Signs you might be a micromanager

First - different perspectives (i.e. bigger vs. narrow picture), Second - skills and competencies gaps.

First 'Special Conditions' - The gap between 'customer' and 'engineer' can often be quite large. Junior Engineers especially generally don't have an intuition for those things, and often 'the technical details' deal directly with feature orientation. There are legal issues, operational issues, so many 'bigger picture' things that are relevant. Cross-functional issues are definitely a thing, which is why a guy like Musk is probably managing a few layers deep, and 'very deep' in some specific scenarios.

Musk is a good example - because when he intervenes, because he has 'a lot of legitimacy' as 'founder and supposed genius' - people may not feel 'micromanaged' whereas if it were any other situation they very well might.

You may have a very complex code base where the architects, or Senior Devs who built the system need to intervene with a bunch of things to ensure consistency, communicate much of the 'unspoken' idioms that exist, and provide 'leadership by example' etc. etc..

For example, I trust my team members a lot more in the Java/Python domain, I almost don't trust anyone in C++ there are just so many ways to skin the cat, so many horrible anti-patterns, I've seen it all, so I like to take a really good look at the code. Often a second set of eyes helps.

On the whole, yes, micromanaging probably shouldn't be constant, but it can be consistent.

Second - there are skills (and communications) gaps in every resume. I'm literally managing a small offshore team right now, not getting adequate response when asking some specific questions. I've come to the conclusion they are literally not considering a whole pile of corner cases. I'm going to have to step in and hold their hands through a set of functions that they, for whatever reason, are not wading through very well. Fortunately, I have a ton of experience with this, and it will be ok.

This idea of 'if they are not good enough use someone else' is a little bit glib because far more often than not, it's not an option - either you have an incumbent team, budgetary/timing issues, and frankly, even if you didn't have limitations there, it's hard to evaluate people anyhow.

Finally - I will say that there are some situations where micromanaging probably is going to be constant. For very young and new developers on any kind of complex system ... they will need to have a lot of coaching and oversight. Even little things like tooling usage, which may not be 'formalized' because the team is in good sync, or the team is senior, but you have a junior who's not familiar with the git idioms on the team etc...

I had a gig with a company that could only retain very junior developers. I was very nervous going in, because only retaining junior developers implies that the management can't get along with experienced developers.

I couldn't quite "put a finger" on why I wasn't happy and had trouble getting along with the management and tech lead... And, why the tech lead was always frustrated with the manager.

It's because they were all micromanaging each other!

Thanks -- but no, for me personally it couldn't be farrher from the case. Meant broadly / generically, bc IME there's so much of this -- and IMHO it's often perpetrated unknowingly. A convenient mechanism to shed light could end a lot of misery.

There’s a joke I make with colleagues for a fantasy startup we’d call Micromanagr. The pitch “The problem with micromanagement is it doesn’t scale... until now”

Jokes aside micro-management has its roots in insecurity and lack of being able trust. Perhaps for a small number it’s also about a power trip but for most it’s simply a lack of understanding of how to delegate and a false belief that you’re the only person that “gets it”.

That said one of the greatest feelings a manager is seeing people step up, take things on and do it in a newer and better way. You have to allow them to make mistakes which they will at first. But when you can get to this with a whole team, you end up doing things collectively which are truly bigger than the sum of the parts, and that’s an amazing thing to be part of.

The common pattern of behavior I have observed with micro managers is a fear of perception, such as a fear of looking bad. Most commonly this manifests as the boss wanting a hyper selective output they wish they could do themselves because either they do not trust the employee and/or because they cannot communicate what they want.

Contrast that against excellent managers who provide proper direction and allow their employees to safely fail for growth because you learn more from failure.