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Signs you might be a micromanager

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Re: Signs you might be a micromanager

#41

Post by eikenberry »

cocoa19 wrote: post #10

The opposite of micromanagement can be damaging as well. Let's call this "no management". I quit a job where I would only see the manager on 1-1 meetings, and was clueless about the state of the business and how to help team members succeed and get promoted. I stopped discussing work topics on the 1-1 meetings since I didn't see any point, and eventually quit, as well as other team members.

A my last $job I had a direct manager for the first 3 months then they moved on and a replacement was never found. 2 years later his manager (my ex-managers manager) quit and was never replaced. I worked there for just about 3 years total with no real manager.

Luckily for them I'm very independent and they had a lot of obvious problems to work on. But it was rather silly.

Re: Signs you might be a micromanager

#42

Post by mensetmanusman »

cocoa19 wrote: post #10

The opposite of micromanagement can be damaging as well. Let's call this "no management". I quit a job where I would only see the manager on 1-1 meetings, and was clueless about the state of the business and how to help team members succeed and get promoted. I stopped discussing work topics on the 1-1 meetings since I didn't see any point, and eventually quit, as well as other team members.

Interesting, I thrive with as little management interaction as possible. Ha. monthly 1:1 is more than enough.

Re: Signs you might be a micromanager

#43

Post by withinboredom »

lkschubert8 wrote: post #37
Alex3917 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've noticed that often people micromanage because they don't trust their team There's also some tasks that just shouldn't ever be done by one person. E.g. naming features and global classes and functions. There isn't any way to know if a name is intuitive to everyone else unless you actually ask everyone else. Although this the canonical example of bike shedding, I've never once had a discussion about what a bunch…

Yeah it is a bit funny that naming is the go to bikeshedding example because in my experience poor terminology surrounding a project can be hugely detrimental (e.g. names that have nothing to do with what is actually happening) and vice versa.

For awhile there, I was “the second opinion” if you outsourced a project. You’d hire people like me to tell you if it really would take 100 man hours to make photo uploads faster, or did they really patch a security issue, etc. It was pretty neat to read so much closed source code. But more than once, the developer would send obfuscated code and claim that it was how they worked on it. Only once did someone say, “oops, here’s the right version”.

Those projects taught me how important naming is, more than anything. Some people like to say that you don’t need names.

I’ll be the first to say that they’re probably right (considering the code executes) but damn does it make life easier when things are named well... and less expensive for everyone.

Re: Signs you might be a micromanager

#44

Post by tamrix »

nharada wrote: post #9

I don't see one of the most important parts of how to stop micromanaging, which is to help your team grow . I don't mean add more people, I mean to grow the skills and competencies of the people already on it. I've noticed that often people micromanage because they don't trust their team, but it's not necessarily because the manager is a dumb narcissist who vetoes their team's brilliant ideas as some of these article…

The problem with larger corporations and bigger hiarchy is some Mangers egos are are boosted by their titles.

They then conclude that they're more senior and treat others, even people with far more experience than them, as juniors.

I've found that some Mangers like to micromanage so that they can claim more success of the project as well.

Re: Signs you might be a micromanager

#45

Post by ryandrake »

eikenberry wrote: post #41
cocoa19 wrote: post #10

The opposite of micromanagement can be damaging as well. Let's call this "no management". I quit a job where I would only see the manager on 1-1 meetings, and was clueless about the state of the business and how to help team members succeed and get promoted. I stopped discussing work topics on the 1-1 meetings since I didn't see any point, and eventually quit, as well as other team members.

A my last $job I had a direct manager for the first 3 months then they moved on and a replacement was never found. 2 years later his manager (my ex-managers manager) quit and was never replaced. I worked there for just about 3 years total with no real manager. Luckily for them I'm very independent and they had a lot of obvious problems to work on. But it was rather silly.

Reminds me of Forgotten Employee [1]

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17332440

Re: Signs you might be a micromanager

#46

Post by telchar »

withinboredom wrote: post #43
lkschubert8 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it is a bit funny that naming is the go to bikeshedding example because in my experience poor terminology surrounding a project can be hugely detrimental (e.g. names that have nothing to do with what is actually happening) and vice versa.

For awhile there, I was “the second opinion” if you outsourced a project. You’d hire people like me to tell you if it really would take 100 man hours to make photo uploads faster, or did they really patch a security issue, etc. It was pretty neat to read so much closed source code. But more than once, the developer would send obfuscated code and claim that it was how they worked on it. Only once did someone say, “oop…

I'm curious, how would they obfuscate code and how could you tell?

Re: Signs you might be a micromanager

#48

Post by antman »

nharada wrote: post #9

I don't see one of the most important parts of how to stop micromanaging, which is to help your team grow . I don't mean add more people, I mean to grow the skills and competencies of the people already on it. I've noticed that often people micromanage because they don't trust their team, but it's not necessarily because the manager is a dumb narcissist who vetoes their team's brilliant ideas as some of these article…

There is also the common case of a cash strapped department that hires only juniors.The secret sauce in that case is hidden micromanagement, supported by CI and splitting work and commits to mini modiles.

Re: Signs you might be a micromanager

#49

Post by thunderbong »

cocoa19 wrote: post #10

The opposite of micromanagement can be damaging as well. Let's call this "no management". I quit a job where I would only see the manager on 1-1 meetings, and was clueless about the state of the business and how to help team members succeed and get promoted. I stopped discussing work topics on the 1-1 meetings since I didn't see any point, and eventually quit, as well as other team members.

I agree that 'no management' is really damaging but I don't think that's that the opposite of micromanagement is.

Micromanagement is a 'type' of management. As others have mentioned, it primarily arises from lack of trust or having a very rigid way of looking at things.

The manager that you mention should hardly be called that. These people are the ones who have been put in their position without acknowledging their strengths and weaknesses and will obviously end up back-firing.

Re: Signs you might be a micromanager

#50

Post by holoduke »

mynameisslim wrote: post #6

I would like to see the other perspective, why it is good to micromanage. I’m a non tech founder And I outsource my teach overseas. I don’t trust my team. I really feel over billed (I pay US prices (over six figures per year per programmer) even though this team is in South America) and they have failed over years to really provide a quality service. Not only that but they over bill me and I frequently catch it. Why…

I am usually not directly accusing people here on HN. But this post of yours makes you the exact manager not a single employee in world would prefer. And therefor noone will be ever motivated for his or her job. Your style leads to a guaranteed failure of any startup.
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