A study finds that bosses can be useful but also sneaky • Hacker News Board

Re: A study finds that bosses can be useful but also sneaky

#61

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 9:55 PM UTC

codingdave wrote: post #7

stunt wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Someone who does burocracy and orga, but hasn't any power They are even less useful without power. Problem is most of the managers are junior in their position. They don't have leadership experience. Often just got a promotion and come up from a different background and only have a few years of experience on management position. Or, they have some experience at different scale. So when they start on a bigger organi…

> They are even less useful without power. If managers are getting things done by wielding their authority from the org chart, odds are they aren't great leaders to begin with. In most organizations, leaders arise naturally, and they don't always match the org chart. Wise managers let those people shine, and help them succeed. Then the informal leaders help the team succeed, and the manager gets what they want becaus…

[deleted]

Re: A study finds that bosses can be useful but also sneaky

#62

Post by nwallin » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 10:30 PM UTC

celticmusic wrote: post #31

k__ wrote: post #2

People often talk about the extemes. Managers or no managers. Why can't we have something in-between? Like, instead of a manager, we have a team assistant. Someone who does burocracy and orga, but hasn't any power and the power is exercied in some way by all of the team members. This would remove the "if all do it no one does it" problem and still prevent single people decisions.

Having recently experienced "agile", one of the things I've concluded is that the PM needs to be fireable by the team. I don't mean unemployed, I simply mean the team needs to be able to tell the PM they will no longer be working with them. I just put in my 2 week notice at a shop that I've been working at for 6 months, and what I've found is that effectiveness isn't the goal. Having done freelance for the past 8 yea…

> I'm sure there are shops out there that end up using agile and don't become these ridiculous monstrosities, but I feel like those shops would be successful with or without agile.

I think that's the key. Agile isn't a silver bullet, it's just a tool. If your problems are screws and you grab a screwdriver, you're probably in good shape. It works great for my team, because we all trust each other and genuinely take the quality of our product to heart. It doesn't work for our neighboring team because nobody gives a fuck besides getting credit for all of the good stuff and deflecting blame for all of the bad stuff.

I don't have a whole lot of faith in "there's one way to run a team/be a leader and you do it like this" sort of thing. The style of leadership I was taught in the military would not fucking fly on my team, but honestly, it would serve my neighboring team fairly well. Their problems are nails.

Re: A study finds that bosses can be useful but also sneaky

#63

Post by JMTQp8lwXL » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 10:58 PM UTC

cgarvis wrote: post #32

k__ wrote: post #2

People often talk about the extemes. Managers or no managers. Why can't we have something in-between? Like, instead of a manager, we have a team assistant. Someone who does burocracy and orga, but hasn't any power and the power is exercied in some way by all of the team members. This would remove the "if all do it no one does it" problem and still prevent single people decisions.

At Slalom _build[1], we have People Managers and Team Leads. Your people manager stays with you as you transition from project to project. They never have more than six direct reports. They are the person that handles all the bureaucracy for you and helping you through the org. Your team lead is sometimes a people manager but probably not yours. They change based on the project you are on and are responsible for it's…

Kind of like how some countries have Prime Ministers and a President, but all of that is rolled up into one role in the U.S.

Re: A study finds that bosses can be useful but also sneaky

#64

Post by mzanchi » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 2:21 AM UTC

nilkn wrote: post #51

mzanchi wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been in my mind recently. I am head of development at a startup and have something like 30 direct reports. I don't want to be doing this job for a long time, and am maneuvering the team structure to make myself redundant with the following actions: - I am trying to convince the execs and HR to increase pay transparency and to reward people who want to progress in their careers as engineers more than those wh…

30 direct reports is an astonishing number, and it makes me feel like you're either onto something brilliant or are crazy and this structure is going to crash and burn once things get really complicated and fast-paced. I suppose it depends on how routine a lot of the work is. You'd be spending a minimum of 15 hours a week just on 1:1s, but I could see that being as high as 20 or 30 hours; 15 is already two full days…

Yeah, I started doing 1-on-1 with all of them when the team was about half size. The reason I got one of the guys "promoted" as dev lead is so he can take most of the mentoring and feedback gathering. He is not their boss though, with no authority to assign work or make demands.

Nowadays I do 1-on-1s with the dev lead, the assistant, and the product owners (senior devs and architects), so only 5 people.

Still, that would mean the dev lead would need to do 25 1-on-1s, so we have a structure of peer mentorship, with two phases: a formal and an informal. The formal is to maintain quality of information gathering and fairness. The informal is to allow for rapport and flexibility in the part of the mentor. We started this recently, we'll see how it goes.

Re: A study finds that bosses can be useful but also sneaky

#65

Post by mlthoughts2018 » Sat, Oct 26, 2019, 1:52 PM UTC

k__ wrote: post #30

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s such a false dilemma to say that the extremes are “manager” or “no manager.” “Manager” is somewhere in the middle. “Insane bad manager” is the extreme, not the mere existence of a management structure.

I think the quality of performed management tasks is another dimension.

Management & no management is binary. If we used an indicator variable (1 for “has management” and 0 for “no management”) then there’d be no way to have any idea of “quality of management performed” along a different axis in the “no management” case.

I don’t agree that separating this as a distinct inficator variable would actually be useful.