How do you find a good manager? • Hacker News Board

Re: How do you find a good manager?

#51

Post by Joel_Mckay » Wed, Jul 24, 2024, 5:18 PM UTC

chairmansteve wrote: post #32

apwell23 wrote: post #30

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?

Start your own business.

This is the best advice, and the logical choice if you want to run things in your own way.

One could fight the inertia of a large firm, or simply create an entity that better aligns with your own values and customer needs.

A tax strategy driven small business teaches people how to manage projects, and see the stupid manager/worker BS for what it is... no PMP or Phd required... =3

Re: How do you find a good manager?

#52

Post by ineptech » Wed, Jul 24, 2024, 5:18 PM UTC

m348e912 wrote: post #33

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…

Agreed, unless you're desperate it's madness to accept a job without having had a discussion with your prospective manager. And not just to make sure they're not a big jerk, this is your chance to find out what kind of team you're joining. Ask probing questions: What happens when there's a disagreement about how to implement something? What happens when it becomes clear that a major milestone is going to be late? Has that happened recently? What goal are you currently working on for modernizing your tools, and are you making progress on it? etc.

Re: How do you find a good manager?

#53

Post by SoftTalker » Wed, Jul 24, 2024, 5:23 PM UTC

m348e912 wrote: post #33

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…

> org structures are sometimes in flux

At one point I went for nearly two years reporting to nobody. My previous boss left, and I basically was not on anyone's radar, but still got paid.

Re: How do you find a good manager?

#54

Post by photochemsyn » Wed, Jul 24, 2024, 5:24 PM UTC

The most obvious way to select a good manager for an organization is to have the workers in the organization elect their managers. Shareholders in the investment capitalist model will not like this, as they want to be the ones selecting the managers (C-suite), even though they have no day-to-day involvement in the corporation's operations, and typically are looking at quarterly returns as their metric for what is 'good'. Unexamined assumption here: define 'good'.

Workers in a corporation will instead tend to elect people who ensure decent working conditions, profit-sharing and safety, while also maintaining a positive balance sheet, e.g. in a steel mill. If they live in the local area, they're also unlikely to support dumping industrial waste in their rivers and streams. A shareholder who lives halfway around the world has no such motivation, so they'll hire managers who pollute and cut safety and health standards in the name of higher profits and dividends for shareholders. If their results are terrible they'll call on their pet politicians for a corporate welfare (bailout) to protect their holdings. Silicon Valley Bank is a recent example, but there are dozens.

Easy fixes: (1) Only allow the workers in a corporation to be shareholders in that corporation, with one vote per share, with shares based on skill and experience (2) Less radically, give worker unions the same voting rights when it comes to C-suite selection as the shareholder unions (Blackrock/Fidelity/Vanguard/StateStreet etc.). (3) End corporate welfare programs - just let collapsing corporations go into receivership and find new operators for each entity, and stop the 'fail upward' trend.

Re: How do you find a good manager?

#55

Post by voiceblue » Wed, Jul 24, 2024, 5:24 PM UTC

As an experienced dev I can tell whether a (direct) manager will work for me or not within about three weeks, with some variance depending on organizational pressure (in lean times you can tell sooner, in lush times it takes longer — a result of how much of the managerial skill needs to be brought to bear).

If a manager doesn't work for me, I don't care how good of a manager they are by any organizational measure, since I know I can get (and deserve) a better working environment. In this case if nothing changes, I am going to leave — which should rightly count as a demerit to such a manager.

There are even cases where people will work harder just before they quit, so as to leave a good impression or secure a pending promotion (despite present management) prior to their departure.

Seen in this way, what makes a manager good for an org seems to be different than what makes a manager good for an IC. TFA seems to be looking at it from an org perspective only (if one is being generous, since what they have studied is hardly an org), which can probably work in the short term, but will lead to ugly consequences in the long run.

Re: How do you find a good manager?

#56

Post by SoftTalker » Wed, Jul 24, 2024, 5:27 PM UTC

chairmansteve wrote: post #32

apwell23 wrote: post #30

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?

Start your own business.

Then you have to suck up to clients/customers. And they're often way more demanding and irrational than managers in a company.

Re: How do you find a good manager?

#57

Post by steveBK123 » Wed, Jul 24, 2024, 5:27 PM UTC

Not sure how you screen for this in interviews but..

My WORST managers have been guys who fly off the handle on administrative minutiae like the formatting on an internal wiki, tabs-vs-spaces, or making lots of PR comments on trivial code changes at 10pm without ever clicking the approve button.

The common theme seems to be having no focus on what clients actually do with the product and their satisfaction.

Re: How do you find a good manager?

#58

Post by bilater » Wed, Jul 24, 2024, 5:28 PM UTC

Be your own manager first.

Re: How do you find a good manager?

#59

Post by SoftTalker » Wed, Jul 24, 2024, 5:29 PM UTC

Purplehermann wrote: post #17

worldvoyageur wrote: post #2

" Good managers have roughly twice the impact on team performance as good workers. People who nominate themselves to be in charge perform worse than managers appointed by lottery, in part because self-promoted managers are overconfident, especially about their social skills. Managerial performance is positively predicted by economic decision-making skill and fluid intelligence – but not gender, age, or ethnicity. "

How could anything be positively predicted by gender? More seriously, selection effects should be much stronger than gender, age and ethnicity, and yet there should still be some correlation in one direction or another, wish there were power and confidence values given

I have found women to be better managers than men overall, just my experience but it has been across several different employers. I am male, BTW.

Re: How do you find a good manager?

#60

Post by fatnoah » Wed, Jul 24, 2024, 5:34 PM UTC

legitster wrote: post #47

I have had some amazing managers - who do an amazing job of allocating work and managing our time to get the best out of us. But it doesn't really matter because the C-suite usually sucks. 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 experienc…

I've seen it go both ways.

I once worked at a large (> $100B market cap) tech company and had the opposite experience. I had several interactions with C-Suite and the level below and my main takeaway was that "holy cow, they get it!". Now, the layers between me and them were another story. It was amazing to have the experience of my manager talking about our tech/product strategy, and then to hear it from someone several levels higher in the org chart. The explanations from the former typically made little sense, but from the latter it made much, much, more sense.