[HN Gopher] So you're a manager now
___________________________________________________________________
So you're a manager now
Author : mooreds
Score : 209 points
Date : 2025-07-31 12:48 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (scottkosman.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (scottkosman.com)
| tiniuclx wrote:
| I've recently been getting more and more management
| responsibilities. This article seems very helpful - thank you for
| sharing! The advice on over-communicating & owning up to your
| mistakes is very on point.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> The advice on over-communicating [...] is very on point._
|
| Is it? Being on the other side I've left jobs because of
| manager over-communication.
|
| If you don't have the right communication skills, let someone
| else do the job. There are plenty of people out there who are
| very capable of effectively communicating without over-
| communicating. Just as you wouldn't want a developer who writes
| excess code to make up for their lack of being able to write
| good code, same goes for a manager trying to communicate. Going
| over the top to make up for your shortcomings is never a recipe
| for success.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| I'd say it depends on the person. People who communicate
| badly often do so because they think they can say all they
| need to with few words. Those people communicate better by
| doing what they think of as over-communicating.
| Aurornis wrote:
| Some good advice. It's missing one of the most difficult topics:
| Performance Management.
|
| Most first-time managers have already read a lot of advice about
| being humble, delegating, celebrating your team's wins, and the
| other feel good topics.
|
| If you want to write internet advice that gets upvoted and shared
| you almost have to avoid the difficult conversation topics and
| assume that the team is full of perfect people that the manager
| just needs to serve.
|
| I'm in a semi-private peer group for managers and the number one
| most common struggle for new managers is their first encounter
| with employees who aren't working unless a manager is standing
| over their shoulder, or who are causing problems within the team.
| Books like "The Managers Path" can help, but in my experience the
| best help is to find a more experienced manager you can talk to
| for advice. A lot of the difficult realities of managing people
| are messy or even painful and are often intentionally avoided in
| feel-good internet advice.
| wiz21c wrote:
| Yeah, went down that road too. It's really emotionnally
| difficult/grinding. And I still don't have a clue: you have to
| find how each person behaves. Lots of talk, influence,
| repeating the same thing every day, etc. Unfortunately, I've
| never taken any pleasure in doing that, it was just difficult
| and exhausting to me...
| Aurornis wrote:
| > you have to find how each person behaves. Lots of talk,
| influence, repeating the same thing every day, etc.
|
| It doesn't help that most of the management advice you find
| on the internet assumes that inside every employee is a
| happy, productive worker and their manager can unlock it with
| the right words.
|
| In the real world the range of employee types is very large.
| Some of them are just toxic and you're not going to coach it
| out of them. Knowing when and how to cut your losses is
| important for preserving the rest of the team.
| MobiusHorizons wrote:
| Jim Keller did a talk somewhere on YouTube about his
| experience at AMD on the zen project, and one of the things
| he highlighted in that process was figuring out what was
| going on with people that was preventing them from working
| well on the project. Getting at the deeper causes made it
| easier to try to find mutually beneficial solutions even if
| those were the employee moving on from the team. People
| problems are messy though, and you will definitely feel like
| the bad guy in some cases, even if you are trying to do what
| is best for everyone.
| flashgordon wrote:
| This is really nice. I've been doing this for quite a while
| (and also ping pong ic-em and back). Oh and I've also been
| "the" poor performer. A couple of observations:
|
| 1. Performance management is never easy and I don't think it
| should be. I don't mean the technique or process of it bit the
| mental weighing of it. You are affecting a person's livelihood
| so you don't want to approach it robotically always (despite
| what the hr training tells you about it not being personal etc)
|
| 2. This is a big one. Performance has a huge under rated aspect
| that is environmental and circumstantial. I've seen really
| strong performers drop and fail because of personal situations
| and not being able (or rather not given the space and bandwidth
| to recover organically). And similarly those with a poor perf
| in one company go to a supposedly "higher tier" company and
| really thrive and sky rocket.
|
| Management is really a mixed bag. I loved the coaching,
| direction setting, strategy, etc but always having to sell
| opaque higher up decisions as your own and being an inverted
| $hit umbrella for leadership can be draining. I guess the
| solution is to just join executive leadership ha.
| virgilp wrote:
| > I guess the solution is to just join executive leadership
| ha.
|
| It's really... not? I guess, it probably depends on the
| person too. But at some level, you have both a lot of power
| to influence things accidentally in a bad way if you're not
| careful, and at the same time absolutely minimal power to
| actually get stuff done (you always need to rely on others
| for the "doing" part, oftentimes several levels deep/ with a
| lot of potential for miscommunication).
|
| Those opaque decisions? You _have to_ take decisions, because
| not taking decisions is very often worse than taking a bad
| decision. And you don't have the information, you can't have
| the information, you need to work at a high level of
| abstraction because it's impossible to know all the details.
| Unless the relevant details are being communicated to you
| just in time (spoiler: they won't be), you won't know them.
| If you actually care about how well you do your job and what
| is your impact on others, it's not a walk in the park, at
| all.
| flashgordon wrote:
| I wasnt suggesting that you shouldnt or you cannot take the
| decisions. We all understand corporate life etc and i think
| that kind of compartmentalizing is just part of the game.
| Frankly there is no decision to take - you are just a
| messenger so you roll with the punches. While we all learn
| to put up a straight face and explain (nay relay/readout)
| why sacrificing X000 people because the path to ASI needs
| new blood etc - if you are not moved by it internally (with
| your inner self raising that single eye-brow in ....
| curiosity) then I applaude you for being made of much more
| sterner stuff than me :)
| virgilp wrote:
| I was not being clear - I was just trying to say that
| taking opaque $hit decisions with lots of inverted
| umbrellas around you is somewhat inevitable and not all
| fun, either; sure, it's lucrative, so that helps - but
| otherwise it's not really a solution to the "mixed bag"
| problem.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > I've seen really strong performers drop and fail because of
| personal situations and not being able (or rather not given
| the space and bandwidth to recover organically). And
| similarly those with a poor perf in one company go to a
| supposedly "higher tier" company and really thrive and sky
| rocket.
|
| I have, too, but this is the bias I was talking about: We
| like reading and writing about the situations where managers
| were able to convert a low performer to a star performer.
| Similarly, when a high performer becomes a low performer we
| like reading about how management was at fault.
|
| Yet much less is written about the difficult employees who
| aren't responsive to management coaching. Most of what is
| written is about the stories where good managers turned
| difficult employees around or bad managers failed to help
| employees, leaving an impression that the manager is solely
| responsible for the outcome.
|
| In the peer group I mentioned above a common story is for
| someone to arrive after trying to coach a problem employee
| for years without progress. When you've been led to believe
| that a failing employee is really a failure of management
| it's hard to let go of them, because letting go is admitting
| failure. It takes a reality check from someone more
| experienced to realize that not every employee has good
| intentions. These situations aren't written about as much
| because they're uncomfortable and many don't like reading
| about it.
| flashgordon wrote:
| Clarifying - If the employee is not coachable why spend
| years? I know you mentioned the "admitting failure" aspect
| of letting go (this probably makes me a sociopath to even
| ask this).
|
| Now coachability could mean different things - Are they
| absolutely unreceptive to feedback? Were they actually
| hired in the wrong role? fantastic interviewers but
| terrible on the job, mislevelled, completely wrong area,
| passion etc? Record of toxicity?
|
| Arent these (except may be the mislevelled bit) grounds for
| a PIP to begin with. Ive felt these situations were easier
| to manage in FAANG?MAANGO etc precisely due to the highly
| process driven cultures. Also i think the "emotion" of it
| goes away because hiring is extremely generalized and
| pipelined (best case you see a candidate's interview
| feedback if you are the HM and usually you only do that if
| you are happy with the "numeric rating"). Generalized
| hiring has its own problems but that's another story. Again
| this may be different at various companies so just trying
| to job my memory.
|
| Btw I loved this:
|
| > I have, too, but this is the bias I was talking about: We
| like reading and writing about the situations where
| managers were able to convert a low performer to a star
| performer. Similarly, when a high performer becomes a low
| performer we like reading about how management was at
| fault.
|
| Often managers are demonized without recognizing that
| managers themselves are part of the machine that is the
| company and the culture (and I feel this actually has
| become so by design).
| hitekker wrote:
| > Yet much less is written about the difficult employees
| who aren't responsive to management coaching. Most of what
| is written is about the stories where good managers turned
| difficult employees around or bad managers failed to help
| employees, leaving an impression that the manager is solely
| responsible for the outcome.
|
| Maybe off-topic: I think a lot of writing comes from a
| place of control. The writers want to feel like they're in
| control and the readers want to feel they're in control
| too. The internet functions as people's outlet and fantasy
| environ, so scary writing naturally gets filtered out, i.e.
| post something uncomfortable and people must retaliate to
| preserve their comfort, their sense of control.
| normie3000 wrote:
| > Yet much less is written about the difficult employees
| who aren't responsive to management coaching.
|
| There are legal, ethical and emotional risks attached to
| writing about failed relationships with difficult
| colleagues. These stories are meant to be shared over a hot
| (or strong) drink.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Nobody writes books about managing your manager, which
| seems odd. I practiced it, and it worked well for me.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| It's secret knowledge!
| WalterBright wrote:
| It's rather obvious. He is your customer. Figure out what
| he wants and deliver it.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Ah but the art is in figuring out what he actually wants!
| Not what he ideally would want, says he wants, or is
| supposed to want.
| FreakLegion wrote:
| "Managing up" is the term:
| https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/managing-up.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| 1. That's because people are unique and there are infinite
| people problems to solve, so it will never be easy.
|
| 2. I don't believe those are the types that OP was talking
| about. There are people that will just never work out to
| begin with, and there are people who have bad days/weeks. The
| latter are already trusted and deemed worthy, so it's not the
| same class of problem.
|
| And remember, being a director is just being an inverted
| $shit umbrella for veeps, so the grass isn't always greener!
| steveBK123 wrote:
| "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is
| unhappy in its own way"
| alphazard wrote:
| In today's corporate world, it can be difficult or impossible
| to fire people. It's important to understand that actually
| removing someone from the organization is a totally separate
| problem from managing the performance of the team.
|
| People who don't contribute or cause problems need to be
| sequestered as much as possible. Don't let them bring down the
| rest of the team. I think "managed out" is the term that's
| being used now. That is a skill that a manager of any level can
| use to keep their team performing even when they don't have the
| authority to remove someone, or the process to remove someone
| is many months long.
| hobs wrote:
| It's just not though. People above you are making decisions
| to not pay what generally amounts to trivial amounts of money
| to (in many cases I have seen) completely fuck up their
| products.
|
| I have worked with enough C levels to understand that most of
| them just want you to manage all the problems while they
| collect the money and make "strategic decisions" (follow
| whatever fad is hot right now.)
|
| It's why I like working with smaller companies, usually not
| established enough to just make middle management eat shit
| and ignore customers.
| scottLobster wrote:
| As an IC, one reason I left my old (hated) job was
| precisely that. The product was barely-functional shit. We
| once spent 8 months implementing a "feature" that had
| senior engineers walking off the program in protest, only
| for them to be validated when said feature caused us to
| miss our contractual requirements just like said senior
| engineers said it would, and we spent another 8 months
| ripping it out.
|
| Naturally I went looking for answers, started asking polite
| questions of my boss at 1-on-1s, started attending program-
| level meetings that engineers didn't typically show up to
| but were large/open enough I could blend into the
| background, and discovered that the root of the problem was
| roughly 3 levels into management and they weren't going to
| give a shit about what some engineers thought they should
| prioritize, even if we could tie it to financials/hours
| worked/cost savings (we tried and were politely ignored).
|
| Left for a smaller program at a different company, and it's
| night and day. I remember suggesting that it would be nice
| if we could have an additional server for a system we were
| building and got told "yeah good idea, go ask <PM> if it's
| in the budget". It was, and we got it. I was in heaven.
| hobs wrote:
| Even more well managed projects are just "here's the
| budget figure it out yourself or come talk to us if it
| will make us XX% more", but SOCII still manages to make a
| lot of things take forever even in the best of
| situations.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| It's good to do some snooping up the food chain like
| that.
|
| I've been at a few small-scaling-to-big firms going
| through tremendous growing pains. Most of the time it was
| that they had the insight to hire team leads & ICs with
| experience from bigger competitors but not any higher up
| the food chain.
|
| That is - higher extremely experienced, talented people,
| and have them report to the some guy that was hired 20
| years ago because he went to school with the founder, or
| his buddies kid, or some dude who never worked elsewhere
| in the industry. So ultimately the deciders and decisions
| didn't change and it was all window dressing.
| xnx wrote:
| > In today's corporate world, it can be difficult or
| impossible to fire people
|
| Really? In the US you can fire an employee for any reason at
| any time (aside from a few illegal reasons: union activity,
| racism, etc.).
| jghn wrote:
| > In the US you can fire an employee for any reason at any
| time
|
| On paper, yes. In practice, especially in a larger company?
| It's often a long journey that involves a lot of energy on
| the part of the manager. And then of course you may not get
| a backfill rec. So then one needs to ask themselves: is
| this person truly a net negative when compared to the
| energy that'd be required to jettison them *and* replace
| them with nothing?
|
| Often the answer is no.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| I can't speak to a US perspective but in the UK and some
| EU countries I've experienced, firing someone is
| incredibly simple.
|
| In fact every difficulty I've seen is simply that someone
| didn't follow the clearly defined procedure.
|
| It's literally written out for you. You don't have to
| think or care how you feel, just follow the process and
| you're done. If the process says someone should stay then
| you got something wrong. Simple as that.
| jghn wrote:
| To be clear, it's simple for a *company* to fire someone.
| It often can be a pain in the ass for a *manager* to do
| it. For instance, a process like this:
|
| 1) Need to set up a clear paper trail over a period of
| time. For instance, a track record of being marked as an
| underperformed in their reviews _with_ concrete
| complaints. In places that require this to be tied to the
| review, and f they only have annual reviews, this can
| take a LONG time.
|
| 2) Bring HR into the process, where they'll do the
| equivalent of "did you turn it off and on again?" for
| quite some time
|
| 3) If they let you, set up a PIP, which itself will take
| several weeks
|
| 4) Finally the person is let go
| olddustytrail wrote:
| Yes, if that's your process then that's what you're being
| paid to do.
|
| OTOH, why shouldn't your team be able to say you're a bad
| manager and just get you fired? There is rarely a simple
| process to do that.
|
| They're the productive ones so this seems a little
| backwards.
|
| At any rate I definitely don't see why a managers job
| should be made easier to avoid the realistic implications
| of firing someone. If they can't cope with the clearly
| defined rules then maybe they're just not a competent
| manager.
| whstl wrote:
| I agree with you and upvoted you but:
|
| IMO the problem from a management perspective isn't
| really the bad performer staying too long.
|
| Also, dealing with HR as a manager is mostly fine. They
| actually respect you.
|
| And just having someone that sucks on your team for one
| extra year is not really much of a burden. Sure you have
| to do extra paperwork, adjust morale, but that's just the
| job.
|
| The problem IME is when this is used against you. When
| timelines are tight and the C-Level complain that "you
| already have N reports", but you can't fire or transfer
| the person who's disruptive, doesn't delivery or is
| clearly doing a second job instead, and the C-Level is
| too lazy to check what's going on.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| You're absolutely right that this is a problem when
| you're trying to break into the C suite.
|
| This is a deliberate tactic. Don't accept their framing.
| You are following the correct procedure and...
|
| This is the tough bit, you need to call out whoever is
| trying to keep you down.
| conrs wrote:
| The trouble is this calculus is being done at the local
| level despite the mantle of responsibility of management;
| the manager decides it is not worth their personal effort
| to lose a low performer, because they will generate more
| work for themselves. Meanwhile, the company suffers the
| net negative impact of such a decision - arguably even
| worse for the manager's career.
|
| That's the main challenge I have coaching management
| folks - now you have the option of doing work, and often
| you'll be tempted to take the path of least resistance,
| but that'll usually lead you astray.
|
| Edited to add - sorry I missed your net negative comment
| - to touch on that, as it's another thing I see often..
| Giving up on the org's ability to satisfy your needs is
| another toxic pattern for management - it is a lose/lose
| essentially. Management is often in a position of needing
| to push for the things it needs and advocate for the
| people relying on them.
| dustingetz wrote:
| the answer is always yes but the org pays the costs not
| the manager, and the manager isn't accountable to those
| costs, and the manager IS accountable and vulnerable to
| political costs
| complianceowl wrote:
| As a mediocre person, this gives me comfort.
| johndhi wrote:
| the "few illegal reasons" are able to be leveraged by
| almost any employee to write a letter and/or lawsuit
| suggesting they were fired for the wrong reasons. if you
| didn't internally document -- exhaustively -- how bad they
| were, and also assuming they didn't expertly document --
| exhaustively -- how great they were and how unfairly
| treated they were as an employee -- it winds up being a
| gigantic pain in the ass and almost always better for the
| company to simply pay them $200k as a settlement to said
| lawsuit. And that comes out of the budget of a department
| who doesn't have $200k to spare.
|
| That's why it's so hard.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> if you didn 't internally document -- exhaustively _
|
| Even then who knows. I once had to deal with an employee
| who filed a claim without a leg to stand on. The powers
| that be had already decided from the get-go I was at
| fault, even though they clearly didn't even bother to
| look at what I submitted. When questioned about it they
| couldn't even speak to it! They initially sided with the
| worker, but after weeks of phone calls that basically
| amounted to "read what I gave you already", eventually
| they relented with "Oh yeah, you are right. I have
| revised my decision." If it had been a slightly more
| biased/lazy person instead...
| Aurornis wrote:
| > it winds up being a gigantic pain in the ass and almost
| always better for the company to simply pay them $200k as
| a settlement to said lawsuit. And that comes out of the
| budget of a department who doesn't have $200k to spare.
|
| Lawsuits like this are more common than I expected before
| I got a peek behind the curtain, but in my experience
| companies aren't rolling over for $200K settlements
| frequently.
|
| The last time I was at a level in a billion dollar
| company to have some visibility into this, the company
| had a small team of corporate counsel who were pros at
| handling these cases. They would get a lot of suits from
| people hoping to get a quick payday and then spend a
| minimal amount of time actually engaging them. This
| either made them go away when the other side realized it
| wasn't an easy win, or made them change their tune and
| ask for a very small settlement (four or five figures,
| not six).
|
| And I've never heard of a company paying these
| settlements out of the budgets of small departments.
| That's weird.
|
| Nevertheless, even paying $200K to separate from a toxic
| employee would be a long term win relative to paying
| $200-300K (fully loaded cost with benefits) for multiple
| years while also risking them making your good team
| members leave and damaging your product.
| icedchai wrote:
| Firing someone "for cause" is an incredibly long and
| difficult process at many organizations. They eventually
| get put on a PIP for 3 to 6 months, meanwhile they are
| looking for another job and continuing to drag down
| performance of the rest of the team. It would be cheaper to
| pay them to leave sooner.
| MrGilbert wrote:
| Agile Coach / Scrum Master chiming in - I switched from an
| engineering position to this more people-centric role, and
| completely agree with you.
|
| What I find fascinating about this is how predictable people
| become once you know the different personalities and their
| nuances. It helps tremendously to also be interested in getting
| to know people. And yes, you will encounter people that are
| disruptive. Usually, and I can only speak for my environment,
| the team itself is quite good at handling that. I just need to
| give them room and provide a setting where they can talk about
| the issues at hand on a constructive base.
|
| That's why I love my job, and it may sound weird - but I'm the
| guy who can ask all the obvious questions that come to mind and
| others don't dare to ask. I love that I can build myself a
| toolbox to use in different (and difficult) situations. And I
| love to see my team succeed on the one hand, and learn from
| failure on the other.
| MrGilbert wrote:
| Curious to know why my comment received a downvote /
| downvotes.
| kortilla wrote:
| Being an agile coach isn't management
| whstl wrote:
| Off topic, but:
|
| It's interesting how everyone thinks they're "managers"
| in "agile" teams.
|
| Scrum Masters, Product Owners. I've even had Designers
| and QAs trying to make decisions on behalf of the team.
| MrGilbert wrote:
| That sounds like a dysfunctional team to me, to be
| honest.
| whstl wrote:
| It is indeed.
| azangru wrote:
| > It's interesting how everyone thinks they're "managers"
| in "agile" teams.
|
| In scrum in particular, teams are supposed to be "self-
| organizing and self-managing". Perhaps that's why :-)
| whstl wrote:
| Well, yes, but "self-managing team" implies the team
| manages itself, not that one person picks up the slack.
| As the sibling poster said, this is a sign of a
| dysfunctional team.
| MrGilbert wrote:
| Leadership and Management are two pair of shoes, I get
| that.
| dogleash wrote:
| I don't consider Agile bureaucrat positions leadership
| either.
|
| At best they're clerical support and training. In
| practice they can become officious ticket minders.
| MrGilbert wrote:
| Obviously, I strongly disagree.
|
| Hope you will experience better Agile Coaches through
| your career.
| azangru wrote:
| The author of the article writes:
|
| > You're not the player, you're the coach. Sometimes that
| means strategy and big-picture thinking. Sometimes it
| means shielding your team from dumb shit. Sometimes it
| means buying someone coffee and saying, "You're not
| crazy. This is hard."
|
| Guess what good agile coaches or scrum masters are
| expected to do :-)
| poisonborz wrote:
| I didn't, but guess: a lot of happy-babbly words without
| much substance or stark opinion. What's the summary? "I
| love this job, there are challenges, but I can master it
| well". Well..ok, thanks?
| dogleash wrote:
| I didn't downvote, but you started out sharing credentials
| that aren't management and then recounted standard
| platitudes about collaboration and some personal experience
| with zero transferable utility. And you posted that in
| response to a comment saying how difficult topics necessary
| to succeeding as a manager don't happen often on the
| internet. I understand why people would evaluate your
| contribution as detracting from the conversation at hand
| and downvote.
| MrGilbert wrote:
| Understandable. Thanks for pointing it out!
| hitekker wrote:
| Your insight is true enough that almost every recruiter asks a
| manager "have you PIP'd someone before?" in the first phone
| screen. It's a hard experience that some junior managers
| cannot, or will not, do for a variety of reasons.
|
| IMHO, besides the messiness, performance management is
| unspeakable because people generally hate authority. We've all
| had bad experiences with authority figures. We're also told
| many fantasies about the morality of groups of people. If the
| people are blameless, then the the fault lies with the manager
| who resembles (or opposes) our teacher, our parents, our
| government. And so forth.
|
| I use to subconsciously think that until I learned, the hard
| way, it was irresponsible blame-shifting. A recent HN
| discussion demonstrated some of those dynamics at play
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42273798
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| For anyone struggling with this:
|
| https://www.manager-tools.com/map-universe/hall-fame-highly-...
|
| This podcast has made me a 10x better manager.
|
| Good starters:
|
| - https://www.manager-tools.com/2007/04/effective-hiring-
| set-t...
|
| - https://www.manager-tools.com/2008/03/the-management-
| trinity...
|
| - https://www.manager-tools.com/2010/01/how-manage-arrogant-
| pr...
|
| - https://www.manager-tools.com/2008/02/the-management-
| trinity...
|
| - https://www.manager-tools.com/2018/06/manager-tools-
| onboardi...
| Aurornis wrote:
| I found the older manager tools podcasts to be more
| consistently helpful than the newer ones. I see 3/4 of your
| links are to old episodes, which tracks with my experience.
|
| I sampled some newer episodes in the past few years and was
| not impressed. One episode was just the host and guest
| ranting about how remote work isn't real work and how
| everyone needs to get back to the office, which was wholly
| unhelpful for me as a remote manager.
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| Agree. Pre-2016 was mostly great. Post-2020 it went
| downhill.
|
| _Edit: I also linked the wrong feedback episode. The
| correct one was from 2008..._
| icedchai wrote:
| Performance management is challenging and has been a problem
| with my previous managers. I point out that person X is not
| doing their job well, not reviewing PRs (stamping LGTM on
| everything after about 30 seconds), writing buggy code, writing
| zero tests, no updating existing tests, not responsive to
| communication, not receptive to feedback. "I'll talk to him."
| No change. Two months later, I have the same discussion.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| It's a good point but I'll add the problem is also the
| system/incentives of whatever org you are in.
|
| Some shops its easy enough to manage someone out and bring in a
| new team member who will contribute more. This is a health
| environment and generally free of the boom-bust hire/fire
| cycle.
|
| Other shops have very top down hire/fire cycles where if you
| fire someone now you have no ability to replace them, and worse
| yet.. when you HAVE to fire someone, you want the low performer
| around to hit your metrics..
|
| So a lot of shops carry around a lot of dead weight for
| different reasons, as long as the person is not a net negative
| contributor.
|
| Aside from that, yeah, how to deal with poor performers is as
| much an art as a science. I often find, aside from exceptional
| cases, most of them actually have some part of the job they
| prefer & are good at, so modifying the task allocation can go a
| long way.
| joncrane wrote:
| > I often find, aside from exceptional cases, most of them
| actually have some part of the job they prefer & are good at,
| so modifying the task allocation can go a long way.
|
| While this works in the short/naive scenario, I feel like in
| most cases these low performers prefer the "gravy" work if
| you will. The type of work that almost everyone prefers and
| is good at. So you risk setting a bad precedent for perverse
| incentives by rewarding poor performance with easier work.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Really depends actually!
|
| In a sufficient sized team you may have boring/rote tasks
| that your high performers hate & neglect, but sometimes a
| comparatively lower performer will take on.
|
| In many cases it's the (sometimes perceived but not in
| practice) higher performers that want the harder exciting
| high profile tasks, but maybe don't want to do the less fun
| parts of those tasks. Basic data munging, documentation,
| testing, monitoring, configuration management, etc... no
| fun!
|
| A lot of perceived high performing devs I've worked with
| want to be like surgeons who walk into the OR, put their
| hands into the gloves, pick up the tools prepared for them
| on a tray, do the surgery, and leave.
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| It also can be very awkward when you're chosen for a promotion
| over someone who has been there longer for you. Suddenly you're
| managing and giving reviews to someone who was sitting next to
| you for years. I went through this but was _extremely_ lucky
| that I had a wonderful mentor. It wasn 't a big deal, but the
| first performance review, while it went well, definitely felt
| strange.
| mclau157 wrote:
| Isnt this just the definition of check-ins? Simply document how
| many check-ins have not had progress and be done, no need to
| stand over anybody's shoulder
| paulcole wrote:
| Agree 100%.
|
| This is the difficult conversation template I put together and
| use:
|
| https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gHyfR0XAc5ehRoqRImV1yAFh...
| aswerty wrote:
| Great template.
|
| It certainly reflects the process I've gone during some
| difficult conversations, at least when I did them well. And
| I've certainly done the other approach where I just dug my
| trench and they dug theirs; oh lord, is it a terrible
| approach!
| paulcole wrote:
| Thanks! I tried to distill down what was in Difficult
| Conversations:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004CR6ALA?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_a_co
| n...
|
| I think even a bad difficult conversation is better than no
| difficult conversation so just giving the managers I work
| with some tool to compel action is valuable.
| janosch_123 wrote:
| just ordered "The Managers Path" because of your post here,
| looking forward to read it.
| wiz21c wrote:
| I've been down the toxic boss / burn out road. This article is
| spot on. Very good!
| b3lvedere wrote:
| "Be Clear. Painfully Clear.
|
| You think you're being obvious. You're not. Spell out
| expectations. Over-communicate. Set goals in plain language."
|
| Lots of managers i had the pleasure of working with, missed this
| memo entirely...
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| This is a really tough one isn't it? On the other hand I
| personally don't like when leaders or managers are over
| communicating (contrasting to this article). Of course I never
| say it, so the author can claim that nobody has criticised
| managers for over communicating, but I do despise too frequent
| check ins, meetings that are going too long, people who talk
| for too long when I just want to get started already. Managers
| who repeat the same stuff, talk overly verbose, speak 5
| paragraphs of something that could be a sentence, etc.
|
| They are not bad people, but I do personally feel annoyed by
| it, and I do feel it drains me of energy and flow. I feel like
| there are too many 1 hour meetings that shouldn't have been
| there at all or could have summarized in 5 minutes.
| sneak wrote:
| The article also forgot: don't make communication synchronous
| when it could be sent as text. People generally can read
| faster than you can speak.
|
| Lots of people speak instead of write for no reason other
| than they are bad at typing.
|
| It's not that annoying or burdensome to be repeated to in
| text.
|
| Some people don't read, but those people can be special cased
| with meetings and talk.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| Fully agree. Instead of verbal repetition, put things as a
| DM or in a doc in order of priority, organize textual
| information well and you don't have to verbally repeat
| this. That is how I consume information the best, but could
| vary from person to person.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| sounds like they have a hammer (the sync, in-person meeting)
| and go around looking for nails. I don't think the key is
| simple repetition, but reinforcement. This means the
| appropriate channel, content and timing - all influenced by
| the situation and clear understanding of what exactly is the
| motivating problem for the communication.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| Instead of repetition I would prefer written information
| organized well by priority. You don't have to repeat if I
| can revisit the information, easily find it when I need it,
| if I was to forget it. And with text I am happy also with
| overcommunicating as long as it is done once, not
| frequently to break my flow. When you ask me to do
| something always mention priority and the expected due
| time, do I have to drop other things or no. If you have a
| question, tell me by when do you need the answer.
| b3lvedere wrote:
| You can both speak the exact same language and still have
| misinterpretations on what needs to be done. I've witnessed
| that multiple times. Management team holds a meeting and
| agree on what needs to be done. Single manager meets his team
| and tells them something, but not totally the same thing on
| what needs to be done. Each team member just nods and starts
| working. Everybody gets annoyed. Somewhere in the
| communication line something went horribly wrong.
| clwncr wrote:
| Overcommunication is a failure to provide appropriate
| context, with a side of bad delegation and overinvestment in
| process.
|
| Without context, manager communication is noise. It's a waste
| of everyone's time and is functionally sabotage because it
| disempowers people. Worse, the problem can compound itself
| when a team gets demotivated and the manager tries to solve
| "lack of ownership" by spending even more time trying to
| direct behavior.
|
| Good managers give their team appropriate context and tools,
| and then trust the process. Good organizations train and
| support managers in doing that.
| swader999 wrote:
| Repetition is critical.
| dizhn wrote:
| People will start to tune out things you don't repeat enough
| very quickly.
| ramon156 wrote:
| Leople will also tune out repeated things because they're
| often unidirectional conversations.
|
| Cool that you want this done today, but "we" are not doing
| that. Tell the client it's going to take another day
| instead of planning a scoping meeting and interrupting my
| dev time
| swader999 wrote:
| Repetition of key values is more what I'm leaning at.
| Repeatedly demonstrating them too.
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| Especially if you've said something verbally (including on a
| call or even async text like Slack), it's important to follow
| up with a written record, ideally email, so that they
| remember. Also so you have something to point back to if they
| don't do it.
| orthoxerox wrote:
| Yes, and setting deadlines is an important aspect of it. If you
| don't like how close the deadline is, then it's even more
| important to communicate it to your IC.
|
| You might think that saying "I need this done by the end of
| Friday" will make your IC sad. No, what will make him or her
| sad is you coming for the deliverable on Friday when they have
| just started.
| b3lvedere wrote:
| Lots of short deadlines make people very frustrated, because
| it feels the manager just violently yanked them out of their
| (comfortable) working zone. Nobody likes that and there
| better be some huge reward for this very annoying disturbance
| in the force.
|
| Continously demand short deadlines of the team and they will
| not get frustrated anymore but very much deathly hate
| management. Rewards will not cut it. Ever. The line has been
| crossed and there is not much that will repair this.
|
| Sure, the manager may just only get their assignment that
| things need to be done asap, but it is also their task not to
| transfer that frustration to the team. You would be amazed
| how much respect a manager can get if they just tell 'No' or
| negotiate a differebt deadline and honestly tells the team
| just that.
| RickJWagner wrote:
| About 30 years ago I was in the early part of my career and was
| stunned to learn two of my favorite programmers were former
| managers. I couldn't understand why they 'took a step backward'
| to return to programming.
|
| One of them explained "In management, they nip at you from the
| top, and they nip at you from the bottom". Meaning that you had
| many more people with demands. A programmer usually has only one,
| maybe a few.
|
| Later, I learned that many managers are paid less than senior
| programmers.
|
| I turned down every request to begin managing, and I finished my
| career happy.
| hcfman wrote:
| "Later, I learned that many managers are paid less than senior
| programmers."
|
| Not in Europe.
| f1shy wrote:
| Exactly. At least where I'm, not even remotely (30% to 40%
| more as a manager)
| incone123 wrote:
| "Your Job Isn't to Do the Work Anymore."
|
| Unless you work somewhere under-staffed with an org chart that's
| mostly an aspiration.
| jebarker wrote:
| This is also only true (maybe) of the officer class of manager.
| The NCO class (tech leads??) certainly do the work on the
| ground with their staff.
| taormina wrote:
| Tech leads aren't managers.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| It's interesting how the article equates Manager with Boss. If
| you're a "Line Manager" that's true but for Tech Leads, maybe
| less.
| NalNezumi wrote:
| >Sometimes it means shielding your team from dumb shit.
|
| I think this is a generally good advice, but can also be misused.
|
| I liked my previous manager, he had a principle for that part.
| Shielding the team from those crap, especially paperwork stuff.
| The trouble was that I could see how it was grinding him down,
| and I knew I could help him with it (because this was Japan, he
| didn't speak Japanese, I do and language barrier create
| inefficiencies) but he refused. My manager before him (this time
| the opposite: Japanese but couldn't articulate himself on English
| so I took care of all the English team communication) did and it
| worked smoothly.
|
| If you're a small team (in a startup) doubly so, since grasping
| the full context of your team & outside is not as big of a task.
|
| Best is to at least be open if your team members are open to
| helping you with the trickling down bullshit.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| I also have a counterpoint to that: manager "shielding" has
| previously led me into this telephone game sort of thing where
| I have to guess if there is something going politically wrong
| or if the ask is actually honest and straightforward. If I
| exactly understood the politics, or the bs going on, I could
| give better solutions without tiptoeing around it.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| You sometimes hear this described as the "shit umbrella" but
| it needs to be more like a missle defense system. Similarly
| it's hard to hit everything you should and you will miss, but
| you still gotta try. I try to shield the team from the noise,
| but not the awareness. I'm still trying to get this right.
| 2d8a875f-39a2-4 wrote:
| Nah, this lays out what everyone knows going in and leaves out
| what you really need to know as a newby.
|
| Budget. Getting some for your team or at least for your
| priorities. Protecting what you get. Capex vs Opex.
|
| Upward management. Translating messages upwards. Interpreting C
| suite decrees. Pacing and leading. Inducting new leadership
| before they fuck things up.
|
| Retention. Keeping the people you need on your team. Cutting the
| people you don't. Compensation and promotions.
|
| All of which is to say, Politics. How to not come out a loser at
| the game of thrones next time there is a merger, reorg, budget
| season, or just end of quarter.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| Yeah, handling stack ranking, calibrations, proving your team's
| worth, priorities, making sure your team gets work that is
| visible and highly rewarding, selling your team (did we make a
| mistake because our team is incompetent or because the project
| was that challenging), etc.
| ta1243 wrote:
| > Budget. Getting some for your team or at least for your
| priorities. Protecting what you get. Capex vs Opex.
|
| Always spend your budget, ideally about 5-10% over (find out
| what others do)
|
| If you don't, next year you get less. You can't save 20k this
| year and spend it next year. You can't even save 20k and get
| rewarded for being cost efficient as you'll be punished with a
| lower budget next year.
|
| Yes it's stupid.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| The lack of communication one doesn't seem like it needs saying,
| but I've had managers who literally hid information from me, or
| would keep me out of meetings, on stuff I would eventually have
| to work on anyway. Don't be that guy. Spread information
| throughout the team and invite people to meetings even if they
| don't need to be there (clarifying that they're optional).
|
| Also keep in mind that as a manager, you are a custodian of
| culture. What you do and don't do will shape your team's culture
| which will (in part) shape the whole company's culture. So think
| about how you can develop positive culture (and also, ask!).
| Surac wrote:
| Now the dark side grows in you. Managers are the anchors in every
| company. They make sure nothing moves ever again. They are like a
| parasite sitting on the shoulder of thinking engineers. They get
| there money for nothing
| falcor84 wrote:
| Try to run a company without any managers for a while and then
| come back here and tell us all about how productive it was.
| general1726 wrote:
| That's one sided view. As somebody who manages people (I hate
| it tbh) things which can piss me off the most are engineers who
| will go out of their way to not do the task or make some stupid
| excuse why it is not possible to do the task which will fall
| apart the moment I will start poking into the excuse.
| TheChaplain wrote:
| One-sided text that don't nearly speak the whole truth.
|
| It fails to take into account that as a manager you may very will
| end up with employees that are toxic, disrespectful, cheating,
| lazy, incompetent, intolerant, unmanageable...
|
| And contrary to popular belief, that it is not always the
| managers fault.
|
| I had a close relative become a manager, tried their utmost for a
| year but gave up. It was not worth the sleepless nights, stress,
| therapy and sitting in the parking lot crying their eyes out
| after work.
| bsoles wrote:
| The examples I have seen and heard about in software industry
| were mostly the other way around. Toxic managers who were
| clueless about actually managing people and who wanted minions
| instead of colleagues. I have seen many people leave their jobs
| because of toxic managers.
| m8rl wrote:
| There are different type of leads, not only people managers.
| There are architects, chief-of-somethings, designers, people who
| give all their imagination, creativity and experience into
| leading teams and companies to achieve great things. Clearly
| that's empowering, and empowering is crucial: Preparing the
| ground and conditions for people to do their job as good as
| possible. But it's a lot more, and it's fun and you get feedback
| and reward.
|
| Let's not get dragged down by this stories how pathetic the
| reality of leadership roles has to be, this all depends on the
| leadership structure and culture.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| this is a good point. I've been a people manager for about 7
| years and I try to help these people understand that they are
| leaders. I actually think it's a much ahrder form of leadership
| because they don't have the hierarchy crutch like me; their
| legitimacy has to be earned. Recognizing the diversity of
| leadership also helps break the "to go up you need to become a
| manager" idea, which is toxic for technical organizations.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| Nothing here is wrong; some of it good, but it's missing the
| foundational piece that - if you get it right - helps with
| everything you need to do and mitigates the countless mistakes
| you are going to make: you need to genuinely care. How you show
| your team you care is going to be different, but once (ed: if!)
| you do you get a pass on the little mistakes, they won't jump to
| the least charitable interpretation when you don't communicate
| clearly or fully, they will want to help you because you want to
| help them, and you will win together.
|
| So how do you demonstrate caring? For me (YMMV) I prioritize
| relationships over everything else at the very start; you will be
| dropping the ball somewhere but can recover from technical gaps,
| product knowledge, etc. I get in the trenches with the team, not
| to do their work but to try and make it easier; the important but
| non-core stuff that nobody wants to tackle. For each direct I
| continually ask "where is this person heading and how am I help
| them get there?".
|
| One tactical tip: too many managers - especially new ones - focus
| on mentorship, and then maybe coaching but neglect sponsoring.
| This is so important, very passive but probably takes the most
| energy because you need to keep your receiver power at 11 and
| then connect the indirect dots. The act of recognizing and
| connecting an individual with an opportunity is deceptively hard,
| but the returns for everybody dwarf any advice you can give.
| snarf21 wrote:
| Agreed. When I was a manager, my sole focus was trying to help
| my team be maximally successful. That can take many forms but
| it greatly simplifies how and where to put your focus and
| effort. It definitely helps to keep the mindset that these
| aren't people that report to you, these are people that you are
| _responsible for_.
| threatofrain wrote:
| One way to show care is to show if you optimize your decisions
| for the business, versus optimizing for the team which will
| outlast the business. It is wrong to be 100% aligned to the
| business, even if you're the business owner, unless you think
| this is the last ride you'll ever have.
| lambdadelirium wrote:
| This is why I won't become a manager
| mehulashah wrote:
| Fantastic post. I became a manager in the style of the Steve Jobs
| philosophy-- take one of your best individual contributors and
| make them oversee the work of others. Professional managers
| didn't work out well for Apple, but the approach of letting
| growing leaders lead did. This post misses out on the important
| point to rely on your instincts because that's why you've been
| put in that position.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| >> At my day job we use a platform called Bonusly for people to
| give little shout-outs (shouts-out?) to their peers for doing
| something awesome. I rarely get any awards here, but people on my
| teams get them all the damn time and to me that speaks incredible
| volumes.
|
| I view this as you won't see a good manager's fingerprints on the
| thing that receives the recognition, but you will find them all
| over the people who are being recognized. It's harder to get a
| dopamine hit from this but like protein over sugar, it lasts
| longer & helps build you as a manager.
| theli0nheart wrote:
| This was a good article but it doesn't even mention the hardest
| part of management: hiring and firing people.
|
| I feel like a discussion of management without those components
| is missing something critical. Maintaining high performing teams
| requires that you get really good at this. This article makes it
| seem like the job is really just talking to people and making
| sure they're motivated, but in my experience that's the easiest
| part of the job.
| Jcampuzano2 wrote:
| One thing I struggled with when I was a "manager" before going
| back to individual contributor is that at every job I've had this
| far - I have never worked directly for my manager nor when was I
| a manager did I directly oversee my reports.
|
| This seems to be fairly common in tech and consulting. How am I
| supposed to succeed at a manager if I have no fucking clue what
| my reports are going to be working on?
|
| I feel like this is a failure in either companies not knowing how
| to setup management for technical roles, or I was given 0
| training on this and it resulted in me not knowing what the hell
| to do all the time with my reports.
|
| The claim in this article is that my job was no longer to do
| work, but in every role where I reached manager I absolutely was
| still expected to do my own work. I just also had to vaguely
| guide some other person and give them reviews and feedback while
| never having worked with them in my life.
|
| Maybe I was unlucky but these stints at management left a sour
| taste. I'm not even sure I would call my experience "management"
| except companies kept naming it that.
| AberrantJ wrote:
| This time 100,000.
|
| For some reason my high performance meant that in addition to
| my high performance I should manage these other people working
| on other projects (that are just as in depth as mine) and this
| can in no way detract from the amount of work I do.
|
| God I want to quit.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> I 'm not even sure I would call my experience "management"
| except companies kept naming it that._
|
| What is a manager anyway? I've been in this industry for
| multiple decades and I honestly still have no clue. They are
| never willing to assert what they are working on, or what
| blockers they have, during standups. They aren't striking deals
| with clients. They aren't building the product. They
| demonstrate no visible function. What, exactly, are they doing
| behind the scenes?
|
| That's not to imply they aren't doing anything. I just can't
| figure out what it is and I'd love to know more. The article
| says "Learn from them.", but I have never seen anything to
| learn from. It is all shrouded in mystery.
| ashutosh-mishra wrote:
| The real mindfuck is that everything that made you successful as
| an IC - being the person with answers, moving fast, shipping
| stuff - can actually make you a worse manager if you're not
| careful.
|
| Your new job is to make other people successful, which sometimes
| means slowing down, asking questions instead of giving answers,
| and being okay with solutions that aren't exactly what you would
| have built.
| throwaway91743 wrote:
| This was a great read! Saving this to re-read in the future.
|
| One question I have though is what are you supposed to do if as a
| new manager you aren't allowed to... well, do your job? I haven't
| been able to find a lot of resources on what to do in such a
| situation.
|
| I'm a new engineering manager (~8 months in) and my boss isn't
| letting me hire full-time devs to replace consultants whenever
| they leave or their contracts are up and I am not allowed to
| replace any developers who leave either due to a company-wide
| hiring freeze. I have lost 4 of my most senior engineers in the
| last 6 months since I can't replace the consultants or hire
| anyone new. I'm down to 2 senior devs on my team when we used to
| have 6, with the same amount of work. They have also implemented
| mandatory return to office clearly frustrating my team. In
| addition, I am not allowed to promote any of my team members to
| try and encourage them to stay.
|
| The heck am I even supposed to do? What is the point of being an
| EM if you quite literally are not allowed to do your job? I can't
| hire, I can't promote people, and I need to continue delivering
| at the same capacity with a significantly scaled-down team. My
| boss just tells me to try my best to encourage the team through
| this tough time.
|
| I haven't found any resources on how to handle this kind of
| situation as a new EM. If I knew this is what was in store for me
| I would have never taken the job.
| gherkinnn wrote:
| Sounds like you're fucked.
|
| In all seriousness, the trick is not to burn yourself trying to
| change things you have no control over. Maybe that's means
| letting the company burn.
| tinbad wrote:
| In all seriousness you need to be looking for a new job. Like
| now! Because you and your role will be next in line to cut.
|
| The good news is you have management experience now so you may
| be able to land another Manager level at a company that is not
| in a downward cycle.
| xp84 wrote:
| It sounds to me like your team is not super important (right
| now?) to the higher-ups in the company. Obviously I don't know
| the details, but they're very intentionally attritioning (?
| Attriting?) the team by any reasonable definition.
|
| Without any other detail, from my experience (10 years doing
| Eng Manager/Senior Eng Manager roles) I'd advise you to start
| interviewing. Not necessarily because you're in jeopardy, you'd
| know that better than me anyway. But think of what you want out
| of your job: One thing should be professional growth -- going
| from a new EM to a great EM and being set up for future
| promotions. You won't get that here without a major mindshift
| from your boss (and probably up the reporting chain from them
| too).
|
| Interview and when asked why you're leaving when you just
| became an EM, say "I love my new role and the team, but XYZ Co
| seems to be deprioritizing or phasing out the ABC team and I
| find myself without the resources we need to be successful."
| tikhonj wrote:
| > _I need to continue delivering at the same capacity with a
| significantly scaled-down team._
|
| I'd start by thinking through how much of that "need" is
| _real_.
|
| What is driving the things your team "needs" to accomplish?
| What hard external constraints are you operating under? What
| are the interaction points between your work and the rest of
| the organization? How much flexibility do you have? And,
| holistically, how much flexibility _should_ you have?
|
| After that, it's a matter of negotiation. Given some
| understanding of the real constraints as well as the
| personal/political factors driving _your_ manager, how can you
| come up with a better approach for your team and your work? I
| personally found the book _Splitting the Difference_ really
| useful for approaching these sorts of conversations, but I 'm
| also not especially good at that sort of thing naturally!
|
| Unless you have an absolutely awful relationship with your
| manager, a starting point would be asking these questions _to
| them_. The trick is to pose these as legitimately open-ended
| questions. I learned the value of this first-hand: if I 'm
| trying to convince somebody about something, asking an open-
| ended question will either get them to rethink their beliefs
| _or_ they will come back with an answer I didn 't think of, and
| either way I got something valuable out of it.
|
| At the end of the day, you need to find _some_ way to have
| slack in your work, or the team will fall apart. Slack can come
| from changing what you 're doing and how you're fitting into
| the broader organization, or it can come from factors the
| organization does not "see". That latter is where the real risk
| lies: that's the dynamic that results in unreasonable corner-
| cutting and then burns people out.
|
| I should add that I have not been in this situation as a
| manager, but I have been in that situation as a lead with no
| formal, positional power. That seems similar enough to be a
| good staring point, but I'm sure it's different enough that you
| should take everything I say with a grain of salt!
|
| One thing I've realized is that we talk about "plans" and
| "budgets" and "roadmaps" as something constant and immutable,
| but they're not. They're just decisions that the organization
| made. We can make different decisions! But that in particular
| might be a view that's more useful as a lead than as a formal
| manager, because it very much goes against the way most
| organizations are run. This realization changed _my_
| perspective on what 's going on, but I suspect it would be
| impolitic to emphasize it when negotiating up the chain.
| tikhonj wrote:
| One more thing: when I've been in analogous situations, one
| of the difficulties I had was managing my own emotions. I'm
| still not especially good at that. But one thing that helped
| _me_ was taking some concrete action to change things, even
| if it 's small and symbolic. Just starting something--even if
| it means writing up some notes and setting up a meeting--
| immediately helped manage my own anxiety. It sounds obvious
| in hindsight, but it took me a while to recognize this! Now I
| have three coping strategies I reach for: -
| write up my thoughts and feelings--sometimes notes to myself,
| sometimes as docs I can share with others - talk to
| somebody--I got a lot out of having mentors to talk to in and
| outside my job; occasionally they gave me non-obvious advice
| I found useful, but mostly just talking through something
| really helped - do just *one* concrete thing about
| whatever is worrying me
|
| Honestly, writing comments like this is also a coping
| strategy! I've repeatedly written about topics like this
| online and it has really helped me deal with things and work
| through my own ideas and observations.
|
| In your case, the answer could well just be leaving like
| others are suggesting. But, even if it is, trying to do
| something about it at your current place might still be worth
| the effort in the short term. Even if things don't work out
| and you leave, it can make you feel better in the short term,
| and it's a great chance to learn how to handle this kind of
| situation by actually trying something. (And, in hindsight,
| that whole paragraph is advice I needed to give to myself
| just now more than advice for you or anyone else :P)
| saravanan2661 wrote:
| Never let the accumulated trauma from your managers (the
| unbearable ones) turn you into one of them. That's my takeaway
| here!
| cbm-vic-20 wrote:
| Bottom tier manager is the worst role in tech.
|
| * You are responsible for sticking to commitments that depend
| almost completely on other people sticking to theirs.
|
| * You're still on the hook for delivery, so if someone you
| assigned a subtask can't get that job done, you either have to
| pass it on to someone else (which often ends up harming the
| social dynamic of the team) or just do it yourself. Throwing an
| employee under the bus is not a good look.
|
| * You get to be the "executioner" when a RIF rolls through, even
| if you get RIFed yourself, and even if you had no input into who
| is getting RIFed. Those Sunday evening "let's have a chat
| tomorrow morning" emails, and the following chat, are the most
| gut-wrenching things I've ever had to do as a manager.
|
| * By the time you become a manager, you're probably one of the
| most experienced members of the team, so you are still always the
| "go-to" person when someone needs a gnarly bug fix, or if there's
| a lore question, or if a sticky situation with a customer comes
| up. If your reports are too green, it's hard to delegate these
| things, and this just adds to your own cognitive load.
|
| * You don't have enough clout to make organizational-level
| changes. So process things that you see that are really
| inefficient, and you have some ideas how to address them? Now
| you've got to convince your manager and probably theirs, too, and
| they usually don't want to rock the boat.
|
| Your best path as a ground-level manager is to not spend too much
| time here: become a second-tier manager (ie, director) or find a
| nice landing place as an individual contributor again.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| > " _You get to be the "executioner" when a RIF rolls
| through..._"
|
| The other fun bit about that from the worm's eye view is bottom
| tier managers who haven't really internalized that their direct
| reports also are very aware that they're stuck with the
| "executioner" role and, before/during/shortly after layoffs,
| frequently reach out with "Got a minute to talk?" with no
| additional explanation or context, giving their reports a mini
| panic attack every time.
| luckylion wrote:
| I've received messages from people (who don't even report to
| me) asking whether they did something wrong because I had
| forgotten to close some google doc they shared which then
| showed me as "active on the document" for hours and they
| thought "he's combing through everything, I'm in trouble" and
| eventually reached out because they couldn't take it anymore.
|
| People read things very differently based on their perceived
| (job) safety. If you add culture differences (I'm german in a
| company with a lot of non-germans; what's normal
| communication to me makes some people gasp), there's a lot of
| opportunity to accidentally cause stress.
| Rainbooow wrote:
| You forgot the worst one imo: * when re-org happens / changing
| jobs, you now have no deep knowledge at all in the stacks you
| are managing. And no time to develop such knowledge before the
| next re-org anyway. So you are constantly in a state where you
| are dealing with topics that you only have a superficial
| understanding about.
|
| I really feel like the tension between <time to develop a deep
| understanding of your scope> VS <time before the next re-org
| (or layoff)> is not in your favor.
|
| Problem is: going to Director level takes several years, at
| least. And even there, you are basically the CEO of a small
| start-up, in the sense that you need to constantly fight for
| "market shares", i.e. scope. Else your org risks getting
| irrelevant pretty fast, and you are in for a lot of trouble.
| jampa wrote:
| It depends a lot.
|
| In your first two points, I think that after you know your team
| well enough, you will understand where your engineers' skills
| lie and learn how to delegate effectively to either the person
| most capable or the one who will learn the most.
|
| Your last point is true in larger enterprises. However, it's
| not so bad if you are a manager in smaller companies or
| startups, when you are 1-3 steps from the CEO, you get a lot of
| independence.
|
| In the other points, I must admit I never went through an RIF
| and never had a situation where the "engineers were too green."
| However, I worked at an enterprise company where there was a
| 1:1 ratio of interns to employees, so it might be a large
| enterprise. Generally, there is always at least one senior in
| the team to deal with firefighting.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Nitpick, but directors are typically considered executive-tier,
| not n-tier-management.
| tristor wrote:
| Depends on the company, but in my experience that is not
| true. VP is the first executive level. Directors are middle
| management.
| icedchai wrote:
| It depends. I worked at a company with tons of title
| inflation. The first layer of management was referred to as
| "director." One of the "directors" literally had one report.
| The organizational hierarchy was bizarre.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| One of the more real management comments I've read on Hacker
| News. Most people just post LinkedIn feel-good spam when it
| comes to management.
| josh_carterPDX wrote:
| I agree with most of this except the overcommunicating part. If
| you're setting the right expectations, overcommunicating may be
| mistaken for micromanaging.
|
| Managers are judged by outcomes, not by contribution. Good
| leaders know how to shield their team from the chaos above while
| shielding the managers above from the challenges of managing many
| different personalities. They are a conduit for collaboration and
| inspiration.
|
| Bad leaders are chaos agents and are the main drivers of
| attrition and should be rooted out quickly. They are a poison
| pill.
| dogleash wrote:
| >You're Going To Mess Stuff Up. Repeatedly. [...] Nobody expects
| you to have all the answers. [...] You're not expected to be
| perfect. [...] Messing up is part of the job. What matters more
| is how you respond. Own your mistakes. Say the awkward thing out
| loud. Apologize when you blow it. Your team doesn't need a
| flawless boss, they need a human one who's willing to grow in
| public. That builds trust faster than pretending you've got it
| all figured out.
|
| Emotionally supportive advice like this is probably part of an
| important foundation. But I've been on the receiving end of
| management that's trying to figure out how to do their job
| through osmosis too many times. I move to avoid it, but I just
| don't have it in me to put my personal drive into work anymore
| when the generally-accepted way of training a new manager is
| letting them whoopsiedaisy torpedo a multiyear project or two
| along the way.
|
| > But if you show up with humility, curiosity, and a genuine
| desire to make work suck less for the people around you? That's
| real leadership.
|
| No. No it's fucking not. That's necessary but not sufficient.
| jppope wrote:
| Just an important note, and a thing that is often confused by new
| managers - leadership and management are not the same thing. More
| often than not the skills you want to hone are actually
| leadership skills not management skills.
| bsoles wrote:
| In my experience, managers are like politicians: those who want
| to become one are not qualified/worth of becoming one, and those
| who could be good managers are not interested in the job.
| legaltechPM wrote:
| I kind of want to call BS on this. Sure, a bad manager can crush
| an employee's motivation and will to work. But when an employee
| is crushing it, I am not sure how much of that is really because
| the manager "empowered" the employee - unless you mean literally
| just allowing them to show up and work on something of value to
| the company?
| xp84 wrote:
| This seems like a "glass half full/empty" question: The top
| quintile (or so) of developers need little but to be given a
| mission statement or overall goals and commit access, but some
| managers bog down those people with improper use of meetings,
| process that gets in the way, too much 'digital paperwork' (did
| you fill out all 15 fields of the Jira ticket? etc), etc.
|
| The bottom quintile never get anything done and hopefully you
| have fired them or convinced them to stop being bottom-tier.
| For the rest, to accomplish good work they need (A) to give a
| shit, which often is directly under your influence: how much
| they think their boss appreciates and cares about them is
| important. (B) to know what their strengths and weaknesses are
| so that they can improve, and (C) to be allowed to focus on the
| important things and not be pulled in 100 directions, which a
| good manager constantly keeps aware of and constantly tries to
| tune. A bad manager fails to do A, B, and C, and as such their
| teams are less likely to accomplish things.
| adonese wrote:
| Add to it the ability to cut through the bullshit and follow
| through tasks till completion. The amount of bullshit that ICs,
| QAs, and products can spin in rounds and add to that the new
| bureaucracy that comes with being a manager is just unreal.
| phamtrongthang wrote:
| Good advice. Recently, I had to manage a team just because I am a
| senior employee of the company. I messed up the first project,
| but they still trust me for the second one. Honestly, the
| pressure is insanely hard to bear sometimes.
| maleldil wrote:
| This is a great article. It echoes a lot of what I went through
| when transitioning to management. I can also recommend the book
| "The Making of a Manager", which covers similar ground in more
| detail.
|
| I have one criticism: no auto-play GIFs, please. They're so
| distracting. They could be better as short, pausable videos.
| throwaway746262 wrote:
| If you fired all the people that build things, then your company
| could no longer build things. If you fire all the people that
| sell things, then your company could no longer sell things. Grug
| brain understand this.
|
| But if you fired all the managers then... What? Wouldn't
| everything just continue as before? Grug brain has never
| understood management.
| majewsky wrote:
| Then no high-level decisions would get made. Any technical
| argument that spans beyond one person would be at risk of
| running into an eternal stalemate. No strategic choices would
| be undertaken.
|
| (Tone indicator: Not a value judgment. I'm not saying that all
| managers are particularly good at this, same as how observing
| that "builders build things" does not mean that the builders
| are necessarily good at building.)
| throwaway746262 wrote:
| I feel like "making choices" and "making decisions" isn't
| really a full time job. Maybe just see what a group of
| seniorish people think?
|
| I don't sort of "hate managers" or anything. Just curious
| about why businesses always seem to think they have to have
| them.
| taormina wrote:
| The people who decide that managers are mandatory, are, the
| managers.
| Jemaclus wrote:
| I think you should ask yourself that last question again,
| and this time really think about it. Why /do/ all companies
| seem to have managers?
|
| (Tone clarification: I'm not approaching this in a
| condescending manner, but more of a "let's talk through
| this problem out loud and see where it gets us." So please
| don't take this as condescension.)
|
| One way to think about "obvious" solutions to problems,
| such as a "no manager" solutuon, is this: if it's so
| obvious, why is no one doing it? For example, I worked for
| a grocery delivery startup for a while. Every single new
| hire, without fail, would show up at the end of the first
| week and say "I have a great idea, why don't we let users
| shop by recipe?"
|
| On its face, it sounds like a brilliant idea! One
| intuition-based shortcut to find the answer is: if that's
| such an obvious thing, why doesn't Amazon or Kroger or
| Safeway or HEB or any of the major grocery chains let you
| do that?
|
| And of course, the answer is: that's not how users shop. If
| it worked, the big players would be doing it. They're not.
| Are you smarter than Amazon? Probably not. That's not to
| say a smaller group can't innovate past Amazon, but Amazon
| has some /really fucking smart people/ working for them,
| and the odds are fantastically small that you'll out-think
| them. (You can certainly out-_pivot_ them by doing
| something faster than they can, but if it turns out to be
| valuable, in the long run, they'll do it too.)
|
| So when you approach a conversation like this and say,
| "Maybe just see what a group of seniorish people think?",
| one way to do a quick sanity check on it is: can you think
| of successful companies that are run that way?
|
| You probably can't. I certainly can't.
|
| There's a similar problem in the theatre world. It is
| universally understood that someone doing a 60 second
| monologue for an audition is _the worst way to evaluate
| theatrical performance_... except for everything else.
|
| And similarly, it appears, based on scanning the successful
| companies, that having managers is possibly also the worst
| way to ensure performance... except for everything else.
|
| So... managers it is. It's unlikely that there's a better
| way to do this at scale. Many people have tried. Management
| chains always win.
| taormina wrote:
| I agree with your broader consensus, but, for that
| example you give, HEB absolutely lets you shop by recipe
| on their website.
| alkonaut wrote:
| > You were probably really good at your job. Now your job is to
| make sure other people can be good at theirs.
|
| Anyone else see the exact opposite, that out of N people that
| _could_ become managers, it's the worst individual contributors
| that do? Mostly because they want it most. People who love being
| individual contributors are going to become good at it, and
| they'll resist management tasks.
|
| I think this is great and very natural. But there's a kind of
| zombie myth that engineering managers are the best former
| engineers that refuses to die. It's decent engineers with some
| aptitude and/or desire to manage.
| jellyfishbeaver wrote:
| Great post. I'm still going through this process. I was offered
| the management cap a few years ago as an escape from the drudgery
| I was dealing with at the time. Now I am not sure if I regret it
| or not.
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