Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mistakes as a new manager

terriblesoftware.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 157 posts

Re: Mistakes as a new manager

#51

Post by roenxi »

chasd00 wrote: post #7
TripleChecker wrote: post #5

Delegation was one I struggled with a lot in the early days. Even as the CEO, I was reluctant to give up my customer service responsibilities of manning the inboxes. Eventually, I understand that even if someone handled it only 80-90% as well, that would be much better for the company than having me do it.

Delegation is so hard, i struggle constantly and I'm technically a "Sr. Manager". When the project is up against deadline pressure, it's so tempting to do something yourself that only takes you a day vs delegating to someone else and they spin on it for 3 and screw it up at the end anyway. Inevitably you become the bottleneck when a wave of escalations or other management tasks come down the pipe but there's a pile o…

> vs delegating to someone else and they spin on it for 3 and screw it up at the end anyway.

If that is happening more than twice in a 6 month period you need to do a post-mortem on your management style, something is wrong. Spinning on a task is already a bad sign pointing at a problem that can be solved at the management level.

Re: Mistakes as a new manager

#52

Post by pdonis »

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’ve noticed quality issues in your code recently that’s resulted in some rollbacks

I would tend to even leave out the first part of that phrase. Focus on the actual objective measure: the rollbacks. They happened, and the goal is to figure out how to not have them happen in the future.

Re: Mistakes as a new manager

#53

Post by crowcroft »

hackable_sand wrote: post #43
crowcroft wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’m meaning in the sense of ‘ruinous empathy’

https://www.radicalcandor.com/faq/what-is-ruinous-empathy/

Re: Mistakes as a new manager

#54

Post by icedchai »

sumedh wrote: post #48
icedchai wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Absolutely! But who is going to really admit this?

Re: Mistakes as a new manager

#55

Post by anotheracc88 »

steerpike wrote: post #11
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…

100% agree with this. I would say that the other highly likely mistake new managers make is trying to code their way out of problems. It makes sense, right? Previously when you're an IC and a project ran into issues you could just "code harder" and get through it, but that's rarely the right solution when you're a manager and will likely exacerbate the problem itself if you disappear into the trenches trying to code…

Indeed. Purposefully stay off the critical path! Do coding that helps you keep up with what people are talking about. Not coding that is urgent!

Re: Mistakes as a new manager

#57

Post by starky »

binarymax wrote: post #16

I’ve got a good hack for the dopamine: PowerPoint and excel. Go to town on making kick ass presentations and reports. “Ship” those to the org during meetings and all hands. It’s not the same as code for customers, but it helps. Also, if you have time, code non critical things that will never be a dependency for anything else.

Agreed, my go to when feeling like I haven't produced real work in awhile is to document processes, especially if there is something I've noticed has been done poorly or been asked about a couple times recently.

Re: Mistakes as a new manager

#58

Post by starky »

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.

This is generally a bad idea. I never know when I'm going to get pulled into something that will take my attention away from the task. The only times I really do that anymore is if the task is not time critical or if it is something that I know I could be picked up by others in any state without any issue.

Re: Mistakes as a new manager

#59

Post by antman »

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 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

Re: Mistakes as a new manager

#60

Post by NhanH »

antman wrote: post #59
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 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 the work itself rather than communication
Post reply on HN