131–140 of 191 posts
>> At my day job we use a platform called Bonusly for people to give little shout-outs (shouts-out?) to their peers for doing something awesome. I rarely get any awards here, but people on my teams get them all the damn time and to me that speaks incredible volumes. I view this as you won't see a good manager's fingerprints on the thing that receives the recognition, but you will find them all over the people who are…
But if you fired all the managers then... What? Wouldn't everything just continue as before? Grug brain has never understood management.
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Being an agile coach isn’t management
Leadership and Management are two pair of shoes, I get that.
At best they're clerical support and training. In practice they can become officious ticket minders.
If you fired all the people that build things, then your company could no longer build things. If you fire all the people that sell things, then your company could no longer sell things. Grug brain understand this. But if you fired all the managers then... What? Wouldn't everything just continue as before? Grug brain has never understood management.
(Tone indicator: Not a value judgment. I'm not saying that all managers are particularly good at this, same as how observing that "builders build things" does not mean that the builders are necessarily good at building.)
If you fired all the people that build things, then your company could no longer build things. If you fire all the people that sell things, then your company could no longer sell things. Grug brain understand this. But if you fired all the managers then... What? Wouldn't everything just continue as before? Grug brain has never understood management.
Then no high-level decisions would get made. Any technical argument that spans beyond one person would be at risk of running into an eternal stalemate. No strategic choices would be undertaken. (Tone indicator: Not a value judgment. I'm not saying that all managers are particularly good at this, same as how observing that "builders build things" does not mean that the builders are necessarily good at building.)
I don't sort of "hate managers" or anything. Just curious about why businesses always seem to think they have to have them.
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It's just not though. People above you are making decisions to not pay what generally amounts to trivial amounts of money to (in many cases I have seen) completely fuck up their products. I have worked with enough C levels to understand that most of them just want you to manage all the problems while they collect the money and make "strategic decisions" (follow whatever fad is hot right now.) It's why I like working…
As an IC, one reason I left my old (hated) job was precisely that. The product was barely-functional shit. We once spent 8 months implementing a "feature" that had senior engineers walking off the program in protest, only for them to be validated when said feature caused us to miss our contractual requirements just like said senior engineers said it would, and we spent another 8 months ripping it out. Naturally I wen…
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Off topic, but: It's interesting how everyone thinks they're "managers" in "agile" teams. Scrum Masters, Product Owners. I've even had Designers and QAs trying to make decisions on behalf of the team.
That sounds like a dysfunctional team to me, to be honest.
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Off topic, but: It's interesting how everyone thinks they're "managers" in "agile" teams. Scrum Masters, Product Owners. I've even had Designers and QAs trying to make decisions on behalf of the team.
> It's interesting how everyone thinks they're "managers" in "agile" teams. In scrum in particular, teams are supposed to be "self-organizing and self-managing". Perhaps that's why :-)
I've recently been getting more and more management responsibilities. This article seems very helpful - thank you for sharing! The advice on over-communicating & owning up to your mistakes is very on point.
> The advice on over-communicating [...] is very on point. Is it? Being on the other side I've left jobs because of manager over-communication. If you don't have the right communication skills, let someone else do the job. There are plenty of people out there who are very capable of effectively communicating without over-communicating. Just as you wouldn't want a developer who writes excess code to make up for their…
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Then no high-level decisions would get made. Any technical argument that spans beyond one person would be at risk of running into an eternal stalemate. No strategic choices would be undertaken. (Tone indicator: Not a value judgment. I'm not saying that all managers are particularly good at this, same as how observing that "builders build things" does not mean that the builders are necessarily good at building.)
I feel like "making choices" and "making decisions" isn't really a full time job. Maybe just see what a group of seniorish people think? I don't sort of "hate managers" or anything. Just curious about why businesses always seem to think they have to have them.