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Why Silicon Valley has so many Bad Managers

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Re: Why Silicon Valley has so many Bad Managers

#11

Post by mgkimsal »

person8645 wrote: post #9
908B64B197 wrote: post #4

I met a lot of Jobs copycats. Most of them failed at one or most of these: - They could never get a technical co-founder to work with them - They were wrong about the market - They were wrong about design - They didn't have the means to self-finance their businesses (think Pixar and Next) - They didn't have the connections What they had was the college drop-out part and some ideas.

Do they also copy the volatile temperament? I've always wondered how important that is to managing creative or groundbreaking teams. I work in architecture, where that temperament is way more common than vision and talent.

Not the GP, but I've been in a few situations like that, where yeah, they copy the volatility too. I think it was deliberate. Worked with someone who morphed in to that, and I think he thought it was either expected or somehow a requirement for 'success'. Being volatile and yelling and copying other aspects of Jobs (and that behavior in general) is ... not great, but it's doubly so when you're pulling that on people who you're not even paying.

Getting berated or public raked over the coals from a jackass 'founder', but you've got decent $ coming in - some people can justify that to themselves, at least for a while. Expecting people to take that shit when they're working for 'equity'? Have seen that and it's insane. Good thing was/is that I've not seen it much, and haven't seen those situations play out successfully. But... the Apple/Jobs myth was powerful on that part for a long time (probably still is?).

Re: Why Silicon Valley has so many Bad Managers

#12

Post by majormajor »

I don't know if tech companies have worse managers than other companies, I wouldn't be surprised if they don't... but that seems to be missing a rather big point.

If your company can have better managers than its competitors you can gain an advantage. So if you say "eh, we don't have it that bad, other industries suck too," you're leaving that opening for others...

Re: Why Silicon Valley has so many Bad Managers

#14

Post by waylandsmithers »

> With a manager only a few years older than you, you have a tough experience.

So I'm pretty early in my career but have already had multiple experiences having managers who are a little younger than me. I want it to be fine, but it's just hard to see them as any kind of authority. How do other folks make this work?

Re: Why Silicon Valley has so many Bad Managers

#15

Post by justin_oaks »

waylandsmithers wrote: post #14

> With a manager only a few years older than you, you have a tough experience. So I'm pretty early in my career but have already had multiple experiences having managers who are a little younger than me. I want it to be fine, but it's just hard to see them as any kind of authority. How do other folks make this work?

If management is about authority then then the managing is already going poorly.

Re: Why Silicon Valley has so many Bad Managers

#16

Post by angryasian »

In engineering Hiring good managers is not what they optimize for. Yes Engineering management should still have a high level of understanding of engineering principals within that domain, but management also because a people skill. Out of all my interviews, people skills and EQ are very often overlooked.

Re: Why Silicon Valley has so many Bad Managers

#17

Post by at_a_remove »

angryasian wrote: post #16

In engineering Hiring good managers is not what they optimize for. Yes Engineering management should still have a high level of understanding of engineering principals within that domain, but management also because a people skill. Out of all my interviews, people skills and EQ are very often overlooked.

EQ has already been co-opted as a term and rendered essentially meaningless. One job, there was a craze for it, starting at the top, so naturally we all eventually had to go to this wretched little one day course on it. I kid you not, everything was about either "fear" or "love." If that sounds familiar, if it sounds like Donnie Darko, you would be right ... almost everything we were "taught" in this emotional intelligence course was almost directly out of that mindset, done straight and not as a parody.

Fear and love are the only real motivators, apparently, and we don't want to be afraid of things, blah blah, it was such a wretched simplification and so absurd in its manipulative outlook ("do it, you wouldn't want to be ... afraid ... now would you?") that I began to wonder if this was some kind of larger test on who could keep from laughing.

Re: Why Silicon Valley has so many Bad Managers

#19

Post by lcuff »

I'm not so impressed with this article, and partly it's because of the rather bad news: There's not much to be done about bad management. Peter Drucker, well worth reading if you haven't, said that the thing that makes a manager is character. My definition of character is someone who takes action that may have serious negative personal consequences (extreme version: high-profile whistle blowing). Character can't be built by buying an app or taking a weekend workshop. It's formed early in life. It's an extremely rare commodity. Hence, good managers are scarce on the ground and likely to remain so.
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