Live data from Hacker News

Some mistakes I made as a new manager

benkuhn.net

11–20 of 156 posts

Re: Some mistakes I made as a new manager

#12

Always remember: as a manager you are still an employee, and you are still required to observe the law. Being a manager does not mean you are correct by default. It does not mean you cannot receive feedback from your managees. Also, a brief refresher: lying about someone is defamation. If you defame people's performance and cause them to lose money you are personally liable for damages. We should sue managers more, w…

[deleted]

Re: Some mistakes I made as a new manager

#13

Always remember: as a manager you are still an employee, and you are still required to observe the law. Being a manager does not mean you are correct by default. It does not mean you cannot receive feedback from your managees. Also, a brief refresher: lying about someone is defamation. If you defame people's performance and cause them to lose money you are personally liable for damages. We should sue managers more, w…

> We should sue each and every of these entitled tyrants.

Probably unionization is a better path.

Re: Some mistakes I made as a new manager

#14

I'm so tired of these humble brag posts.

This post didn't feel particularly braggy to me. Also, having connected with Ben (I cold emailed him about something he referenced in one of his earlier blog posts), he seems like a person who is genuinely just trying to help and share his knowledge when useful.

Re: Some mistakes I made as a new manager

#16

Always remember: as a manager you are still an employee, and you are still required to observe the law. Being a manager does not mean you are correct by default. It does not mean you cannot receive feedback from your managees. Also, a brief refresher: lying about someone is defamation. If you defame people's performance and cause them to lose money you are personally liable for damages. We should sue managers more, w…

> Also, a brief refresher: lying about someone is defamation. If you defame people's performance and cause them to lose money you are personally liable for damages.

Genuinely curious: do you have an example of a manager who was personally held financially liable after firing an employee? I couldn't find an example in some brief Googling, but IANAL and I'm curious if this is even a possibility.

Even if it is possible, though, it seems... pretty stupid, frankly: you'd get a much higher payout from suing the company rather than the manager directly, and the manager could use corporate policy as a shield. Plus, in most organizations, HR is the one who pulls the trigger, not the manager; so who really fires you? HR could have always vetoed after all, or anyone else further up the management chain. Seems like it'd be very tough to prove that a single direct manager was unilaterally responsible for damages.

Anyway, this is why most medium-and-larger organizations now have documented processes with PIPs and such. As long as there's a paper trail, you as an employee don't have much of a chance of winning a lawsuit, even if you feel like you were fired due to your manager being an asshole.

Re: Some mistakes I made as a new manager

#17
The author seems to have a lot on his plate. One way to improve the situation is to delegate more technical leadership work, such as code and design reviews, to principal engineers and rely on them keep you appraised.

Re: Some mistakes I made as a new manager

#18
> You upset them so deeply that they respond by unleashing the incredibly vicious-yet-perceptive tirade that they’ve been stewing on since the incident, reducing you to tears. Congratulations on hiring someone in the bottom ~2% of professionalism? At least your conscience can be clean at this point I guess.

"Well your reaction was bad, so it doesn't matter what I did"

This sort of discounts what the manager did to piss the person off, and if it's a recurring thing. A tirade isn't usually the first response. Maybe consider that you've overlooked some cues leading up to it.

Re: Some mistakes I made as a new manager

#19

Always remember: as a manager you are still an employee, and you are still required to observe the law. Being a manager does not mean you are correct by default. It does not mean you cannot receive feedback from your managees. Also, a brief refresher: lying about someone is defamation. If you defame people's performance and cause them to lose money you are personally liable for damages. We should sue managers more, w…

yeap and we should sue individual employees for lying about estimates and delivery dates and making false promises. We should sue when the technical design isn't right and not delivered on time. If you say to a company you can deliver on a date and cause them to lose money you are personally liable for damages. /s
Post reply on HN