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Manager's Handbook (2020)

themanagershandbook.com

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Re: Manager's Handbook (2020)

#61

Post by kjs3 »

Invictus0 wrote: post #49
rebeccaskinner wrote: post #37

I really dislike the idea that people should be required to have their cameras on for all meetings. I think for people who rarely see one another in person, it can be good to try to encourage people to be on video occasionally, but when and how often should really be left up to the individual. As a manager, I make it a point to try to turn my own video on most of the time, but I'd never ask someone to turn their came…

Hard disagree. At my last company, "people should have the choice" very quickly turned into "I didn't know you had a beard".

We've had quite a few "going full Viking I see..." video calls in the last year.

Re: Manager's Handbook (2020)

#62

Post by khazhoux »

dominotw wrote: post #3

Being a manager in modern day means you have to accept being a devious person to a certain degree. You are in the middle of managing two conflicting goals of company and the employee. Each wants to extract as much as possible from the other. Promotions for example are always based on nebulous criteria that are often made up on the fly. Yea there are career ladders and stuff but those are totally ignored for all pract…

> Promotions for example are always based on nebulous criteria that are often made up on the fly.

The way this actually looks, from the management side, is that people by and large do mediocre work, and fail to ever increase the scope or quality of the work they deliver.

The manager has visibility into the work of many engineers, and can see how one person implements major features quickly, cranks out design documents, fixes a ton of bugs, helps to organize the work of their teammates, brings people together from different teams to make technical decisions... meanwhile almost everyone else takes at least two weeks for even the smallest change, can't answer simple questions about the work they're doing, they don't help their teammates in any significant way, and so on. And those people are bewildered and frustrated that they're not getting promoted.

Re: Manager's Handbook (2020)

#63

Post by [deleted] »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #44
ericb wrote: post #42

> The first time someone doesn’t meet an agreement, you point it out to them immediately. If they apologize, you respond that apologies are not needed, and all that is required is that they only make agreements that they can commit to and that they meet all the agreements they make. If the person continues to fail at these, there is only one consequence that makes sense: they can no longer be part of the company.” Th…

> all that is required is that they only make agreements that they can commit to and that they meet all the agreements they make. An when you do that, the toxic manager responds with "Is that all you can do?"

[deleted]

Re: Manager's Handbook (2020)

#64

Post by [deleted] »

thenerdhead wrote: post #11

I went through half of it. I think it has promise, but not really sure I would call it a handbook. Some things are just strange to me: > A senior employee comes to you with a competitive offer in hand, asking for a promotion. You investigate the situation and decide that, since you really don’t want to lose this employee, you will cave and give them a promotion. > You have just created a strong incentive for politica…

[deleted]

Re: Manager's Handbook (2020)

#65

Post by iamthemonster »

rebeccaskinner wrote: post #37

I really dislike the idea that people should be required to have their cameras on for all meetings. I think for people who rarely see one another in person, it can be good to try to encourage people to be on video occasionally, but when and how often should really be left up to the individual. As a manager, I make it a point to try to turn my own video on most of the time, but I'd never ask someone to turn their came…

I'm not sure how common this experience is, but my company seems to have spontaneously settled into a great habit - cameras on (some with digital backgrounds) for the "hey how you going, how was your weekend?" niceties at the start, then cameras off when we get into the meat of it.

Re: Manager's Handbook (2020)

#66

Post by thrownaway41922 »

thenerdhead wrote: post #11

I went through half of it. I think it has promise, but not really sure I would call it a handbook. Some things are just strange to me: > A senior employee comes to you with a competitive offer in hand, asking for a promotion. You investigate the situation and decide that, since you really don’t want to lose this employee, you will cave and give them a promotion. > You have just created a strong incentive for politica…

No post body was provided.

Re: Manager's Handbook (2020)

#67

Post by jeffybefffy519 »

dtjb wrote: post #39
catach wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do preface with: "It is not an exact science. It is not there to pigeonhole people or to be an excuse for bad behavior. It is just a useful framework for understanding yourself and others a little better. And the better you understand someone, the better you can work together."

I just took the test from their provided link (eclecticenergies.com) and it is 100% woo. Spiritual chakra energy lifeforce crystals woo. That site should not be used, at least not directly, by anybody in a professional managerial setting.

I think you aren’t thinking about this enough. Any human physiology test is going to be somewhat ‘woo’ because humans are complex that way. Just use it as a tool and understand that it has limitations.

Re: Manager's Handbook (2020)

#68

Post by andrei_says_ »

civilized wrote: post #51
rebeccaskinner wrote: post #37

I really dislike the idea that people should be required to have their cameras on for all meetings. I think for people who rarely see one another in person, it can be good to try to encourage people to be on video occasionally, but when and how often should really be left up to the individual. As a manager, I make it a point to try to turn my own video on most of the time, but I'd never ask someone to turn their came…

A decent, humane manager. At my company, all the ICs I respect have camera off meetings. Only managers, obnoxious ladder climbers, and outside consultants are constantly pushing face time.

Yeah where did phone calls go?

Just a couple of years ago the standard medium for a meeting was a conference phone call.

Just because it’s easy to always have a videoconference doesn’t mean that we should.

Re: Manager's Handbook (2020)

#69

Post by osigurdson »

rebeccaskinner wrote: post #37

I really dislike the idea that people should be required to have their cameras on for all meetings. I think for people who rarely see one another in person, it can be good to try to encourage people to be on video occasionally, but when and how often should really be left up to the individual. As a manager, I make it a point to try to turn my own video on most of the time, but I'd never ask someone to turn their came…

Humans communicate via audio. Actually seeing a person's face doesn't seem to add much to comprehension in my opinion. As an absurd example to illustrate this point, consider a cameras on, mics off meeting to get a sense of what proportion of information is communicated by audio vs video. As a second example, consider a meeting with cameras and audio but with a 1 second delay in audio - this would almost be as bad as the first.

I don't mind having cameras on at all really but they don't add much - it is largely just a novelty. Audio is everything.

Re: Manager's Handbook (2020)

#70

Post by [deleted] »

catach wrote: post #24
Kototama wrote: post #23

Oh no, it has a whole section on enneagram, which is pseudo-science.

They do preface with: "It is not an exact science. It is not there to pigeonhole people or to be an excuse for bad behavior. It is just a useful framework for understanding yourself and others a little better. And the better you understand someone, the better you can work together."

[deleted]
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