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Mistakes as a new manager

terriblesoftware.org

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Re: Mistakes as a new manager

#141

Post by antman »

NhanH wrote: post #60
antman wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I have noticed you ate brutalizing your subordinates and that has increased quality and output but I know it is not sustainable and the team is going to crash" any ideas how to communicate it are welcome

What's wrong with saying what you typed above verbatim? It is a fairy standard scenario and your wordings probably have been said in one-on-one millions of times. You need to follow up the sentence with "what's next", since the scenario does not have a simple solution (the manager can tone down the demand, but then output and quality goes back to where is was and we have to deal with that). But now that is more about…

That is how I said it, but there was no joint understanding of what I predicted about the future.

Re: Mistakes as a new manager

#142

Post by cutemonster »

resonious wrote: post #137
diatone wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long are these Q&A sessions, would you say the work of ICs getting blocked isn’t worth having the manager be able to eg: advocate for that work upwards?

We recently had an hour long session in the middle of the day with the entire team dedicated to explaining to the EM what exactly happened during a recent incident (a fairly sophisticated attack - not a simple bug, to be fair). Then next week another hour long session with the entire team AND a hefty handful of other people where EM regurgitated what we had explained to him. Fine I guess, except I'm pretty sure most…

Sounds annoying. Maybe if he'd asked one person to explain instead of the whole team? How big is the team if I can ask?

> AND a hefty handful of other people where EM regurgitated what we had explained to him.

Is that him trying to show he's doing something useful?

How many people does he manage btw?

Re: Mistakes as a new manager

#143

Post by cutemonster »

dakiol wrote: post #112
resonious wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an IC on a team full of seniors with strong domain knowledge that recently hired in an EM from the outside. In short, it was pretty bumpy and despite the guy being an ex engineer, his constant questions about how the system works were a huge drag. Maybe to him he was digging deep but to me it felt like my (and my teammates') work was blocked by his inability to grasp simple concepts. Like the time spent explainin…

What’s wrong with taking “too much” peoples time? I mean, it’s a colleague, asking questions… it’s not that you are going to work more because you’re allocating time to help others.

Partly answered here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42356687

Re: Mistakes as a new manager

#144

Post by cutemonster »

YZF wrote: post #128
acedTrex wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what context is IC every used in any derogatory fashion? In my experience "Manager" or "People Leader" is far far more derogatory.

It implies the persons' leverage is limited to only what they personally do. That's obviously false. A non-manager engineer can have broad scope in putting in a proper architecture, in mentoring others, in cross-team communications. I would go as far as saying there's virtually no engineer whose impact is limited to themselves. They have a harder job since they need to affect change without having official authority…

What's a better word than IC? :-)

Re: Mistakes as a new manager

#145

Post by pdonis »

cutemonster wrote: post #139
pdonis wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the new manager is technical and familiar with the codebase, and can assess that the reason for the rollbacks is a genuine quality issue. This is useful information Only if the report doesn't already know it. But they probably do. It doesn't seem likely to me that the report would be in the dark about why the rollbacks happened. And if they already know it, it's better to let them ask for help than to tell them up…

Meanwhile, deployments keep getting rolled back? Sounds like this mistake: > > avoiding hard conversations with your reports. And hoping that things will get better soon. But: > > Sadly it is the single biggest cause for dissatisfaction that can also be among others in the team, who have to deal with the rollbacks.

> Meanwhile, deployments keep getting rolled back?

One could say that the scenario as described in the post I originally responded to, by localghost3000, doesn't make sense, yes. If there have already been multiple rollbacks, and this is the first conversation you as a manager are having about them with this report, then you as a manager have already messed up by not addressing the issue sooner.

But that just makes it even more of a problem to lead with language like "quality issues in your code", implying that all the responsibility lies with the report, and none of it lies with you, the manager. The approach I described, where you focus first on the objective fact, that the rollbacks happened, and on how to keep them from happening again, avoids that.

Re: Mistakes as a new manager

#146

Post by quietbritishjim »

pdonis wrote: post #133
quietbritishjim wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, at least in this case. In the comment you're replying to, the new manager is technical and familiar with the codebase, and can assess that the reason for the rollbacks is a genuine quality issue. This is useful information, and if you leave it out then you leave your report partially in the dark, wondering if the rollbacks are happening for some other reason (I can think of plenty). I'm not saying it need…

> the new manager is technical and familiar with the codebase, and can assess that the reason for the rollbacks is a genuine quality issue. This is useful information Only if the report doesn't already know it. But they probably do. It doesn't seem likely to me that the report would be in the dark about why the rollbacks happened. And if they already know it, it's better to let them ask for help than to tell them up…

You haven't met anyone that has quality issues but doesn't realise it? Lucky you!

Even if they do, mentioning that everyone is rejecting their code and asking why they think that is, when you know full well the answer, is classic passive aggression and more condescending than just stating the obvious situation (again, not saying it literally needs to be in the same breath like the sentence I quoted).

Re: Mistakes as a new manager

#147

Post by eastbound »

epalm wrote: post #98
mikhmha wrote: post #97

What are you supposed to do when your manager has terrible and/or selective memory? My last manager would assign me work and then promptly forget half the time what he assigned me. It was bizarre. Sometimes it worked in my favour because I would do something he assigned me - then show him - and then he would sing praises for my "self initiative" and creativity. Like dude, you told me to do this. Of course this sort o…

About the poor memory stuff, just get it in writing. “In writing“ could mean in an email, or a chat, or more likely in an issue tracker that has an audit log. When there’s a discrepancy, just link to where it was written down.

Just write the daily standup in a list, and keep this list. It will be succint and task-level.

Re: Mistakes as a new manager

#148

Post by pdonis »

quietbritishjim wrote: post #146
pdonis wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the new manager is technical and familiar with the codebase, and can assess that the reason for the rollbacks is a genuine quality issue. This is useful information Only if the report doesn't already know it. But they probably do. It doesn't seem likely to me that the report would be in the dark about why the rollbacks happened. And if they already know it, it's better to let them ask for help than to tell them up…

You haven't met anyone that has quality issues but doesn't realise it? Lucky you! Even if they do, mentioning that everyone is rejecting their code and asking why they think that is, when you know full well the answer, is classic passive aggression and more condescending than just stating the obvious situation (again, not saying it literally needs to be in the same breath like the sentence I quoted).

> everyone is rejecting their code

That's not what "rollbacks" means. "Rollbacks" means other people accepted their code, let it get into production, and then an issue surfaced that forced the change to be rolled back, and this happened multiple times. So at a minimum, there have to be other people besides this particular coder who made mistakes, multiple times.

If other people rejected their code multiple times in code review, the problem wouldn't be "multiple rollbacks", it would be "multiple rejections in code review", and yes, in that situation you have a much better case for being up front about "quality issues in their code", since the process itself is working and highlighting that specific issue.

> you know full well the answer

If you are operating on the belief that only this particular report bears responsibility for "multiple rollbacks", then I think you do not "know full well the answer". You are ignoring the fact that other people had to let this poor quality code get into production in order to have rollbacks happen. You are also ignoring your own responsibility as a manager (as the sibling post to yours by cutemonster pointed out) to address issues like this before they result in multiple instances of a problem with production code (see my response to the sibling post I just mentioned).

Re: Mistakes as a new manager

#149

Post by resonious »

cutemonster wrote: post #142
resonious wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We recently had an hour long session in the middle of the day with the entire team dedicated to explaining to the EM what exactly happened during a recent incident (a fairly sophisticated attack - not a simple bug, to be fair). Then next week another hour long session with the entire team AND a hefty handful of other people where EM regurgitated what we had explained to him. Fine I guess, except I'm pretty sure most…

Sounds annoying. Maybe if he'd asked one person to explain instead of the whole team? How big is the team if I can ask? > AND a hefty handful of other people where EM regurgitated what we had explained to him. Is that him trying to show he's doing something useful? How many people does he manage btw?

The explanation party was maybe 4 or 5 people. The "retro" was 10+ people (almost 20 on calendar but I don't think everyone actually attended).

> Is that him trying to show he's doing something useful?

That is certainly what it looked like to me

> How many people does he manage btw?

About 10.

Re: Mistakes as a new manager

#150

Post by pdonis »

quietbritishjim wrote: post #146
pdonis wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the new manager is technical and familiar with the codebase, and can assess that the reason for the rollbacks is a genuine quality issue. This is useful information Only if the report doesn't already know it. But they probably do. It doesn't seem likely to me that the report would be in the dark about why the rollbacks happened. And if they already know it, it's better to let them ask for help than to tell them up…

You haven't met anyone that has quality issues but doesn't realise it? Lucky you! Even if they do, mentioning that everyone is rejecting their code and asking why they think that is, when you know full well the answer, is classic passive aggression and more condescending than just stating the obvious situation (again, not saying it literally needs to be in the same breath like the sentence I quoted).

> You haven't met anyone that has quality issues but doesn't realise it? Lucky you!

We're not just talking about someone who has code quality issues. We're talking about someone who has code quality issues that have resulted in multiple rollbacks. Even if they weren't bright enough to spot that their code quality contributed on their own, they're going to hear about it from other people who had to get involved in the rollbacks.

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