All this remind me of a quote by an old friend from a long time ago: life is mafia, freedom is to get fscked on your own.
Why do incompetent managers get promoted?
81–90 of 144 posts
Re: Why do incompetent managers get promoted?
#82How many times do people who are good at their jobs get promoted just because there isnt anywhere else to go? You cant make any more money at the level you are without switching companies so you get stuck going into management. I got promoted to being a manager of a small group just because there wasn't anyone else to do it and I am completely incompetent as a manager of people. I don't enjoy it and didn't ask for it…
It is even worse. For companies without SME tracks, SMEs find themselves getting almost no raises or comp despite contributing to more and more revenue and/or important/complex work. Then you see stupid things happen, like they find need for and hire 2 or 3 people just so they can justify a 5% raise. Then they find need for and hire more people to justify another 10% raise. Suddenly you have a company with many FTEs…
I'm at a company that does a good job of presenting a branching ic track that compensates at or above management. The issue is no one wants to become a team lead now. Worse work, more annoying responsibility, similar pay
Re: Why do incompetent managers get promoted?
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, most days I am therapist/coach/mom, and while I think I'm actually pretty decent at it, it's not what I want to be doing. It's emotionally exhausting and rarely rewarding.
I'm curious if your male/father co-worker managers think of themselves (or are thought of) as "dads" at work, or if there are gender biases here.
I'm not sure if that's quite what you asked, but I for one found that becoming a dad made me a better manager. It's very different, but there are parallels, particularly around learning to let go.
Re: Why do incompetent managers get promoted?
#84I don’t agree with anything in this article. Incompetent managers get promoted because the things they are competent at are not the things their employees want them to be competent at. There is a dichotomy between traits that get people promoted at large companies and traits that make a good manager from the perspective of subordinates. Those traits only sometimes overlap. Thus the whole argument is predicated on a f…
politics, self-promotion, networking, choosing the right (high-visibility) things to work on, taking credit
A “good” manager gives his team credit for success and takes the blame himself for failures. A bad manager does the opposite. That’s all there is to management really, it’s simple, but very few do it.
Re: Why do incompetent managers get promoted?
#85I wonder how many people who reference "The Peter Principle" have actually read it? It's short-- maybe 100 pages long-- and IMO not particularly good. It's essentially just a pile of brief vignettes about incompetent people being promoted, many of which feel like they were largely made up for the book. "There once was a guy named bob. He was bad at his job and got promoted. So there." ---- it is not quite that bad bu…
Anecdotally, I find it true for so many books - that they are longer than needed to get their points across. It is like Important Things (TM) always needs a minimum number of pages to be valuable. And of course, no one would pay for a 2 page book..
Re: Why do incompetent managers get promoted?
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, most days I am therapist/coach/mom, and while I think I'm actually pretty decent at it, it's not what I want to be doing. It's emotionally exhausting and rarely rewarding.
I couldn’t take the daily crying. Individuals would come to my office, close the door and break down in tears. There was too much emotion over trivial things.
Where are you working that there is daily crying ? oO
Re: Why do incompetent managers get promoted?
#87I once held a presentation titled "How come my boss is an utter idiot" and used "Parkinson's Law", "Peter Principle" and "Dilbert Principle" as source
Re: Why do incompetent managers get promoted?
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think a key error people often make is assuming that the line engineers are always right. If a decision pisses off the line engineers it must be idiotic! The manager must be a fool. Peter principle in action. This surely happens sometimes. But I’ve personally witnessed a lot of engineers (especially junior engineers) who don’t give a shit about customers or shipping products or building alignment or communicating p…
> This surely happens sometimes. But I’ve personally witnessed a lot of engineers (especially junior engineers) who don’t give a shit about customers or shipping products or building alignment or communicating planning and impact. This attitude is what I've usually seen from management, and junior engineers are often the ones who fight against this attitude, before they get too jaded and leave. Management will dishon…
> Management will dishonestly claim successful delivery with zero regard for the actual product, and then force the engineers into 24/7 oncall.
There is a balance here. This happens I'm sure. But I've also seen healthy velocity (no mountains of debt, no oncall) be pulled down by engineers who insist on working on what they find fun rather than what is actually good for a product. And these engineers have called their managers idiots to me.
Re: Why do incompetent managers get promoted?
#89I don’t agree with anything in this article. Incompetent managers get promoted because the things they are competent at are not the things their employees want them to be competent at. There is a dichotomy between traits that get people promoted at large companies and traits that make a good manager from the perspective of subordinates. Those traits only sometimes overlap. Thus the whole argument is predicated on a f…
I think this could be put even more simply: You get promoted for making your superiors happy, not for making your reports happy. What actually makes anyone happy is going to vary from organization to organization, from person to person, and from situation to situation. I've known managers whose job was 100% just to keep their subordinates happy, but that happened because keeping those roles filled was one of the comp…
An effective manager does two things first and foremost:
1) Make sure that his/her employees' day-to-day work aligns with the goals of the company
2) Remove any and all roadblocks keeping employees from being efficient and effective in their work, even if it means risking political capital.
I've always fantasized that if I ran a company, when annual reviews came around, the reviews would be bi-directional. In order words, employees must (confidentially) review their managers as well as vice-versa.
Someone will eventually respond, "okay, but if you let, say, engineers have that much control over how a company operates, you're not going to have a profitable company for very long." To which I would respond: that's why you set the company culture and also you have to be diligent about letting people go who are not a good fit for the company's goals.
Re: Why do incompetent managers get promoted?
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think a key error people often make is assuming that the line engineers are always right. If a decision pisses off the line engineers it must be idiotic! The manager must be a fool. Peter principle in action. This surely happens sometimes. But I’ve personally witnessed a lot of engineers (especially junior engineers) who don’t give a shit about customers or shipping products or building alignment or communicating p…
> This surely happens sometimes. But I’ve personally witnessed a lot of engineers (especially junior engineers) who don’t give a shit about customers or shipping products or building alignment or communicating planning and impact. This attitude is what I've usually seen from management, and junior engineers are often the ones who fight against this attitude, before they get too jaded and leave. Management will dishon…
> This attitude is what I've usually seen from management, and junior engineers are often the ones who fight against this attitude, before they get too jaded and leave. Management will dishonestly claim successful delivery with zero regard for the actual product, and then force the engineers into 24/7 oncall.
Or do junior engineers build a broken system because they don't know better which results in them having to constantly fix shit and burn out?
And then a senior engineer is hired from outside with a lovely mess to clean up while getting paid more than the junior engineer was. And at that point in the company's life, the pressure is usually lower. So it's a nice gig. ;)