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Manager's Handbook (2020)

themanagershandbook.com

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Re: Manager's Handbook (2020)

#101

Post by kkfx »

There is a lesson from the history, especially from the IT history about how people do not understand tools they use and so they try to mimic old paradigms used in old tools with them. I suggest seeing old General Magick, Magic Cap UIs for instance https://youtu.be/iw4mi6SKNp8 there is NO point in try representing a virtual office with a virtual desk with a virtual file cabinet, suspended folders etc it's just useless clutter that slow down the work. But people try to mimic that and keep doing the same for decades before a small change followed by another small and various other crappy solution to make the situation even worse.

Remote work and office work are different, there is NO POINT in mimicking the latter in the former, like there is no point in making big north-facing windows in cold climate because that's normally done in hot south and vice versa. That's just blind ignorance and fear of change.

I can understand both, but please do not encourage such behaviors, instead try to craft a REAL new remote paradigm too many have no idea about how to shape it.

Re: Manager's Handbook (2020)

#102

Post by spangry »

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…

I found parts of the handbook insightful, but that bit about competing offers and promotions bothered me too. The section goes on:

> After you fold, three things happen:

> Word gets out that “all you need to do to get a raise is to ask for it.” You have sent out the message that raises aren’t tied to performance.

> Less aggressive employees will be denied a raise simply by being apolitical.

> The lesson to your team is that the most politically astute employees get raises. Prepare for more politics!

If an employee comes to you with a 'competitive offer' (read: pays more), then it means someone else judges their market wage to be higher than what you are paying. If your assessment of that employee's value is higher than the amount they're being offered, you should admit to yourself that the jig is up, they're no longer going to accept being paid below their market wage, and you should match or better the offer. It's not 'caving', it's paying a sufficient wage to retain a valued employee. It's not 'politics', it's the labour market. I find the whole undertone of this section, that it's somehow being sneaky or 'political' for an employee to figure out that you're underpaying them, to be borderline offensive.

Fine, your perfectly rational strategy might be to sacrifice one high-value employee so you can continue to underpay your other employees (wouldn't want them to get the idea that they can ask for a raise, right?), but it's the dishonesty of this section that gets me.

Their proposed solutions are equally silly:

> Put a process around raises. Do them annually, and don’t make them out of band.

> Create a leveling system that can be referred to objectively.

> Never cave to people who have competing offers.

Sounds like a good way to steadily lose your best talent to your labour market competitors.

Re: Manager's Handbook (2020)

#103

Post by smeej »

osigurdson wrote: post #69
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…

I thought this was true most of my life...until someone suggested to me that I had Asperger's.

Upon deeper investigation, I found out (to my great surprise) that most people's experience of communication is different from mine in a profound way. They really are taking most of their cues about meaning from things other than my actual words, and they were trying to communicate a great many things to me without words that I was missing completely.

I (obviously) don't know you from anyone, but if this claim has seemed as transparently false to you as it did to me, I'd just encourage you to try to keep your mind open to the possibility that your experience is anomalous.

The good news is that once I knew this was true, I was able to focus on trying to learn to compensate. It's almost like people are speaking two languages at once, whatever they're saying out loud, and then another whole set of things in a kind of full body sign language that most of them picked up intuitively from earliest childhood and use constantly without even being aware they're doing it.

All languages are learnable if you're determined, so once you know to look for them, you can start.

If you want to come at it from a formal angle (which might be necessary), check out the old TV show "Lie to Me." It touches on the science of interpreting body expressions and facial cues. I think it'll help you see some of what I mean.

Re: Manager's Handbook (2020)

#104

Post by DavidSharff »

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…

+1 from a manager of a fully remote small team.

I find the mental overhead of the always-on camera exhausting, and I prefer voice only communication for certain types of conversations so I can dedicate all my processing power to what's being said. I also pace when I'm thinking, make coffee, lay down, etc.

In a pleasant twist of fate, migrating our full company (20ish people) into gather.town has largely made it a moot point for me now.

I have the choice between zoom like video boxes or switching to small thumbnails I largely ignore in favor of viewing/interacting with the 2D scene.

Also, when you see someone walking by and they "drop in" for a quick chat, the context for the visual feed seems more natural and less encumbering than spinning up a zoom meeting: they approach, you talk, they walk away, and you're alone again. If I pace IRL during the discussion and am off camera, my avatar is reinforcing that I'm still in the same space with the other participants.

If I don't want to be interrupted I go to a blocked off private area; the 2D equivalent of a DnD status.

(Wish I didn't have to add this disclaimer but this is the internet: I am not, nor have ever been affiliated with gather in any way. That friends was just an earnest anecdote and soft reccomendation)

Re: Manager's Handbook (2020)

#105

Post by nikau »

osigurdson wrote: post #76
grzm wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High definition audio is great. That said, upwards of 90% of human communication is non-verbal, including body language and facial expressions. One benefit of high-quality audio vs text is that we include intonation. But it doesn't encapsulate everything. This isn't to say we've cracked that nut with the current state of internet-transmitted video. A blanket "humans communicate via audio neglects these other channels…

> 90% of human communication is non-verbal, If true you should be able to communicate effectively without audio. Clearly this is not the case.

On the flip side I would probably pay more attention if meetings were done french mime style

Re: Manager's Handbook (2020)

#106

Post by lifeisstillgood »

Coders are the new managers

Ok - so quick thoughts - companies are moving to run all processes on software. software is eating the world and if they are not already (manufacturing) the essence of a business (core competency) is becoming digitised.

that means you need to be a coder to create the core competency, monitoring it or chnage it. Some people will be experts who learn to code, more often it seems coders will learn to be experts (mostly because you cannot create the code if you don't understand the job)

(side note I argue that software is a form of literacy so substitute "able to read and write for coder)

This leads to a number of issues - the first one here is that managers in say the 1960s bestrode the world, before digitisation one person had to be the nexus for information in order to make day to day decisions. but software replaces that (cf the bank manager replaced with algorithm) and all managers are going that way because it allows more efficient decisions - and so we have the Google manager - not a decision maker but a coach for the real decision makers - coders.

which leads us to - management only applies at the level of hiring and firing (i mean if a non coder is telling coders what to write it's already broken). so if you are not the person with hiring / firing / internal team allocation you are not a manager - and if you are and you are not focused on pull requests and automated testing you are doing it wrong

Which also leads us to managers are the new VC/investors - funding teams for results.

Re: Manager's Handbook (2020)

#107

Post by blowski »

ericb wrote: post #100
blowski wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re not sure you can deliver something, don’t commit to it. Instead, provide confidence levels, increase confidence by doing the riskiest bits earlier, and give frequent status updates.

> Instead, provide confidence levels, increase confidence by doing the riskiest bits earlier, and give frequent status updates. Right--you're trying to choose the winning move: not to play. That's not really an option.

Effective management - both by the manager and the managed - is about avoiding such zero sum games. Look for the win-win and do your best to deliver it.

Re: Manager's Handbook (2020)

#108

Post by hiptobecubic »

kjs3 wrote: post #61
Invictus0 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Would you not have gotten such a comment if you had gone into the office as a full viking?

Re: Manager's Handbook (2020)

#109

Post by SamuelAdams »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #106

Coders are the new managers Ok - so quick thoughts - companies are moving to run all processes on software. software is eating the world and if they are not already (manufacturing) the essence of a business (core competency) is becoming digitised. that means you need to be a coder to create the core competency, monitoring it or chnage it. Some people will be experts who learn to code, more often it seems coders will…

Not necessarily. In my current role I am the implementer, and I may have to explain the current behavior of systems to managers. But they ultimately make the decision on what gets changed.

I present it as business impact / use cases, they decide what “policy” (non-tech) changes they want to make, and I decide how to technically best implement that considering the existing design and new changes.

Re: Manager's Handbook (2020)

#110

Post by throwoutway »

mkl95 wrote: post #98

> With a top-grading interview, you are working through the candidate’s last five positions (in chronological order), asking a set of questions to determine how successful they were. It's important that the hiring manager responsible for the role is the one who conducts this interview. I've gone through this step countless times and every time I just reword what's already on my LinkedIn profile. If you like what you…

I've interviewed folks who have lied on their resume, and it was well worth my time to ask a few questions about how they achieved their bullet points. I do nt ask things in chronological order like this Hanbook suggests, nor every role
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