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

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61–70 of 248 posts

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

#61
post #57

Amazing systems knowledge. My previous senior was the chief architect, and a life long C++ developer. His systems knowledge was amazing, unlike all the people i knew previously who were either Java or PHP or Ruby coders. Dynamic language folks have almost no knowledge of the system their software works on which makes them script kiddies at best. Experience isnt enough to be a senior, your knowledge domain should also…

you're describing a "tech lead", not a manager

Nope unfortunately i am describing a manager, our techlead was no good Ruby Developer with no idea about anything. We cleared our doubts from our architect/Manager.

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

#62
I always liked managers with strong technical skills.

I had one manager, when one of his engineers fumbled up a project for month, singlehandedly rewrote the code and had it running in 2 days. A file that had 1000 lines of code was reduced to 20 lines that was clear and worked correctly on first attempt.

Another was the VP of engineering who had years of technical experience plus was gifted in working with customers. When a major customer was yelling at us due to some performance issues with our code, he went over to meet then and soothed things over. They agreed to give use a few months to rework the code and they were willing to pay a NRE for this. And they were happy in the end also.

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

#63
post #35
post #28

At a previous company, I joined a team that had to deliver something a year before I joined. All previous teams assembled to deliver that had failed and had been fired. That the company didn't have that feature was deeply embarrassing, the competition mentioned having it in the first line of their marketing materials. The most influential engineers on the team didn't give a damn about deadlines and thought that being…

> 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…

To me it seems a lot of people in these teams were more interested in climbing the corporate ladder than working in nice teams. Those kinds of people might perhaps be hesitant to leave the company.

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

#64
post #35
post #28

At a previous company, I joined a team that had to deliver something a year before I joined. All previous teams assembled to deliver that had failed and had been fired. That the company didn't have that feature was deeply embarrassing, the competition mentioned having it in the first line of their marketing materials. The most influential engineers on the team didn't give a damn about deadlines and thought that being…

> 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…

People who are high performers in a group of slackers like these kinds of managers.

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

#65
post #28

At a previous company, I joined a team that had to deliver something a year before I joined. All previous teams assembled to deliver that had failed and had been fired. That the company didn't have that feature was deeply embarrassing, the competition mentioned having it in the first line of their marketing materials. The most influential engineers on the team didn't give a damn about deadlines and thought that being…

> Best manager I ever had.

Very sorry to hear that.

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

#66
post #35
post #28

At a previous company, I joined a team that had to deliver something a year before I joined. All previous teams assembled to deliver that had failed and had been fired. That the company didn't have that feature was deeply embarrassing, the competition mentioned having it in the first line of their marketing materials. The most influential engineers on the team didn't give a damn about deadlines and thought that being…

> 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.

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

#67
He was only my manager for a year, when I started my current job. One of the things that made him so great is that he didn't need convincing about my competence and ability to take on responsibility. He knew I wanted to do (more programming heavy tasks) and knew what needed to be done on the project, and gave me the kinds of tasks that formed my attitude and outlook on how we do things even now that he's gone years later. He didn't doubt my ability to do the job and set me up to take on a lot of responsibility.

Specifically he showed me the importance of autotesting and set me up to take on the responsibility for maintaining and improving our autotesting framework and implementing our team-wide autotest policy. Since he was the TD on the project he was also able to give me the backing with the rest of the team to enforce some pretty strict policies, and that continued for the rest of the project even after he was gone. This became my area of special interest and expertise on the project even though it didn't fall into my original job description and helped me grow into the direction I wanted at the company.

I think because this was so long ago and I only had him as a manager for maybe a year there may be things I'm viewing through rose-tinted glasses, but I still remember him as the best manager I've had.

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

#68
post #66
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.

During his first war, he was absolutely terrible in wartime as well.

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

#69
post #28

At a previous company, I joined a team that had to deliver something a year before I joined. All previous teams assembled to deliver that had failed and had been fired. That the company didn't have that feature was deeply embarrassing, the competition mentioned having it in the first line of their marketing materials. The most influential engineers on the team didn't give a damn about deadlines and thought that being…

What little management experience I have (3 years as team lead for 2 different teams) tells me most people are masochists deep down inside and crave a dictator to order them what to do.

> and crave a dictator to order them what to do.

When a manager tells someone what to do, that person is personally assuming the responsibility of deciding how the work must be done and, of course, being accountable for failing to deliver.

Prefering to have the manager be held accountable for managerial decisions is not masochism. In fact the opposite, having to decide what and how work should be done and having to answer for your decisions, suits that definition a whole lot better.

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

#70
post #28

At a previous company, I joined a team that had to deliver something a year before I joined. All previous teams assembled to deliver that had failed and had been fired. That the company didn't have that feature was deeply embarrassing, the competition mentioned having it in the first line of their marketing materials. The most influential engineers on the team didn't give a damn about deadlines and thought that being…

Ouch.

This kind of thing generally works where there is underlying sense of duty, or impetus to win.

The WW2 film 'Twelve O'Clock High' where an Air Force General comes in an sorts out a demoralized and broken unit is used as training in various militaries to depict this kind of leadership on a higher level.

But 'reprimands' etc. tend only to work when there's a higher calling. Like winning a war.

For salaried teams - even if the team is being a little dysfunctional ... just might lead to mutiny, exodus.

From what you described I'm very surprised that the team didn't fall apart, or that the product was shipped.

A few things:

1) If the team was that utterly toxic, and people were openly backstabbing others ... this is not going to be fixed really. Those people are toxic they need to go.

2) Changing culture 'in place' is really hard with regular people. You can't just come in and play hardball with carrots and sticks. An alternative would be basically re-org the whole thing. Even having a different physical presence, maybe different team structure ... even if it's kind of a facade - a new work dynamic might set up people towards thinking of a 'clean start'. So instead of 'penalizing' people for coming in late etc. you have a new team dynamic in a new operating environment where 'everyone agrees' to more specific hours for the betterment of the team. A good idea would be to 'listen' to some of the problems, even if there's no action on it, just the act of listening will help.

I think you're lucky ... your 'no nonsense' manager is very lucky and this approach I think can only really work when there is a specific kind of dysfunction. I think if you have younger developers, all of whom lack self discipline but are otherwise good team members, maybe who need just a little bit of a kick in the pants. But I'm glad you had a good experience.

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