Never met a great manager, the least harmful were smart/dumb enough not to interfere with the day-to-day work too much and let the people do their job. I'm still skeptical of the value added by m&ms.
Ask HN: What made your favorite manager/supervisor/CEO so great?
91–100 of 248 posts
Re: Ask HN: What made your favorite manager/supervisor/CEO so great?
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
There has to be a middle ground somewhere, pursuing technical perfection for eternity will not make you money.
I think most of us want our code to see the light of day. If given an actual problem to solve, we aren't going to toil away at tiny details forever. We want to see it run! A good manager knows this and will give you room to find that balance yourself, unless you have demonstrated you need help with that.
I read an interesting twist on perfectionism: try to the "perfect compromise". Quality has multiple dimensions and you can't optimize all of them perfectly. Instead, choose which dimension is actually most important for the current problem and prioritize it.
Re: Ask HN: What made your favorite manager/supervisor/CEO so great?
#93I'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…
She never demoed a project or took credit for something she didn't build herself. Like my teammates, I had to demo every product I built 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 ma…
A good manager will know that s/he will be given credit for good work. Letting the team (especially junior members) lets them take ownership and pride in their work. And some nice words from the senior level present in the room always goes down well, which keeps the team happy.
I don't think it's a fair to compare an internal demo of a team's work to colleagues with an external demo of a company's products to journalists and the public. To take your reasoning: marketing and sales should also be done by engineers, which is not the case.
Re: Ask HN: What made your favorite manager/supervisor/CEO so great?
#94No names to protect privacy. Used to work for a multi-billion dollar datacenter company. Met my gf there who's daughter was diagnosed with lukemia at age 3. CEO heard through her, then boss, and gave my gf 6 months paid leave to spend time with her daughter and paid for 1 year of chemo out of his pocket. Her daughter beat cancer.
Re: Ask HN: What made your favorite manager/supervisor/CEO so great?
#95The best CTO I worked with, ran a meritocracy. The freshest low level hire could come up to this guy and disagree with him, and he would listen to their arguments and accept them if they were compelling.
He had all the usual requisite skills, but his passion for technology and willingness to be proven wrong were instrumental to the success of the company. We were able to iterate quickly and find workable solutions to big problems because the CTO created a culture of facts over status and an environment where everyone could safely express their ideas, no matter how stupid, so that the best idea may win.
Re: Ask HN: What made your favorite manager/supervisor/CEO so great?
#96I'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…
I see some qualities from past manager:
- push you to your limits (public speaking)
- shield you from management/bigcorp bullshit
- hire better people than themselves
- don’t take credit from you
Re: Ask HN: What made your favorite manager/supervisor/CEO so great?
#97Gratitude and appreciation, simple as that.
Re: Ask HN: What made your favorite manager/supervisor/CEO so great?
#98I'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 silo mentality).
I don't know the companies culture and the people who asked for help, so maybe it was a good reaction at the time, but in general, I would advise being cooperative towards other departments.
Re: Ask HN: What made your favorite manager/supervisor/CEO so great?
#99Unambiguous. Approachable. Genuine desire to help. Clear objectives. Holds you accountable and offers stern feedback. Notices when you grow. Places you with people and problems that challenge you personally and technically. Completely capable of understanding complex tech. Insulates you from noise. Interrupts you when shit hits the fan. Demands answers, but gives you appropriate time to get answers. Makes risky, even…
It's weird how easy it is to be shitty manager. If someone is otherwise excellent, but blames you for stuff you didn't do? Instantly shitty manager there.
Re: Ask HN: What made your favorite manager/supervisor/CEO so great?
#100I'm at a place now where I'm really happy with my manager, and my manager's boss, the CTO. I can sum this up pretty quickly. They listen. Like, actually listen. They are very easy to talk to about both work related issues and issues outside of work. It's like they can see what everyone is doing and even if your job for the day is to push a small bug fix, credit will be given for that. I'm recognised here as are my co-workers. It's a wonderful place to be.