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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

#21

Post by ip26 »

justin_oaks wrote: post #15
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.

"Authority" can refer to wisdom & experience, e.g. "They are an authority on the subject". People like having leaders who are knowledgeable about the task at hand.

Re: Why Silicon Valley has so many Bad Managers

#22

Post by [deleted] »

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?

[deleted]

Re: Why Silicon Valley has so many Bad Managers

#23

Post by 908B64B197 »

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.

Definitely!

But I didn't get close enough with most of them to know if they too had kids whose paternity they denied. I only have so much time after all.

Re: Why Silicon Valley has so many Bad Managers

#25

Post by swframe2 »

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?

I mentioned my problems, with my manager, to very senior coworkers and they strongly recommended that I quit. As a result of their advice, I mentally quit my job. My old job was to make successful products for customers. My new job is to overcome the limitations of my manager.

I've tried very obvious things. I have worked out a path to be successful despite the efforts of my manager to prevent it. I included my skip level manager in the conversation. I very carefully review my manager's actions and tell them constructively in our 1on1 when they are managing badly. I spend a lot of time reviewing my progress to make sure my path is the best. I built relationships with other coworkers without my manager involvement so they can support my efforts when performance reviews are due.

If I kept the notion that was doing my old job I would be unhappy; changing my point of view has helped a lot.

Re: Why Silicon Valley has so many Bad Managers

#26

Post by jevanish »

lcuff wrote: post #19

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…

I appreciate the skepticism, but that's a very fixed mindset. People can absolutely change and I've seen it hundreds of times.

It certainly can take a "come to Jesus" moment like you find out your team hates you, you get fired, a wave of employees quit on you, etc, but people can absolutely change when they decide to.

Character is absolutely important, and it does predispose one to being a better manager, but you can become a good manager later in life.

Unfortunately, as we discuss in the article (I wrote it), the incentives aren't always there, nor are the positive examples of what to do.

Re: Why Silicon Valley has so many Bad Managers

#27

Post by jevanish »

nickpinkston wrote: post #6

There's a lot of great points in the article, though I'm unsure how Silicon Valley's early/mature companies stack against average ones. Take for instance: - Are managers at a pizza shop / drywall contractor / design studio better than the average startup? - Are managers at IBM / GE / JPM better than ones at Facebook / Apple / Google? At first blush, I'd think that we're actually better correcting for firm age, but I'…

The reason the Valley is different is because if you have 35% turnover at most companies, you're out of business.

In Silicon Valley, you can hide it behind more recruiters and funding. I've talked to multiple companies with first hand accounts of that level of turnover, which is rare in other industries because they'd go out of business losing that many people.

Re: Why Silicon Valley has so many Bad Managers

#28

Post by jevanish »

uberman wrote: post #5

Does it really have comparatively bad managers? Are a lack of diversity and prevalence of harassment more common in Silicon Valley than say big pharma, big banking, big investing, or big entertainment? I am speculating the answer is "no".

Certainly finance has its own terrible reputation and problems, but that does not absolve Silicon Valley / Tech companies from doing better. They absolutely have the knowledge, funding, resources to do better.

Re: Why Silicon Valley has so many Bad Managers

#29

Post by jevanish »

majormajor wrote: post #12

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...

This^. Well said.

Re: Why Silicon Valley has so many Bad Managers

#30

Post by robocat »

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.

And media regularly depicts successful management as anger e.g. Gordon Ramsay, The Apprentice.

How many managers model their behaviour upon these fake depictions of success?

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