51–60 of 120 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You must be willing to say "I don't know" does not sound like any manager i ever knew
It may sound different, such as "That's a great question"
The biggest thing most managers give up is their mind. You start using corporate jargon. You become more authoritarian. You embrace careerism (a term I invented to describe people who erroneously conflate rising in corporate rank with happiness). You quickly learn that no one understands anything about the people or the business--and that all decisions are made by gut, cherry picked data, and story-telling. Suddenly,…
> The biggest thing most managers give up is their mind. The biggest thing they give up is having to do leetcode interviews.
Hiring managers perogative.
The biggest thing most managers give up is their mind. You start using corporate jargon. You become more authoritarian. You embrace careerism (a term I invented to describe people who erroneously conflate rising in corporate rank with happiness). You quickly learn that no one understands anything about the people or the business--and that all decisions are made by gut, cherry picked data, and story-telling. Suddenly,…
It seems like you're a manager, but how do these two sentiments go together: > You must be willing to say "I don't know" 10x more than as an IC > All other approaches will lead to you failing to deliver results, failing to retain, and a drag on the org. Your advice is contradictory on its face. How can you embrace "not knowing" and having a curious mind, while at the same time declaring that this set of operational a…
>This also just seems like new-age guilt injected into the work place. Don't be a micro manager always in people's faces for no reason but if you're telling yourself you're a failure because _as a manager_ you told someone to do something, I'm not sure how you last more than 2 days on the job.
I don't know. As a parent it's something I do all the time. My aim is very much to lead my kid and I absolutely hate being authoritarian. So whenever I do find myself being so, I try to introspect (not very successfully for the most part) and find a better solution.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems like you're a manager, but how do these two sentiments go together: > You must be willing to say "I don't know" 10x more than as an IC > All other approaches will lead to you failing to deliver results, failing to retain, and a drag on the org. Your advice is contradictory on its face. How can you embrace "not knowing" and having a curious mind, while at the same time declaring that this set of operational a…
>> You must believe deep down in your core that ordering a human being to do something is a sign you must introspect about your failure as a manager, and commit to fixing the problem. >This also just seems like new-age guilt injected into the work place. Don't be a micro manager always in people's faces for no reason but if you're telling yourself you're a failure because _as a manager_ you told someone to do somethi…
“Here, take this tabula rasa child and, over the course of many years, with virtually no timely feedback about the impact of any of your actions, raise a fully formed rational adult capable of effectively dealing with the problem of human survival on a planet incredibly hostile to life.”
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It may sound different, such as "That's a great question"
I worked for 5 years at an American company in Australia and I heard this multiple times per day from my US colleagues - my conclusion after heard it said to the most basic questions was that it’s mostly a filler phrase used to buy time while the respondent thinks up an answer.
In any exchange with the US, any question asked was responded to with, "That's a great question!".
It was probably just filler but definitely came across as incredibly patronising to our ears.
The biggest thing most managers give up is their mind. You start using corporate jargon. You become more authoritarian. You embrace careerism (a term I invented to describe people who erroneously conflate rising in corporate rank with happiness). You quickly learn that no one understands anything about the people or the business--and that all decisions are made by gut, cherry picked data, and story-telling. Suddenly,…
> You must be willing to say "I don't know" does not sound like any manager i ever knew
The biggest thing most managers give up is their mind. You start using corporate jargon. You become more authoritarian. You embrace careerism (a term I invented to describe people who erroneously conflate rising in corporate rank with happiness). You quickly learn that no one understands anything about the people or the business--and that all decisions are made by gut, cherry picked data, and story-telling. Suddenly,…
As an IC, I’ve had about 8 managers in my day. Sadly, I failed to recognize and appreciate great managers due to my own lack of maturity at the time and not understanding the manager role. Earlier in my career, I had a manager who I initially had pegged as disengaged - he wasn’t, he was just actually delegating and managing without getting bogged down in the IC work he entrusted to his reports. At the time I thought…
I quit managing because I couldn't stomach the language managers are required to speak. The cliches, the obfuscation, the outright lying when relaying the c__p coming from above, the list goes on.
This was one of the hardest things for me as a manager too. You have to own the company’s message to your reports (and others) even if you disagree with it or don’t know how it came to be.
At the first level, you have zero actual power. All you are doing is conducting perfunctory 1:1s and signing time-off forms. But you also aren't an IC and slowly fall out of the dev mindset and your skills atrophy
My boss has been a first level manager for years...if he's ever laid off he is in big trouble...he never really managed anything and he no longer codes