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

All managers make mistakes; good managers acknowledge and repair

terriblesoftware.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 134 posts

Re: All managers make mistakes; good managers acknowledge and repair

#11

Post by giancarlostoro »

harimau777 wrote: post #4

I think the problem is that there's a difference between a good manager and a manager who keeps their job.

I had one that fired everyone he hired, I was the last one and one other guy, I got the can for sticking up for the other guy, and the other guy got a demotion. Eventually when things at the company were bad enough the manager got the can with a ton of other managers.

My friend who is still there says this is his last ever programming job, after that manager he wants nothing to do with this industry, and that is a shame.

Re: All managers make mistakes; good managers acknowledge and repair

#12

Post by giancarlostoro »

mettamage wrote: post #10
harimau777 wrote: post #4

I think the problem is that there's a difference between a good manager and a manager who keeps their job.

The incentive is more strongly aligned with the latter one than the former one. I'm going through a bit of a phase at the moment, so I'm biased. It's "show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome". I used to find that an interesting idea, not sure if true or not. Nowadays a few years later, I'm almost hyper focusing on it, because I'm noticing that it is mostly true. Like, there's some room for individuality…

Bad management trickles down from the top usually.

Re: All managers make mistakes; good managers acknowledge and repair

#13

Post by lazide »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #12
mettamage wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The incentive is more strongly aligned with the latter one than the former one. I'm going through a bit of a phase at the moment, so I'm biased. It's "show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome". I used to find that an interesting idea, not sure if true or not. Nowadays a few years later, I'm almost hyper focusing on it, because I'm noticing that it is mostly true. Like, there's some room for individuality…

Bad management trickles down from the top usually.

Also known as ‘a fish rots from the head’

Re: All managers make mistakes; good managers acknowledge and repair

#14

Post by sqircles »

People love to talk about management skills and how things should be, but in my experience the autonomy to have that freedom is greatly lost upon the manager. At every level of management you'll be barking down orders as a transitory and the main difference is how you do or do not get buy-in from your reports - and often it is next to impossible to gain that buy-in (more work! longer hours! emergency pragmatic fix for an administrative problem!), which is why you're the one presenting the task.

Re: All managers make mistakes; good managers acknowledge and repair

#15

Post by selecsosi »

IME the gap in management between ICs is accountability. It's easy to say you are sorry, or say things won't happen again but good management, and what I strive to do is hold myself accountable.

To me, that means 1. To identify the issue that occurred (especially when you caused it), and much more importantly, 2. Put systems into place that prevent it from happening again.

Employees can feel very clearly when a manager lacks accountability and as part of mid and especially high level management (if your goal is actually improving both output and quality of people's lives) to not just say you did something wrong, but actually put your skin in the game ensuring what happened will not happen again (usually it means being better at saying no or aggressively managing prioritization rather than heaping additional tasks on people).

Re: All managers make mistakes; good managers acknowledge and repair

#16

Post by junebash »

willmadden wrote: post #5

That sounds more like a daycare skill, not a management skill. Good managers don't get distracted by "favors" for other departments or navel gaze after making mistakes. They have a clear vision of what needs to be done and execute on it aggressively, and aren't afraid to make mistakes when pursuing a goal. Good team members love this, and the rest fail out.

Disagree. This sounds like a manager that would drive me absolutely insane.

Re: All managers make mistakes; good managers acknowledge and repair

#17

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #7

I think this goes for Engineers as well. In fact, I say the biggest skill I want from a SENIOR developer regardless of years of experience is humility. Someone who "cannot do wrong" and is a toxic about it will poison the rest of the team with their toxicity. But the seniors who are more open to feedback even from Junior developers, those are the ones everyone else follows to hell and back because they're there with…

> Heck, even the LLMs mess up.

You can say that again. In another window, I am iterating with one for fixing my site CSS.

Re: All managers make mistakes; good managers acknowledge and repair

#18

Post by apwell23 »

harimau777 wrote: post #4

I think the problem is that there's a difference between a good manager and a manager who keeps their job.

despite talk of "great flattening" I've found that management seems to be strangely immune from layoffs compared to ICs.

enterprises just love layers and layers of management. can't get enough of it. No CEO has ever seen a management layer he didn't like.

Re: All managers make mistakes; good managers acknowledge and repair

#20

Post by n4r9 »

Someone posted a link on HN years ago to a set of google docs titled the "Mochary Method", which covers all sorts of management skills just like this. I have it bookmarked as it's the only set of notes I've seen which talks about this stuff in a very human way that makes sense to me (as a non-manager).

Here's the doc for responding to mistakes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AqBGwJ2gMQCrx5hK8q-u7wP0...

And here's a video with Matt talking about it in a little more detail: https://www.loom.com/share/651f369c763f4377a146657e1362c780

It's a very similar approach to the linked article although it goes slightly further in advocating "rewind and redo" where possible.

EDIT - The full "curriculum" is here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/18FiJbYn53fTtPmphfdCKT2TM...

Post reply on HN