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People leave managers, not companies

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Re: People leave managers, not companies

#51

Post by michaelt »

subsubsub wrote: post #47
crdoconnor wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IME this kind of experience comes when you have a manager who has no fundamental understanding of what it is that they are managing and has no particular reason to trust you. A manager who can monitor your output by reading your pull requests simply won't engage in this type of behavior whereas a manager who can't will usually instinctively gravitate to terrible metrics like "does he show dedication by being in at 9a…

Is turning up on time for your job a terrible metric? To me being on time is just a very basic low level requirement of being a professional. As the initial commenter said: trust goes both ways. Turning up on time is a good way to show your manager that you can be trusted. Edit: Actually, turning up on time may not make your manager trust you more, but turning up late will definitely make them trust you less.

In software engineering, many companies prioritise "getting your work done" (which is admittedly a subjective, hard-to-quantify metric) and consider any metric that contradicts it to be suspect.

A person who believes this would say that if according to policy my best employee should work 9am-5pm, but he prefers to work from 7am-3pm and is my best employee, it is the policy not the employee that needs changing.

Personally, I always try to get to the bottom of this stuff during job interviews - nobody wins if the employee assumes there will be flex-time and the company doesn't allow it!

Re: People leave managers, not companies

#52

Post by collyw »

sheepmullet wrote: post #49
subsubsub wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is turning up on time for your job a terrible metric? To me being on time is just a very basic low level requirement of being a professional. As the initial commenter said: trust goes both ways. Turning up on time is a good way to show your manager that you can be trusted. Edit: Actually, turning up on time may not make your manager trust you more, but turning up late will definitely make them trust you less.

> To me being on time is just a very basic low level requirement of being a professional. What is on time? On time for what exactly? Is he missing any meetings? Is he working fewer hours? Is he doing less work? Is he impacting a colleague? Why do you consider something that has no relationship to the posters job to be a basic requirement to being a professional?

OK, I'll give an example. My team leader in a previous job used to regularly turn up at 11am (officially we were supposed to be in by 9.30, but it was academia and no one complained too much). I was usually in before 9.15 - like the majority of the staff.

So sometimes I would need to ask him something, and he wasn't around - that would hold me up. Sometimes other people would need to ask him something. He wasn't around, so they asked me instead - usually when I was trying to get in the zone.

I am all for giving staff flexibility but it should not come at an expense to productivity.

Re: People leave managers, not companies

#53

Post by cpfohl »

michaelt wrote: post #51
subsubsub wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is turning up on time for your job a terrible metric? To me being on time is just a very basic low level requirement of being a professional. As the initial commenter said: trust goes both ways. Turning up on time is a good way to show your manager that you can be trusted. Edit: Actually, turning up on time may not make your manager trust you more, but turning up late will definitely make them trust you less.

In software engineering, many companies prioritise "getting your work done" (which is admittedly a subjective, hard-to-quantify metric) and consider any metric that contradicts it to be suspect. A person who believes this would say that if according to policy my best employee should work 9am-5pm, but he prefers to work from 7am-3pm and is my best employee, it is the policy not the employee that needs changing. Person…

This. I've literally never held a job that wasn't okay flex time, and I've worked at 4 radically different types of companies as a software engineer over the last 7 years.

I'll be honest, I was surprised to read this sorry if environment still existed for programmers

Re: People leave managers, not companies

#54

Post by cpfohl »

collyw wrote: post #52
sheepmullet wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To me being on time is just a very basic low level requirement of being a professional. What is on time? On time for what exactly? Is he missing any meetings? Is he working fewer hours? Is he doing less work? Is he impacting a colleague? Why do you consider something that has no relationship to the posters job to be a basic requirement to being a professional?

OK, I'll give an example. My team leader in a previous job used to regularly turn up at 11am (officially we were supposed to be in by 9.30, but it was academia and no one complained too much). I was usually in before 9.15 - like the majority of the staff. So sometimes I would need to ask him something, and he wasn't around - that would hold me up. Sometimes other people would need to ask him something. He wasn't arou…

Remote, timezone-distributed teams deal with this all the time. We always ensure everyone has a bunch of work they can do, and we use email/chat to handle the asynchronous communication issue. What you described isn't a scheduling issue, it's a communication issue. Not on your part, either, BTW.

Re: People leave managers, not companies

#56

Post by cpfohl »

xerophyte12932 wrote: post #37
somberi wrote: post #28

I have been managing large teams (Anywhere from 100 to 300 people) and in my experience I would phrase it differently. 1. In a going concern, which has found traction, a manager is often the _reason_ for people to leave the company. 2. In a company that is not finding traction, or the larger view of its direction is obfuscated, managers are the reason people _stay_ back to work. This manager being the end-all of asso…

You have been directly managing over a hundred people? That just sounds like textbook bad heirarchy

I didn't interpret their comment that way. It's common to have a handful of managers under you, but reference to their reports as your managees as well. That easily reaches 100-200 people.

Re: People leave managers, not companies

#57

Post by jpatokal »

xerophyte12932 wrote: post #37
somberi wrote: post #28

I have been managing large teams (Anywhere from 100 to 300 people) and in my experience I would phrase it differently. 1. In a going concern, which has found traction, a manager is often the _reason_ for people to leave the company. 2. In a company that is not finding traction, or the larger view of its direction is obfuscated, managers are the reason people _stay_ back to work. This manager being the end-all of asso…

You have been directly managing over a hundred people? That just sounds like textbook bad heirarchy

They did not claim to directly manage 300 people, and it's somewhat bizarre to assume they did.

Re: People leave managers, not companies

#58

Post by crdoconnor »

subsubsub wrote: post #47
crdoconnor wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IME this kind of experience comes when you have a manager who has no fundamental understanding of what it is that they are managing and has no particular reason to trust you. A manager who can monitor your output by reading your pull requests simply won't engage in this type of behavior whereas a manager who can't will usually instinctively gravitate to terrible metrics like "does he show dedication by being in at 9a…

Is turning up on time for your job a terrible metric? To me being on time is just a very basic low level requirement of being a professional. As the initial commenter said: trust goes both ways. Turning up on time is a good way to show your manager that you can be trusted. Edit: Actually, turning up on time may not make your manager trust you more, but turning up late will definitely make them trust you less.

>Is turning up on time for your job a terrible metric?

The worst metric.

That is, unless the "turning up on time" is actually causing a serious and recognizable problem. Then it's the problem that's a problem.

>As the initial commenter said: trust goes both ways.

No it doesn't. If you put the onus on the developer and say "not only do you have to deliver high quality code you have to make me trust that you've delivered high quality code by adhering to these arbitrary metrics I've come up which bear no intrinsic relationship to how you do your job" you're admitting incompetence as a manager.

It's a manager's job to know whom to trust and a manager that trusts the useless developer who turns up at 9am sharp over the excellent developer who turns up at 9:05am requires termination.

>Actually, turning up on time may not make your manager trust you more, but turning up late will definitely make them trust you less.

It will definitely make a bad manager trust you less.

A good manager will either recognize that you're delivering or not.

Re: People leave managers, not companies

#59

Post by seanmcdirmid »

mianos wrote: post #11
jclarkcom wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10x developers definitely exist, quite amazing to work with them.

But 0.1X managers are always telling us they are a myth. Do the math. :)

It’s the 0.1x manager who generally demands rock stars to make up for their inability to manage.

Re: People leave managers, not companies

#60

Post by crdoconnor »

michaelt wrote: post #51
subsubsub wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is turning up on time for your job a terrible metric? To me being on time is just a very basic low level requirement of being a professional. As the initial commenter said: trust goes both ways. Turning up on time is a good way to show your manager that you can be trusted. Edit: Actually, turning up on time may not make your manager trust you more, but turning up late will definitely make them trust you less.

In software engineering, many companies prioritise "getting your work done" (which is admittedly a subjective, hard-to-quantify metric) and consider any metric that contradicts it to be suspect. A person who believes this would say that if according to policy my best employee should work 9am-5pm, but he prefers to work from 7am-3pm and is my best employee, it is the policy not the employee that needs changing. Person…

>"getting your work done" (which is admittedly a subjective, hard-to-quantify metric)

Getting "work done" is fairly easy to recognize - you can tell when bugs are getting fixed and features are being delivered and when they are not.

Getting work done to a high standard and delivered at an appropriate speed is, I think, only recognizable by another developer who is as good or better than you.

>Personally, I always try to get to the bottom of this stuff during job interviews - nobody wins if the employee assumes there will be flex-time and the company doesn't allow it!

Yeah, that's one of my red flags during interviews. Companies that are strict on this type of stuff are essentially advertising the fact that management is clueless about what development does and rely upon intrinsically meaningless social cues to build trust. Like suits.

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