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Ask HN: What made your favorite manager/supervisor/CEO so great?

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Re: Ask HN: What made your favorite manager/supervisor/CEO so great?

#201

Post by siruncledrew »

stevetursi wrote: post #161

She fought for us, when there was an issue she cared and sought to understand, she understood that family comes first before work (and lived the example), she protected us from the politics of the large organization, and she did whatever she could to obtain the resources we needed to do the job (a nearly impossible task at that company.) She had a 100-200 people on her staff yet she always made time to meet with whoe…

It's good to see an altruistic manager fight their bosses in order to keep their subordinates happy. That's the kind of representation you want. Other managers could have said "Well, sucks for them", and just let everyone get fired in order to stay in good favor with the company's executives.

Re: Ask HN: What made your favorite manager/supervisor/CEO so great?

#202

Post by neffy »

mattm wrote: post #66
messit wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> She told us she didn't care about any of us. Revoked everybody's little privileges, would literally come see if everybody was on their keyboard and typing all the time. Didn't force overtime on anyone but was adamant against people arriving late or leaving early or missing meetings. Started openly taking notes of everybody's failures so she would have ample documentation of who failed what. That sounds pretty horre…

This is the wartime/peacetime leader conundrum. The tactics she used worked well because the situation was dire. They probably wouldn't have worked well in a company with a good culture. Winston Churchill is the most famous example of this. He was a great leader during wartime but terrible during peacetime.

Churchill was a complex man, but it was his party that got defeated in the 1945 election not Churchill. (Churchill it should be said, was a Liberal, not a Conservative before the war, and joined the party to prevent conflict in the immediate aftermath of the outbreak - he would later describe it (in his diaries) as a mistake.)

We don´t know if he would have been a good or bad leader during peacetime (by the time the conservatives got back into office he was no longer in his prime shall we say), but what he would most certainly have been is a leader with a lot of experience in dealing with Stalin, and a British Imperialist. Which would have been entertaining at least.

Re: Ask HN: What made your favorite manager/supervisor/CEO so great?

#203

Post by TimTheTinker »

mathattack wrote: post #137
JepZ wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of what you say are qualities I like managers to have too, but 'someone tried to ask us for help with someone else's project without asking her first--she was furious.' is a quality I do not value. I mean, protecting your people is one thing (an essential quality), but being furious because someone in need of help asked in the wrong order doesn't foster cooperation beyond the borders of the own team (causing sil…

It’s very context sensitive. QA usually needs someone strong to protect the team, as they’re the ones who most frequently get asked to make up for cost/scope/schedule/quality problems that others caused. In other casss, being too standoffish causes local optimization (“look how efficient my team is!”) at the expense of the broader org.

> QA usually needs someone strong to protect the team, as they’re the ones who most frequently get asked to make up for cost/scope/schedule/quality problems that others caused

Bingo. That combined with the odd guy from a completely different department coming over and singling me out for help (at the time, we were the team pushing the envelope with what was possible on the web).

That being said, (a) Margaret always offered our team's help to other teams, and we frequently spent large blocks of time assisting with outside projects. But there was so much demand for us that she had to insist they go through her first; and (b) of course we could answer people's questions and assist them for a few minutes here and there. I'm talking about requests like "hey could you do this work for me", where it ends up taking several hours or more.

My point, though, was that she protected us from outside demands so we could stay really productive.

Re: Ask HN: What made your favorite manager/supervisor/CEO so great?

#204

Post by mrhappyunhappy »

I worked remotely at a small company of 10 people. The founder who preferred to keep the team small was one of the most admirable people I’ve ever met. Besides having a best friend type of attitude he did an amazing job of motivating people to do their best without you ever realizing it. He was kind, caring, thoughtful and super detailed. He had a go getter type of attitude and just got shit done without delay or procrastination which motivated the hell out of me. I never knew a person could be so kick ass until I worked there. It makes sense though - his success and success of the company is entirely his doing. It was clear to me that no matter what industry he worked in, he’d make a business out of it and be successful. I left the company for higher paying position but I always think back to the great times I had at this company and how I was constantly challenged, pushed to be my better self without ever feeling direct pressure. I admire this person greatly to this day.

Re: Ask HN: What made your favorite manager/supervisor/CEO so great?

#205

Post by roystonvassey »

bentoscher wrote: post #187
stevetursi wrote: post #161

She fought for us, when there was an issue she cared and sought to understand, she understood that family comes first before work (and lived the example), she protected us from the politics of the large organization, and she did whatever she could to obtain the resources we needed to do the job (a nearly impossible task at that company.) She had a 100-200 people on her staff yet she always made time to meet with whoe…

“Life is mostly froth and bubble, Two things stand like stone. Kindness in another's trouble, Courage in your own.” - Adam Lindsay Gordon

That’s a beautiful stoic+ thought

Re: Ask HN: What made your favorite manager/supervisor/CEO so great?

#207

Post by techsin101 »

mrhappyunhappy wrote: post #204

I worked remotely at a small company of 10 people. The founder who preferred to keep the team small was one of the most admirable people I’ve ever met. Besides having a best friend type of attitude he did an amazing job of motivating people to do their best without you ever realizing it. He was kind, caring, thoughtful and super detailed. He had a go getter type of attitude and just got shit done without delay or pro…

Can you be more specific

Re: Ask HN: What made your favorite manager/supervisor/CEO so great?

#208

Post by alexhutcheson »

JepZ wrote: post #98
TimTheTinker wrote: post #48

I'll name the best manager I ever had, since she unexpectedly passed away nearly three years ago to our team's (and company's) great sadness. Margaret Thielemann was a QA manager for nearly 10 years at Esri (she previously headed up QA at PeopleSoft before its acquisition by Oracle), and I reported to her for all of those 10 years, during which I learned and mastered web development by scoping, designing, and buildin…

Most of what you say are qualities I like managers to have too, but 'someone tried to ask us for help with someone else's project without asking her first--she was furious.' is a quality I do not value. I mean, protecting your people is one thing (an essential quality), but being furious because someone in need of help asked in the wrong order doesn't foster cooperation beyond the borders of the own team (causing sil…

I think a lot hinges on whether it's truly asking for help vs. telling you you need to do something, and possibly phrasing it as a question. Depending on how the organization is set up and the seniority of the person asking, it can be very hard for a low-level employee to say "No, I don't have time to do that."

Having multiple people that can give you contradictory orders about how to spend your time makes for a miserable job experience. You either work overtime to meet both sets of demands, or you get negative feedback from one of your "bosses" for not completing their tasks. It's the manager's job to prevent this, and it's important that they do so.

Re: Ask HN: What made your favorite manager/supervisor/CEO so great?

#210

Post by stopyellingatme »

bentoscher wrote: post #187
stevetursi wrote: post #161

She fought for us, when there was an issue she cared and sought to understand, she understood that family comes first before work (and lived the example), she protected us from the politics of the large organization, and she did whatever she could to obtain the resources we needed to do the job (a nearly impossible task at that company.) She had a 100-200 people on her staff yet she always made time to meet with whoe…

“Life is mostly froth and bubble, Two things stand like stone. Kindness in another's trouble, Courage in your own.” - Adam Lindsay Gordon

That is a beautiful quote. Thank you.
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