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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.
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> 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…
Not within the existing culture. It seems necessary. Most of that is "blank slate, let's start again" with expectations made clear. Obviously that was lacking in this place. When you've got people successfully blaming others for their own failures, this manager, with experience on the front lines, did the most effective thing to remedy that. I'm sure nobody got fired for someone else's failings after that.
The aftermath was that a few people left the company for better jobs after we shipped (unavoidable, some had set their minds even before she joined and actually stayed longer because of her). For the rest, it was promotions. The engineers on a PIP exited the PIP by being promoted(!), were allowed to move to their favorite projects. Even the scheming engineers who turned us into a toxic team got promoted for the work they did under her management (though personally I think they should have been shown the door for their attitude). Manager moved to a more prestigious peacetime team, where I am sure she runs things differently.
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…
That sounds strange. Didn't you ever work on a product with other developers? Who demos in that case?
And what would be wrong with a manager demoing a product that was built by a team he/she manages? It seems to imply that the manager should have no sense of ownership, but a good manager is absolutely crucial to the success of a project. Taken to the extreme, it would imply a CEO of a company could never demo a company product he didn't "build himself".
I don't have a single "most favorite" but I worked for someone a couple weeks ago who began by saying "I just want you to get the job done right and I don't care how long it takes you". I knew right away I was going to love it there. That's the way to my heart.
There are very, very few managers who are realistically in a position to be able to say something like that.
There's a good chance you might be working for a nice guy / purist / engineer's manager ... but who might actually not be a very good manager at all.
If 'getting it right no matter the cost' were a good company building philosophy, we'd all be doing it!
'Getting it good enough for the market to accept given a limited budget and timeframe' is basically how 99% of the world must operate. It's just reality. That's why being a manager or starting/owning/running a business is hard. Usually really hard.
What I learnt from the best managers i have worked under - 1) Don't be a condescending ass 2) Give autonomy to your reportees 3) Listen carefully, give your attention to your team 4) Lead not direct 5) Go beyond office in terms of relationship 6) Give them a clear career path 7) Praise in front, give feedback in private, softly The rest of my WIP list is here https://www.theprohack.com/p/what-not-to-do-when-you-becom…
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…
Hopefully she transitioned to a more compassionate and positive management style after whipping the team into shape, instilling discipline and earning their respect as an effective leader.
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…
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…
He actually cared about making money. (I'm amazed at how many bosses care about everything except making money, even at hedge funds.) He gave me total autonomy to build whatever I wanted as long as I made money.
I had a sales job like this for a while at a small VAR. We were an HP, Netapp, cisco, etc Gold partner, but my boss didnt care if I sold any of that, only that I generated enough profit to cover my base salary through literally any means. Ended up writing my own software to interact with the Amazon Marketplace sellers API and all our distributors nightly inventory data and just drop ship stuff in mass, and send a cou…
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…
It’s true - some people only respond to that type of authority.