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Mistakes as a new manager

terriblesoftware.org

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Re: Mistakes as a new manager

#41

Post by localghost3000 »

brailsafe wrote: post #37
localghost3000 wrote: post #9

This misses the single biggest mistake every new manager makes: avoiding hard conversations with your reports. If you start managing folks you were recently in the trenches with this can be VERY hard. These are your comrades after all! You want them to like you. It’s all very natural. Sadly it is the single biggest cause for dissatisfaction I’ve seen on a given team. Being unwilling to give honest, direct feedback re…

I agree with the sentiment and importance of addressing these things, or dealing with conflicts in-general, but I disagree with the tone somewhat and disagree with the notion that you're not in the trenches with them, but it depends on what trenches means to whoever it's relevant to. I feel like many new managers know they'll need to deal with this, but never developed their abilities prior to being a manager, and do…

You’re basically validating my original point if I am reading your comment correctly. You absolutely cannot avoid conflict but there is a right and a wrong way to go about it. Simple, direct feedback that speaks to behaviors not character is very important.

To your point about being in the trenches I think maybe you’re extrapolating too much from that. Any manager who is any good is of course right there alongside their team in said trenches.

Re: Mistakes as a new manager

#42

Post by wavemode »

> As an individual contributor (IC), your work spoke for itself; people could easily see it. Plain and simple. As a manager, it’s less black and white, and surprisingly, for many new managers, part of your job now involves managing how others see you.

This doesn't only apply to managers. Even as an individual software engineer, the more you move up (if moving up is something that matters to you), the more you have to play politics.

Your work can't possibly "speak for itself", since the people it's speaking to (the managers with power over your career) don't speak code.

Re: Mistakes as a new manager

#43

Post by hackable_sand »

crowcroft wrote: post #38
localghost3000 wrote: post #9

This misses the single biggest mistake every new manager makes: avoiding hard conversations with your reports. If you start managing folks you were recently in the trenches with this can be VERY hard. These are your comrades after all! You want them to like you. It’s all very natural. Sadly it is the single biggest cause for dissatisfaction I’ve seen on a given team. Being unwilling to give honest, direct feedback re…

I have found that company culture has the biggest impact on junior managers. It sets the expectation for them the most because they don’t have any actual ability yet. Overly empathetic companies end up with terrible junior managers because they can’t have any real direct conversations. Tough and demanding companies I have seen fair much better because no one can hide from tough conversations for too long.

That's not what empathy means.

Re: Mistakes as a new manager

#44

Post by hackable_sand »

localghost3000 wrote: post #9

This misses the single biggest mistake every new manager makes: avoiding hard conversations with your reports. If you start managing folks you were recently in the trenches with this can be VERY hard. These are your comrades after all! You want them to like you. It’s all very natural. Sadly it is the single biggest cause for dissatisfaction I’ve seen on a given team. Being unwilling to give honest, direct feedback re…

These are the marks of a passive-aggressive and adversarial manager who would sell their team out from under them.

Re: Mistakes as a new manager

#45

Post by Joel_Mckay »

KerrAvon wrote: post #40
Joel_Mckay wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to admit I initially hired a few Papered Posers, and it was a mistake to pay them 2.4x higher than market rate to ensure the project would reach conclusion on schedule. The lessons we learned: 1. "Manage or be managed...": your first lesson is people will try to manipulate those in positions of authority regardless of competency. i.e. the idea of "goodwill" being the true core product can escape the irrational…

You may wish to talk to someone to evaluate whether the company you work for might be completely dysfunctional-- none of that list sounds like it's coming from a healthy place. > 9. Managers usually can never be a normal employee again. People subconsciously fear they cannot control authority, and will prefer to hire someone easier to "handle". This is usually not the case at a FAANG, for whatever it's worth. Multipl…

My personal experience with titles has always been complicated.

By the time a corporation has reached FAANG scale, they become boring and ultimately immutable out of necessity. I find it sad many folks dream of joining that drudgery, inventing nothing, and gambling on asinine business plans. =3

Re: Mistakes as a new manager

#46

Post by ElevenLathe »

thanksgiving wrote: post #25
brap wrote: post #20

I joined a new team as a manager and after 3 years was kindly asked to step down and become an IC. While there are many external factors to blame, I decided to do an honest postmortem with myself so I thought about these things a lot. As a line manager a huge mistake you could make (especially if you’re joining a new team) is not being technical enough. You may not write code anymore, but you are expected to know the…

> You may not write code anymore, but you are expected to know the system very thoroughly, otherwise you’ll be perceived as a glorified babysitter. I think the way "experienced" managers do this is to not actually understand the technical work 100% but rather make your manager think you understand it 100%. Even as an individual contributor, I fail to fully understand all the changes my team is making. I can't imagine…

Managing up is just rebranded brown-nosing.

Re: Mistakes as a new manager

#47

Post by majormajor »

ElevenLathe wrote: post #46
thanksgiving wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You may not write code anymore, but you are expected to know the system very thoroughly, otherwise you’ll be perceived as a glorified babysitter. I think the way "experienced" managers do this is to not actually understand the technical work 100% but rather make your manager think you understand it 100%. Even as an individual contributor, I fail to fully understand all the changes my team is making. I can't imagine…

Managing up is just rebranded brown-nosing.

I think it's the direct opposite: A huge part of "managing up" is making your your boss knows what's going on enough to help them make a wrong decision due to being unaware of details you and your reports are aware of. If you're scared of contradicting or correcting them you can't do that.

A huge common mistake for anyone with a boss - at ANY level, IC or management, is assuming their boss knows everything that they know + more things. The intersection of what you know + they know is probably smaller than you think. And so being able to recognize what they will NEED to know in the near future is a valuable skill.

Re: Mistakes as a new manager

#48

Post by sumedh »

icedchai wrote: post #19
otteromkram wrote: post #3

> "Where’s my dopamine?" I'm not in management, but couldn't OP become a working manager? Might depend on the size of their team and demands of the new role, but I've worked with managers who wear their IC hat on occasion and thought it was a positive value-add for the group as a whole.

For small teams (like, 5 people max) that may make sense. It really depends on the organization. With some orgs, you're going to meetings all day and there's no time to focus.

> With some orgs, you're going to meetings all day and there's no time to focus.

Let's be honest here, some of those meetings could have been done over chat conversation.

Re: Mistakes as a new manager

#49

Post by majormajor »

thanksgiving wrote: post #25
brap wrote: post #20

I joined a new team as a manager and after 3 years was kindly asked to step down and become an IC. While there are many external factors to blame, I decided to do an honest postmortem with myself so I thought about these things a lot. As a line manager a huge mistake you could make (especially if you’re joining a new team) is not being technical enough. You may not write code anymore, but you are expected to know the…

> You may not write code anymore, but you are expected to know the system very thoroughly, otherwise you’ll be perceived as a glorified babysitter. I think the way "experienced" managers do this is to not actually understand the technical work 100% but rather make your manager think you understand it 100%. Even as an individual contributor, I fail to fully understand all the changes my team is making. I can't imagine…

For those sorts of things you need to understand:

- the reason it's happening

- the cost (time / people)

- what else you are deciding not to do instead

You don't have to be in the weeds enough to implement it yourself but you need to guard against both:

- people working on things that aren't priorities because they only want to work on their own pet projects, by not being technical enough to tell when they're BSing about the technical justification for certain things

- people doing things in inefficient or not-aligned-with-future-needs ways because they are more junior and don't know some technical things, or because you haven't shared enough roadmap context

It's related to "managing up" in that it's good to be proactive about sharing some of that info upward as-relevant with your boss so that they don't have to go out of their way to know what's going on with you (or else you run the risk of them having a wrong assumption when they're making decisions that impact you and your reports).

Re: Mistakes as a new manager

#50

Post by localghost3000 »

hackable_sand wrote: post #44
localghost3000 wrote: post #9

This misses the single biggest mistake every new manager makes: avoiding hard conversations with your reports. If you start managing folks you were recently in the trenches with this can be VERY hard. These are your comrades after all! You want them to like you. It’s all very natural. Sadly it is the single biggest cause for dissatisfaction I’ve seen on a given team. Being unwilling to give honest, direct feedback re…

These are the marks of a passive-aggressive and adversarial manager who would sell their team out from under them.

This is literally the opposite of passive aggressive. That’s my entire point!! You have to be direct with people so the know where they stand. That applies to what they’re doing well on also.

As for the “sell out” statement… I have no idea how you got that out of what I said. Sounds like maybe you had some bad managers?

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