You're barely managing
barely-managing.bearblog.dev
You're barely managing
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Re: You're barely managing
#2Companies are incredibly lazy when it comes to managers. One reason I ask for extra pay is just because I have to deal with that group of smug and unqualified group of people. They can cry all they want when they say we are too expensive, until they start promoting people that are actually qualified to manage projects and people I will make them pay.
Re: You're barely managing
#3Most people just aren't cut out for it. To be a good manager you need to ....
1. Be willing to be wrong a lot and admit it
2. Show vulnerablility
3. Deal with constant setbacks and disappoinment
Most people get the reigns and are suprised to find out its actually a thing nobody wants. Like being a social worker.
Re: You're barely managing
#4It's interesting.
I agree with everything in that article.
At the same time, I also agree with similar but opposing articles complaining about people who did train to be managers (by going through university program) now leading technical people without having a clue on what those people are doing, how their problems are solved, etc.
I think this is a generalized class of frequent hiring / placement problem: I have two orthogonal skillsets I need. Which one is core, which one is trainable?
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?
(As somebody who was a techie and is now in a management role, I'll lead through the entire series and see what help I can gain from that. But note there exist MANY useful, structured and helpful resources for those who want to improve their people managing/supporting skills. The key part though is acknowledging you want/need to improve those skills - for many of us, learning SQL or C++ or JavaScript is perceived as a "hard skill", useful and pragmatic; whereas "people managing", "coaching", "negotiation" etc are seen as "soft skills" and not worth. If this article helps some people convert their thinking and acknowledge we need to work just as hard on people skills as on tech skills, awesome:)
Re: You're barely managing
#5> 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%?
...
> This series will provide my personal guidance on both how to be a manager and how to do the job of managing people.
> You do not need to read this entire thing A-Z like a tome, but instead I encourage you to casually work through the core articles (they will be highlighted) and then jump around to any others that catch your interest.
This is incredibly frustrating. I have read countless peoples' opinions on management, with perspectives ranging from analytical measurement to pop-psy, but none of them has offered me, in the end, more credibility as a manager.
According to the opening statement here, none of that even counts as "study", and the solution it offers is ... reading this blog. Casually.
It's self-selecting for an audience of people who have already read lots of blogs about management, telling them that reading blogs doesn't count, and then offering another blog to read.
Re: You're barely managing
#6I began my first management role a few years ago (through the "successor" path outlined in the article). My manager left for another company, and since I'd been with the team for 4 years at that point, I was asked if I wanted to take over.
I agreed, not realizing how much of a shift it was. It's an entirely different profession, and it's made me wonder how realistic the notion of an Engineering Manager is. It's sort of like the "full stack" engineer - yes you may have baseline competency across disciplines, but you're not going to excel at all of them.
Sometimes I wonder if engineering teams would best be served by someone who actually went to business school for management. Likely there would be tension as this person is very unlikely to have anything beyond conversational technical knowledge, but I'm not sure what we're doing right now is any better.
Re: You're barely managing
#7I work at a big company. A few times a year I meet an EPM or engineer and think “wow they are really good”. Usually, within a year, they get promoted. I still get to work with them and they are great IC’s, but they’ll have 2-4 people under them (that usually aren’t as good, but sometimes they will also be really good), and will try and help the other IC’s be good too.
I’m always interested in becoming a better manager and was hoping I could pass this on to managers on my team, but it did not at all ring true to my experiences. I see people get promoted up as their competence improved, even at the VP Engineering level. Classic Peter Principle I guess but they haven’t yet hit the incompetence layer.
Re: You're barely managing
#8Most people just aren't cut out for it. To be a good manager you need to .... 1. Be willing to be wrong a lot and admit it 2. Show vulnerablility 3. Deal with constant setbacks and disappoinment Most people get the reigns and are suprised to find out its actually a thing nobody wants. Like being a social worker.
Most of us believe managers have power and just get to boss people around.
We are in for a rude awakening to find the opposite :). There was a brilliant hardward business review article on what managers learn in their first year - if you read it and acknowledge some of those challenges / aspects on day 1, it'll put you far ahead of your fellow first-time managers:
https://hbr.org/2007/01/becoming-the-boss
(sadly, I read that article in my year two of techie-who-became-a-manager :)
Re: You're barely managing
#9Most people just aren't cut out for it. To be a good manager you need to .... 1. Be willing to be wrong a lot and admit it 2. Show vulnerablility 3. Deal with constant setbacks and disappoinment Most people get the reigns and are suprised to find out its actually a thing nobody wants. Like being a social worker.
I was writing up a huge list of other things you need as well, but I'll just say that being a manager was a massive eye-opener for me. Prior to that, I thought I was doing all the work and didn't think my manager was doing very much. I was very, very wrong. But what's great about the experience is that you come to understand how valuable a good manager is, and how to be a more effective IC.
Re: You're barely managing
#10I began my first management role a few years ago (through the "successor" path outlined in the article). My manager left for another company, and since I'd been with the team for 4 years at that point, I was asked if I wanted to take over. I agreed, not realizing how much of a shift it was. It's an entirely different profession, and it's made me wonder how realistic the notion of an Engineering Manager is. It's sort…
> who actually went to business school for management.
Are these actually good? Sometimes I feel like education has such a large disconnect from reality. Especially true in corporate fields. There is also the meme of MBAs showing up and ruining everything. I also went to business school for undergrad, idk if any of it is useful. though it was a while ago now