41–50 of 102 posts
This is a great discussion. Good managers can insulate you from bad companies and bad managers can ruin your experience in a great company. I would go as far as to say the person you work for is more important in some cases than the company you work for. Here are some thoughts. Companies aren't always clear on who you would be reporting to during the hiring process. This isn't always intentional, but org structures a…
The problem is the nobody is actually looking for good managers.
We do. It can take months and months of interviews to find them though. Which might be why.
This is a great discussion. Good managers can insulate you from bad companies and bad managers can ruin your experience in a great company. I would go as far as to say the person you work for is more important in some cases than the company you work for. Here are some thoughts. Companies aren't always clear on who you would be reporting to during the hiring process. This isn't always intentional, but org structures a…
Exactly why you never want to take a job unless you have clarity on reporting lines and speak to your future manager (and also their manager if possible) during the recruiting process.
I skimmed the paper. It's pretty ambitious IMO. They took a bunch of people (two sets of n=20) and did some tests on them, by the sounds of it, the task was to do something that sounds to me like a math or IQ test. People were tested individually and in groups. They then made little groups of three where the manager tries to coordinate who does what in terms of the tasks, and then they give the group a score. All the…
If you treat people like cogs you're always going to be disappointed in their output. For the duration of a study I don't know how you could possibly do otherwise, and get disappointing results. You have to know something about people to figure out how to divide the labor so people are generally near their comfort zone but routinely pushed a little bit out of it for purposes of growth.
I'm not even a manager, just a lead dev, but I am what some people might call an 'informed consumer' of management skills.
In most large firms there is a magical barrier somewhere between lower and upper management where quality doesn't really matter. For every great servant leader, you will also have to deal with someone who has no technical experience and have never had to work a real job in their life. And the only reason your good boss has to report to them is because through proper breeding and connections or luck they have enjoyed a career unencumbered by details.
Tangential. i have too much pride, introversion and embarrassment to 'suck up'. This has greatly hindered my career ( and my earnings). I know what the sucking up process is and how to execute it but have psychological block actually doing it. Any advice from ppl who've dealt with this?
I am 99.9% certain that, the overall trajectory of your career is not hinging on something as specific as "if only I learned how to 'suck up' then everything would be great". This is actually a form of magical thinking, of making excuses to avoid engaging with the real problems, and instead just lumping everything into a single excuse as to why ____ didn't work out.
The fact that you mention "too much pride, introversion, embarrassment" is also a clue to me that you might be someone with very rigid patterns of thought, and therefore likely to fall victim to black-and-white thinking (that something is all-good or all-bad, that something can ascribed to 1 single root cause to blame, etc.).
Some off-the-cuff ideas/questions, not all of them may be applicable to you, but hopefully it triggers some introspection on your part:
- Do you often think thoughts like, "I know I am right, everyone else is wrong, why can't they just appreciate my genius"?
- Is there anyone that you actually respect in your team/your org? Have you ever tried to ask them, "how did you get to where you are?" Do they mention "sucking up" as a big ingredient?
- When was the last time you asked someone to help you with something? Did you phrase it as a demand or threat? Or did you seek some kind of mutually beneficial win-win outcome?
- When was the last time you admitted to making a mistake?
- When was the last time you let someone else convince you to change your mind about something?
You find a good manager the same way you would find a good IC: https://youtube.com/watch?v=QplyFXgIx7Q
That's great, but the video goes on to say that he hired a trained manager (an MBA) with zero experience in manufacturing to manage the Macintosh manufacturing team... So, do as I say not as I do?
Tangential. i have too much pride, introversion and embarrassment to 'suck up'. This has greatly hindered my career ( and my earnings). I know what the sucking up process is and how to execute it but have psychological block actually doing it. Any advice from ppl who've dealt with this?
There's a difference between "sucking up" and being polite/courteous and respectful. For me, arrogance has always been a bit of a trigger. I can work with most people, but when someone is both arrogant and less than competent it irks me to no end. My advice is try to always assume the best possible interpretation of any given person's motives in a workplace. Try to be friendly.
I think this is a common trigger for a lot of technically inclined people, myself included.
In those cases I generally try to focus on acceptable outcomes more than "being right". And, importantly, not focussing as much on proving the other guy wrong (which is not quite the same as proving yourself right).
Having a track record of delivery without being seen as the sore thumbs that sticks out goes a long way.