by GianFabien
6 subcomments
- In my experience the bad managers are constantly trying to impress their bosses and curry the next promotion. They treat their reports like serfs who are obliged to burnish their image.
The best managers (very few) I've come across are like a mother bear. Protective of their team, running interference and pushing back on out of scope work, etc.
I've only ever had one manager whose calendar was viewable by his team. If he needed a meeting with you, he would ping by email with the subject and any supporting materials and asking you to block out the meeting time in his calendar. Talk about respecting your productive times.
by mock-possum
0 subcomment
- > Your manager, who you’ve barely seen all year except in meetings, suddenly has opinions about your “growth areas.” They cite that one PR that took too long (ignoring the context) or mention you need to “be more visible” (while giving you no time to do anything visible).
It’s taken me a long time to come around to recognizing this as the common thread in all the ‘bad bosses’ I’ve had over the years - each has felt pressure from above, but been unable to level with me about the position they’re in, and unable to sit down with me as an ally to allay upper management’s concerns. Instead, they’ve essentially sat on the issue, until they can’t anymore and find reason to let me go - and there’s always a reason if you care to look, no one is a perfect employee.
My exit interview ends up being the relief to the pressure they’ve been feeling, and then, in turn, I can imo assume they resume incubating, until they’re ready to hatch the next scapegoat.
Having one’s professional fate so haphazardly tied to an untrustworthy comrade is really only made tenable by the compensation this industry tends to offer - and between the layoffs and hiring freezes plaguing the SWE field lately, it’s definitely becoming less of a comfort. I hope I can get away with retiring before I run seriously afoul of the situation.
- > Breaking the cycle
> The best engineering managers I’ve known — the ones engineers actually like — have figured out a few things:
> 1. They protect focus time like it’s sacred. […]
> 2. They stay technical enough to make informed decisions. […]
> 3. They give credit lavishly and take blame personally. […]
> 4. They make feedback actually meaningful. […]
by jurschreuder
3 subcomments
- Software development is the only high-skilled work where people have managers.
Doctors don't have managers. Lawyers don't have managers. Professors don't have managers. Architects don't have managers. Bankers don't have managers.
Engineers should not have managers.
There should just be different levels of engineers.
by gpderetta
2 subcomments
- I must be an extreme outlier. In 20 years of career in half a dozen companies I have always had good managers. Decent persons (I called a few of them friends), good managers, and all extremely technically talented. Almost always even the skip level managers were also very technically competent.
by EduardLev
5 subcomments
- This focuses on what managers should do differently, but not what engineers could do differently to make the relationship better. Improve their communication skills, document and evangelize their work, etc.
- It's very rare for me to not find a way to work well with most managers I've had. What I find the larger problem is what's lost in communication/translation going up and down the org chart. This isn't usually a problem for small or shallow orgs, or in rare cases larger orgs that have strong technical leadership. What does happen is that there's layer(s) of middle-management that's typically where technical details are lost. The best way to combat this is to have flatter structures, or isolate divisions/units. Microservices is one way of solving this communication/autonomy human problem, by forcing system interfaces to sweat the communication details.
- IME I blame Telephone(aka Chinese whispers) being the default communication between ICs and skip level manager. A skip level should address a team in writing instead of the manager vaguely mentioning things. Communications among a team should happen in a public channel instead of DMs.
by tropicalfruit
1 subcomments
- i feel strongly that most managers are redundant
you could have an empty chair and things would still get done
in general there are too many useless or noise making people in companies i worked in
when they go on holiday the work continues in peace
by nine_zeros
1 subcomments
- The fact that management issues are so persistently reported and so widespread in tech, should be a strong signal that management practices in tech have failed - measured by the number of non-faang companies that lost their trajectory by copying corrosive FAANG practices.
- Been reading a lot about this hate from the other side perspective's - I've burned out in my first experience as tech manager. There are good materials on Will Larson's blog (and books) and substacks like this: https://gleicon.substack.com/p/the-burden-of-tech-managers. It was all on me for over extending on control and not using my previous experience as leverage to have the team on my side...
by 1970-01-01
0 subcomment
- Missing from the article is they are not immune to the Peter Principal. Good managers do not stick around very long.
- [dead]
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