51–60 of 70 posts
One thing that's missing from this - your metric of success will change, and you'll have to navigate that. As an IC you have a tangible representation of what you accomplished that day - the doohickey now spins, the bloop now boops when you tap it, the clicky thing now does the clickity click. In your first weeks as a manager you're going to look at your little box of accomplishments, find it empty, and you're going…
I find it funny that management started referring to themselves as leadership in the recent decades. Maybe some are, but most are your run of the mil administrators that carry out whatever upper management says. Hardly leadership.
First a caveat - I’m not a manager. I am at the top of the tech tree in a large org, which carries with it “leadership responsibilities”. I’ve also worn many hats over the years in various employment, so I know a thing or two about management. I think you are generally wrong. Yes, ‘manager’ carries with it a certain amount of administrative and organisational responsibilities, not to mention the important ‘soft skill…
Leading is having an affect on those around you such that they voluntarily look to your for input.
Any role at a company can do that, so to try to pretend that falls directly on management lines is a white lie managers tell themselves.
When I first started managing, I thought it was all about making decisions and setting direction. But over time, I realized the more important part is learning to listen, to let go, and to give others the space to grow. Building trust and psychological safety is easy to overlook, but it’s the thing most worth practicing again and again.
Second question, if you don't set direction, what's the contrast/alternative?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The nature of a 'teaching professor' job can vary a lot, but the positions are often very precarious and unstable, as I can attest from personal experience.
Does not mean they are absolutely worthless.
My point is not “don’t respect teaching profs”, quite the opposite in fact: Recognize that the teachers that had an impact on you in university that had an impact on you not only to no career benefit, but potential to their own professional detriment.
Same goes for truly great technical managers. All the technical work they enable is through their own personal devotion and at best causes no professional growth, at worst takes away energy that should be spent elsewhere.
I find it funny that management started referring to themselves as leadership in the recent decades. Maybe some are, but most are your run of the mil administrators that carry out whatever upper management says. Hardly leadership.
First a caveat - I’m not a manager. I am at the top of the tech tree in a large org, which carries with it “leadership responsibilities”. I’ve also worn many hats over the years in various employment, so I know a thing or two about management. I think you are generally wrong. Yes, ‘manager’ carries with it a certain amount of administrative and organisational responsibilities, not to mention the important ‘soft skill…
It's a fine opinion to have, but on matters like this, I'm more interested in the opinions of those who are being lead. Plenty of leaders love to think of themselves as great leaders.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does not mean they are absolutely worthless.
I think you may have misunderstood my point. Being a great teaching professor is an invaluable contribution to students lives and the world, but it is “absolutely worthless” as far as promotion and tenure is concerned. My point is not “don’t respect teaching profs”, quite the opposite in fact: Recognize that the teachers that had an impact on you in university that had an impact on you not only to no career benefit,…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suppose the "best manager" in this sense protects his/her team from the upper echelon politics, and, being clueless, does not bother meddling with technical decisions, letting the team do their work. Their worldview is captured in the famous quotation: «You can domesticate programmers the way beekeepers tame bees. You can't exactly communicate with them, but you can get them to swarm in one place and when they're n…
wow what a quote. where is that from?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does not mean they are absolutely worthless.
I think you may have misunderstood my point. Being a great teaching professor is an invaluable contribution to students lives and the world, but it is “absolutely worthless” as far as promotion and tenure is concerned. My point is not “don’t respect teaching profs”, quite the opposite in fact: Recognize that the teachers that had an impact on you in university that had an impact on you not only to no career benefit,…
"Managing down isn't actually that hard to get the hang of if you have strong technical skills and reasonable communications skills. But managing down is very similar to being a good teaching professor: absolutely worthless and largely done at your own peril."
If your reply above is what you meant to say, that was not at all clearly communicated.
When I first started managing, I thought it was all about making decisions and setting direction. But over time, I realized the more important part is learning to listen, to let go, and to give others the space to grow. Building trust and psychological safety is easy to overlook, but it’s the thing most worth practicing again and again.
I've heard management (and a skill I've learned to appreciate from leadership) is "creating alignment" amongst a group of people. Would you say that is different from setting direction? Second question, if you don't set direction, what's the contrast/alternative?
I find "engineer to manager" guides are fundamentally not possible to write. I've been a manager of a team 3-4 times now and each experience was entirely different from the previous. But this post makes the biggest mistake, something I have struggled with in every management role: focusing on managing down. Managing down isn't actually that hard to get the hang of if you have strong technical skills and reasonable co…
> In practice the best managers care primarily about politics and growing their personal stake in the organization. This is fine, and expected of senior management. > I've found that the more clueless they are the better (just don't point that out). This is toxic. Management at the senior level of these organisations has been completely detached from the activities on the ground. A healthy functional organisation sho…