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1) Phrase it as a help-me-help-you arrangement. You're getting gauged on how much stuff your team is getting done. Let me help you improve your performance metr

1) Phrase it as a help-me-help-you arrangement. You're getting gauged on how much stuff your team is getting done. Let me help you improve your performance metrics by reducing my meeting load and letting me focus more on coding. Our output metrics will look a lot better and you'll come out smelling like a rose. Sr. Management will love you and your results. Sell them on what gets them ahead (and it's also in your interest). 2) I liken a good manager to an old school point guard in basketball or a good coach. Your job isn't to score but to setup your teammates for success and create a culture of excellence they can thrive in on your team. Be ruthless about your meeting schedule and filtering input that actually needs to make it to your team. You should be the first POC for anyone needing your team or people on your team to do things to filter it for appropriateness rather than letting your engineers handle things. I'm not talking about their buddy in IT asking them a question, but people like Joe in Accounting who thinks it'd be slick if they could add FeatureX to the software because their boss thinks it's cool and it'd be sweet if it could be in this release. "Ya Know ;)". As a manager your first job is to firewall your people and help handle task requests, analyze them, and prioritize them. Also as a manager you help handle tasking and assignments. While you're building out your current sprint--and you're keeping up with what's happening so you can keep bosses apprised and off your team's back--you're also preparing for the next one, organizing requirements, incorporating feedback, etc. so when the team is ready for the next batch of tasking, it's already there and ready for them to process. WRT meetings, make your meetings targeted, on point, and ruthless enforce them. You're the boss. If someone's running their mouth without reason and taking up time, politely cut them off and get back on track. Have a clear objective for the meeting and stick with it. Once you've hit it, you're done. End the meeting everyone get back t work. Schedule your meetings for either mornings or late afternoons (preferably mornings) to give people plenty of time to get "deep work" done without having to worry about only having an hour to code before a meeting. If other people are trying to draw your team into meetings, figure out whether it's something you can handle and if so, you go. Let your team do their job. Again, you're the firewall. This also means getting to know your team personally and being able to read how they're doing. Does someone look really run down and out of it after a long week? Send them home early. Someone having a hard time getting things done on time? Sit down and talk with them, not adversarially, ask them what's going on, and what you can do to help. Politely point out what you've noticed and why it concerns you. Maybe their estimating wrong or their skill level isn't up to the work. You can help fix that. You're their coach. Know your team and help them succeed.

cookiecaper 11y ago
>2) I liken a good manager to an old school point guard in basketball or a good coach. Your job isn't to score but to setup your teammates for success and create a culture of excellence they can thrive in on your team. The problem being that this is going to sideline the manager. He's not going to let himself become chopped liver while you become a star; ideally there wouldn't be a problem with the people doing the actual building getting the credit, but the system is organized so that that starpower needs to be redirected onto the manager's own career. This causes a real problem with "get out of the way" management styles. Maybe it'd be wiser to pay managers a percentage of revenue. That way, the politics matter much less than making a successful product that sells well.
- floppydisk 11y ago
  That's a good point. One of the best arguments I've read about corporate structure argued the higher up you go, the more of an enable you're supposed to be and it's less about you and more about how you empower the people below you to do. That's the idea I approach management from - how do I set people up to succeed and continue being successful. I think part of helping "fix" management is to acknowledge their job is to empower people to "do" and a manager should be measured by their team. The more successful the team, the better a reflection on the manager rather than the manager must be a star. I also think part of it is the lack of training new managers are given. Promote someone from coder to manager, without giving them any training in how to make the shift and many of them will fall back on old metrics for determining their success rather than getting a new paradigm. It's about what I've done / how I've contributed and "led" rather than how I've empowered the people under me. Sometimes leadership isn't telling people how to do something, it's giving them the tools, trusting their ability, and getting out of the way.

cookiecaper 11y ago

>2) I liken a good manager to an old school point guard in basketball or a good coach. Your job isn't to score but to setup your teammates for success and create a culture of excellence they can thrive in on your team. The problem being that this is going to sideline the manager. He's not going to let himself become chopped liver while you become a star; ideally there wouldn't be a problem with the people doing the actual building getting the credit, but the system is organized so that that starpower needs to be redirected onto the manager's own career. This causes a real problem with "get out of the way" management styles. Maybe it'd be wiser to pay managers a percentage of revenue. That way, the politics matter much less than making a successful product that sells well.

floppydisk 11y ago
That's a good point. One of the best arguments I've read about corporate structure argued the higher up you go, the more of an enable you're supposed to be and it's less about you and more about how you empower the people below you to do. That's the idea I approach management from - how do I set people up to succeed and continue being successful. I think part of helping "fix" management is to acknowledge their job is to empower people to "do" and a manager should be measured by their team. The more successful the team, the better a reflection on the manager rather than the manager must be a star. I also think part of it is the lack of training new managers are given. Promote someone from coder to manager, without giving them any training in how to make the shift and many of them will fall back on old metrics for determining their success rather than getting a new paradigm. It's about what I've done / how I've contributed and "led" rather than how I've empowered the people under me. Sometimes leadership isn't telling people how to do something, it's giving them the tools, trusting their ability, and getting out of the way.