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>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 creat

>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.

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.