17 ms·

People leave managers, not companies

528 points by theyeti 9y ago

draw_down 9y ago
Companies can be bad too, believe it.
seanmcdirmid 9y ago
Likewise, there probably isn't such a thing as a 10X developer, but I totally believe 10X managers exist (they provide cover, they have empathy, they are able to lead people who otherwise aren't very manageable). I've only met very few of them in my career, most managers are 1X or even negative.
- jclarkcom 9y ago
  10x developers definitely exist, quite amazing to work with them.
  - mianos 9y ago
    But 0.1X managers are always telling us they are a myth. Do the math. :)
    - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
      It’s the 0.1x manager who generally demands rock stars to make up for their inability to manage.
  - hailk 9y ago
    What traits did you find in them. How do those traits convert with experience. Say, for example what would, according to you, make a 3-5 year experienced web developer 10x?
    - Scea91 9y ago
      Easy. It's not about LOC written but about making the right decisions. One bad decision can cost you months of work. Also many people are not even able to finish more complex projects. I am just not sure if they are 1X developers or 0.1X developers.
  - sifoo 9y ago
    It's not magic; it's vast amounts of experience; writing more code than, and twisting brains in ways that, normal people can't even imagine; and sticking with it for decades. I have no idea if I'm 5x or 10x or whatever, what I do know is that it's extremely rare to come across people who are more dedicated to the craft and/or have invested more in their skills.
- BuckRogers 9y ago
  That's because management is one of those fields that most people think they're qualified for. If you got arms, legs and are literate, many think they're cut out for it. Same goes for teaching or education in general. So many wannabe educators writing or producing programming lessons that clearly have never studied education theory. A notorious one or two out there as well. Art or professional grade creative endeavors are probably the same way for the vast majority. Unless you're some sort of savant, no one gets away with shortcutting the learning involved with anything. It's just kind of blissful ignorance. You don't know what you don't know and it becomes a strength since most are too unmotivated to ever do things the right way, in a well-informed, disciplined manner regardless. To those who are in those fields though, it's painfully obvious.
  - bradknowles 9y ago
    With respect, no -- not everyone thinks that. I would be a horrible manager. And I know plenty of people who feel the same way about themselves. I am totally happy leaving that job to someone who is better suited for it.
    - perl4ever 9y ago
      Many people may not think they are qualified to be a manager. However, it seems plausible to me that of the people who think they are qualified to be a manager, most are not.
      - TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
        It seems obvious that coding and managing are different jobs, and being good at one is not associated with being good at the other. Good software team management is a superset of coding skill. Not only does the manager need to have reasonable - not necessarily outstanding - developer skills, but also needs to have good people skills, good political skills, a feel for context and strategy, and an ability to improvise creative solutions across all these domains. The idea that someone who is good at coding should be promoted to management automatically seems bizarre. It's like expecting someone who is good at mountain biking to be good at driving a tank. So is the idea that management can be measured with "objective" metrics, such as locs, time on/off, bugs killed, and so on. In fact it's horrifically difficult to quantify the business ROI of software teams or of individual developers. ROI often depends on decisions made higher up the food chain, and it's even harder to get upper management to take responsibility for the consequences of bad decisions and bad attitudes.
- glangdale 9y ago
  I agree with you that 10X managers exist, but it's utter nonsense to claim that 10X developers don't exist. I've met people who are possibly at the 100X level; it's worth remembering that some tasks cannot be done by an average developer with any amount of time. I imagine that there are probably tasks that don't allow the 10X or 100X to show through; anything basic and repetitive enough (or so heavily specified that the developer's job is essentially "typing").
  - ionforce 9y ago
    What's an example of 100X behavior?
    - glangdale 9y ago
      100X developers can straightforwardly - sometimes - find solutions to problems that are simple, elegant and fast. This often means that the things that they do are not only cleaner than the solutions produced by weak(er) engineers, but also require less complexity to implement them whether at the organizational level (e.g. because the task is being done by 1 person in 2 hours, rather than 4 people in 200+ person hours, there isn't any time spent on meetings) or at the technical level (e.g. because the task now runs better on a single computer, rather than a cluster or threaded machine, it no longer requires parallelization and a distributed system). Sometimes this also comes about by a deep knowledge of available algorithms and systems, so while a naive programmer might start flailing around like a dog with their head stuck in a bucket, an experienced person might recognize the problem as an Integer Linear Programming case, etc. There are plenty of cases where no-one is 100x, of course.
- yarg 9y ago
  I really don't like the concept of a 10X developer - it implies linear scaling. If you keep writing very similar implementations of very similar things (without actively damaging the code-base) you may very well be an O(n) developer. You keep working at the same pace regardless. If you are a developer of some calibar, the work that you've already done will feed back into the work that you're doing - making you an O(log(n)) developer, until the work levels out and you slip back toward o(n). Then there's the other end of the stick, the idiot who has no business writing code, but who management keeps around because he's cheap in the short term. Everything he touches turn to shit, each change corrupts the code base just a little more, and each change to the corrupted code takes an amount of time proportional to the level of corruption. This is the O(k^n) developer, and he needs to be stopped.
  - thrwwyquest123 9y ago
    How do I know if I am an O(k^n) developer? My first "software engineer" job I did absolutely nothing but write update scripts, incredibly minute fixes to 10k+ line stored procedures and then helped watch deployments. I left that one for a new one, and I feel very slow compared to my coworker and I know that most of the time my designs for new features are extremely lacking. Should I leave my position since I fear I am impacting his ability to have high quality code?
    - yarg 9y ago
      In my experience the worst developers never ask if if they are doing things wrong and what that might be. Look at the chages you're making to the code - are they of a quality comparable to what was already there, do they integrate cleanly, are you coding with a style that fits in with the surrounding code? If not, what could you be doing better and why aren't you already doing it? It may take longer in the short term, but give consideration to your development practices. Eventually you'll find yourself more quickly writing a higher quality of code that's more maintainable with fewer defects.
  - Humdeee 9y ago
    > the idiot who has no business writing code > Everything he touches turn to shit > he needs to be stopped. You'll never take me alive.
- _pmf_ 9y ago
  Agreed completely. I've had a manager who was able to really leverage persons to create whole new verticals (that were actually profitable), but they hinged on single person's continued interest and commitment. He was borderline psychopathic (in the sense of being extremely manipulative on a personal level), though, and while the work I've done has been the most interesting in my career, the atmosphere was emotionally draining on a very personal level for most of us who worked for him. However, I'm not sure that there exist 10x managers that are not manipulators / psychological exploiters.
quickthrower2 9y ago
You don't just leave a bad manager. You escape! Emotionally it is deflating, defeating, a real grind that affects your whole life if your work situation sucks.
lovich 9y ago
I've definitely left companies and not managers before. To be fair it's usually because my manager's manager's manager was an asshole who thought 1% and an attaboy would be enough to keep people when our rent had gone up 7% and neighboring companies we're offering 50% more. Also to be fair, my managers were good enough that I stayed 6 months longer than I would have with even a neutral manager
a13n 9y ago
I had a great manager at my last job but left because the role wasn't the right risk/reward profile I was looking for.
everdev 9y ago
I've left a good manager for a higher salary.
- justboxing 9y ago
  Congrats! How is the new manager at the higher salary? Equally good? or Bad?
  - everdev 9y ago
    It was years ago, but everything worked out :)
praneshp 9y ago
I left my first job because the company(Yahoo) was burning. My manager was great, I'd love to work for her again. I left a few months earlier than I needed to though, because her new manager was an asshole.
ravenstine 9y ago
It's probably easier for managers to overrate their skills and performance because the problems they cause are often not overt; if parts of their team are underperforming, the knee-jerk assessment is that "there's something wrong with Joe" rather than "there's something wrong with our process" or "there's something wrong with what I'm doing." Some of my worst experiences with management involved cases of serious micromanagement. I'd say if you're micromanaging, there's a 99.9 percent chance that you're a bozo and you don't belong in the position you're in even if you had initially earned it. You have trust issues with your employees and you've failed to build a team and environment that allows people to effectively manage themselves. The best mangers I've known are the ones who are minimally involved. People who are given the space to make choices, be creative, and fail every so often, will often figure out how to manage themselves. I'd argue that people usually leave both managers and companies because companies too often fail to recognize the broken patterns of managers. This is anecdotal, but I worked at one place where more than half of the development team(those with the most talent) quit within a span of 2 weeks, and somehow upper management decided it was not the fault of our tyrannical manager and instead replaced those positions with junior developers they could underpay and abuse. It's all the more insulting when you can point out the problems and provide actual solutions, and the aloof men in suits on Mount Olympus allow the problem to fester. I might have stayed for another year had they booted out our manager. The fact that most people have stories of terrible management is astounding, and it doesn't say very much for whatever training managers receive(if any?).
- Greed 9y ago
  The trust and minimal involvement are really key here, the best managers I've ever worked with have been enablers rather than taskmasters. Managers that remove roadblocks, provide you with exactly the tools you need, insulate you from unnecessary cross-chatter, and just let you kill it with as few distractions as possible. Those sorts of enablers are how you not only maintain, but increase the output of your developers.
- lars512 9y ago
  > The best mangers I've known are the ones who are minimally involved. People who are given the space to make choices, be creative, and fail every so often, will often figure out how to manage themselves. In those cases, did you feel you shared values with those managers? Or were they indifferent to your values, and just left you alone?
pan69 9y ago
The best software teams I've worked on didn't have managers, they had facilitators.
- sloxy 9y ago
  bingo. people who have natural leadership qualities can facilitate without thinking it harms their worth. too often, unsuitable people will be thrust into a management/leadership type role just because there is a (sudden, genuine) void that needs feeling(sudden growth /sudden departure).
- balls187 9y ago
  For self organizing teams, and teams with motivated people, servitude leadership style works really well. Ensure the teams goals and direction is clearly set, and just remove roadblocks as needed. But there are other types of teams, and other situations where other styles are more effective.
mychael 9y ago
There is an important distinction that hasn't been discussed much: - The reason people decide to resign. - The reason people begin to consider resigning. In my experience, bad management is what usually kicks off the whole thought process, but other factors are what cement the decision (like an offer with higher pay, better title, higher prestige company etc.)
k__ 9y ago
Problem is, managers shape companies. Last company I left went bankrupt and got bought by a VC who replaced the whole management. The new managers were running around telling people how to do things because of the "company spirit". A few people, including me, were in the company for over 7 years and we knew the company spirit, because well, we lived and formed it. Now some newly hired MBAs try to tell me that I'm wrong? The bankruptcy lead many people to leave. The rest left because of the new management. Now the company has the old name and product, but noone of the people that created or formed it remained.
- Clubber 9y ago
  Yes, that's a phenomenon I've experienced twice now. Great small company getting acquired by large company. Managers / execs of large company commence dismantling whatever made the small company efficient / competent. I have some theories as to why this pattern occurs. Perhaps it's because the managers get paid a lot and feel the need to do something to prove they're worth it. Maybe managers are trying to cut costs, product be damned, to get bonuses. It could be because big companies typically have a lower grade of developers on average than small companies that are good enough to get acquired, and lower grade developers need to be babysat more. I dunno. It sucks though.
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  "ow the company has the old name and product, but noone of the people that created or formed it remained." That's probably by design.
  - k__ 9y ago
    Don't you say? Just because people do things intentionally doesn't make it any better...
Greed 9y ago
One of the issues I've had that isn't mentioned here is the value of mutual trust. Communication and trust are the two cornerstones of a really solid manager <-> managee relationship in my experience. Whether that lack of trust manifests itself as micro-management, constant check-ins, or a constant threat of surveillance it can easily turn an above average performer into an apathetic and demoralized employee. I used to work remotely for a company that spanned more than a few timezones, with a wonderful daily team manager and a not-so-great weekly department manager. Learning that my minutes and output were constantly monitored completely destroyed my trust with the latter, and had me searching within the week. My reaction to that was so strong I actually considered it a fortune when I was laid off for unrelated reasons rather than having to quit. I would be reprimanded for signing on five minutes later than usual despite being on a team of individuals that spanned multiple countries, and would get a questioning ping if I was offline for more than 10 minutes (especially problematic if you're the type of programmer to write or plan code on the whiteboard / paper first). Extremely draining to deal with that sort of nonsense and mistrust. Please, managers of the world, trust your employees! You have performance metrics for a reason!
- crdoconnor 9y ago
  IME this kind of experience comes when you have a manager who has no fundamental understanding of what it is that they are managing and has no particular reason to trust you. A manager who can monitor your output by reading your pull requests simply won't engage in this type of behavior whereas a manager who can't will usually instinctively gravitate to terrible metrics like "does he show dedication by being in at 9am rather than 9:05am"? Managers should form a very deep understanding of whom to trust and why or understand on a very deep level what it is that they are managing. Managers who cannot do either of those things should be terminated with prejudice. >You have performance metrics for a reason! As far as developing software goes, every single performance metric is terrible.
  - subsubsub 9y ago
    Is turning up on time for your job a terrible metric? To me being on time is just a very basic low level requirement of being a professional. As the initial commenter said: trust goes both ways. Turning up on time is a good way to show your manager that you can be trusted. Edit: Actually, turning up on time may not make your manager trust you more, but turning up late will definitely make them trust you less.
gaius 9y ago
That manager may not be your line manager, they may be several levels above, they may even by the CEO. So actually, it is “the company”.
lliamander 9y ago
I have only ever left good managers. I've had bad managers, but it was only under good managers that I was fully enabled to do my best work - work that would give me the confidence (and the resume fodder) to pitch myself to a new company for better pay. That may seem disloyal to those good managers, but I never left on a whim. It was always an agonizing process. But it was also always necessary. My former managers have never held it against me, and I now have connections with a number of great managers who would hire me without question if I was ever looking again (and they know I would work for them in a heartbeat). What always happened was that it became evident that my interests and my company's interest had diverged, whether it was a lack of opportunity for advancement, the company was going under, the product was a non-starter, or upper-management was bent on self-sabotage. EDIT: Added missing words
toomanybeersies 9y ago
At my previous job, I left due to the company, not the management. My direct supervisor was great. He was a good manager on most levels. I left because the company had no future, they weren't going bankrupt, but they weren't growing either. I never got a pay rise, probably never would. My benefits actually shrunk as time went on, staff social functions were cut (e.g. team lunches), use of networking funds became more restricted, and my work environment became less flexible. In fact, the only reason I considered staying was my manager and coworkers. People leave poor working environments, whether it's a company or a manager causing that poor environment.
- murukesh_s 9y ago
  Yea, its too easy to say people leave managers, but it was never in my case. I think it varies between industry. With the software companies, the churn is mostly due to folks looking out for better opportunities.. Me personally almost always looked outside due to availability of better opportunities. The argument that people leave managers makes sense only if you are in the best possible job/company you can get with your skill set (which is a very small %) and you somehow got a rift with the manager big enough to leave. But it could be different in other domains/industries where people stick with the same company till their retirement..
- speby 9y ago
  As somberi commented awhile ago, people leave due to managers -> company -> cause, in roughly that order. So even good managers will lose people if the company has traction issues or the cause is unclear or there is no future. So it absolutely can happen and it is fair to say that a single manager's performance, in isolation, is not the only reason for retention.
somberi 9y ago
I have been managing large teams (Anywhere from 100 to 300 people) and in my experience I would phrase it differently. 1. In a going concern, which has found traction, a manager is often the _reason_ for people to leave the company. 2. In a company that is not finding traction, or the larger view of its direction is obfuscated, managers are the reason people _stay_ back to work. This manager being the end-all of association comes from military knowledge that you fight because of allegiance to your battalion, cause and the country - in that order. In an knowledge enterprise, these constructs exist, but with almost equal weightage. The best manager cannot make an employee stay back if the company is not going anywhere, or if the cause is not evident. The worst manager will lose employees even if the company is going bonkers.
- jondubois 9y ago
  Totally agree. If the company has enough traction and I have a decent shares/options package with a clear exit strategy in sight then I'd stay even if my boss was a wild baboon and my job mostly involved shoveling monkey shit. If you're a manager in a high traction company and you're losing employees regularly, you should seriously consider finding another career.
- xerophyte12932 9y ago
  You have been directly managing over a hundred people? That just sounds like textbook bad heirarchy
  - cpfohl 9y ago
    I didn't interpret their comment that way. It's common to have a handful of managers under you, but reference to their reports as your managees as well. That easily reaches 100-200 people.
  - jpatokal 9y ago
    They did not claim to directly manage 300 people, and it's somewhat bizarre to assume they did.
    - 9y ago
sifoo 9y ago
There's a lot of talk about full stack developers lately, I'm still waiting to find the first full stack manager. Someone who's visionary, yet realistic; confident, yet empathic; powerful, yet humble. I feel like there's some truth to the saying that the best leaders are those who don't consider themselves fit to lead.
- perl4ever 9y ago
  I've seen a variety of managers doing bad jobs, and it never makes me think I could do it better. It makes me think about managerial problems, and how they are inherently difficult because of conflicts of interest. On the other hand, I got tired of technical problems, because the real problems always seemed to be managerial where I worked.
DaniFong 9y ago
people drop out of shitty things that undervalue them, which is much of the modern world. welcome to the world, 2.0.
unabst 9y ago
The manager is your interface to management. It's their job to tell you what you need to know and what to do. To an employee, they're the face of the business. But at the end of the day, if it's the people that make up a business, then I'd question if they are not the same thing. I asked a new acquaintance of mine about something bothering me. I asked him, "so, how often do you fire people? How do find the right people for your businesses?" "I hardly ever have to fire anyone," he said. "I ask them questions, and they leave." Damn. And the thing is, this pressure isn't faked or manufactured. This isn't anyone trying to fire someone. This is just someone needing work done, and answers. No business wants anyone incompetent, yet, it happens, because of interviewees lying through their teeth and not knowing any better. So they walk in and fail to do the exact job they won for themselves, then come the questions. Now they lose their place and have to leave, knowing they got the job by accident. There is plenty of real pressure to go around in a real business, and we avoid managerial roles because we know the stakes are higher. We know that having a manager is "safer" than being one, because having a manager is having someone responsible for you, and for your well being. It's how America figured out how to hire from the abundant talent pool of those who can't handle tough responsibilities and stay happy on their own, and those who'd rather have it easier. It's the luxury of being managed. But above that, it gets even worse. Fewer luxuries, just higher pay. Just think of all the bullets the CEO has to catch with their teeth every day. And wen they fail, it's news.
- perl4ever 9y ago
  Being a manager is about being loyal to the company and not individuals. It pays more precisely because it causes pain to peoples' consciences to put an abstraction above fellow employees. Talking about a CEO catching bullets in their teeth is ridiculously inflated language. Why use such imagery? Because the mission of a typical company does not sufficiently compensate for the guilt produced by putting the organization ahead of individuals.
  - scaryclam 9y ago
    I usually think of the managerial responsibilities to be in this order: - Company, because without it there's no employees - The team you're managing, because teams are more than just a single person - The individuals in the team, since they're the one's that can make a team better It seriously sucks to have to think of things in that order sometimes. I've never been involved in firing a person I didn't like. Though, when it comes down to it it's not fair for the team to suffer because of an individual, no matter how much they are liked, and it's not fair for all of the teams to suffer because one of them can't cut it. That's not to say there's no wiggle room though. I'll fight tooth and nail for an employee or team if I think it's a management fault that they've not performed (especially if I'm the manager screwing up) and will try to take a long term view of their value, not just the next quarter. Of course, all of this could be making me a bad manager. I've been put into managing people by virtue of being technically strong, not being a great people herder. I really do wish companies would spend as much time mentoring and helping managers get better at hands on managing as they do other tasks.
CalRobert 9y ago
Tellingly, when I interviewed with Intercom their "culture fit" manager was extremely rude and condescending, and constantly interrupted. Everyone else was polite, but if this is the person who gets to decide "yeah, they'd fit in here" that's a pretty huge problem. People turn you down because of managers, not companies, too.
- sloxy 9y ago
  Funnily enough, I like Intercom's hiring process (as it appears on paper). But...my real life experience was quite different. Interviewed by a precocious child who didn't have interview skills.
  - CalRobert 9y ago
    Intercom does a fantastic job with content marketing. I'm not sure how much it reflects reality, though. Again, most of the people I talked to were polite; it was just one extremely off-putting interviewer. I nearly thought it must be some kind of perverse test to see how I handle jerks.
korginator 9y ago
People leave the environment, not just the manager, though the manager is a big piece of the puzzle. I quit my last employer because the manager was an abusive bully with severe trust issues who would constantly threaten, abuse and demoralize people, but HR was also to blame since they did not lift a finger to address the issue even though this manager's behavior was widely known throughout the company for decades. I've also left a great manager in the past since the business was going nowhere. I've left a good manager and good team because I was very underpaid in another company.
noureen 9y ago
this article seems like a good strategy that attracts employees to apply for a position at intercom
nishantvyas 9y ago
#1. People get hired for what they are good, their skills and then get promoted (to management) for same technical/IC skills not for the MGMT skills. No MGMT ramp-up. No MGMT tools. No MGMT framework. You are now tasked to lead a team. it's surely will fail. #2. Next the mindset. Typical mindset when you move from technical (or any IC) role to MGMT and the higher you go in MGMT should completely change.... unfortunately its not so easy to give up the control. MGMT is about making others successful... giving up your control to others is very frightening and often causes identity issues... moving from do it all (as an IC) to ask_and_inspire is not easy... #3. Assuming you overcome these two... typical problem of MGMT/leadership is they try to find, "What's the matter?" where as the focus should always be on "What matters to you (an individual/ICs in team)"
rich_archbold 9y ago
Hey all, I'm the blog author, Rich Archbold from Intercom. Just to clarify … I wrote this blog, with the exaggerated / cliched title, to try to speak to the large cohort of over-confident, under-skilled and often lacking-enough-self-awareness, managers out there. I was (and often still am) a member of this cohort. Being a great manager all the time is really hard and almost impossible IMHO. The goal was to hopefully try and generate some more self-awareness and introspection and thus make life a little fairer, more pleasant, more growth-oriented and hopefully more successful for all concerned. I wasn't trying to deny or downplay that people also leave their jobs for all of the other reasons highlighted by folks here. Thanks, Rich.
- nishantvyas 9y ago
  My take based on my experience is, #1. People get hired for what they are good, their skills and then get promoted (to management) for same technical/IC skills not for the MGMT skills. No MGMT ramp-up. No MGMT tools. No MGMT framework. You are now tasked to lead a team. it's surely will fail. #2. Next the mindset. Typical mindset when you move from technical (or any IC) role to MGMT and the higher you go in MGMT should completely change.... unfortunately its not so easy to give up the control. MGMT is about making others successful... giving up your control to others is very frightening and often causes identity issues... moving from do it all (as an IC) to ask_and_inspire is not easy... #3. Assuming you overcome these two... typical problem of MGMT/leadership is they try to find, "What's the matter?" where as the focus should always be on "What matters to you (an individual/ICs in team)"
- brlewis 9y ago
  Hey Rich, I enjoyed the article and IMHO it did well in encouraging self-awareness and introspection. I hope it goes far.
- jumpkickhit 9y ago
  I liked the "tracking the dust in your phone" part. Hehe
gadders 9y ago
I can't help feeling that sometimes saying "People leave managers, not companies" is something senior company management tell themselves to absolve themselves of blame for staff turnover. I could be managed by the best manager in the world, but if I'm paid 20% below market rate I'm going to leave for a better paid job.
spodek 9y ago
"People join good projects and leave bad managers" is how I phrase it, quoting a business school professor and author, Michael Feiner. I wrote about how to use the perspective to help prepare for job searches and interviews, and to enjoy your time at work more: http://joshuaspodek.com/people-join-good-projects-leave-2 http://joshuaspodek.com/people-join-good-projects-leave-2
notacoward 9y ago
There's often a third possibility; leaving groups. At a small enough startup they're effectively the same, but I've seen distinct groups form in companies as small as 20. While it's true that a manager can affect the quality of the entire group, they're only one factor. High-performing fun group with a ho-hum manager? I'll probably stay. Dysfunctional bunch of ho-hum peers with a really good manager? That was my last job, and it's not my current job for exactly that reason. Especially at a larger company, managers might be constrained wrt hiring and firing, reviews and raises, pushing back against misguided product-management decisions, etc. Even a good manager might not be able to deal with these issues quickly enough to prevent attrition. I've seen some really good managers, people I'd worked with before and who have been superstars at other companies, burn out trying. That's sort of leaving the company that hobbled the manager, but other managers and other groups within the same company were doing fine so I'd call it leaving the group.
ZenoArrow 9y ago
I think this article misses an important point, which is that managers, or at least line managers, are often the messenger for decisions made in upper management. If I think back on the jobs I've had in the past, it's very rare for me to have issues with line managers. However, I had serious doubts about the competency of upper management in multiple companies that I've worked for. In this case, unless upper management recognise the problems that the line manager is highlighting, there's often not much more the line manager can do. Seeing as upper are (in my experience) frequently out of touch with the repercussions of their decisions, line managers should accept that they can only do what they can with what they're given (either that or leave).
- dominotw 9y ago
  I am this exact situation. I love my manager, simply one of the best i've ever worked with. But he is simply is messenger for poor decisions that are made by couple of incompetent people above him. I am not sure what can be done about incompetent people being promoted to position of power where they make horrendous misinformed decisions. Often its too late before the magnitude of their fuckups is visible, usually these people move on to different orgs with their pumped up resumes while lower level people scramble to undo the damage.
  - corpMaverick 9y ago
    In corporate IT, it is an accepted practice to promote people who don't have hands on experience, or who did the job 20 years ago and haven't followed up on the industry trends. They have a hard time admitting that they don't know and refuse to listen to the competent people in their teams. They don't even know who is competent and who is faking it.
    - organsnyder 9y ago
      Even with leaders with more recent/relevant hands-on experience, it can be difficult. If a leader continues to weigh in on technical decisions without understanding the power dynamics inherent to their position, bad decisions and demoralization of individual contributors (who feel steamrolled) can result.
jdsknene 9y ago
No, people leave companies too. Using my throwaway account because I don't want my name attached to this. I went contract-to-hire at my current job. When it came time to come on full-time, the offer they made was far too low to accept. The owner of the company made a big deal out of the bonus and at the time I believed him. I held out for $5k more before accepting. Fast forward a year later and I'm really looking forward to this bonus. It was 5% of my salary, basically an extra paycheck. I was expecting at least three times that because of what he said during the negotiation. I started looking that day and am interviewing with two companies. I've since realized that I just don't want to work for consultants anymore. You're being farmed out and your labor is being arbitraged. This incentivizes them to dick you on comp. I know in his mind it's just business, but I don't want that in my life anymore. So while the thesis of this article may hold for a certain segment of the labor market, it certainly doesn't hold for all of them. Some segments just suck. Conflicts of interest in these segments invariably pit line workers against management and no amount of manager cordialness or professionalism will prevent turnover. Sure there are a few workplaces that have ironed out conflicts of interest and so can attract the cream of the crop, these places can build nice engineer caves and then personal relationships rather than endemic conflicts of interest become the dominant cultural factor that drives turnover. But these guys trying to tell the rest of the world's managers how to run a shop is just profoundly naive.
sriku 9y ago
It was ironic to see this title and "here is why I left google" on HN front page at the same time.
Paul_S 9y ago
People leave salaries.
tnolet 9y ago
Not disagreeing with the point made, but why is this "article" (or rehash of other people's management philosophy) on the intercom site? What does it have to do to with them outside the fact they probably have managers. I might be a sour old man, but I honestly don't get these infomercial type blog posts. It makes me have a lesser opinion of companies publishing these types of things, although with intercom their beep boop sound already pretty much destroyed any sympathy. /s
haddr 9y ago
people also leave the environment, so not only their managers, but their peers. managers are somehow reponsible for creating a proper environment, but it is hard to enforce the atmosphere created by the rest of the team...
paul7986 9y ago
I left my big fat paying job after.... - reported a females colleagues non sexual harassment - started to be harassed myself by my direct coworker who insisted I use css lint in the strictest mode. When I disagreed with what lint was saying in the strictest mode he sold to management that I don’t know how to code or do my job. From then on I struggled to change their minds even when linking to things like using negative margins is valid.
oldsmallcorp 9y ago
Not my usual account for obvious reasons, but - I'm on my way out because of the company, not my manager. My current manager is decent, and my previous one was the reason I came to work for this company. The thing that's driving me out is the company's lack of direction. They talk of innovation, but their actions demonstrate that they're more concerned with maintaining the status quo with incremental improvements to aging products. I've spent about 70% of my few years here working on new products that never saw the light of day. That's disheartening. Fool me twice... time to go.
amyjess 9y ago
I have mixed thoughts on this. The one company I quit, I quit in large part because my manager was abusive. A particular tantrum my manager threw was what caused me to apply to several jobs in a fit of pique, and when one of them gave me an offer, I put in my notice. On the other hand, the company was toxic on several levels, the abusive manager was only part of it, and I'd been looking at job postings on and off for months before that incident. The pay was abysmal. Nobody at the company had any insurance (because of this I will never work for a startup again). Company leadership was willing to roll over for a transphobic landlord and throw me under the bus. The company was a young startup without any infrastructure or processes, and pretty much everybody technical had very little professional experience (including both the technical leadership and the rank-and-file; and I say this even though I ended up becoming friends with several of my fellow rank-and-file, most of whom I still talk to to this day). Somehow I got along well with the CTO, but he was very mercurial and there were some people there (including a couple friends of mine) he took a strong personal dislike to for no real reason, and I was always afraid he would turn on me. I definitely quit the company and not just the manager. I still keep up with them and their employees on LinkedIn. One thing I've noticed is that since I left, they've been handing out Director titles like candy, I'm assuming to compensate for their lack of monetary compensation. The company was a disaster on pretty much every level. The one good thing I could say about it was that some of my ex-coworkers there are still friends of mine, but that's a really low bar. Edit: I want to add another story. The company I ended up jumping ship to, I came close to quitting before they laid me off, for reasons that had nothing to do with my manager. My manager was excellent. I liked him a lot. But the work I was doing had nothing whatsoever to do with my skillset. I felt like an idiot compared to my coworkers, I made far less useful contributions than pretty much anybody else at the company (my boss reassured me that he didn't care because he knew the stuff they did was esoteric and was willing to spend years training someone new), and the longer I stayed the more it felt like it was actually harming my career since I was letting my specialty atrophy (and I still thought this even though I'm not a career-minded person!). Ultimately, that decision got taken out of my hands because 1/3 of the company including me got taken out in the only layoff in the company's 20-year history, but if I did quit it would have been despite my manager being awesome, not because of him.
phaus 9y ago
I work on a team that lost about 66% of its members in the last year and a half. Every single one of them liked our manager, but the way the organization works at a higher level was making everyone's life miserable. People absolutely leave companies because of the company. I've also had toxic managers at other organizations, so I agree a manager CAN drive an employee away, but that's not always or even usually the case.
- cgore 9y ago
  I think that too is on the company. A good one-level-up manager will check up on their underlings, the managers in question, and figure out who's good and bad and resolve the situation.
- crescentfresh 9y ago
  > but the way the organization works at a higher level was making everyone's life miserable Isn't this attributing the cause of leaving to management as well, just not direct managers?
awefpoij 9y ago
My experience has been the complete opposite. I'm grossly underpaid and I know for a fact that my manager is fighting for me to stay here. The company (HR and upper management) and myself (I should not have accepted such a low starting salary) are solely to blame.
rconti 9y ago
Funny, I just left a job where new management was installed and promptly lost ~12/30 people in the span of 9 months. Not only was life markedly worse on day 1, it got worse every time another quality coworker or line manager left. You'd think this would send a signal to someone that a mistake had been made. Nope!
hkmurakami 9y ago
Do people join managers, not companies? Serious question btw. I think such a scenario would be vastly superior to the general "join a black box" type of recruiting we have today.
husamia 9y ago
I can relate to this as a manager and as being managed. I been looking into this, do you think Self-Managed types of Organizations reduce the issues with this type of problem of out of date communication style from top down? we are in the 21st century. We don't need to have information coming from top down we need information coming the the bottom up. Our smart devices can do better job than a human manager!

528 points by theyeti 9y ago

Companies can be bad too, believe it.

Likewise, there probably isn't such a thing as a 10X developer, but I totally believe 10X managers exist (they provide cover, they have empathy, they are able to lead people who otherwise aren't very manageable). I've only met very few of them in my career, most managers are 1X or even negative.

jclarkcom 9y ago
10x developers definitely exist, quite amazing to work with them.
- mianos 9y ago
  But 0.1X managers are always telling us they are a myth. Do the math. :)
  - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    It’s the 0.1x manager who generally demands rock stars to make up for their inability to manage.
- hailk 9y ago
  What traits did you find in them. How do those traits convert with experience. Say, for example what would, according to you, make a 3-5 year experienced web developer 10x?
  - Scea91 9y ago
    Easy. It's not about LOC written but about making the right decisions. One bad decision can cost you months of work. Also many people are not even able to finish more complex projects. I am just not sure if they are 1X developers or 0.1X developers.
- sifoo 9y ago
  It's not magic; it's vast amounts of experience; writing more code than, and twisting brains in ways that, normal people can't even imagine; and sticking with it for decades. I have no idea if I'm 5x or 10x or whatever, what I do know is that it's extremely rare to come across people who are more dedicated to the craft and/or have invested more in their skills.
BuckRogers 9y ago
That's because management is one of those fields that most people think they're qualified for. If you got arms, legs and are literate, many think they're cut out for it. Same goes for teaching or education in general. So many wannabe educators writing or producing programming lessons that clearly have never studied education theory. A notorious one or two out there as well. Art or professional grade creative endeavors are probably the same way for the vast majority. Unless you're some sort of savant, no one gets away with shortcutting the learning involved with anything. It's just kind of blissful ignorance. You don't know what you don't know and it becomes a strength since most are too unmotivated to ever do things the right way, in a well-informed, disciplined manner regardless. To those who are in those fields though, it's painfully obvious.
- bradknowles 9y ago
  With respect, no -- not everyone thinks that. I would be a horrible manager. And I know plenty of people who feel the same way about themselves. I am totally happy leaving that job to someone who is better suited for it.
  - perl4ever 9y ago
    Many people may not think they are qualified to be a manager. However, it seems plausible to me that of the people who think they are qualified to be a manager, most are not.
    - TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
      It seems obvious that coding and managing are different jobs, and being good at one is not associated with being good at the other. Good software team management is a superset of coding skill. Not only does the manager need to have reasonable - not necessarily outstanding - developer skills, but also needs to have good people skills, good political skills, a feel for context and strategy, and an ability to improvise creative solutions across all these domains. The idea that someone who is good at coding should be promoted to management automatically seems bizarre. It's like expecting someone who is good at mountain biking to be good at driving a tank. So is the idea that management can be measured with "objective" metrics, such as locs, time on/off, bugs killed, and so on. In fact it's horrifically difficult to quantify the business ROI of software teams or of individual developers. ROI often depends on decisions made higher up the food chain, and it's even harder to get upper management to take responsibility for the consequences of bad decisions and bad attitudes.
glangdale 9y ago
I agree with you that 10X managers exist, but it's utter nonsense to claim that 10X developers don't exist. I've met people who are possibly at the 100X level; it's worth remembering that some tasks cannot be done by an average developer with any amount of time. I imagine that there are probably tasks that don't allow the 10X or 100X to show through; anything basic and repetitive enough (or so heavily specified that the developer's job is essentially "typing").
- ionforce 9y ago
  What's an example of 100X behavior?
  - glangdale 9y ago
    100X developers can straightforwardly - sometimes - find solutions to problems that are simple, elegant and fast. This often means that the things that they do are not only cleaner than the solutions produced by weak(er) engineers, but also require less complexity to implement them whether at the organizational level (e.g. because the task is being done by 1 person in 2 hours, rather than 4 people in 200+ person hours, there isn't any time spent on meetings) or at the technical level (e.g. because the task now runs better on a single computer, rather than a cluster or threaded machine, it no longer requires parallelization and a distributed system). Sometimes this also comes about by a deep knowledge of available algorithms and systems, so while a naive programmer might start flailing around like a dog with their head stuck in a bucket, an experienced person might recognize the problem as an Integer Linear Programming case, etc. There are plenty of cases where no-one is 100x, of course.
yarg 9y ago
I really don't like the concept of a 10X developer - it implies linear scaling. If you keep writing very similar implementations of very similar things (without actively damaging the code-base) you may very well be an O(n) developer. You keep working at the same pace regardless. If you are a developer of some calibar, the work that you've already done will feed back into the work that you're doing - making you an O(log(n)) developer, until the work levels out and you slip back toward o(n). Then there's the other end of the stick, the idiot who has no business writing code, but who management keeps around because he's cheap in the short term. Everything he touches turn to shit, each change corrupts the code base just a little more, and each change to the corrupted code takes an amount of time proportional to the level of corruption. This is the O(k^n) developer, and he needs to be stopped.
- thrwwyquest123 9y ago
  How do I know if I am an O(k^n) developer? My first "software engineer" job I did absolutely nothing but write update scripts, incredibly minute fixes to 10k+ line stored procedures and then helped watch deployments. I left that one for a new one, and I feel very slow compared to my coworker and I know that most of the time my designs for new features are extremely lacking. Should I leave my position since I fear I am impacting his ability to have high quality code?
  - yarg 9y ago
    In my experience the worst developers never ask if if they are doing things wrong and what that might be. Look at the chages you're making to the code - are they of a quality comparable to what was already there, do they integrate cleanly, are you coding with a style that fits in with the surrounding code? If not, what could you be doing better and why aren't you already doing it? It may take longer in the short term, but give consideration to your development practices. Eventually you'll find yourself more quickly writing a higher quality of code that's more maintainable with fewer defects.
- Humdeee 9y ago
  > the idiot who has no business writing code > Everything he touches turn to shit > he needs to be stopped. You'll never take me alive.
_pmf_ 9y ago
Agreed completely. I've had a manager who was able to really leverage persons to create whole new verticals (that were actually profitable), but they hinged on single person's continued interest and commitment. He was borderline psychopathic (in the sense of being extremely manipulative on a personal level), though, and while the work I've done has been the most interesting in my career, the atmosphere was emotionally draining on a very personal level for most of us who worked for him. However, I'm not sure that there exist 10x managers that are not manipulators / psychological exploiters.

quickthrower2 9y ago

You don't just leave a bad manager. You escape! Emotionally it is deflating, defeating, a real grind that affects your whole life if your work situation sucks.

lovich 9y ago

I've definitely left companies and not managers before. To be fair it's usually because my manager's manager's manager was an asshole who thought 1% and an attaboy would be enough to keep people when our rent had gone up 7% and neighboring companies we're offering 50% more. Also to be fair, my managers were good enough that I stayed 6 months longer than I would have with even a neutral manager

a13n 9y ago

I had a great manager at my last job but left because the role wasn't the right risk/reward profile I was looking for.

everdev 9y ago

I've left a good manager for a higher salary.

justboxing 9y ago
Congrats! How is the new manager at the higher salary? Equally good? or Bad?
- everdev 9y ago
  It was years ago, but everything worked out :)

praneshp 9y ago

I left my first job because the company(Yahoo) was burning. My manager was great, I'd love to work for her again. I left a few months earlier than I needed to though, because her new manager was an asshole.

ravenstine 9y ago

It's probably easier for managers to overrate their skills and performance because the problems they cause are often not overt; if parts of their team are underperforming, the knee-jerk assessment is that "there's something wrong with Joe" rather than "there's something wrong with our process" or "there's something wrong with what I'm doing." Some of my worst experiences with management involved cases of serious micromanagement. I'd say if you're micromanaging, there's a 99.9 percent chance that you're a bozo and you don't belong in the position you're in even if you had initially earned it. You have trust issues with your employees and you've failed to build a team and environment that allows people to effectively manage themselves. The best mangers I've known are the ones who are minimally involved. People who are given the space to make choices, be creative, and fail every so often, will often figure out how to manage themselves. I'd argue that people usually leave both managers and companies because companies too often fail to recognize the broken patterns of managers. This is anecdotal, but I worked at one place where more than half of the development team(those with the most talent) quit within a span of 2 weeks, and somehow upper management decided it was not the fault of our tyrannical manager and instead replaced those positions with junior developers they could underpay and abuse. It's all the more insulting when you can point out the problems and provide actual solutions, and the aloof men in suits on Mount Olympus allow the problem to fester. I might have stayed for another year had they booted out our manager. The fact that most people have stories of terrible management is astounding, and it doesn't say very much for whatever training managers receive(if any?).

Greed 9y ago
The trust and minimal involvement are really key here, the best managers I've ever worked with have been enablers rather than taskmasters. Managers that remove roadblocks, provide you with exactly the tools you need, insulate you from unnecessary cross-chatter, and just let you kill it with as few distractions as possible. Those sorts of enablers are how you not only maintain, but increase the output of your developers.
lars512 9y ago
> The best mangers I've known are the ones who are minimally involved. People who are given the space to make choices, be creative, and fail every so often, will often figure out how to manage themselves. In those cases, did you feel you shared values with those managers? Or were they indifferent to your values, and just left you alone?

pan69 9y ago

The best software teams I've worked on didn't have managers, they had facilitators.

sloxy 9y ago
bingo. people who have natural leadership qualities can facilitate without thinking it harms their worth. too often, unsuitable people will be thrust into a management/leadership type role just because there is a (sudden, genuine) void that needs feeling(sudden growth /sudden departure).
balls187 9y ago
For self organizing teams, and teams with motivated people, servitude leadership style works really well. Ensure the teams goals and direction is clearly set, and just remove roadblocks as needed. But there are other types of teams, and other situations where other styles are more effective.

mychael 9y ago

There is an important distinction that hasn't been discussed much: - The reason people decide to resign. - The reason people begin to consider resigning. In my experience, bad management is what usually kicks off the whole thought process, but other factors are what cement the decision (like an offer with higher pay, better title, higher prestige company etc.)

k__ 9y ago

Problem is, managers shape companies. Last company I left went bankrupt and got bought by a VC who replaced the whole management. The new managers were running around telling people how to do things because of the "company spirit". A few people, including me, were in the company for over 7 years and we knew the company spirit, because well, we lived and formed it. Now some newly hired MBAs try to tell me that I'm wrong? The bankruptcy lead many people to leave. The rest left because of the new management. Now the company has the old name and product, but noone of the people that created or formed it remained.

Clubber 9y ago
Yes, that's a phenomenon I've experienced twice now. Great small company getting acquired by large company. Managers / execs of large company commence dismantling whatever made the small company efficient / competent. I have some theories as to why this pattern occurs. Perhaps it's because the managers get paid a lot and feel the need to do something to prove they're worth it. Maybe managers are trying to cut costs, product be damned, to get bonuses. It could be because big companies typically have a lower grade of developers on average than small companies that are good enough to get acquired, and lower grade developers need to be babysat more. I dunno. It sucks though.
maxxxxx 9y ago
"ow the company has the old name and product, but noone of the people that created or formed it remained." That's probably by design.
- k__ 9y ago
  Don't you say? Just because people do things intentionally doesn't make it any better...

Greed 9y ago

One of the issues I've had that isn't mentioned here is the value of mutual trust. Communication and trust are the two cornerstones of a really solid manager <-> managee relationship in my experience. Whether that lack of trust manifests itself as micro-management, constant check-ins, or a constant threat of surveillance it can easily turn an above average performer into an apathetic and demoralized employee. I used to work remotely for a company that spanned more than a few timezones, with a wonderful daily team manager and a not-so-great weekly department manager. Learning that my minutes and output were constantly monitored completely destroyed my trust with the latter, and had me searching within the week. My reaction to that was so strong I actually considered it a fortune when I was laid off for unrelated reasons rather than having to quit. I would be reprimanded for signing on five minutes later than usual despite being on a team of individuals that spanned multiple countries, and would get a questioning ping if I was offline for more than 10 minutes (especially problematic if you're the type of programmer to write or plan code on the whiteboard / paper first). Extremely draining to deal with that sort of nonsense and mistrust. Please, managers of the world, trust your employees! You have performance metrics for a reason!

crdoconnor 9y ago
IME this kind of experience comes when you have a manager who has no fundamental understanding of what it is that they are managing and has no particular reason to trust you. A manager who can monitor your output by reading your pull requests simply won't engage in this type of behavior whereas a manager who can't will usually instinctively gravitate to terrible metrics like "does he show dedication by being in at 9am rather than 9:05am"? Managers should form a very deep understanding of whom to trust and why or understand on a very deep level what it is that they are managing. Managers who cannot do either of those things should be terminated with prejudice. >You have performance metrics for a reason! As far as developing software goes, every single performance metric is terrible.
- subsubsub 9y ago
  Is turning up on time for your job a terrible metric? To me being on time is just a very basic low level requirement of being a professional. As the initial commenter said: trust goes both ways. Turning up on time is a good way to show your manager that you can be trusted. Edit: Actually, turning up on time may not make your manager trust you more, but turning up late will definitely make them trust you less.

gaius 9y ago

That manager may not be your line manager, they may be several levels above, they may even by the CEO. So actually, it is “the company”.

lliamander 9y ago

I have only ever left good managers. I've had bad managers, but it was only under good managers that I was fully enabled to do my best work - work that would give me the confidence (and the resume fodder) to pitch myself to a new company for better pay. That may seem disloyal to those good managers, but I never left on a whim. It was always an agonizing process. But it was also always necessary. My former managers have never held it against me, and I now have connections with a number of great managers who would hire me without question if I was ever looking again (and they know I would work for them in a heartbeat). What always happened was that it became evident that my interests and my company's interest had diverged, whether it was a lack of opportunity for advancement, the company was going under, the product was a non-starter, or upper-management was bent on self-sabotage. EDIT: Added missing words

toomanybeersies 9y ago

At my previous job, I left due to the company, not the management. My direct supervisor was great. He was a good manager on most levels. I left because the company had no future, they weren't going bankrupt, but they weren't growing either. I never got a pay rise, probably never would. My benefits actually shrunk as time went on, staff social functions were cut (e.g. team lunches), use of networking funds became more restricted, and my work environment became less flexible. In fact, the only reason I considered staying was my manager and coworkers. People leave poor working environments, whether it's a company or a manager causing that poor environment.

murukesh_s 9y ago
Yea, its too easy to say people leave managers, but it was never in my case. I think it varies between industry. With the software companies, the churn is mostly due to folks looking out for better opportunities.. Me personally almost always looked outside due to availability of better opportunities. The argument that people leave managers makes sense only if you are in the best possible job/company you can get with your skill set (which is a very small %) and you somehow got a rift with the manager big enough to leave. But it could be different in other domains/industries where people stick with the same company till their retirement..
speby 9y ago
As somberi commented awhile ago, people leave due to managers -> company -> cause, in roughly that order. So even good managers will lose people if the company has traction issues or the cause is unclear or there is no future. So it absolutely can happen and it is fair to say that a single manager's performance, in isolation, is not the only reason for retention.

somberi 9y ago

I have been managing large teams (Anywhere from 100 to 300 people) and in my experience I would phrase it differently. 1. In a going concern, which has found traction, a manager is often the _reason_ for people to leave the company. 2. In a company that is not finding traction, or the larger view of its direction is obfuscated, managers are the reason people _stay_ back to work. This manager being the end-all of association comes from military knowledge that you fight because of allegiance to your battalion, cause and the country - in that order. In an knowledge enterprise, these constructs exist, but with almost equal weightage. The best manager cannot make an employee stay back if the company is not going anywhere, or if the cause is not evident. The worst manager will lose employees even if the company is going bonkers.

jondubois 9y ago
Totally agree. If the company has enough traction and I have a decent shares/options package with a clear exit strategy in sight then I'd stay even if my boss was a wild baboon and my job mostly involved shoveling monkey shit. If you're a manager in a high traction company and you're losing employees regularly, you should seriously consider finding another career.
xerophyte12932 9y ago
You have been directly managing over a hundred people? That just sounds like textbook bad heirarchy
- cpfohl 9y ago
  I didn't interpret their comment that way. It's common to have a handful of managers under you, but reference to their reports as your managees as well. That easily reaches 100-200 people.
- jpatokal 9y ago
  They did not claim to directly manage 300 people, and it's somewhat bizarre to assume they did.
  - 9y ago

sifoo 9y ago

There's a lot of talk about full stack developers lately, I'm still waiting to find the first full stack manager. Someone who's visionary, yet realistic; confident, yet empathic; powerful, yet humble. I feel like there's some truth to the saying that the best leaders are those who don't consider themselves fit to lead.

perl4ever 9y ago
I've seen a variety of managers doing bad jobs, and it never makes me think I could do it better. It makes me think about managerial problems, and how they are inherently difficult because of conflicts of interest. On the other hand, I got tired of technical problems, because the real problems always seemed to be managerial where I worked.

DaniFong 9y ago

people drop out of shitty things that undervalue them, which is much of the modern world. welcome to the world, 2.0.

unabst 9y ago

The manager is your interface to management. It's their job to tell you what you need to know and what to do. To an employee, they're the face of the business. But at the end of the day, if it's the people that make up a business, then I'd question if they are not the same thing. I asked a new acquaintance of mine about something bothering me. I asked him, "so, how often do you fire people? How do find the right people for your businesses?" "I hardly ever have to fire anyone," he said. "I ask them questions, and they leave." Damn. And the thing is, this pressure isn't faked or manufactured. This isn't anyone trying to fire someone. This is just someone needing work done, and answers. No business wants anyone incompetent, yet, it happens, because of interviewees lying through their teeth and not knowing any better. So they walk in and fail to do the exact job they won for themselves, then come the questions. Now they lose their place and have to leave, knowing they got the job by accident. There is plenty of real pressure to go around in a real business, and we avoid managerial roles because we know the stakes are higher. We know that having a manager is "safer" than being one, because having a manager is having someone responsible for you, and for your well being. It's how America figured out how to hire from the abundant talent pool of those who can't handle tough responsibilities and stay happy on their own, and those who'd rather have it easier. It's the luxury of being managed. But above that, it gets even worse. Fewer luxuries, just higher pay. Just think of all the bullets the CEO has to catch with their teeth every day. And wen they fail, it's news.

perl4ever 9y ago
Being a manager is about being loyal to the company and not individuals. It pays more precisely because it causes pain to peoples' consciences to put an abstraction above fellow employees. Talking about a CEO catching bullets in their teeth is ridiculously inflated language. Why use such imagery? Because the mission of a typical company does not sufficiently compensate for the guilt produced by putting the organization ahead of individuals.
- scaryclam 9y ago
  I usually think of the managerial responsibilities to be in this order: - Company, because without it there's no employees - The team you're managing, because teams are more than just a single person - The individuals in the team, since they're the one's that can make a team better It seriously sucks to have to think of things in that order sometimes. I've never been involved in firing a person I didn't like. Though, when it comes down to it it's not fair for the team to suffer because of an individual, no matter how much they are liked, and it's not fair for all of the teams to suffer because one of them can't cut it. That's not to say there's no wiggle room though. I'll fight tooth and nail for an employee or team if I think it's a management fault that they've not performed (especially if I'm the manager screwing up) and will try to take a long term view of their value, not just the next quarter. Of course, all of this could be making me a bad manager. I've been put into managing people by virtue of being technically strong, not being a great people herder. I really do wish companies would spend as much time mentoring and helping managers get better at hands on managing as they do other tasks.

CalRobert 9y ago

Tellingly, when I interviewed with Intercom their "culture fit" manager was extremely rude and condescending, and constantly interrupted. Everyone else was polite, but if this is the person who gets to decide "yeah, they'd fit in here" that's a pretty huge problem. People turn you down because of managers, not companies, too.

sloxy 9y ago
Funnily enough, I like Intercom's hiring process (as it appears on paper). But...my real life experience was quite different. Interviewed by a precocious child who didn't have interview skills.
- CalRobert 9y ago
  Intercom does a fantastic job with content marketing. I'm not sure how much it reflects reality, though. Again, most of the people I talked to were polite; it was just one extremely off-putting interviewer. I nearly thought it must be some kind of perverse test to see how I handle jerks.

korginator 9y ago

People leave the environment, not just the manager, though the manager is a big piece of the puzzle. I quit my last employer because the manager was an abusive bully with severe trust issues who would constantly threaten, abuse and demoralize people, but HR was also to blame since they did not lift a finger to address the issue even though this manager's behavior was widely known throughout the company for decades. I've also left a great manager in the past since the business was going nowhere. I've left a good manager and good team because I was very underpaid in another company.

noureen 9y ago

this article seems like a good strategy that attracts employees to apply for a position at intercom

nishantvyas 9y ago

#1. People get hired for what they are good, their skills and then get promoted (to management) for same technical/IC skills not for the MGMT skills. No MGMT ramp-up. No MGMT tools. No MGMT framework. You are now tasked to lead a team. it's surely will fail. #2. Next the mindset. Typical mindset when you move from technical (or any IC) role to MGMT and the higher you go in MGMT should completely change.... unfortunately its not so easy to give up the control. MGMT is about making others successful... giving up your control to others is very frightening and often causes identity issues... moving from do it all (as an IC) to ask_and_inspire is not easy... #3. Assuming you overcome these two... typical problem of MGMT/leadership is they try to find, "What's the matter?" where as the focus should always be on "What matters to you (an individual/ICs in team)"

rich_archbold 9y ago

Hey all, I'm the blog author, Rich Archbold from Intercom. Just to clarify … I wrote this blog, with the exaggerated / cliched title, to try to speak to the large cohort of over-confident, under-skilled and often lacking-enough-self-awareness, managers out there. I was (and often still am) a member of this cohort. Being a great manager all the time is really hard and almost impossible IMHO. The goal was to hopefully try and generate some more self-awareness and introspection and thus make life a little fairer, more pleasant, more growth-oriented and hopefully more successful for all concerned. I wasn't trying to deny or downplay that people also leave their jobs for all of the other reasons highlighted by folks here. Thanks, Rich.

nishantvyas 9y ago
My take based on my experience is, #1. People get hired for what they are good, their skills and then get promoted (to management) for same technical/IC skills not for the MGMT skills. No MGMT ramp-up. No MGMT tools. No MGMT framework. You are now tasked to lead a team. it's surely will fail. #2. Next the mindset. Typical mindset when you move from technical (or any IC) role to MGMT and the higher you go in MGMT should completely change.... unfortunately its not so easy to give up the control. MGMT is about making others successful... giving up your control to others is very frightening and often causes identity issues... moving from do it all (as an IC) to ask_and_inspire is not easy... #3. Assuming you overcome these two... typical problem of MGMT/leadership is they try to find, "What's the matter?" where as the focus should always be on "What matters to you (an individual/ICs in team)"
brlewis 9y ago
Hey Rich, I enjoyed the article and IMHO it did well in encouraging self-awareness and introspection. I hope it goes far.
jumpkickhit 9y ago
I liked the "tracking the dust in your phone" part. Hehe

gadders 9y ago

I can't help feeling that sometimes saying "People leave managers, not companies" is something senior company management tell themselves to absolve themselves of blame for staff turnover. I could be managed by the best manager in the world, but if I'm paid 20% below market rate I'm going to leave for a better paid job.

spodek 9y ago

"People join good projects and leave bad managers" is how I phrase it, quoting a business school professor and author, Michael Feiner. I wrote about how to use the perspective to help prepare for job searches and interviews, and to enjoy your time at work more: http://joshuaspodek.com/people-join-good-projects-leave-2 http://joshuaspodek.com/people-join-good-projects-leave-2

notacoward 9y ago

There's often a third possibility; leaving groups. At a small enough startup they're effectively the same, but I've seen distinct groups form in companies as small as 20. While it's true that a manager can affect the quality of the entire group, they're only one factor. High-performing fun group with a ho-hum manager? I'll probably stay. Dysfunctional bunch of ho-hum peers with a really good manager? That was my last job, and it's not my current job for exactly that reason. Especially at a larger company, managers might be constrained wrt hiring and firing, reviews and raises, pushing back against misguided product-management decisions, etc. Even a good manager might not be able to deal with these issues quickly enough to prevent attrition. I've seen some really good managers, people I'd worked with before and who have been superstars at other companies, burn out trying. That's sort of leaving the company that hobbled the manager, but other managers and other groups within the same company were doing fine so I'd call it leaving the group.

ZenoArrow 9y ago

I think this article misses an important point, which is that managers, or at least line managers, are often the messenger for decisions made in upper management. If I think back on the jobs I've had in the past, it's very rare for me to have issues with line managers. However, I had serious doubts about the competency of upper management in multiple companies that I've worked for. In this case, unless upper management recognise the problems that the line manager is highlighting, there's often not much more the line manager can do. Seeing as upper are (in my experience) frequently out of touch with the repercussions of their decisions, line managers should accept that they can only do what they can with what they're given (either that or leave).

dominotw 9y ago
I am this exact situation. I love my manager, simply one of the best i've ever worked with. But he is simply is messenger for poor decisions that are made by couple of incompetent people above him. I am not sure what can be done about incompetent people being promoted to position of power where they make horrendous misinformed decisions. Often its too late before the magnitude of their fuckups is visible, usually these people move on to different orgs with their pumped up resumes while lower level people scramble to undo the damage.
- corpMaverick 9y ago
  In corporate IT, it is an accepted practice to promote people who don't have hands on experience, or who did the job 20 years ago and haven't followed up on the industry trends. They have a hard time admitting that they don't know and refuse to listen to the competent people in their teams. They don't even know who is competent and who is faking it.
  - organsnyder 9y ago
    Even with leaders with more recent/relevant hands-on experience, it can be difficult. If a leader continues to weigh in on technical decisions without understanding the power dynamics inherent to their position, bad decisions and demoralization of individual contributors (who feel steamrolled) can result.

jdsknene 9y ago

No, people leave companies too. Using my throwaway account because I don't want my name attached to this. I went contract-to-hire at my current job. When it came time to come on full-time, the offer they made was far too low to accept. The owner of the company made a big deal out of the bonus and at the time I believed him. I held out for $5k more before accepting. Fast forward a year later and I'm really looking forward to this bonus. It was 5% of my salary, basically an extra paycheck. I was expecting at least three times that because of what he said during the negotiation. I started looking that day and am interviewing with two companies. I've since realized that I just don't want to work for consultants anymore. You're being farmed out and your labor is being arbitraged. This incentivizes them to dick you on comp. I know in his mind it's just business, but I don't want that in my life anymore. So while the thesis of this article may hold for a certain segment of the labor market, it certainly doesn't hold for all of them. Some segments just suck. Conflicts of interest in these segments invariably pit line workers against management and no amount of manager cordialness or professionalism will prevent turnover. Sure there are a few workplaces that have ironed out conflicts of interest and so can attract the cream of the crop, these places can build nice engineer caves and then personal relationships rather than endemic conflicts of interest become the dominant cultural factor that drives turnover. But these guys trying to tell the rest of the world's managers how to run a shop is just profoundly naive.

sriku 9y ago

It was ironic to see this title and "here is why I left google" on HN front page at the same time.

Paul_S 9y ago

People leave salaries.

tnolet 9y ago

Not disagreeing with the point made, but why is this "article" (or rehash of other people's management philosophy) on the intercom site? What does it have to do to with them outside the fact they probably have managers. I might be a sour old man, but I honestly don't get these infomercial type blog posts. It makes me have a lesser opinion of companies publishing these types of things, although with intercom their beep boop sound already pretty much destroyed any sympathy. /s

haddr 9y ago

people also leave the environment, so not only their managers, but their peers. managers are somehow reponsible for creating a proper environment, but it is hard to enforce the atmosphere created by the rest of the team...

paul7986 9y ago

I left my big fat paying job after.... - reported a females colleagues non sexual harassment - started to be harassed myself by my direct coworker who insisted I use css lint in the strictest mode. When I disagreed with what lint was saying in the strictest mode he sold to management that I don’t know how to code or do my job. From then on I struggled to change their minds even when linking to things like using negative margins is valid.

oldsmallcorp 9y ago

Not my usual account for obvious reasons, but - I'm on my way out because of the company, not my manager. My current manager is decent, and my previous one was the reason I came to work for this company. The thing that's driving me out is the company's lack of direction. They talk of innovation, but their actions demonstrate that they're more concerned with maintaining the status quo with incremental improvements to aging products. I've spent about 70% of my few years here working on new products that never saw the light of day. That's disheartening. Fool me twice... time to go.

amyjess 9y ago

I have mixed thoughts on this. The one company I quit, I quit in large part because my manager was abusive. A particular tantrum my manager threw was what caused me to apply to several jobs in a fit of pique, and when one of them gave me an offer, I put in my notice. On the other hand, the company was toxic on several levels, the abusive manager was only part of it, and I'd been looking at job postings on and off for months before that incident. The pay was abysmal. Nobody at the company had any insurance (because of this I will never work for a startup again). Company leadership was willing to roll over for a transphobic landlord and throw me under the bus. The company was a young startup without any infrastructure or processes, and pretty much everybody technical had very little professional experience (including both the technical leadership and the rank-and-file; and I say this even though I ended up becoming friends with several of my fellow rank-and-file, most of whom I still talk to to this day). Somehow I got along well with the CTO, but he was very mercurial and there were some people there (including a couple friends of mine) he took a strong personal dislike to for no real reason, and I was always afraid he would turn on me. I definitely quit the company and not just the manager. I still keep up with them and their employees on LinkedIn. One thing I've noticed is that since I left, they've been handing out Director titles like candy, I'm assuming to compensate for their lack of monetary compensation. The company was a disaster on pretty much every level. The one good thing I could say about it was that some of my ex-coworkers there are still friends of mine, but that's a really low bar. Edit: I want to add another story. The company I ended up jumping ship to, I came close to quitting before they laid me off, for reasons that had nothing to do with my manager. My manager was excellent. I liked him a lot. But the work I was doing had nothing whatsoever to do with my skillset. I felt like an idiot compared to my coworkers, I made far less useful contributions than pretty much anybody else at the company (my boss reassured me that he didn't care because he knew the stuff they did was esoteric and was willing to spend years training someone new), and the longer I stayed the more it felt like it was actually harming my career since I was letting my specialty atrophy (and I still thought this even though I'm not a career-minded person!). Ultimately, that decision got taken out of my hands because 1/3 of the company including me got taken out in the only layoff in the company's 20-year history, but if I did quit it would have been despite my manager being awesome, not because of him.

phaus 9y ago

I work on a team that lost about 66% of its members in the last year and a half. Every single one of them liked our manager, but the way the organization works at a higher level was making everyone's life miserable. People absolutely leave companies because of the company. I've also had toxic managers at other organizations, so I agree a manager CAN drive an employee away, but that's not always or even usually the case.

cgore 9y ago
I think that too is on the company. A good one-level-up manager will check up on their underlings, the managers in question, and figure out who's good and bad and resolve the situation.
crescentfresh 9y ago
> but the way the organization works at a higher level was making everyone's life miserable Isn't this attributing the cause of leaving to management as well, just not direct managers?

awefpoij 9y ago

My experience has been the complete opposite. I'm grossly underpaid and I know for a fact that my manager is fighting for me to stay here. The company (HR and upper management) and myself (I should not have accepted such a low starting salary) are solely to blame.

rconti 9y ago

Funny, I just left a job where new management was installed and promptly lost ~12/30 people in the span of 9 months. Not only was life markedly worse on day 1, it got worse every time another quality coworker or line manager left. You'd think this would send a signal to someone that a mistake had been made. Nope!

hkmurakami 9y ago

Do people join managers, not companies? Serious question btw. I think such a scenario would be vastly superior to the general "join a black box" type of recruiting we have today.

husamia 9y ago

I can relate to this as a manager and as being managed. I been looking into this, do you think Self-Managed types of Organizations reduce the issues with this type of problem of out of date communication style from top down? we are in the 21st century. We don't need to have information coming from top down we need information coming the the bottom up. Our smart devices can do better job than a human manager!