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Ask HN: How do you manage your manager?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your manager?

#81

Post by raducu »

frisco wrote: post #28
greggarious wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> OP feels going to the conference is a must, "a given", a "constitutional right", and that the manager "wronged" him by not letting him go. It's a very childish way of viewing the world. OP's employer does not own them - they have a right to a private life. While they certainly could not want OP identifying themselves as an agent of their employer when giving a talk, OP is entitled to use their free time / vacation…

That's true as long as they're not talking about their work at the conference. I assume they would be?

I've seen a very good QA engineer leave a company in exactly the same circumstances.

She wanted to do an external presentation on cutting edge security testing (nothing proprietary, just cutting edge) and the idiot manager wouldn't let her.

She asked why and was given bullshit reasons and so she asked her manager's manager which esentially let her do the presentation and agreed with her she was given bullshit reasons.

Nevertheless her direct manager kept a grudge and she eventually had to leave the company, I'm sure she went to a much better place after that.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your manager?

#82

Post by m0rc »

The best advice I have seen about this topic is the classic book "The Unwritten Laws of Engineering" from W.J. King. I always recommend the book to newcomers.

Note that the latest re-print of the book is named "The Unwritten Laws of Business". I guess that editors expect to attract more readers with the new title.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your manager?

#83

Post by psyc »

I don’t know how to, because the usual tool - words - are off the table. Every time we speak, he monologues at length, going into the kind of detail parents use with small children. He paves over every attempt to interject or ask for clarification I actually need. And then at the very end, he listens to the first few words of my thoughts, then interrupts that he’s late to something and runs off. Every time.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your manager?

#84

Post by raducu »

AznHisoka wrote: post #80
dagw wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does talking "about their work" actually entail?. I use Cython to do parts of my job. I've given talks about using Cython, drawing on experiences and knowledge gained while doing my job. Was that talking about work?

The most interesting talks in conferences usually are case studies or explain how X was successfully used in a pratical project. It might be hard for OP to give such a talk unless he talked about his personal projects only. If he is just giving a generic talk about lessons learned without explaining the intricate war stories, thats a dull talk. Those are commodities.

Oh please, unless he developed something patent-worthy or something specific that could be used by direct competition then it's stupid not to let an employee talk about his (technical) work.

In 99.99% the cases where a manager would be so impertinent as to decide upon how the personal time of an employee be used, it's because the manager is a shitty manager and the employee is completely worthless in the eyes of the manager.

It would be a great insult if a manager treated me like that, because it would either imply that I'm too stupid not to know what I can and what I cannot reveal about my work or (the most likely reason) that even though the risk of my presentation hurting the company is minute, I'm so worthless that he thinks he can just tell me what I can and can't do in my free time.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your manager?

#85

Post by sokoloff »

raducu wrote: post #81
frisco wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true as long as they're not talking about their work at the conference. I assume they would be?

I've seen a very good QA engineer leave a company in exactly the same circumstances. She wanted to do an external presentation on cutting edge security testing (nothing proprietary, just cutting edge) and the idiot manager wouldn't let her. She asked why and was given bullshit reasons and so she asked her manager's manager which esentially let her do the presentation and agreed with her she was given bullshit reasons…

She sure didn’t go to a worse place...

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your manager?

#86

Post by AllegedAlec »

tomerv wrote: post #78
AllegedAlec wrote: post #55

I think a lot of advice here implicitly assumes the following: 1: You are invested in the company in a serious way. 2: Your company is invested in you and wishes the best for you. However, I think those are quite optimistic assumptions. There's a inherent tension between what you want and what the company wants. The company wants to invest into you the minimum required to both keeping you as an employee as well as al…

> you need to find out what your manager's motivation is from keeping you from such events and based on that formulate a strategy for dealing with him/her. That's a pretty adverserial approach. Why not understand the manager's motivation and then work with him/her? The "adverserial-ness" is also apperant in the possible causes you raised for the manager's decision (he's a company man / he's taking advantage of the fa…

> There can be other reasons, even with a manager that's 100% on your side. For example, maybe he worked hard to get approval for you to go to that conference, even fought his supervisors, but at the end he lost? That's why the best advice is to ask him to explain the decision, and not to come to the conversation with any assumptions.

Fair enough. Maybe I should have said "managerial layers" when I said management.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your manager?

#87

Post by raducu »

tomerv wrote: post #78
AllegedAlec wrote: post #55

I think a lot of advice here implicitly assumes the following: 1: You are invested in the company in a serious way. 2: Your company is invested in you and wishes the best for you. However, I think those are quite optimistic assumptions. There's a inherent tension between what you want and what the company wants. The company wants to invest into you the minimum required to both keeping you as an employee as well as al…

> you need to find out what your manager's motivation is from keeping you from such events and based on that formulate a strategy for dealing with him/her. That's a pretty adverserial approach. Why not understand the manager's motivation and then work with him/her? The "adverserial-ness" is also apperant in the possible causes you raised for the manager's decision (he's a company man / he's taking advantage of the fa…

Shouldn't the manager as a decent human being, upon so blatantly encroaching on another human being's personal time, be the one to explain himself and his reason for his refusal?

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your manager?

#89

Post by raducu »

dpark wrote: post #2

Why were you asked to not give the talks? Context is everything. Are you asking for the company to pay but the travel/training budget is insufficient? Sell your boss on why this is valuable to the company and why the budget should be expanded or funded some other way. Does your manager not think you’re good enough to be giving the talk? Your options are probably to prove him/her wrong, get a better manager, or live w…

OP did not tell us how his manager justified his refusal, BUT because of the way he formulated his question and my personal life experience, I'm very much inclined to believe that the manager simply gave not or bullshit/generic reasons as to why he won't let OP give the talk.

That the most common situation is the manager is a shitty person who realises that if by any minute chance OP's talk somehow hurt the company the implications are dire for the manager while if OP's talk do nothing bad for the company, there's nothing to gain for the manager/company -- therefore the manager chose not to allow OP to give the talk.

Which would prove the manager to be a verry shitty human being, just the kind that would elicit employees asking questions like "how do I manage my manager" on the internet.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your manager?

#90

Post by raducu »

hn0 wrote: post #63

Try to understand their point of view. Maybe he/she hates your guts, but I doubt it. I’d ask something like: “I’m certain you have your reasons about not wanting me to attend the conference, but they aren’t clear to me. I have the best interests of the company in mind, but from my point of view this feels like a unduly limitation of my personal liberty. I do understand there’s not always the time or energy to explain…

Yes OP, and while you're at that and reducing your relationship with your manager to that of a parent to a 2 year old boy, also remember to kneel and kiss your manager's hand if they do you the favor of allowing you to do as you please in your own spare time.
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