71–80 of 134 posts
Everyone asks three questions of people leading them:
1. Can I trust you?
2. Do you care about me?
3. Are you committed to excellence? (aka do you have high standards).
Think about someone you admire. Odds are the answer to the above for them is "yes" to all three.
Now think of someone you have had a lot of problems with. Odds are the answers to the above are "no".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand why managers cannot fulfill both roles though? The job of management isn't hard (I'm doing it). Outside of the project management responsibilities, there is a lot of time doing nothing. If I wasn't coding, as a manager, 80% of the time I would sit around doing nothing. I strongly believe that managers should be able to fulfill both roles but maybe it's just because I've been burned by so many manag…
Question for HN: If you were talking with someone at a conference and heard him say > The job of management isn't hard (I'm doing it) What signals would you look for to tell the difference between these two possibilities? A. This person has so much tacit knowledge of good management that they don't realise how much skill they are applying day-to-day. B. This person has zero awareness of how their team is burning out…
I’d ask a few questions about the bits of management that I think are hard.
How do you get your team aligned on the company’s priorities as they shift?
How do you foster growth?
How do you assess who needs to be promoted/given a raise?
How do you handle feedback for employees that aren’t doing well, or aren’t meeting your expectations (or even harder, employees who think they should be promoted but you think are just solid at their current level)?
And the big/meta one - what do you think the job of a manager is? (Could just be a semantic disconnect on what the job entails).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand why managers cannot fulfill both roles though? The job of management isn't hard (I'm doing it). Outside of the project management responsibilities, there is a lot of time doing nothing. If I wasn't coding, as a manager, 80% of the time I would sit around doing nothing. I strongly believe that managers should be able to fulfill both roles but maybe it's just because I've been burned by so many manag…
Question for HN: If you were talking with someone at a conference and heard him say > The job of management isn't hard (I'm doing it) What signals would you look for to tell the difference between these two possibilities? A. This person has so much tacit knowledge of good management that they don't realise how much skill they are applying day-to-day. B. This person has zero awareness of how their team is burning out…
Lou Holtz [0] has a very pithy mental model for how to evaluate leadership: Everyone asks three questions of people leading them: 1. Can I trust you? 2. Do you care about me? 3. Are you committed to excellence? (aka do you have high standards). Think about someone you admire. Odds are the answer to the above for them is "yes" to all three. Now think of someone you have had a lot of problems with. Odds are the answers…
And for a leader, you can scale these by caring about roles and what info those roles get to show trust.
Really cool framework as a fundamental baseline.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand why managers cannot fulfill both roles though? The job of management isn't hard (I'm doing it). Outside of the project management responsibilities, there is a lot of time doing nothing. If I wasn't coding, as a manager, 80% of the time I would sit around doing nothing. I strongly believe that managers should be able to fulfill both roles but maybe it's just because I've been burned by so many manag…
I've been a manager for a while and at best I get 20% time to code. With 8+ reports the weeks tends to break down into: * 20% for 1-on-1s and dealing with management level issues people bring up. * 20% spent on hiring * 20% on various status meetings (team, cross-team, with my boss, etc.) * 20% spent on pro-actively finding or solving issues before the explode. This includes networking with my counterparts in the res…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand why managers cannot fulfill both roles though? The job of management isn't hard (I'm doing it). Outside of the project management responsibilities, there is a lot of time doing nothing. If I wasn't coding, as a manager, 80% of the time I would sit around doing nothing. I strongly believe that managers should be able to fulfill both roles but maybe it's just because I've been burned by so many manag…
Question for HN: If you were talking with someone at a conference and heard him say > The job of management isn't hard (I'm doing it) What signals would you look for to tell the difference between these two possibilities? A. This person has so much tacit knowledge of good management that they don't realise how much skill they are applying day-to-day. B. This person has zero awareness of how their team is burning out…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand why managers cannot fulfill both roles though? The job of management isn't hard (I'm doing it). Outside of the project management responsibilities, there is a lot of time doing nothing. If I wasn't coding, as a manager, 80% of the time I would sit around doing nothing. I strongly believe that managers should be able to fulfill both roles but maybe it's just because I've been burned by so many manag…
Question for HN: If you were talking with someone at a conference and heard him say > The job of management isn't hard (I'm doing it) What signals would you look for to tell the difference between these two possibilities? A. This person has so much tacit knowledge of good management that they don't realise how much skill they are applying day-to-day. B. This person has zero awareness of how their team is burning out…
1) that’s interesting! What do you consider the hardest people management issue you’ve run across? 2) what is the people management problem you think most people overrate in difficulty?
It usually will surface if they, for instance, consider people management easy because they have zero emotional affect and hence never bear any emotional load, or if they’ve been bless by ignorance and don’t see the work their peer and senior managers are doing to avoid them setting everything on fire, or never consider coaching or growth of someone to be a problem - because they never do it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm going to pile on here with the others. If you're legitimately a people manager (not a low grade 'team lead'), there is no way, no how, you could have 80% free time. I've been doing this for some 23 years and had a stint as a proper manager for a year, where I spent about 20% of my time coding, and I was more starved for time than just about any other phase in my career. I'm currently a principal eng/ arch at a mi…
> general meetings, presentation prep, working on process improvements, Scrum/product owners for backlog grooming, interfacing with other managers, etc You as a manager don't need to do all that. If you can't delegate most of that to reports then you have a problem.
If you’re sitting around with nothing to do, either you’re in a dead end, or no one actually trusts you with more once you’ve ‘succeeded’ because you’ve burned too many bridges or alienated key people - even if the org chart looks good.
Of course if someone is finding themselves in that churn all day for any length of time, you are quite correct - they are busy not succeeding.
Lou Holtz [0] has a very pithy mental model for how to evaluate leadership: Everyone asks three questions of people leading them: 1. Can I trust you? 2. Do you care about me? 3. Are you committed to excellence? (aka do you have high standards). Think about someone you admire. Odds are the answer to the above for them is "yes" to all three. Now think of someone you have had a lot of problems with. Odds are the answers…
4. Do you delegate high visibility tasks?
Managers who don't do this work hard to hog all the glory, spend all their time in meetings with other managers or presenting to higher level people etc. It isn't good for them nor their reports, by not growing the reports skills they have a hard time getting to the next level as a manager. Also they create a situation where they are the bus factor 1, which is problematic in itself.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> general meetings, presentation prep, working on process improvements, Scrum/product owners for backlog grooming, interfacing with other managers, etc You as a manager don't need to do all that. If you can't delegate most of that to reports then you have a problem.
In most companies, once you’ve built or found the people to delegate that too, and handed it off successfully - congrats, you’ve demonstrated you can handle the next level and you get the next round of challenges. If you’re sitting around with nothing to do, either you’re in a dead end, or no one actually trusts you with more once you’ve ‘succeeded’ because you’ve burned too many bridges or alienated key people - eve…
And no, delegating a lot of those tasks doesn't mean that you as a manager have nothing to do. Instead you can spend 20% time doing management tasks and 80% time coding. Each person in the team sharing the "management" burden makes it pretty manageable. (it isn't really management to coordinate with other teams or present to people etc though, no reason you should have a bus factor of 1 for that role)