[HN Gopher] Mistakes as a new manager
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Mistakes as a new manager
Author : Sharpie4679
Score : 64 points
Date : 2024-12-06 16:56 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (terriblesoftware.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (terriblesoftware.org)
| eastbound wrote:
| List is toi short. I'd add: Posture.
|
| Everyone wants to be the benevolent manager, especially if there
| is enough money for everyone, and especially in these times where
| collaboration and positive management are touted. But you have to
| keep a carrot and a leash on the employees.
|
| My first employees got a 33% raise the first year things were
| good. Long story short: None of them are here anymore and we're
| still scrambling to recover from the mess they've created by
| being lazy.
|
| Now people struggle to get a few percent salary increase. It eats
| me to my core, but I want them to get my product out.
| chasd00 wrote:
| heh i will say being a parent helps with being a manager. You
| really understand the carrot/stick balance as a parent.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| I have to admit I initially hired a few Papered Posers, and it
| was a mistake to pay them 2.4x higher than market rate to
| ensure the project would reach conclusion on schedule.
|
| The lessons we learned:
|
| 1. "Manage or be managed...": your first lesson is people will
| try to manipulate those in positions of authority regardless of
| competency. i.e. the idea of "goodwill" being the true core
| product can escape the irrationally ambitious/sycophantic.
|
| 2. No amount of money can make someone care about company
| projects. The worker may be interested in the project, or is
| simply there for the wrong reasons. Remember you want to keep
| employees content, but a "kingdom of kings" is unsustainable.
|
| 3. People can postpone something until tomorrow indefinitely.
| Thus, pay very close attention to projected deliverable times.
|
| 4. Fire someone for being unproductive according to a defined
| workmanship-standard as soon as possible. It will notify the
| rest of staff you are not there to play games, and stupid
| behavior will have consequences. Mostly effective with Jr staff
| using ChatGPT to try and BS the world like any other con.
|
| 5. Delegation? Just initially run trial contracts with
| potential staff first for each project deliverable. Failure to
| deliver on time means they don't get another dime, or a second
| chance to be unaccountable for their behavior.
|
| 6. Entrenched incompetence: organizations have their own
| emergent structure, and it will usually drift back to the same
| dysfunctional patterns/designs.
|
| 7. Redacted
|
| 8. try to leave things slightly better than when you arrived.
|
| 9. Managers usually can never be a normal employee again.
| People subconsciously fear they cannot control authority, and
| will prefer to hire someone easier to "handle".
|
| Best regards, =3
| otteromkram wrote:
| > "Where's my dopamine?"
|
| I'm not in management, but couldn't OP become a working manager?
| Might depend on the size of their team and demands of the new
| role, but I've worked with managers who wear their IC hat on
| occasion and thought it was a positive value-add for the group as
| a whole.
| 98codes wrote:
| Every manager I've ever had that couldn't let go of their IC
| hat also had a pile of manager hat work that wasn't ever
| getting done.
| icedchai wrote:
| For small teams (like, 5 people max) that may make sense. It
| really depends on the organization. With some orgs, you're
| going to meetings all day and there's no time to focus.
| TripleChecker wrote:
| Delegation was one I struggled with a lot in the early days. Even
| as the CEO, I was reluctant to give up my customer service
| responsibilities of manning the inboxes. Eventually, I understand
| that even if someone handled it only 80-90% as well, that would
| be much better for the company than having me do it.
| chasd00 wrote:
| Delegation is so hard, i struggle constantly and I'm
| technically a "Sr. Manager". When the project is up against
| deadline pressure, it's so tempting to do something yourself
| that only takes you a day vs delegating to someone else and
| they spin on it for 3 and screw it up at the end anyway.
| Inevitably you become the bottleneck when a wave of escalations
| or other management tasks come down the pipe but there's a pile
| of actual work you decided to take on yourself half done too.
| nineteen999 wrote:
| "Mistakes I made as a new manager which you won't necessarily
| make because all humans are different"
| Ferret7446 wrote:
| Everyone is different, yes, but people are >99% similar. We all
| go through the same developmental stages, perhaps at different
| times, and we exhibit millions of the same psychological
| biases.
| localghost3000 wrote:
| This misses the single biggest mistake every new manager makes:
| avoiding hard conversations with your reports. If you start
| managing folks you were recently in the trenches with this can be
| VERY hard. These are your comrades after all! You want them to
| like you. It's all very natural. Sadly it is the single biggest
| cause for dissatisfaction I've seen on a given team. Being
| unwilling to give honest, direct feedback results in
| underperforming teams and unhappy reports. It's counterintuitive
| but very important to get right as a manager. The big "AHA!!"
| moment for me was when I realized you need to speak to behaviors
| and outcomes not character. So instead of "you're sloppy" you say
| something like "I've noticed quality issues in your code recently
| that's resulted in some rollbacks. Can we talk about how we can
| address that?". Involving them in the solution and explaining why
| it matters. It makes all the difference and folks ironically
| respect and like you more for it.
| steerpike wrote:
| 100% agree with this. I would say that the other highly likely
| mistake new managers make is trying to code their way out of
| problems. It makes sense, right? Previously when you're an IC
| and a project ran into issues you could just "code harder" and
| get through it, but that's rarely the right solution when
| you're a manager and will likely exacerbate the problem itself
| if you disappear into the trenches trying to code your way
| through a critical path. Your role is no longer primarily
| solving coding problems it's solving people problems.
| bobsomers wrote:
| Completely agree. This is excellent advice.
| roenxi wrote:
| [delayed]
| binarymax wrote:
| I've got a good hack for the dopamine: PowerPoint and excel. Go
| to town on making kick ass presentations and reports. "Ship"
| those to the org during meetings and all hands. It's not the same
| as code for customers, but it helps. Also, if you have time, code
| non critical things that will never be a dependency for anything
| else.
| ryoshu wrote:
| Delegation -> This is 1000% the hardest thing to do. You need to
| let go and trust your people.
|
| Where's my dopamine? -> Your success is the teams' success. When
| they are doing well, you are doing well.
|
| Quality over quantity -> Yes.
|
| The level of engagement -> Your job is to support the team -
| blockers are your problem, not their problem. Fight to remove
| blockers. That's your job.
|
| Managing perception -> Which leads into, your role, well done, is
| invisible. Protect them from the bullshit politics that any org
| has and let them do what they do well.
|
| Redefining success -> That's up to you and your manager. If
| you're a new manager, you need to manage across and up. That's a
| set of skills that we don't train people for.
|
| You're coming from an IC position and you know how to do the
| work. Managing people is a different job,
| brap wrote:
| As a line manager a huge mistake you could make (especially if
| you're joining a new team) is not being technical enough.
|
| You may not write code anymore, but you are expected to know the
| system very thoroughly, otherwise you'll be perceived as a
| glorified babysitter.
|
| As a new manager it's very easy to fall into the trap of not
| doing any technical work because you're a big boy now playing in
| the big boy league, but this will 100% hurt you.
|
| You need to stay on top of everything your reports are doing.
| Ultimately YOU are directly responsible.
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