Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Some mistakes I made as a new manager

benkuhn.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 156 posts

Re: Some mistakes I made as a new manager

#61

Post by chupchap »

johndhi wrote: post #35

I'm a new manager and am facing a conundrum over a supposed super star who joined my team but, at least from what I can tell, is far and away the least productive member of my team. Any ideas?

Don't approach it as a performance review as there are a lot of people who take some time to get up to speed. If the quality of work is good, then it can be a casual discussion over a coffee on challenges they might be facing and the sort of productivity targets you would like them to meet within X period of time.

In that context you could ask again if there are any issues they have or if there are any challenges they face that might make this difficult etc.

This way you can get your message through without it becoming confrontational or the other person getting overly defensive.

Re: Some mistakes I made as a new manager

#62

Post by SoftTalker »

_adamb wrote: post #54
steveBK123 wrote: post #46

> I asked people for feedback. I found that if I just asked “do you have any feedback for me?” people often wouldn’t, but if I asked more granular questions—“was that meeting useful?”—I would usually learn a lot from it. This part is good. I think generally as engineers, a manager simply asking "do you have feedback for me" just feels like a trap. I don't know man, there's plenty of things you do that annoy me but li…

I find the pattern of "How are you feeling about X, 0-10?" followed up by "What would get you to a 10?" very useful. Almost nobody ever says 10 and when they do, when you pressure test it, "So, everything is 100% perfect and you want it to stay the same forever?" it gets revised down appropriately. "What would get you to a 10" is as very constructive way to think about it as well. It's not just complaining, it's arti…

I always feel there is an alterior motive when managers ask me these sorts of questions. Like the GP post, I'm rarely honest; I tell them what I think they want to hear. This has been learned over years where being honest resulted in the manager getting defensive, a lecture about "getting with the program" or at best an attempt to pursuade me to see it their way. Rarely have I ever had critical feedback accepted and used to improve anything.

Re: Some mistakes I made as a new manager

#63

Post by saghm »

_adamb wrote: post #54
steveBK123 wrote: post #46

> I asked people for feedback. I found that if I just asked “do you have any feedback for me?” people often wouldn’t, but if I asked more granular questions—“was that meeting useful?”—I would usually learn a lot from it. This part is good. I think generally as engineers, a manager simply asking "do you have feedback for me" just feels like a trap. I don't know man, there's plenty of things you do that annoy me but li…

I find the pattern of "How are you feeling about X, 0-10?" followed up by "What would get you to a 10?" very useful. Almost nobody ever says 10 and when they do, when you pressure test it, "So, everything is 100% perfect and you want it to stay the same forever?" it gets revised down appropriately. "What would get you to a 10" is as very constructive way to think about it as well. It's not just complaining, it's arti…

> I find the pattern of "How are you feeling about X, 0-10?" followed up by "What would get you to a 10?" very useful. Almost nobody ever says 10 and when they do, when you pressure test it, "So, everything is 100% perfect and you want it to stay the same forever?" it gets revised down appropriately.

I could potentially see myself responding well to this if it was from a manager I already had enough experience with to know and trust, but at that point, I wouldn't really need extra prompting to give honest feedback. If a manager who I only started working with more recently tried this on me, it would probably make me even _more_ hesitant to be candid with them. Not every manager in the world has their employees best interests at heart, and I'm not going to risk rocking the boat if I don't know whether the captain might react by throwing me overboard. Pressuring people to trust when trust hasn't been earned doesn't just magically work; at best, it might result in the appearance of trust, but it will actually just foster resentment that they'll go extra lengths to hide for fear of repercussions.

Re: Some mistakes I made as a new manager

#64

Post by operatingthetan »

SoftTalker wrote: post #62
_adamb wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the pattern of "How are you feeling about X, 0-10?" followed up by "What would get you to a 10?" very useful. Almost nobody ever says 10 and when they do, when you pressure test it, "So, everything is 100% perfect and you want it to stay the same forever?" it gets revised down appropriately. "What would get you to a 10" is as very constructive way to think about it as well. It's not just complaining, it's arti…

I always feel there is an alterior motive when managers ask me these sorts of questions. Like the GP post, I'm rarely honest; I tell them what I think they want to hear. This has been learned over years where being honest resulted in the manager getting defensive, a lecture about "getting with the program" or at best an attempt to pursuade me to see it their way. Rarely have I ever had critical feedback accepted and…

I tell my team that they are my first priority and I 100% mean it. When difficult situations arise I explain to them the pressures that are on me and ask them to do their best to help, and in return I try to make their lives easier the rest of the time. Of course I play the upward game, but in my mind it's in service of the team. This has the intended effect of having a very productive and functional team that seems (to me) to be honest with their feedback.

Re: Some mistakes I made as a new manager

#65

Post by Andrex »

steveBK123 wrote: post #46

> I asked people for feedback. I found that if I just asked “do you have any feedback for me?” people often wouldn’t, but if I asked more granular questions—“was that meeting useful?”—I would usually learn a lot from it. This part is good. I think generally as engineers, a manager simply asking "do you have feedback for me" just feels like a trap. I don't know man, there's plenty of things you do that annoy me but li…

> I asked people for feedback. I found that if I just asked “do you have any feedback for me?” people often wouldn’t, but if I asked more granular questions—“was that meeting useful?”—I would usually learn a lot from it.

"How was school today?" vs. "How was the class discussion on that book you were reading?"

Re: Some mistakes I made as a new manager

#66

Post by SoftTalker »

johndhi wrote: post #35

I'm a new manager and am facing a conundrum over a supposed super star who joined my team but, at least from what I can tell, is far and away the least productive member of my team. Any ideas?

I recall one time when I had a manager tell me that I was not performing up to expectations. I had no idea. I thought I was doing pretty well. At the time I was pretty young and inexperienced, so not a huge surprise. He was calm but direct, did not turn it into a personal attack, and had some specific examples of things that needed to improve. I apprecated this, I worked on the things that he wanted me to improve upon, and ended up getting top perormance reviews not long afterwards.

Re: Some mistakes I made as a new manager

#67

Post by throwmeaway1212 »

29athrowaway wrote: post #39
throwmeaway1212 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If you say it's an estimate then, it's not exact as per definition. If you are upfront regarding what assumptions were used to build the estimate, even better. It would be different if you signed something, establishing a legally binding contract to deliver something at a given date. Plus, a late delivery is not defamation. What I am talking here is condemning defamation as an accepted way of doing business.

So that means direct reports/ICs can be held liable if they write harsh 360 reviews of their managers? or when they talk to other people about their manager in critical ways?

You seem to hate managers, whatever experience(s) that you had must have been pretty bad, I don't think what you are proposing is an answer or makes much sense or would have any impact. I truly hope you, in time, reach a healthier place.

Re: Some mistakes I made as a new manager

#68

Post by ehnto »

KarlTheCool wrote: post #51
steveBK123 wrote: post #46

> I asked people for feedback. I found that if I just asked “do you have any feedback for me?” people often wouldn’t, but if I asked more granular questions—“was that meeting useful?”—I would usually learn a lot from it. This part is good. I think generally as engineers, a manager simply asking "do you have feedback for me" just feels like a trap. I don't know man, there's plenty of things you do that annoy me but li…

I feel this response. If voicing your opinion is a risk that needs calculating, it's not worth trying. It's sad to see a small team's chat be bullied into a stream of just :eyes: :raising_hands: :party_popper:

I found it difficult when working with American companies, as they can be purified by positivity. A saving grace of software work is the retrospective, those were at least a moment of honesty.

While I do appreciate the upbeat attitude, I found it made people hide small issues to not ruin the vibe, and anyone with major concerns with approach risks getting backbenched.

Re: Some mistakes I made as a new manager

#69

Post by explorer83 »

I particularly liked the "managing the wrong amount". I hate being micromanaged. So I told myself when I could manage people that I would not micromanage them. Big mistake, some people need more of a guiding hand. One glaring missing point from this though that I would add is "don't think because you are a manager people will listen to you or respect you". You still have to earn that kind of relationship with people and a lot of people think they can do better than you if they had your title.

Re: Some mistakes I made as a new manager

#70

Post by explorer83 »

steveBK123 wrote: post #41
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Yeah I like to call these types of management "smile f**ers". My last org was like this. All smiles, everything great, everyones doing a great job. Except that behind the scenes senior management was very unhappy about certain things, and our entire org got its clock cleaned over the following 18 months. Senior managers moved aside, others downgraded to IC roles, pushed a few people out, new leads hired from outside,…

In some worlds there are experienced managers that know processes and systems inside and out. they clearly stand out as leaders. But in areas where there is a lot of ambiguity, change and innovation, sometimes NOBODY knows whether something is a good idea or not. What else are you supposed to do other than say "it's sounds reasonable let's go for it". Only later to get the results back and find out it was a flop. Now changes have to be made to make it look like effort is being made to reduce flops. Could it also be something like that?
Post reply on HN