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Some mistakes I made as a new manager

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Re: Some mistakes I made as a new manager

#21

Post by 29athrowaway »

mjr00 wrote: post #16
29athrowaway wrote: post #8

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,…

There are limits to the freedom of expression (i.e.: what you can communicate verbally or in writing no matter what the context).

Fraud, defamation (libel, slander), perjury, etc.

No matter what your position is, you are not free from the consequences of those.

Re: Some mistakes I made as a new manager

#23

Post by PragmaticPulp »

> ANGSTING INSTEAD OF ASKING

This is a great way of describing one of my biggest peeves in the office: So many unnecessary conflicts/dramas can be avoided by simple and honest communication.

There’s a related dysfunction where managers are (wrongly) convinced that they must answer every question in the most positive and upbeat way possible. I had to leave a company once because my manager was frustrated with many people, including me, but he was too nice to actually explain what he thought we were doing wrong. He thought it was best to try to gently encourage us with hints and rhetorical questions and vague allusions to what he was actually thinking, but when you’d ask him for a direct answer he’d switch to “everything’s great” mode. The faux positivity turned into toxic positivity and destroyed morale across the team.

Re: Some mistakes I made as a new manager

#24

Post by bboygravity »

29athrowaway wrote: post #10
bluefirebrand wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We should sue managers more. I'm very curious what you think the outcome of this would be.

Break the spirit of people that think lying has no consequences. Teach them a lesson, that they live in a country with people protected by rights.

There are A LOT of places in the world where lying is rewarded dearly. Including certain types of businesses in the US where lying a lot is basically a pre-requisite for company survival, growth and employee survival: banking, hedge funds and financial markets. The 2008 derrivatives crash was a concequence of that, the upcoming hyperinflation is a (predictable) consequence of that.

More generally: ads lie all the time.

Where does your assumption come from that lying has bad consequences for people?

I agree with you that lying is not nice and extremely annoying, but in my opinion the level of corruption globally (and in financial markets in the US specifically) shows that lying constantly can have extremely positive outcomes for those who lie and do crime. It doesn't seem to me like law is trying very hard to stop them either.

Re: Some mistakes I made as a new manager

#25

Post by MuffinFlavored »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #23

> ANGSTING INSTEAD OF ASKING This is a great way of describing one of my biggest peeves in the office: So many unnecessary conflicts/dramas can be avoided by simple and honest communication. There’s a related dysfunction where managers are (wrongly) convinced that they must answer every question in the most positive and upbeat way possible. I had to leave a company once because my manager was frustrated with many peo…

> So many unnecessary conflicts/dramas can be avoided by simple and honest communication.

It's really not that simple in my opinion. The flow of information is "upper management wants this a certain way/at a certain time, I'm just the enforcer, if you don't work to accommodate/comply at a high priority, it's a problem" more often than not.

Re: Some mistakes I made as a new manager

#26

Post by majormajor »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #25
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #23

> ANGSTING INSTEAD OF ASKING This is a great way of describing one of my biggest peeves in the office: So many unnecessary conflicts/dramas can be avoided by simple and honest communication. There’s a related dysfunction where managers are (wrongly) convinced that they must answer every question in the most positive and upbeat way possible. I had to leave a company once because my manager was frustrated with many peo…

> So many unnecessary conflicts/dramas can be avoided by simple and honest communication. It's really not that simple in my opinion. The flow of information is "upper management wants this a certain way/at a certain time, I'm just the enforcer, if you don't work to accommodate/comply at a high priority, it's a problem" more often than not.

There are worlds of problems in teams and organizations that have nothing to do with what upper management wants, especially as a company grows.

Disputes between two developers on a team, disputes between two teams, disputes between a developer and a team, a bunch of teams dogpiling on another team, etc...

The above ones aren't always the same as the "what do you think of me" example for "angsting over asking" but are generally still problems of communication - the other team isn't doing what you would want them to do because they don't know what makes things easier/harder for you, vice versa, etc.

Angsting instead of giving negative feedback is an extremely common one too, and leads to people being pissed off and blindsided at performance review time.

Re: Some mistakes I made as a new manager

#27

Post by PragmaticPulp »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #25
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #23

> ANGSTING INSTEAD OF ASKING This is a great way of describing one of my biggest peeves in the office: So many unnecessary conflicts/dramas can be avoided by simple and honest communication. There’s a related dysfunction where managers are (wrongly) convinced that they must answer every question in the most positive and upbeat way possible. I had to leave a company once because my manager was frustrated with many peo…

> So many unnecessary conflicts/dramas can be avoided by simple and honest communication. It's really not that simple in my opinion. The flow of information is "upper management wants this a certain way/at a certain time, I'm just the enforcer, if you don't work to accommodate/comply at a high priority, it's a problem" more often than not.

The problem I described was the opposite, actually: We often couldn’t tell what upper management wanted or was upset about because the manager was too “nice” to communicate it. We had multiple situations where something we built was unsatisfying to upper management for some reason, but couldn’t address it because the manager was avoiding negative communication or anything resembling confrontation.

Getting it out in the open so we could at least do something about it would have been better.

Re: Some mistakes I made as a new manager

#30

Post by klabb3 »

This sounds like the words of an a good manager, simply because of the healthy amount of self-doubt. It’s a strange status quo that management is something you’re expected to handle simply from experience as an IC, which is absolutely not a guarantee. The predictable result is that only those with great mentors or willing to self-learn the hard way actually become good, after much trial and error. It’s unfortunate and borderline insulting to genuinely good leaders to say that popularity, company loyalty and/or domain experience is enough. So we end up with what we select for.

Otoh, what ICs often overlook is that managers often lack the hard and soft power to manage effectively, which of course is a leadership problem in itself. I’ve had well-meaning managers who still were bad for me because they didn’t have enough influence or respect in the greater org. Just like with engineering, even the best can’t do a great job if they are unable to access the right tools.

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