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Ask HN: What mistakes in your experience does management keep making?

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Re: Ask HN: What mistakes in your experience does management keep making?

#391

Post by mmcnl »

0xfeba wrote: post #257
FractalNerve wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> * Give no feedback unless things go wrong > * Treat your highly educated, intelligent and motivated devs like children by misusing agile in order to micromanage them These two points made me cry. I suffered my very first burn-out due to that and although having a higher degree in computer science and love towards programming this really made me feel like a piece of shit. I have the feeling that it's really hopeless…

Also hits a nerve for me. Our mgmt just shuffles devs around from fire to fire without really just sticking the same devs to a single project until it's done. Then we get questioned why projects are not done. And don't get my started on our new Agile process. We have scrum meetings for our scrum meetings. We have mgmt. popping in the project level scrum meetings to tell us what is and isn't scrummy enough to talk abo…

LPT: Don't complain, but suggest improvements. Stop looking at "management" as some evil superpower that can't be reasoned with. They're just people with different responsibilities. Align.

Re: Ask HN: What mistakes in your experience does management keep making?

#392

Post by mmcnl »

stickfigure wrote: post #7

I've never met a manager that wouldn't rather pay four average people $100/hr to solve a problem that one smart person could solve in half the time for $400/hr. There seems to be some sort of quasi-religious belief in the fundamental averageness of humans; consequently the difference between developer salaries at any company varies by maybe 50%, whereas the productivity varies by at least a full order of magnitude. U…

This is simple risk management. The risks are too big that you're paying someone $400/hr without the expected benefits. There's just a too wide margin of error. Pay four people, things even out if and the whole thing just becomes more predictable (and thus easier to manage). Managers are often eager to pay the cost of predictability.

Re: Ask HN: What mistakes in your experience does management keep making?

#393

Post by lsadam0 »

gsylvie wrote: post #387
lsadam0 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, poor management aside....I cannot believe you are bragging about this. Rather than confront and address the problem, your solution was to actually delete shared knowledge?

Confront and address? You ain't gonna get your boss fired without a scratch. He's just bragging that he achieved a local maxima, and I think he's correct. Maybe during the exit interview he could have said, "oh by the way, there's a file on my computer..." But then he might suddenly find the severance offer is retracted.

I respect your point, but I still could not disagree more. Actions like this only serve to increase dysfunction, not improve.

Re: Ask HN: What mistakes in your experience does management keep making?

#394

Post by cjp222 »

serpix wrote: post #64
ChuckMcM wrote: post #10

There are some very common ones; * Building a one more generation of product than the market supports (so you build a new version when the market has moved on to something new). * Rewarding productivity over quality. * Managing to a second order effect. For example when Nestle' bought Dryers they managed to 'most profit per gallon' which rewarded people who substituted inferior (and cheaper) components, that lead to…

> Tolerating misbehavior out of fear of losing an employee. What if said employee pulls in 10x, 100x more revenue/value than average worker for the company? Would you fire him because the rule book say so? That said I trust in effective communication as soon as possible to manage difficult situations or misbehaviour. Often the reasons can be deeply personal or family related and people are preoccupied with stuff outs…

Way late on this, but this thread has been referenced in things like Oren Ellenbogen's Software Lead Weekly, so maybe the reference will help someone...

Bob Sutton's "The No Asshole Rule" calls this TCA - total cost of assholes. TCA incorporates the cost to replace people who leave because of the asshole, time spent by manager calming people down and cleanup, customer relastionship issues, etc.

10x, 100x revenue is only one piece of the story.

Re: Ask HN: What mistakes in your experience does management keep making?

#395

Post by gsylvie »

lsadam0 wrote: post #393
gsylvie wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Confront and address? You ain't gonna get your boss fired without a scratch. He's just bragging that he achieved a local maxima, and I think he's correct. Maybe during the exit interview he could have said, "oh by the way, there's a file on my computer..." But then he might suddenly find the severance offer is retracted.

I respect your point, but I still could not disagree more. Actions like this only serve to increase dysfunction, not improve.

Do you have the insanity and the tenacity to un-rot the fish from the bottom up?

> Corollary 1. Who can, and sometimes does, un-rot the fish from the bottom? An insane employee.

http://yosefk.com/blog/people-can-read-their-managers-mind.h...

Re: Ask HN: What mistakes in your experience does management keep making?

#396

Post by lsadam0 »

gsylvie wrote: post #395
lsadam0 wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I respect your point, but I still could not disagree more. Actions like this only serve to increase dysfunction, not improve.

Do you have the insanity and the tenacity to un-rot the fish from the bottom up? > Corollary 1. Who can, and sometimes does, un-rot the fish from the bottom? An insane employee. http://yosefk.com/blog/people-can-read-their-managers-mind.h...

What about the rest of that paragraph?

> Someone who finds the forks, crashes, etc. a personal offense, and will repeatedly risk annoying management by fighting to stop these things. Especially someone who spends their own political capital, hard earned doing things management truly values, on doing work they don't truly value – such a person can keep fighting for a long time. Some people manage to make a career out of it by persisting until management truly changes their mind and rewards them. Whatever the odds of that, the average person cannot comprehend the motivation of someone attempting such a feat.

In answer to your question: yes, I do. Just like the rest of your link states, it pays off.

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