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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

#61

Post by lcuff »

jevanish wrote: post #26
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…

I agree that people can and do change, at many levels and in many ways. When we unknowingly treat people badly, and get the wake up call, we can (perhaps) shift to treating them better.

My personal journey has included discovering how amazingly angry I was, without even knowing it. It precluded having reasonable (engineering) discussions when people disagreed with me, being able to take and give direction, etc. Therapy helped a lot. Learning to be truthful, disagree reasonably, keep promises, think through problems, treat people kindly are all 'learnable'. But some core elements of our beings are pretty intractable, and I believe having the solid core of 'self' that can stand (again in the face of negative personal consequences) against the often outrageous conduct that's around us in the world is only very occasionally developed in adulthood.

Re: Why Silicon Valley has so many Bad Managers

#62

Post by throwaway9870 »

jevanish wrote: post #39
question000 wrote: post #32

I'm a developer and I admit the truth is that managers are bad only because developers are worse. Turnover in tech is extremely high and it's not because devs are constantly being mismanaged, it's because they are egotistical and capable of working independently and often just do without any real penalty. "Oh you fired me, well 9 times out of 10 I'll just be earning more money across the street, good luck recruiting…

It's certainly a two way street between a manager and team member to work well together, but in my experience the best managers in Silicon Valley/tech retain great people for a long time. In fact, many bring former team members with them from company to company, being a talent magnet.

It is my experience good managers know how to filter through employees to find ones that are manageable. Perhaps not at the time of hiring, but they know how to move people off their teams that they know are not good members. I consider myself a decent manager and built strong teams of people that would still work for me or act as references, but even then, I probably failed with half the people I hired.

Re: Why Silicon Valley has so many Bad Managers

#63

Post by TuringNYC »

question000 wrote: post #55
TuringNYC wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Turnover in tech is extremely high and it's not because devs are constantly being mismanaged, it's because they are egotistical and capable of working independently and often just do without any real penalty. "Oh you fired me, well 9 times out of 10 I'll just be earning more money across the street, good luck recruiting anyone with a bad Glassdoor review!" What incentives does the manager have to get invested with…

Yeah, it seems so insane to me how little companies will give raises or promote from within, this is definitely driving turnover and building animosity against managers. I think that's a big factor here. I most upper management doesn't want to have commit to having few veteran devs when they can increase/decrease the labor pool quickly.

From my experience as a manger, many times, companies will easily hire at 30, or even 40% above the current salary, but will offer promotions/raises of just a tenth of that.

This is especially stark when different members of a team were hired in different years, and thus got the prevailing market salary for a particular vintage of hires. You can get situations where an identical position is paying a 30% difference, only some of it due to negotiation.

The result is the developers "calibrate" themselves, many work less and less until they feel the situation is "fair." Many are working on their next startup, doing gigs, consulting, etc.

I find the technology industry to be a total mess as compared to management consulting (where I began my career.) There was some strangeness, but usually everything was in generally consistent bands. In comparison, my friends in big law describe a completely orderly situation.

Re: Why Silicon Valley has so many Bad Managers

#64

Post by ryandrake »

TuringNYC wrote: post #63
question000 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it seems so insane to me how little companies will give raises or promote from within, this is definitely driving turnover and building animosity against managers. I think that's a big factor here. I most upper management doesn't want to have commit to having few veteran devs when they can increase/decrease the labor pool quickly.

From my experience as a manger, many times, companies will easily hire at 30, or even 40% above the current salary, but will offer promotions/raises of just a tenth of that. This is especially stark when different members of a team were hired in different years, and thus got the prevailing market salary for a particular vintage of hires. You can get situations where an identical position is paying a 30% difference, o…

When a developer leaves a typical tech company, there's a massive cost involved in hiring a new one. You'd think the company could save a fortune if, instead of spending on recruiting, just half of that cost was spent on simply retaining the existing developer... Yet companies continue to happily let them leave, then spend that fortune hiring someone new. Seems like such a sub-optimal way to go.

Re: Why Silicon Valley has so many Bad Managers

#65

Post by proc0 »

The pervasive problem I've seen is bad accountability models, where the person who knows how to do something is not the one officially responsible (but ultimately it is because they get fired of course, however they're not responding to higher management about it). This causes huge tension and also miscommunication. Knowing how to do something should at least give you more decision power on how to move forward with a problem, but what ends up happening is extra overhead explaining solutions and options just so a decision is made by someone else that might still not understand and make the wrong decision anyway. This also causes a bottleneck and compounds the problem by making the org. very slow to respond to changes in direction.

Unfortunately I don't see an easy solution, and bad managers tend to be the ones that have the least understanding of the problems, but somehow make the most decisions.

Re: Why Silicon Valley has so many Bad Managers

#66

Post by ci5er »

cblconfederate wrote: post #44
question000 wrote: post #32

I'm a developer and I admit the truth is that managers are bad only because developers are worse. Turnover in tech is extremely high and it's not because devs are constantly being mismanaged, it's because they are egotistical and capable of working independently and often just do without any real penalty. "Oh you fired me, well 9 times out of 10 I'll just be earning more money across the street, good luck recruiting…

Why is that bad?

A first level response would be that you were hired at a salary to do a job.

If you can't or won't do a coding job I hire you for, I would back-fill for myself and you would be on the street. (Cost of capital for startups isn't cheap!)

Re: Why Silicon Valley has so many Bad Managers

#67

Post by ci5er »

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.

I bet they got the black turtleneck right, though - amirite? :-)

Re: Why Silicon Valley has so many Bad Managers

#68

Post by vanusa »

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'…

Are managers at a pizza shop / drywall contractor / design studio better than the average startup?

We can safely leave out "design studio" as these are much closer conceptually to programming shops.

But going by my own experience working jobs closer the former two categories - I would say "yes, and by a wide margin". The reasons for this are very straightforward:

(1) Both the customer needs, and the performance metrics in business in the "pizza-drywall" camp are generally much more "pure" (dare we say 10x as pure) as those in SD.

As in: "Can you make a pizza so good that not only you would would want to eat it as often as you could - but your friends would brag to their friends and neighbors about it as well? Or at least be good enough for the market / price range we're after? And can you make X per day, every day? And like not be a dick or show up hungover and stuff."

Versus: Are you a "culture fit"? Can you stay on top of the latest buzzwords? Can you spend all your available time for several weeks or months cramming for our ridiculous interview process - and put up with all the whiteboarding, ghosting and other gratuitous humiliations that we expect you to eat, eat, eat, and eat some more of in return for the exquisite pleasure of working with us? And once we deign to let you in - will you go along with our various brainwashing rituals (standups, agile, "DevOps culture", etc)? Or at least pretend to? BTW if you're kind of a dick that's actually okay being as many of us are, as you'll find out eventually.

(2) Infinitely less emphasis on what might loosely be called "theoretical" management techniques (see above) versus, again, nuts-and-bolts: "Can you do the work? Will you be happy doing it? Can we get along?"

Hands-down - while it would never be sustainable economically - I was infinitely happier at many of the food service / delivery / random construction jobs than at at least 50 percent of the tech industry jobs I've had.

Re: Why Silicon Valley has so many Bad Managers

#69

Post by aeternum »

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?

As a manager, I feel that whenever I have to use authority I've failed.

If a manager is unable to convince a team member and forces them to take some path by pulling rank, isn't it a recipe for disaster regardless of age? In my experience, begrudging compliance is not a recipe for quality code.

Re: Why Silicon Valley has so many Bad Managers

#70

Post by _y5hn »

ryandrake wrote: post #64
TuringNYC wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my experience as a manger, many times, companies will easily hire at 30, or even 40% above the current salary, but will offer promotions/raises of just a tenth of that. This is especially stark when different members of a team were hired in different years, and thus got the prevailing market salary for a particular vintage of hires. You can get situations where an identical position is paying a 30% difference, o…

When a developer leaves a typical tech company, there's a massive cost involved in hiring a new one. You'd think the company could save a fortune if, instead of spending on recruiting, just half of that cost was spent on simply retaining the existing developer... Yet companies continue to happily let them leave, then spend that fortune hiring someone new. Seems like such a sub-optimal way to go.

You have to look at who does the hiring and who benefits from the churn: The managers themselves.

Keeping old timers, they will take charge and be harder to manage.

Each newcomer, will be at your mercy, to be formed and taken hostage for many years.

Besides, an influx of chaos is good for grabbing more power. As it's really someone else's problem after all: Win win.

So such situations are because someone benefits from the situation, even though the organization bleeds. Look at incentive structures and follow the money. Though even if unintentional, it follows from simple cause and effects.

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