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

How do you find a good manager?

nber.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 102 posts

Re: How do you find a good manager?

#81

Post by apwell23 »

tracker1 wrote: post #78
apwell23 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Try to be friendly. I am already friendly. I am not convinced that merely being friendly will get you to your VPs 'inner circle'.

If your goal is to get into an executive's inner circle, that's a purely political move and will take playing politics... unless you're already a direct report for your current position.

> your goal is to get into an executive's inner circle

Yea you need to be a known entity to a VP in my company to get promoted beyond senior engineer.

Yes my main goal is to make most money.

Re: How do you find a good manager?

#82

Post by snapcaster »

apwell23 wrote: post #75
snapcaster wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you should look a bit deeper. Your comment seems to imply if you would just suck it up everything would be perfect but I'm skeptical that it's true

I agree its a necessary but not sufficient condition. I think phrase 'sucking up' seems to have triggered people. I should've said 'building trust and camaraderie' with my superiors, aka being one of the 'bros' in their inner circle .

I don't think i'm triggered, it's more that it seems like a poor framing of what is essentially just the reality of working with humans. I think we have a lot more control over our thoughts and perceptions than we give it credit for. I'm skeptical you'll be successful when you're seeing it this negatively

Re: How do you find a good manager?

#83

Post by apwell23 »

snapcaster wrote: post #82
apwell23 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree its a necessary but not sufficient condition. I think phrase 'sucking up' seems to have triggered people. I should've said 'building trust and camaraderie' with my superiors, aka being one of the 'bros' in their inner circle .

I don't think i'm triggered, it's more that it seems like a poor framing of what is essentially just the reality of working with humans. I think we have a lot more control over our thoughts and perceptions than we give it credit for. I'm skeptical you'll be successful when you're seeing it this negatively

I see anything that gets me more money as positive. I see 'sucking up' as a positive.

I believe from your response that you perceived 'sucking up' as negative for some reason. Curious about why you instinctively reacted that way. whats wrong with sucking up?

Re: How do you find a good manager?

#84

Post by strgcmc »

apwell23 wrote: post #79
strgcmc wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would actually encourage you to zoom out 1 or 2 levels, and instead of focusing on the "how to get better at 'sucking up'" problem, I would instead coach you to think about why you chose to apply this specific mental model to your career, and why this form of "black-and-white" thinking might be hurting you even more (as a general theme, where "suck up" is just one specific example). I am 99.9% certain that, the ove…

I came across an interesting stat "90% of Fortune 500 CEOs play golf and over 80% of executives say that golf played an important role in their career" What do you make of this.

Well, are you an executive, or one step from becoming one? Then it's entirely possible that spending more time socializing recreationally can directly help your career. Golf happens to be a common choice, but maybe your exec team likes rock climbing or playing video games... just depends on the company or the social group.

Also, whether you are an executive or middle-manager or an IC, overall I don't doubt that socializing and networking and investing in good relationships, is helpful to one's career, but to differing degrees (i.e. for execs = a lot, for middle-managers = a medium amount, for line-level tech ICs = a much lesser amount). And building relationships or earning trust by spending time together != "sucking up".

Just the implication that you associate "golf" with "sucking up" apparently, shows that you likely have an inherently antagonistic view of personal relationships. For any given group of people, either they truly like playing golf, or golf just happens to be a convenient activity that allows for lots of downtime, and therefore encourages discussion/communication to happen, either way it's very likely that they are getting together for reasons other than "sucking up".

Why do you assume that what happens on the golf course is inherently or inevitably about "sucking up"? Have you never encountered a group of people, getting together for some event (recreational or otherwise), where they just communicate on equal footing, or debate ideas together, but with no one being fawned over or worshipped?

Re: How do you find a good manager?

#85

Post by apwell23 »

strgcmc wrote: post #84
apwell23 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came across an interesting stat "90% of Fortune 500 CEOs play golf and over 80% of executives say that golf played an important role in their career" What do you make of this.

Well, are you an executive, or one step from becoming one? Then it's entirely possible that spending more time socializing recreationally can directly help your career. Golf happens to be a common choice, but maybe your exec team likes rock climbing or playing video games... just depends on the company or the social group. Also, whether you are an executive or middle-manager or an IC, overall I don't doubt that socia…

i think you are getting too carried away by that phrase. I dont have any moral qualms about "sucking up". i adressed this here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41061026

I presonally think "sucking up" is a better phrase because you "build relationships" with your peers and equals not with someone who can take food away from your family table just because they don't like you. What kind of relationship is that where you are always inferior.

Re: How do you find a good manager?

#86

Post by saulpw »

robertlagrant wrote: post #72
legitster wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I started my career there was still a sense of agility and meritocracy in tech that made it super appealing. But that vibe feels very much gone now. Of the last 3-4 CEOs I worked under - not a single one actually built a company or rose up through the ranks. All of them started their careers in consulting or management. So not saying they can't be good CEOs or leaders, or that there are companies that aren't exc…

> tech industry is overall shifting towards management/labor class divisions I think it's very easy to slip into this way of thinking, but I think it depends on the company. Any company big and rich enough will start to have the same inefficiencies and inappropriate leadership appointments as any large org or even government will. If money is easy to come by, people who don't create value can thrive.

It depends on the company but 90% of companies are this way. Which is what the parent comment was saying, it's overall shifting towards that. Which I have seen as well.

Re: How do you find a good manager?

#87

Post by redsaz »

Joel_Mckay wrote: post #41
JofArnold wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do. It can take months and months of interviews to find them though. Which might be why.

Why aren't you promoting internal senior team-lead staff into these roles? Just kidding, we all already know why... =3

Answer: because they don't want to be promoted to manager, they'd rather be coding.

Re: How do you find a good manager?

#88

Post by AndrewKemendo »

ZenMikey wrote: post #21
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #13

Yet another perfect example of not even understanding that there are other ways to run an organization All of the things mentioned are in service of the existing model of capitalism. That model is: There are people who do work that leads to the direct creation, maintenance or support of a customer who is paying them. There is a separate group completely independent from this group who view the firm as a form of finan…

Just my anecdotal two cents: what you're saying simply does not match my life experience. The model bit is debatable, but the predicted outcomes are demonstrably false for me and a lot of people I know.

Yes this system produces “wins” and it’s generally at someone’s expense. There are exceptions of course, like everything but this is the general distribution

The whole point though is that if you’re a winner in the game has very little to do with being or having a “good” manager

Re: How do you find a good manager?

#89

Post by AndrewKemendo »

jiiam wrote: post #24
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #13

Yet another perfect example of not even understanding that there are other ways to run an organization All of the things mentioned are in service of the existing model of capitalism. That model is: There are people who do work that leads to the direct creation, maintenance or support of a customer who is paying them. There is a separate group completely independent from this group who view the firm as a form of finan…

In game theoretic terms all of this looks a lot like a Nash equilibrium to me and, as such, fells inescapable

As long as everyone treats each other as a p zombie then yes that’s true

Re: How do you find a good manager?

#90

Post by AndrewKemendo »

Willish42 wrote: post #20
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #13

Yet another perfect example of not even understanding that there are other ways to run an organization All of the things mentioned are in service of the existing model of capitalism. That model is: There are people who do work that leads to the direct creation, maintenance or support of a customer who is paying them. There is a separate group completely independent from this group who view the firm as a form of finan…

That's a pretty grim outlook, but I honestly can't poke a "hole" in its logic. Well stated, somebody's clearly done their reading on Marxist theory :) I've been struggling recently with limitations on "managing upward" I've seen thus far in my career -- eventually incentives become aligned such that no "good" manager that represents their employees well to leadership and says "no" when necessary has stuck around very…

It’s the legal and social infrastructure we all tacitly support.

I’m not necessarily mad at anyone for that, but at a certain point it seems like we keep coming back to the same things.

And for the record, while I am read in Marx, I’m more of a Proudhon fellow, I think worth making that distinction.

Post reply on HN