
| experience, our society except for very few jobs lack
| such experience and as always anyone want young people
| with decade of experience behind...
| AndrewDucker wrote:
| You no longer have to spend 5 minutes walking between
| meeting rooms and can now go straight from one meeting to
| another with no time to collect your thoughts at all!
| bin_bash wrote:
| I understood that as 18-24 engineers in a company, not
| per manager.
| ineptech wrote:
| And in my experience, if more than 5 people are working
| together to do the same thing, one of them is going to be
| the manager, whether you call them that or not. We do it
| intentionally and explicitly because that's more likely to
| lead to a _good_ manager then just letting someone take
| charge.
| jghn wrote:
| I don't think that contradicts what GP is saying, or
| perhaps I misunderstand them. 5 directs per manager. So
| 10 engineers = 2 managers. But at 25 engineers you have 5
| managers, and now you've maxed out their manager.
|
| Either way, my experience has been 5-10 directs as the
| sweet spot. 12-15 is fine but really pushing things.
| Beyond that, you need more structure.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| My primary responsibilities as a manager are coaching,
| mentoring, hiring, firing, and solving impedance mismatches
| with other teams. None of that is aided by technology.
| yike321123 wrote:
| Not really the entire hierarchical structures of corporations
| is actually highly inefficient it's something a lot of
| universities have been talking about for a while now. Which is
| ironic when you realize most universities are designed similar
| to churches with indentured servitude.
| throwaway93982 wrote:
| Yep, hierarchy comes from religion ( _hierarkhia_ , "rule of
| a high preist"). Traditional capitalist hierarchical
| organization is just one of many potential hierarchies, so
| definitely it could be improved. But hierarchy is ingrained
| in culture, and culture is probably the third hardest thing
| in the universe to change, after genetics and cancelling your
| gym membership.
| hallway_monitor wrote:
| It seems to me that hierarchy is ingrained in nature, and
| human nature is an extension of that. There will always be
| a hierarchy in any system of living (and therefore
| competing) organisms.
|
| It seems more productive to focus on making sure the
| difference between the top and bottom doesn't get too
| extreme, rather than lamenting the fact of nature and
| wishing there was no such thing as competition.
| trhway wrote:
| The nature didn't for the most part had software nor
| networks, and thus couldn't fully explore and utilize the
| alternative approach of self organization from the bottom
| up with closed loop feedback to achieve desired emergent
| properties/product/etc. There are good chances that many
| known human hierarchies are going the way of dinosaurs.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| If you are talking about hierarchy copying the Catholic
| Church, well the church also copied the Roman government,
| that appeared mostly naturally from the existence of an
| imperium.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I've never been too impressed with what academics think the
| corporate world is like. Some of them, maybe, are pretty
| knowledgable, but a lot of them have been inside the academic
| bubble too long.
| yike321123 wrote:
| Honestly, they're right more than they are wrong under the
| correct circumstances that is. Too bad being locked in a
| room for your entire life leads to a lot of other issues
| instead of experiencing the world and grabbing a better
| understanding of how everything ties in together. But who
| would change that after all if we believe what the modern
| psychologist says altruism doesn't exist.
| taeric wrote:
| Are they, though? Specifically in predictability of
| models. Really good at explaining, but not good at
| hedging on how likely what happened was to have happened.
| xwdv wrote:
| By far the most inefficient part of the hierarchy is at the
| very bottom. Workers slacking off, not working optimally, and
| still getting paid for the full 40 hours. Wouldn't need so
| much redundancy if you could truly get their full output.
| akomtu wrote:
| It's always the horses who fail the king. If only those
| lazy animals did more than the bare minimum, the king
| wouldn't need to be such a despot.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| That's a management problem as well.
| alan-hn wrote:
| Are you aware of any data or studies that back up this
| claim? I would love to read about it
| phoe-krk wrote:
| _> if you could truly get their full output._
|
| Getting the relative most out of the bottom line workers
| and finding and taking care of the underperformers is the
| direct responsibility of their managers, and I'm saying
| this unironically. Managing is about being a performance
| multiplier, and the most hands-on part of management always
| involves concrete teams of people doing concrete dirty
| work.
|
| It's the manager managers that are the problem mentioned
| here.
| cpeterso wrote:
| And the productivity of line workers doesn't matter if
| management is prioritizing the wrong projects. Bad
| managers have a bigger negative impact than bad line
| workers.
| willcipriano wrote:
| > Wouldn't need so much redundancy if you could truly get
| their full output.
|
| The incentive structure is that those workers capture much
| less than the value of their total output. If they worked
| harder so the firm required less employees, how do they
| benefit?
| stult wrote:
| This touches on the controversy that sparked Coase's Theory
| of the Firm. He proposed the idea that firms exist to reduce
| transaction costs as an explanation for why capitalist firms
| look like mini-soviets internally, with highly centralized
| control and planning. Which seems like a contradiction to
| classical economists. If free markets are so effective, why
| can't you run a company like a free market? eg have workers
| bid for tasks from managers. Turns out that is wildly
| inefficient because of the transaction costs involved in
| coordinating competitively instead of cooperatively (at least
| in successful companies). I suspect pandemic WFH has revealed
| there are much more efficient ways to coordinate
| cooperatively than simple centralized planning, and those
| methods generally do not require as much managerial
| facilitation because they rely much more heavily on
| asynchronous communication.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| Is that always true? What about in R&D departments or
| startups? Wouldn't the free market of a firm be guided by
| personal reputation?
| WJW wrote:
| It seems logical to me that free markets are also not
| necessarily very efficient at price discovery, there are
| after all a ton of costs involved in price discovery,
| information gathering about market counterparts to see if
| they are trustworthy, drafting and policing contracts,
| etc etc etc. However, even with these added costs markets
| are the only thing we've discovered that still works well
| beyond a certain scale.
|
| For R&D departments and startups, plan economies can
| still work because the complexity is still small enough
| that humans can comprehend it.
| lupire wrote:
| The offices solution to Coase's paradox is that central
| planning doesn't scale well.
|
| This is similar to federalism -- central governments don't
| work very well for everything, but scaler local governments
| are still effective for local issues.
| darkerside wrote:
| So you're saying their theory differs from their practice?
| Hmm.
| yike321123 wrote:
| Why share the cake when you can have it all to yourself.
| After all they did spent their entire life getting to that
| point shouldn't everyone else suffer as well? Maybe just a
| little worse every iteration until we just stop paying
| them. /s
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Actual work like coding and drawing has become much easier with
| WfH. People work, like managing and coordinating, has become much
| harder now that you can't just walk up to people and have
| conversations with them anymore.
|
| If anything, middle managers are _more_ important than that were
| before. I'm sure upper management will just see them as a cost-
| cutting measure though and write specious articles like this to
| justify their idiocy.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| "If anything, middle managers are more important than that were
| before. I'm sure upper management will just see them as a cost-
| cutting measure though and write specious articles like this to
| justify their idiocy. "
|
| I only disagree about one thing in that sentence. It is missing
| one qualifier. 'Good middle managers are more important than
| there were'.
| codezero wrote:
| I think they mean micromanagers. I thrived as a middle manager of
| a remote team that was always distributed across three time
| zones. I'm not a micromanager and I built my team with that in
| mind, so my focus was hiring, onboarding, long term planning, and
| mentorship.
| algo_trader wrote:
| Can you share tips about ensuring you get a good (enough)
| funnel of (remote) candidates and hires?
| codezero wrote:
| I hire relatively entry level folks for advanced product
| technical support so my funnel is naturally large since they
| aren't specialists and I can teach/train the stuff to anyone
| who is a technical hobbyist or enthusiast. This has been my
| best way to keep top of the funnel high, over the years I
| also got more and more comfortable hiring folks with less and
| less technical/startup background but mostly my advice isn't
| helpful for roles that require a lot of specialization. At
| that point it's good to have a solid network, a good
| reputation, and a successful company. That's another thing
| that's kept me from having to expand my funnel much - my
| company has been doing really well for eight years and is
| only becoming more well known and mostly we get a lot of
| inbound. Besides that, hire good recruiters, sourcers, and
| recruiting coordinators. They know their shit.
| hinkley wrote:
| Maybe there's a two dimensional chart here, but my best
| managers have been leaders, in which case they became mentors,
| or they've been service oriented, in which case I and my peers
| were up-managing them. The ones who are trying to herd cats
| come off as shrill, and nobody respects them. Fears them maybe,
| but no respect.
|
| Problem is that if you're up-managing your boss, they aren't
| up-managing their boss. I'm sure there's a Law in there
| somewhere. The leader types tend to know what's what and shield
| the team from bullshit so they can get busy making the boss
| look competent in every other area. You can talk your way out
| of a lot of stuff when people are happy with the rest of your
| results. Delay tactics if nothing else. Sorry we can't work on
| bullshit #372 right now because we're busy being awesome on
| feature #784. Come back in a month or two (then cross your
| fingers to see if they still remember or are focused on
| bullshit #381).
| maleldil wrote:
| What do you mean by "service oriented" and "up-managing"?
| throwaway93982 wrote:
| Service-oriented would be when they make themselves
| available as a service to "customers" (direct reports,
| other teams). Think of helpdesk/customer service, where
| there's docs on how to communicate/collaborate/find needed
| info, times to schedule meetings/office hours, etc.
| Focusing more on the experience and needs of the people who
| might need the manager for something.
|
| Up-managing is basically supporting your boss. Help them
| with their goals, find ways to unblock them, ask them how
| they're doing/let them vent, make them look good to others.
|
| Personally I disagree with the whole "making someone else
| look good" management philosophy (including "only complain
| up"). I think it's dishonest and counter-productive. Sure
| it reduces friction, but it doesn't help crappy things be
| less crappy. It does prevent people from having hard
| conversations which might change things for the better. We
| need to take the ego and resistance to change out of
| work/management.
| khazhoux wrote:
| > I think they mean micromanagers
|
| I've never in 20+ years seen a micromanager in the wild. I'm
| not sure they really exist.
| throwanem wrote:
| They do; I went to a lot of effort a few years back, teaching
| one how not to be. We both learned a lot: I learned how to
| avoid a significant failure mode in my own career, and he
| learned he was happier in an IC role.
| ipaddr wrote:
| From demanding all computer screens face them to
| micromanaging time that required logging every minute in 15
| minute intervals. I've seen it. From email snooping to
| timestamp logging to phone call recording tracking
| micromanagers are alive and well .
| jghn wrote:
| When I've seen 15 min time logging it's always been when
| time is billable. Have you seen cases outside of this?
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| I had a CTO who would often send erratas with corrections in
| documentation written by and for ICs.
|
| He would also _frequently_ request that PMs would send him
| draft emails before they send those to third party suppliers.
|
| Note that all of these edits were not about content or data
| sensitivity or anything technical. It was purely grammar or
| just zero value adding re-wording.
|
| It was definitely the shortest position in my career, i got
| out as quick as I gracefully could.
|
| So yeah micro-managers do definitely exist.
| acrooks wrote:
| You're incredibly lucky if that's the case.
|
| I've had a mix of both. The times that I had I micromanager
| were the most soul-sucking experiences of my career.
|
| They're definitely out there.
| rybosworld wrote:
| They exist, and it seems silly to suggest that they don't
| with n=1
| dhruvrrp wrote:
| Current corporation structure is not meant to increase individual
| productivity, but rather it increases on group productivity (at
| the cost of individual productivity) which is why middle managers
| are always be important.
|
| People leave, go on vacations, get sick, priorities changes, all
| of which need to be dealt with. And in an environment where the
| amount of work available to do is always higher than the
| resources available, you need middle managers to deal with other
| teams, PMs, customers etc.
| thesumofall wrote:
| The article doesn't even mention "middle manager"?
|
| It also does not make any sense. Increased WFH requires more
| effort to connect people, communicate context, mentor people,
| bridge silos, ... all part of the job description of a middle
| manager
| bb88 wrote:
| It's far easier and preferable for a manager to punish employees
| than reward them.
|
| I'm really sick of this management mentality of "A good employee
| gets a 3% pay raise, but step out of line once and you'll get a
| PIP."
| lazyant wrote:
| Remote work is exposing a lot of foolishness in the workplace,
| like "busy work" and ineffective managers rather than a
| particular role.
| qiskit wrote:
| Once a decade, there is a story about middle managers becoming
| irrelevant. Somehow they manage to cling on. I'm sure in another
| decade, we'll get another article about something else making
| middle managers irrelevant.
| mountainriver wrote:
| Yup as a manager you don't do much, sort of like being a
| corporate lawyer. The company keeps you on payroll to delegate
| responsibility.
|
| The best teams I've worked for were more self organizing. When
| you have great engineers this is very effective and a wonderful
| work environment.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| It all depends on the role. My immediate manager is good ( and
| likely the best manager I had so far ).
|
| But he actively cuts through red tape for us and deals with the
| usual corporate idiocy on our behalf. I actually declined a job
| offer partially because of him ( no friends at other place to
| vouch for the place ).
|
| I don't know how much other managers do, but he does a lot. Not
| just for us, but for the company.
| rowanajmarshall wrote:
| Although, most companies can't or won't hire great engineers,
| because great engineers are hella expensive and hard to hire.
| bb88 wrote:
| What's worse, is if you happen to hire a great engineer, you
| have to keep the pay raises and bonuses coming to that star
| engineer. Otherwise, he'll move on and take the %30 pay raise
| with a new job.
|
| The punishment/reward metric is skewed toward punishment in
| most companies.
| ip26 wrote:
| Even more simply, all engineers are not great engineers, and
| _somebody_ is employing the ones that aren't great.
| dQw4w9WgXcQ wrote:
| > Yup as a manager you don't do much
|
| Not doing your job well if this is the case. Quality managers
| do everything `codezero` mentioned above (hiring, onboarding,
| long term planning, and mentorship) along with being a
| corporate therapist and much more.
|
| A lazy manager looks like the ER where they only handle shit
| when people come to them with blood and guts, a quality manager
| is regularly assessing the daily/weekly situation and
| anticipating obstacles or implementing fixes so engineering can
| run an unimpeded race. They're essentially the emotional chaos
| buffer for engineering, the goal being engineers come to work
| and feel the autonomy, freedom, and energy to execute well.
| drewcoo wrote:
| Hard disagree. A well-managed team can manage itself. If you
| can go on a month-long vacation and don't need to set up any
| special delegation of tasks first, it's a well-managed team.
|
| If you're constantly dealing with crises, that's a huge
| management failure.
| rybosworld wrote:
| It sounds like your suggesting that every team is made of
| high-performers. In my experience, it's only high-
| performers that can self-manage.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Let me correct that title for you: "Middle managers irrelevant,
| and now we know it with work from home"
| someweirdperson wrote:
| The title of the original story:
|
| "Fed-up managers declare WFH is over, as 77% say they'd fire you
| or cut your pay for not coming back to the office"
|
| And the reasons the article describes are more along the lines of
| managers feeling that they cannot manage remotely, not worrying
| about their relevance.
|
| The underlying reason might of course be worries about relevance,
| but that is not the content of the article.
|
| I think it is worries about job-security. If everyone is remote
| every worker can be replaced by someone cheaper from some region
| with lower wages. As mangers are at the same location as their
| underlings, their relevance vanishes with local workers.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I am not surprised, but I am annoyed.
|
| There are clear benefits to remote. Our company posted record
| profits, ICs report increased individual productivity, but we
| have to roll it back, because it is 'hard' on managers? Whatever
| happened to, 'git gud'?
|
| Schmidt:
|
| "I don't know how you build great management [with remote work].
| I honestly don't," he said. And about half of managers, 51%,
| genuinely believe that their workers want to return to the
| office.
|
| Wesman:
|
| "Clearly, managers are struggling," said Max Wesman, GoodHire's
| chief operating officer. "Organizations that find a work
| arrangement that satisfies the majority of their workforce will
| benefit in the areas of recruitment, productivity, employee
| satisfaction, and retention."
| Bud wrote:
| I can think of a route towards Wesman's stated goal: if you
| fire most of the worthless middle managers, and let the real
| workers work from home, then a majority of the workforce will
| be satisfied.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I am not against it. To be honest, one could argue that the
| nation-wise remote experiment already yielded results.. we
| could easily extrapolate, who is an actual contributor and
| who is just there, because... reasons.
| nathias wrote:
| That's completely untrue, they just found out they were never
| relevant in the first place.
| kbos87 wrote:
| I'm a middle manager at a company that is fully and completely
| embracing remote work, and I feel as needed as ever. It's the bad
| middle managers who only know how to provide "value" by
| instilling fear and managing presence who should be afraid.
| deltaonefour wrote:
| Some of them matter. Most of them don't. I would say you belong
| to about 1% of middler managers that actually matter.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| my middle manager at Apple Inc in California purposefully
| instilled distrust between members of his group. It gave him
| control and he would do it repeatedly over different
| situations. At the same time, there was this vague message that
| if you wrote patent applications, you could possibly maybe be
| promoted, with a bonus, but there was no time allocated to do
| that. 1990s
| bb88 wrote:
| If managers treat their employees as "liabilities", employees
| will treat the company as a "liability" to their career.
| INTPenis wrote:
| My manager has been great during covid. He immediately
| scheduled a daily group meeting for 30 minutes and it made me
| feel more involved with my staff group than ever. Because we're
| all so spread out so whenever I visited the HQ I only ever met
| a few of them.
|
| But our org is so confusing that he has very little to do with
| my daily tasks, I have other types of managers for that.
| dhd415 wrote:
| Daily 30-minute meetings sounds to me like the antithesis of
| good management. If you feel like you need 30 minutes of
| synchronous time per day from your team of engineers, you are
| not a good manager.
| xyse53 wrote:
| > He immediately scheduled a daily group meeting for 30
| minutes and it made me feel more involved
|
| It's almost as if there's not a one-size-fits-all. Unlike
| your comment.
| pjbeam wrote:
| That's a bit unfair. Good management is partially about
| meeting the needs of the team. Some teams benefit from this
| sort of thing.
| verve_rat wrote:
| That depends. A "daily group meeting" doesn't sound like a
| stand up or project management meeting. It sounds like 30
| minutes a day to goof off with your work mates. A way to
| replicate the downtime you naturally have during an on site
| work day, a way to increase group cohesion by talking shit
| and playing games.
|
| If that is the case, then they sound like a great manager.
| icedchai wrote:
| "Daily standups" that become status reports where people
| drone on for 5 or 10 minutes each are not good experiences.
| My best managers have been fellow engineers that understand
| this (and also understand what their reports are actually
| doing.)
| cosmiccatnap wrote:
| It's wild how often people defend middle management.
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