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I'll name the best manager I ever had, since she unexpectedly passed away nearly three years ago to our team's (and company's) great sadness. Margaret Thieleman

I'll name the best manager I ever had, since she unexpectedly passed away nearly three years ago to our team's (and company's) great sadness. Margaret Thielemann was a QA manager for nearly 10 years at Esri (she previously headed up QA at PeopleSoft before its acquisition by Oracle), and I reported to her for all of those 10 years, during which I learned and mastered web development by scoping, designing, and building several internal web apps. She hired me as a kid with little corporate experience, straight out of college, and took me "under her wing" and patiently taught me the ropes of thriving in a corporate environment. Margaret had all the hallmarks of an incredibly great manager. She hired for potential (not past achievement) and gave employees every opportunity to grow and pursue our passion as developers. This allowed me to pivot and grow into web development, which was not in my job description or past experience. She never micromanaged, even when a deadline was approaching. She never demoed a project or took credit for something she didn't build herself. Like my teammates, I had to demo every product I built -- which was challenging but forced me to grow in public speaking skills (and she coached me the first few times). This also allowed me and other team members to gain recognition throughout the department. She very effectively protected us from HR and whoever else wasn't on the team so we could focus on our work. A few times someone tried to ask us for help with someone else's project without asking her first--she was furious. She also fought (very effectively) with HR and management to get us raises that better reflected our increasing market value. I owe my career and present livelihood largely to Margaret and the opportunities she provided me. I'd be remiss not to acknowledge God's obvious provision to me in her. Thanks so much Margaret, and thank you Lord.

brennebeck 8y ago
Thanks for tale. Definitely interesting and I suspect similar to the other ‘best managers’.
solipsism 8y ago
She never demoed a project or took credit for something she didn't build herself. Like my teammates, I had to demo every product I built That sounds strange. Didn't you ever work on a product with other developers? Who demos in that case? And what would be wrong with a manager demoing a product that was built by a team he/she manages? It seems to imply that the manager should have no sense of ownership, but a good manager is absolutely crucial to the success of a project. Taken to the extreme, it would imply a CEO of a company could never demo a company product he didn't "build himself".
- kbar13 8y ago
  fairly common. team builds a product that other teams use, so you do a demo. it's obviously better for the engineer to demo their own product. not only does it feel like you have control over your own product but it also gives a face to the project.
  - solipsism 8y ago
    it's obviously better for the engineer to demo their own product Again.. rarely does an engineer create a product in a vacuum. Usually a few disciplines contribute to the project, and a manager can be absolutely instrumental. And of the various creators of a product should be candidates to demo a thing. The right person certainly depends on the nature of the product, the team dynamics, the audience of the demo, etc. I for one wouldn't want to work somewhere with some kind of rigid "engineer X owns product Y, manager Z is just a manager" kind of culture.
    - TimTheTinker 8y ago
      > Again.. rarely does an engineer create a product in a vacuum. That may be rare, but that’s what people on our team did... multiple times. For my own part, for each of several products, I wrote the project charter, interviewed potential users and stakeholders, created UI comps, built the app (database, server side, front-end), managed the server VMs and infrastructure, negotiated and built 3rd party integrations (when necessary), wrote the documentation, gave the demos, supported users, and released updates for years afterwards based on feedback. It wasn’t a culture thing as much as a necessity. We were a team of 10 with 3-5 projects in development at all times, and nearly 30 in maintenance/support after several years. And that on top of normal QA activities. In retrospect, I think Margaret intentionally had us handling such breadth individually in order to set us up for success as much as possible (several of us she had hired straight out of college). I didn’t realize it at the time, but the QA team didn’t have to do all that stuff to begin with. The demand for it only began to really increase after we had released several projects that had a significant positive impact on the department.
- pavlov 8y ago
wingerlang 8y ago
90% of these things also applies to my best manager.
- blablabla123 8y ago
  Same for me, although the best manager thing applied only to 10% of my jobs ;) I haven't met any manager in years that hires for potential.
the_clarence 8y ago
I see some qualities from past manager: - push you to your limits (public speaking) - shield you from management/bigcorp bullshit - hire better people than themselves - don’t take credit from you
- arethuza 8y ago
  "shield you from management/bigcorp bullshit" I've heard that memorably described as managers either being "shit umbrellas" or "shit funnels".
  - iagooar 8y ago
    What I ask myself is: why do corps allow to become places where shit is being thrown around, instead of productive work and cooperation.
    - blowski 8y ago
      For the same reason we end up with shit codebases - a combination of ignorance, incompetence, egos, politics, "just-this-once", laziness, and because sometimes it really is the right thing to do.
    - nathantotten 8y ago
      You have to remember that giant corporations are actually many small teams trying to work on their own problems. So the “shit” to one team may very well be mission critical to another team. Part of the manager’s job is basically deciding when it makes sense for two teams to work together (I.e. let the “shit” through) and when it doesn’t make sense and shield the team so they can focus on their work.
      - ryandrake 8y ago
        And at smaller organizations “shit” can take on different forms. I’ve seen a lot of “executive indecision” shit. Where the CEO or some big shot leader wakes up every week with a totally different idea and he thinks the engineers should drop everything and start working on it right away. The best managers can talk him off the ledge and let their team focus without even seeing this chaos.
JepZ 8y ago
Most of what you say are qualities I like managers to have too, but 'someone tried to ask us for help with someone else's project without asking her first--she was furious.' is a quality I do not value. I mean, protecting your people is one thing (an essential quality), but being furious because someone in need of help asked in the wrong order doesn't foster cooperation beyond the borders of the own team (causing silo mentality). I don't know the companies culture and the people who asked for help, so maybe it was a good reaction at the time, but in general, I would advise being cooperative towards other departments.
- MaxBarraclough 8y ago
  > protecting your people is one thing (an essential quality), but being furious because someone in need of help asked in the wrong order doesn't foster cooperation This depends entirely on intent, no? If they simply got it wrong, that's one thing. If they were intentionally subverting the 'chain of command', that's quite another.
  - JepZ 8y ago
    Sure, the intention is relevant.
- mcny 8y ago
  Yeah, what's the point of having Microsoft Lync or whatever chat thing on every computer if I have to escalate up to our common report? A place I worked at, the investors had bought two different American companies and joined them at the top. So, when I needed a service I was supposed to consume to fix something (pretty obvious if I remember), the person at my level and his manager didn't respond to me or my manager at all. My manager said he had to escalate it like three levels above him and turns out the engineer simply forwarded my messages and emails to his boss, who did the same to his boss, who was on vacation. Took almost a week to resolve something so simple. It was just outright bizarre that someone would not even write one line back to say "dude, hold on. I can't do anything without my manager's sign off". Like anyone not in their immediate team was an outsider they wouldn't talk to.
dominotw 8y ago
> She very effectively protected us from HR and whoever else wasn't on the team so we could focus on our work. on contrary, bad managers use this excuse that they are protecting you from politics to hold on to important pieces of information from the team so only he has the complete picture of what is going on. I am highly suspicious of managers who keep saying this.
- dasil003 8y ago
  This is ridiculous, if you want to be clued in to all the bullshit flying around then you should move into management because as a developer it will kill your productivity trying to keep up with and interpret it.
  - dominotw 8y ago
    > all the bullshit flying around I didn't say that though, I said "important pieces of information" . You made least charitable interpretation of what I said and called it 'ridiculous'. I am not saying all but i've seen managers use this excuse to justify withholding information to justify their usefulness to the project.
    - dasil003 8y ago
      Fair point, but managers shouldn't avoid doing the right thing because it could be done for the wrong reason. Bad managers will use all kinds of nonsensical justifications, so I wouldn't over-index on that.

brennebeck 8y ago

Thanks for tale. Definitely interesting and I suspect similar to the other ‘best managers’.

solipsism 8y ago

She never demoed a project or took credit for something she didn't build herself. Like my teammates, I had to demo every product I built That sounds strange. Didn't you ever work on a product with other developers? Who demos in that case? And what would be wrong with a manager demoing a product that was built by a team he/she manages? It seems to imply that the manager should have no sense of ownership, but a good manager is absolutely crucial to the success of a project. Taken to the extreme, it would imply a CEO of a company could never demo a company product he didn't "build himself".

kbar13 8y ago
fairly common. team builds a product that other teams use, so you do a demo. it's obviously better for the engineer to demo their own product. not only does it feel like you have control over your own product but it also gives a face to the project.
- solipsism 8y ago
  it's obviously better for the engineer to demo their own product Again.. rarely does an engineer create a product in a vacuum. Usually a few disciplines contribute to the project, and a manager can be absolutely instrumental. And of the various creators of a product should be candidates to demo a thing. The right person certainly depends on the nature of the product, the team dynamics, the audience of the demo, etc. I for one wouldn't want to work somewhere with some kind of rigid "engineer X owns product Y, manager Z is just a manager" kind of culture.
  - TimTheTinker 8y ago
    > Again.. rarely does an engineer create a product in a vacuum. That may be rare, but that’s what people on our team did... multiple times. For my own part, for each of several products, I wrote the project charter, interviewed potential users and stakeholders, created UI comps, built the app (database, server side, front-end), managed the server VMs and infrastructure, negotiated and built 3rd party integrations (when necessary), wrote the documentation, gave the demos, supported users, and released updates for years afterwards based on feedback. It wasn’t a culture thing as much as a necessity. We were a team of 10 with 3-5 projects in development at all times, and nearly 30 in maintenance/support after several years. And that on top of normal QA activities. In retrospect, I think Margaret intentionally had us handling such breadth individually in order to set us up for success as much as possible (several of us she had hired straight out of college). I didn’t realize it at the time, but the QA team didn’t have to do all that stuff to begin with. The demand for it only began to really increase after we had released several projects that had a significant positive impact on the department.
pavlov 8y ago

wingerlang 8y ago

90% of these things also applies to my best manager.

blablabla123 8y ago
Same for me, although the best manager thing applied only to 10% of my jobs ;) I haven't met any manager in years that hires for potential.

the_clarence 8y ago

I see some qualities from past manager: - push you to your limits (public speaking) - shield you from management/bigcorp bullshit - hire better people than themselves - don’t take credit from you

arethuza 8y ago
"shield you from management/bigcorp bullshit" I've heard that memorably described as managers either being "shit umbrellas" or "shit funnels".
- iagooar 8y ago
  What I ask myself is: why do corps allow to become places where shit is being thrown around, instead of productive work and cooperation.
  - blowski 8y ago
    For the same reason we end up with shit codebases - a combination of ignorance, incompetence, egos, politics, "just-this-once", laziness, and because sometimes it really is the right thing to do.
  - nathantotten 8y ago
    You have to remember that giant corporations are actually many small teams trying to work on their own problems. So the “shit” to one team may very well be mission critical to another team. Part of the manager’s job is basically deciding when it makes sense for two teams to work together (I.e. let the “shit” through) and when it doesn’t make sense and shield the team so they can focus on their work.
    - ryandrake 8y ago
      And at smaller organizations “shit” can take on different forms. I’ve seen a lot of “executive indecision” shit. Where the CEO or some big shot leader wakes up every week with a totally different idea and he thinks the engineers should drop everything and start working on it right away. The best managers can talk him off the ledge and let their team focus without even seeing this chaos.

JepZ 8y ago

Most of what you say are qualities I like managers to have too, but 'someone tried to ask us for help with someone else's project without asking her first--she was furious.' is a quality I do not value. I mean, protecting your people is one thing (an essential quality), but being furious because someone in need of help asked in the wrong order doesn't foster cooperation beyond the borders of the own team (causing silo mentality). I don't know the companies culture and the people who asked for help, so maybe it was a good reaction at the time, but in general, I would advise being cooperative towards other departments.

MaxBarraclough 8y ago
> protecting your people is one thing (an essential quality), but being furious because someone in need of help asked in the wrong order doesn't foster cooperation This depends entirely on intent, no? If they simply got it wrong, that's one thing. If they were intentionally subverting the 'chain of command', that's quite another.
- JepZ 8y ago
  Sure, the intention is relevant.
mcny 8y ago
Yeah, what's the point of having Microsoft Lync or whatever chat thing on every computer if I have to escalate up to our common report? A place I worked at, the investors had bought two different American companies and joined them at the top. So, when I needed a service I was supposed to consume to fix something (pretty obvious if I remember), the person at my level and his manager didn't respond to me or my manager at all. My manager said he had to escalate it like three levels above him and turns out the engineer simply forwarded my messages and emails to his boss, who did the same to his boss, who was on vacation. Took almost a week to resolve something so simple. It was just outright bizarre that someone would not even write one line back to say "dude, hold on. I can't do anything without my manager's sign off". Like anyone not in their immediate team was an outsider they wouldn't talk to.

dominotw 8y ago

> She very effectively protected us from HR and whoever else wasn't on the team so we could focus on our work. on contrary, bad managers use this excuse that they are protecting you from politics to hold on to important pieces of information from the team so only he has the complete picture of what is going on. I am highly suspicious of managers who keep saying this.

dasil003 8y ago
This is ridiculous, if you want to be clued in to all the bullshit flying around then you should move into management because as a developer it will kill your productivity trying to keep up with and interpret it.
- dominotw 8y ago
  > all the bullshit flying around I didn't say that though, I said "important pieces of information" . You made least charitable interpretation of what I said and called it 'ridiculous'. I am not saying all but i've seen managers use this excuse to justify withholding information to justify their usefulness to the project.
  - dasil003 8y ago
    Fair point, but managers shouldn't avoid doing the right thing because it could be done for the wrong reason. Bad managers will use all kinds of nonsensical justifications, so I wouldn't over-index on that.