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Leave Work Unassigned and See Who Steps Forward

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Re: Leave Work Unassigned and See Who Steps Forward

#51

Post by meric »

loopbit wrote: post #44
kabouseng wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I may, here is some of my protips: - The best route up is hitching your wagon to your bosses wagon. So yes doing some of his work will make him look like a hero, which will get him promoted, and he'll think who is his most valuable / productive underling, which will get you promoted. Hopefully you doing some of his work free's up his time to be more productive in other areas. If your boss is a lazy PHB (Dilbert),…

Maybe I've had more than my share of bad bosses, but I don't really agree with you here. I must say, also, that in my experience, it does depend on the company size, culture and abilities of said managers more often than not (big, hierarchical companies tend to be worse at this kind of thing, also, banking and financial, not sure why). - A good manager will notice, and appreciate, your effort. But promote you? You ar…

- A good manager will notice, and appreciate, your effort. But promote you? You are one of his best tools, why should he? Usually he'll try everything he can to keep you where you are. If it's a bad manager, he won't even recognize your effort.

Your parent comment:

make him look like a hero, which will get him promoted, and he'll think who is his most valuable / productive underling, which will get you promoted

So, your manager got promoted, so in order to keep you around, he'll try anything, including promoting you, to keep you as one of his best tools.

Re: Leave Work Unassigned and See Who Steps Forward

#52

Post by purpled_haze »

codeonfire wrote: post #17

Ugg. I'm sorry about being negative but here are some protips: 1. If a manager leaves work unassigned and you pick it up, prepare to have a LOT more work dumped on you in the future for no reward. 2. If you pretend to be a manager with hopes of being made a manager, all that you will accomplish is you are going to end up doing your job AND your bosses job. Your boss will look like a hero to his/her peers. You'll kill…

Another warning:

Sometimes doing the right thing in your mind means going against leadership and culture that are ingrained in the heart of the company. Taking this route may actually be the right thing to do, but it might not be in your long-term career's best interest. This goes for everything from filling vacuums to taking charge to fix things gone wrong.

Re: Leave Work Unassigned and See Who Steps Forward

#53

Post by marcosdumay »

miseg wrote: post #46
codeonfire wrote: post #17

Ugg. I'm sorry about being negative but here are some protips: 1. If a manager leaves work unassigned and you pick it up, prepare to have a LOT more work dumped on you in the future for no reward. 2. If you pretend to be a manager with hopes of being made a manager, all that you will accomplish is you are going to end up doing your job AND your bosses job. Your boss will look like a hero to his/her peers. You'll kill…

On this subject, should you dress to look like a manager? While at my company the same dress code applies to all, the managers certainly dress more business-like than the programmers.

If you want to become one, yes.

Re: Leave Work Unassigned and See Who Steps Forward

#54

Post by jackgavigan »

purpled_haze wrote: post #52
codeonfire wrote: post #17

Ugg. I'm sorry about being negative but here are some protips: 1. If a manager leaves work unassigned and you pick it up, prepare to have a LOT more work dumped on you in the future for no reward. 2. If you pretend to be a manager with hopes of being made a manager, all that you will accomplish is you are going to end up doing your job AND your bosses job. Your boss will look like a hero to his/her peers. You'll kill…

Another warning: Sometimes doing the right thing in your mind means going against leadership and culture that are ingrained in the heart of the company. Taking this route may actually be the right thing to do, but it might not be in your long-term career's best interest. This goes for everything from filling vacuums to taking charge to fix things gone wrong.

In my experience, if you find that your values are at odds with the company culture, you should think very carefully about leaving.

Unless you're at/near the top of the organisation, trying to challenge an ingrained culture is difficult, and you risk being perceived as "difficult", "obstructive", "not a team player", etc. and, from personal experience, it can be stressful and depressing.

Re: Leave Work Unassigned and See Who Steps Forward

#55

Post by loopbit »

meric wrote: post #51
loopbit wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I've had more than my share of bad bosses, but I don't really agree with you here. I must say, also, that in my experience, it does depend on the company size, culture and abilities of said managers more often than not (big, hierarchical companies tend to be worse at this kind of thing, also, banking and financial, not sure why). - A good manager will notice, and appreciate, your effort. But promote you? You ar…

- A good manager will notice, and appreciate, your effort. But promote you? You are one of his best tools, why should he? Usually he'll try everything he can to keep you where you are. If it's a bad manager, he won't even recognize your effort. Your parent comment: make him look like a hero, which will get him promoted, and he'll think who is his most valuable / productive underling, which will get you promoted So, y…

Again, maybe I've had more bad managers than the average (in my 17 years of professional experience I've had 2, maybe 3, good managers), but there's no guarantee that will happen.

Maybe in areas like SV, where good professionals with solid experience have no problem finding another role and companies are actually trying their best to keep good employees that happens more often. What I've seen is people skipped for promotion in favor of the manager's son friend. Or in favor of someone "recommended" from above. Or many other forms of nepotism.

I've seen wonderful managers-to-be being kept in a lower role because the company didn't want to cough up the increase in salary. And, as said before, invariably I've seen these people end up leaving and going somewhere else, causing the department a few problems (organization, lost know-how...).

BTW, reading my comments on this one might think I'm bitter and maybe I am: I worked 6 years in Spain and France, where nepotism is the norm and techies are considered second class citizens. I must say that I don't think I've been skipped for promotion many times and personally I haven't had many issues moving up (and down) the ladder in all the places I've worked. But I also know that one of the reasons for this is that I've never had a problem with getting up and leaving a company if I wasn't happy.

Re: Leave Work Unassigned and See Who Steps Forward

#56

Post by ap22213 »

kabouseng wrote: post #23
codeonfire wrote: post #17

Ugg. I'm sorry about being negative but here are some protips: 1. If a manager leaves work unassigned and you pick it up, prepare to have a LOT more work dumped on you in the future for no reward. 2. If you pretend to be a manager with hopes of being made a manager, all that you will accomplish is you are going to end up doing your job AND your bosses job. Your boss will look like a hero to his/her peers. You'll kill…

If I may, here is some of my protips: - The best route up is hitching your wagon to your bosses wagon. So yes doing some of his work will make him look like a hero, which will get him promoted, and he'll think who is his most valuable / productive underling, which will get you promoted. Hopefully you doing some of his work free's up his time to be more productive in other areas. If your boss is a lazy PHB (Dilbert),…

This advice and the advice of the parent are both very useful, in my experiences.

One thing I would add is to make sure you love working for your boss. If you don't love working for your boss, get a new boss.

Re: Leave Work Unassigned and See Who Steps Forward

#57

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

jackgavigan wrote: post #39
happywolf wrote: post #28

This practice can easily be abused or/and cause unintented consequences. For example, once employees know this is a short cut for promotion, they will focus a lot of their energy and attention to find 'the void' and try to fill it, or act like they can fill it, thus neglecting the real work that need to be done. In fact, this could be a cultural issue where everybody tries to act like taking a lead (usually by blanke…

I completely agree. Leaving a gap and waiting for someone to fill it is practically the opposite of management. > ..once employees know this is a short cut for promotion, they will focus a lot of their energy and attention to find 'the void' and try to fill it, or act like they can fill it, thus neglecting the real work that need to be done. This in particular is really dangerous because it can poison an organisation…

Organisations are about politics and status. As a sideline, sometimes useful work gets done.

>In that scenario, Adam has not done a good job as a manager, and he's definitely not a good leader.

One difference between good and bad management is that good managers understand politics, they understand people, and most of all they understand the consequences of different political options. (I mean effective and ineffective, not good vs evil.)

Effective managers don't - ever - rule by formula, campfire or sports coach platitudes, or read-it-in-a-book business mythology.

So if you're dealing with someone who does any of the above as a first choice, they're unlikely to be making rational choices, or to have any deep understanding of the team(s) they're managing.

Evil managers can have a good understanding of consequences but their choices will be designed to increase their own income and status at the expense of their team/company. So they can appear to be doing stupid counterproductive things, but in fact they'll likely be promoted because they're gaming the system. They're a horror to work for, because they'll exploit their team as a resource and discard it without looking back. (I've seen people boast about this. It's not hypothetical.)

Good managers have an interest in developing the talent in their team as well as shipping good things and getting themselves promoted. But they won't be doing it with platitudes like "Leave space for people to act like managers" and then punishing anyone who actually does. They'll be more politically adept than that.

The big problem for employees is that politics and culture are invisible. I've seen plenty of management books, but I can't remember seeing a useful book that explains the practical differences between exploitation/support and good/bad good/evil management. Simple metrics like hours worked are a start, but a bigger picture with standard examples of management practices and styles, and supportive/unhealthy team cultures would be very useful.

Re: Leave Work Unassigned and See Who Steps Forward

#58

Post by tboyd47 »

georgeglue1 wrote: post #24

Sorry for another negative post. As a PM, the example stated seems a bit absurd and definitely not the environment for me. A transparent and healthy company culture lets people (briefly) reason and talk about projects/strengths. There shouldn't be some sort of implicit beauty contest, rewarding aggressive employee who are underloaded. There must be better ways to develop talent. The method listed also creates a lot o…

Agreed. You really hit the nail on the head when you said "aggressive." This strategy seems like it would create an artificially competitive zero-sum game within the company where employees who should be working together are competing to be the golden volunteer for the boss.

I think it would be better to always have fewer tasks than people (not more tasks, like the author seems to suggest), but establish high-level goals for the team as a whole. You'll quickly see who is best at understanding the goals, turning them into work, and recruiting other people to help do that work, which is real leadership (not just jumping to do extra tasks).

Re: Leave Work Unassigned and See Who Steps Forward

#59

Post by lsadam0 »

codeonfire wrote: post #17

Ugg. I'm sorry about being negative but here are some protips: 1. If a manager leaves work unassigned and you pick it up, prepare to have a LOT more work dumped on you in the future for no reward. 2. If you pretend to be a manager with hopes of being made a manager, all that you will accomplish is you are going to end up doing your job AND your bosses job. Your boss will look like a hero to his/her peers. You'll kill…

I'm not really disagreeing. Setting expectation is always a good thing.

However, speaking as a manager...if one of my team members is always stepping up and getting things done in a reliable way without me having to constantly direct them....that person is going to be first in line for promotion and raises.

On the flip side, the team members whom I have to micro manage because they are unable to think for themselves will be the first to be culled.

Re: Leave Work Unassigned and See Who Steps Forward

#60

Post by djb_hackernews »

j_jochem wrote: post #22
d23 wrote: post #20

> Companies don't need to go so far as the well-known Google 20 percent time A bit of a digression here. I love that people think the idea that letting employees spend a measly 20% of their time deciding what they should be working on is somehow an extreme idea. What portion of your typical day would you honestly say is devoted to solid, in-the-flow work? After all the meeting, context switches, random interruptions,…

Maybe I'm exceptionally lucky, but I work from home most of the time and get to prioritize my work myself. If I want to spend a day improving test coverage or build tooling, I am free to do so. The price I pay for this is earning about 10k€ less a year, but I still think it's worth it.

Just for fun I wondered what a missed $10k/yr was over time.

http://www.moneychimp.com/calculator/compound_interest_calcu...

values of 0; 10,000; 20; 4; results in nearly 310k of missed gains.

Increasing that 4% to 8% increases it to nearly a half a million!

At my estimated retirement income requirements, that basically means I could quit working 10 years earlier if I don't settle for being underpaid.

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