Dick is a bad manager

One of the characteristics of "bad management" that's shown here is Dick constantly hovering. At my company, we've arranged the cubicles so that they still offer privacy (walls are about 6 feet high), but that anyone walking by can see what's on the computer screen.

Would you qualify this as hovering? We generally have no issues with casual gchatting, facebooking, stock picking, and have never really reprimanded anyone for that. We also don't do any sort of Internet monitoring.

Two of our employees, however, have taken it upon themselves to re-arrange their desks so that no one can see their monitor. One of them flipped their whole desk setup around (probably spent a good morning working on it), and another employee has turned his monitor 45 degrees - to compensate he has to crane his body at such an odd angle for 8 hours a day that I wonder if I'm going to get a workman's comp claim soon.

Is it bad management if I insist that they go back to their original configuration? I wonder if they think they're trying to pull a fast one over me - do they think I'm an idiot and do not realize what they're doing? Am I a "Dick" manager for wanting to know what they're up to whenever I walk through the room?

No because you're clearly concerned about it so there is hope (Dick managers generally either don't care how they are or actively see it as a good thing), but yes because you seem not to trust them (you admit to wanting to know what they're doing).

The nature of trust is not trusting them to get on with their work eight hours a day to a format you think appropriate, it's trusting them to deliver what's been asked on time and to know how they want to work to achieve that.

You need to accept that there isn't a universal working pattern for programmers. Some are in at 8am, work diligently all day then head off. Others slope in late, are inefficient for large parts of the day but pull it out of the hat when it matters.

There is little point in asking programmer B why he can't work steadily like programmer A because quite simply he can't, that's not how his mind works. It may be that the inefficient time is how he mulls over the problem, it may be that he needs the rush of the approaching deadline, it maybe something else entirely, but these things are rarely as simple as Person X does this so it will work for Person Y.

Think of a programmer as a black box. You define inputs and outputs, they define what goes on inside the box. Your job is to give them the best inputs you can, monitor the outputs and generally leave the rest alone.

In terms of your current style a few questions you might want to ask yourself:

* What is it that means that you want to see what they're doing all the time?

* Why do they want to hide their monitors from you?

* What would you do if you saw them doing something completely non-work related?

* Have they done anything in the past which suggests that they're not committed to the project?

* How does your boss treat you and how do you feel about it?

I suspect the answers might help you identify any Dick traits you might have.

P.S. In terms of the guy craning - yes, you need to address that as you're likely liable for his working environment. But explain that to him and say he can have his cube how he likes so long as it's basically safe.

Anyone have any suggestions for how to manage a team where some employees need me to be Dick and some don't? The obvious solution is to replace the employees who need Dick's management, but that's not always feasible.