41–50 of 105 posts
And now that I manage a small team, the overwhelming majority of my management skills come from "what did I like and dislike from the past decade of managers? What worked or didn't work?"
Just because someone is "qualified" doesn't mean they will be good at it. Some of the best software developers I've known had a physics degree or electrical engineering degree, and some of the worst programmers I've known had PhDs in CS (in fact, a PhD in CS almost guarantees they will write crappy code because it means they've lived in academia their whole careers, insulated from the actual industry).
> How many managers do you know who studied to be managers of people? > I mean more than a couple of one-day courses; I mean someone who studied to be a manager the way someone studied to be a software engineer or doctor. > I personally don’t know anyone, and while those degrees definitely exist, it’s got me wondering: of the total managers in the world, how many of them have those qualifications? Is it even 1%? ...…
management is a lifetime of experience and they themselves often don't entirely understand what they're doing. My favorite manager of all time just left me alone and believed everything I told him when communicating back to the business. It was never clear to me if that was on purpose (he trusted me) or if he was just a lazy ass. And I don't care, I loved working for that man. But if you were to ask him to lay out wh…
Sometimes you have to take non synchronous goals and mash them through a form to press out a result. The middle manager is there drive results, end of story. Friends along the way, is meh. Just look how finance people manage each other.
Yeah to both!
But that being said it's pretty hard to judge what makes a good manager because we already can't agree on what the role of manager is. I think there's a somewhat systemic issue here that people have very conflicting expectations - managees want a) someone that helps them advance in their career, protect them, and create some clarity. Manager's managers want b) someone that get shit delivered, adheres to internal bureaucracy, and if possible creates _some_ retention.
Corporate training will be mostly about a), while being limited because training is expensive. There's also a widely spread culture of self-inflicted expectation that managers should be omnipotent, and therefore shouldn't ask for help if they're doing their job properly. How many times did you have to personally sacrifice because your boss wouldn't dare to ask their boss for a few days delay? And at the same time if that's celebrated as "being tough" or "getting shit done", anf that's the kind of stuff that gets managers promoted. It's a self reinforcing loop. It's corporate natural selection. And that's the stuff that management schools will teach you about, given that it's what makes you successful.
The b) side being more important to managees than company, it's less taught in a corporate setting - and therefore requires self directed training. It requires empathy, and an actual interest in the role itself, not the power it yields. You rarely encounter managers with well developed skills on that side, most just have whatever intuitive skills they acquired by themselves
> 1. Bad managers are the cause of a lot of employee unhappiness. > 2. Bad managers are the cause of a lot of workplace failure, i.e., late projects, subpar products, and unmet goals. > 3. Managers are one of the most under-supported cohorts of employees on the planet. Agree on the first two, but for #3: managers are perhaps the most OVER-supported cohorts of employees on the planet. Much of the time, simply by being…
What are some red flags to look for in a manager that would indicate to the IC they have one before it’s too late?
the amount of managers who will alienate you within five seconds is high. assertive communication which comes across as pressuring is very common, maybe sign of insecurity i think.
Me. Just me. Some folks that I encouraged to do so, not to the same extent though. And I don’t get any respect for it from other managers. If anything it makes it harder to deal with other managers.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"In other words, do I hire person with A and train them on B? Or do I train a person with B and train them on A?" The real question is where are these places that are supposedly training people? The companies I've seen don't do any real training and expect people to just be proficient at everything.
Depends on company and team I suppose; note there are many aspects to "training": 1. Formal training classes, internal or external - many large companies do offer them 2. "Self-serve" internal training - videos and documents etc; again, many large companies do offer them 3. Informal coaching and mentoring - e.g. my boss is constantly providing feedback and mentoring, sometimes in tiny bitesize chunks you can easily m…
Number 2 is basically worthless if they don't give you time to do that training and provides you with an actual mentor to discuss things.
Number 3 is interesting. Oftentimes the feedback of managers is tainted by politics or anterior motives. Informal mentors can be found, but it seems very rare to me. In many cases in my past, it seems two mentors will offer you two conflicting pieces of advice.
Number 4 seems to be the main method of learning companies are moving to. It does suck though because usually they treat personal project experience or school experience and no experience at all. Even if you can self train in 9 different listed tech in the job ad, there seems to always be a 10th that you don't know but they require.
I have a masters in IT Management from an ok school but I learned the most about managing personalities from watching Rip Torn's character Artie in The Larry Sanders show. Obviously an exaggerated characterization, but treating developers like talent is effective.
I've found catering to developers has prevented many conflicts I see between managers and their teams and have been asked to take over several other projects when developers become disgruntled.
I don't think there is any organizational downside. If anything, makes you pay closer attention to resources, gets more realistic estimates, and encourages comradery and communication.
One final benefit I noticed is it can make work more entertaining because you feel like you're playing a character at work. The flip side is holding in what you really think can grate on you. I recommend vigorous exercise as an outlet.
I've recommended this to other managers but they think its a horrible idea, but I also only recommend it to bad managers.