8 ms·

15 years of experience here, an I noticed there is 1 main rule: A great manager is at the service of their team, the team is not at the service of the manager.

15 years of experience here, an I noticed there is 1 main rule: A great manager is at the service of their team, the team is not at the service of the manager. The irony is that you don't really notice a great manager. Their job seems like a walk through the park, and you have a "I could do that job easily" feeling. That's because a good manager shields you from all the shit that's going on, so you and your teammates can concentrate on your job. If you're in a project where shit hits the fan every time, where you have to extinguish fires, overwork because of deadlines, etc. then this is the managers fault. I also noticed that the atmosphere within the team and the company, is always a reflection of upper management. And there is not much that can change this.

darepublic 7y ago
Honestly almost every project in my career (admittedly not as long as yours) has involved shit hitting the fan, etc. Often wonder if it's my fault or just the nature of the business.
- tty2300 7y ago
  At my current job shit has never hit the fan in my time working there. I have also never really been pressured by deadlines and hardly ever get distracted from what I'm working on. I honestly think my manager is a magician because when he talks about all the shit he had to do in the day and stupid phone calls to answer I just think "wow, my day went quite smoothly"
  - oblio 7y ago
    I think you should keep that in mind, this should be a two way street. If you notice a great manager, recommend him for positions at new companies. I might be wrong but I get the impression that job mobility for managers is lower than that for developers.
rglullis 7y ago
Yes, thank you! I am seeing so many answers focused on bullet-point lists and completely miss this fundamental principle. I think I mentioned here before, the best managers I had were the ones that their main function was to simply remove any kind of impediments from the developers' path. Get that in order and everything else follows.
kstenerud 7y ago
To be completely fair, there can also be situations where you have a very good manager, but still have to extinguish fires, overwork because of deadlines, etc. And the kicker is that the manager can't tell you that it's because of upper management because that would destroy morale even more, precipitating an earlier collapse than if they'd just kept their mouth shut (not to mention getting them fired). The astute employee can detect this by observing the manager being reasonable in every respect where they can realistically do so despite the chaos. Also, you can sometimes observe them being in the early wave to leave such a company.
- bongobongo 7y ago
  As a person who was a manager in the situation you describe, I disagree. My obligations are as follows: (1) to my co-workers/reports as fellow human beings; (2) to my work as a professional; (3) to the company that pays me for my professional services. When a company has bad leadership, it makes everybody miserable and often ends in failure—you are screwed twice, first by being exploited/overworked and second by it all being for naught. I will tell my reports when upper management is garbage. I will even encourage them to consider their options. Why? Because they aren’t children. They are adults with lives and families. And I’d be a hypocrite otherwise, because I’d also be considering my options. Edit: I actually now feel pretty strongly that “I have to hide the truth about the company from my reports” is unjustifiable, self-serving nonsense bordering on the unethical.
  - twic 7y ago
    To be clear: those numbered points are supposed to be in decreasing priority order, right? Colleagues > community > company.
    - bongobongo 7y ago
      Absolutely.
  - bumby 7y ago
    > to my co-workers/reports as fellow human beings I don't want to read too much into your sentiments here, but I'm assuming you would consider upper management as co-workers who you feel deserve to be treated fairly. I would extend this to say they probably deserve not to be undermined by being described as "garbage" any more than those under you deserve to be gossiped about. I'm not saying that's the tact you use, but there's a world of difference in saying, "It's all stupid management's fault!" and saying "I know our team disagrees with management's strategy but here's how I think we can get them on our side." One is proactive, still trying to serve the company/mission and the other is a way to pass the buck and destroy morale.
meerita 7y ago
12 years experience here. I dislike the idea of the manager as "the mayordomo" of the team. I like the idea of being a facilitator, but having in mind the last word is on them. Accountability must be enforced to avoid design by consensus.
- ip26 7y ago
  The superior always has the last word, but in a high functioning team, I've observed the reports can often anticipate the choices of their leader, which is another step in leadership becoming both more effective & more invisible.
  - jdmichal 7y ago
    Absolutely this. I love playing this game: When someone asks me about doing something, I like responding with, "What do I want to know?" or "What am I going to ask you?" It trains them to start anticipating your thoughts and needs, and eventually to your thought processes and decision making.
    - drewda 7y ago
      One of my own techniques as a manager: if I'm not satisfied with an answer to my question, I'll just keep asking more questions. Sometimes my questioning will lead the others to find some unnoticed complexity in their own proposal. Other times, their replies to my questions will lead _me to realize I had an incomplete picture in my own head. Either is a useful outcome--likely a better outcome than if I outright disagreed at the beginning.
      - meerita 7y ago
        I do ask many many questions. Often I realized people fell onto "gut feeling" cases or other kinds of biases where empirical evidence never was presented. That's why it's important to ask.
mikeruhl 7y ago
This is so crucial. I've had managers who were ex-developers and I've had managers who are managers first and not subject matter experts. The unifying quality among the good ones was that they aren't really leaders, they're facilitators. - They get you what you need to do your job. - They shield you from product owners and stakeholders by meeting with them and giving you only the information you need (unless it's necessary you meet with them). - They advocate for you and your work. - They give constructive feedback and insight to help you improve. - They never try to stand between you and the advancement of your career. Again, they facilitate. They facilitate the goals of the team and they facilitate your career development. I had one manager who said his sole mission was to get developers promoted out of his team. He wanted to make developers better. It can be very frustrating to find talent if you can't nurture it but I think great managers create an atmosphere where people thrive and become better in the company of their team.
- gaustin 7y ago
  > They shield you from product owners and stakeholders by meeting with them and giving you only the information you need I've worked at a lot of places like this, and I'm continually surprised people enjoy it. For me, it always ends up having the telephone game problem. You spend a huge amount of time error-correcting. How do folks scale it? Given the aforementioned error-correction process, the amount of time a manager spends facilitating that process caps with very few engineers. We have gone another way and our engineering teams work with product managers and together they make decisions. The PM deals with gathering feedback from our analytics teams, end-users and clients, and summarizes that for the team. We feel this gives a sense of ownership to individual engineers and allows them to make better decisions without a lot of back and forth communication funneled through a proxy. And it also means we don't need a dozen managers. Good engineers are expensive and hard to find, and I'd say finding excellent managers is just as onerous.
  - Azkar 7y ago
    > I've worked at a lot of places like this, and I'm continually surprised people enjoy it. That's been my experience as well. When a manager says they try to "shield you from the bullshit" it's just a lack of transparency that leads me to making my own (often worse) assumptions.
ohaideredevs 7y ago
This is a very good way to put it. When I switched to a bad manager, everything was an emergency, every day.
nerder92 7y ago
I totally see myself in this, finally after 8yr in the industry i had the chance to work with a very good Tech lead (manager) and it's a game changer.
cntainer 7y ago
This! I've been in the industry for 10+ years moving through the ranks in all kinds of setups, from developer to senior management, and I think you expressed nicely the gist of it: The irony is that you don't really notice a great manager. Their job seems like a walk through the park, and you have a "I could do that job easily" feeling Very similar to what you're saying is this quote from Laozi, a personal favorite: A leader is best when people barely know that he exists, not so good when people obey and acclaim him, worst when they despise him. Fail to honor people, They fail to honor you. But of a good leader, who talks little, when his work is done, his aims fulfilled, they will all say, "We did this ourselves." It's a tough path to walk on, as you have to let go of your ego, but seeing the team succeed always makes up for it.
- SkyBelow 7y ago
  >A leader is best when people barely know that he exists, not so good when people obey and acclaim him, worst when they despise him. Fail to honor people, They fail to honor you. But of a good leader, who talks little, when his work is done, his aims fulfilled, they will all say, "We did this ourselves." I see a potential problem here. This may be true if you have one iteration of needing a leader. But if you have something that needs a leader on a repeating basis, is this really sustainable? It is like good IT that is so good their budget gets cut for lack of visibility.
  - cntainer 7y ago
    In general the people being lead do realize they have a good leader/manager after some time, even if they tend to underestimate the effort needed to provide that level of leadership. I was that guy that had a great manager in the beginning of my career for 2 years. At the time I was thinking he's a good guy but not great. Only later (+5 years) did I realize what a great manager he was and what an impact he actually had on my career. But you're right, the biggest risk I've seen for this kind of leader is how upper management perceives you. Not a huge risk though, as in most companies upper management ranks leaders/managers like this: 1. people obey and acclaim him -> best leader 2. people barely know that he exists, but good things just seem to happen in his teams -> ok leader. "He's lucky to have a great team" - Average Joe CEO 3. people despise him -> bad leader Instead, if your company ranks 2-1-3 then you're lucky to be working for a great company, but if your company ranks 1-3-2 then run for the hills. From what I've seen number 2 gives the best results overall with very positive long-term effects on the team, but it takes another good manager to recognize and appreciate that. So you might end up frustrated if you're expecting recognition and accolades from someone like Average Joe CEO that I quoted above. In the wild I think a continuous balancing act between 1 & 2 works best. You're probably a saint if you can pull number 2 all the time while also keeping your sanity. :)
jppope 7y ago
Another way this could be said: You don't work FOR them, you work WITH them.
sidlls 7y ago
If you're in a project where shit hits the fan every time, where you have to extinguish fires, overwork because of deadlines, etc. then this is the managers fault. This isn't always true. Managers also have to deal with the legacy of development that has occurred at a company. In poorly run engineering organizations front-line managers' hands are almost as tied as the team's. In these situations they're also almost certainly fighting fires of their own constantly.
- wiz21c 7y ago
  I don't know why, but in practice, I'm that manager. I constantly fight to provide planning which I don't have time to prepare, fight for things breaking here and there, fight for people onboarding team, fight with some of my own people who have become hungry of the project before I got in (and think I'm doing a super bad job), etc. That's exhausting, super tough and even if I can say I have improved things a little bit, that's not funny at all.
mabbo 7y ago
I was once on a team where our manager at the time was in another country, three time zones away from us. He was a great manager, but we were basically on our own. Our meetings ran long, got nothing done, and were frequent. Our sprint velocity was bad and always declining. We got a new manager, local and from an external company (which is often difficult) He did... very little, it seemed. But I noticed half our meetings were cancelled and we didn't need them. Our existing meetings, we got more done. Our sprints were better and better. We just accomplished more per hour than we did before to an enormous extent. Good management is invisible and feels like the team is rocking, not the manager.
- liam_mccormack 7y ago
  "Good management is invisible and feels like the team is rocking, not the manager" - very true, the good managers I've had just let work flow the bad ones (there's been a few) offer a psychological smorgasbord of extreme narcissism, fear of failure, ego, misogynism, inferiority complexes and overt ignorance masquerading as bravado.
bradknowles 7y ago
The other part to this is that you have regular 1:1 meetings with your leadership (like, every two weeks or so), and you’re not terrified out of your gourd when it comes time again for your next 1:1. If you feel like you’re being sent to the Principals Office every time you get called in for a 1:1, that’s a bad sign.
- Joof 7y ago
  Oh man. I was a junior and had a (non-technical) manager that started as a pushover (yes, do anything you want) then compared me to a factory worker making doors faster. We outright fought in 1-1's for 9 months. Which left me emotionally drained most of the week.
  - CanWaxSol 7y ago
    I feel yah. My last 1:1 went for about 5 minutes before my manager started talking to me. He asked me if I had any problems, I said no, not because I'm problem free, but because he never does anything about them. That man sits 10 feet away from me this was the first time he said a word to me in 2 weeks. 1:1 are great if you have a good manager. They're a horrible waste of time if you don't. I'd go to HR again but I'm sick of hearing about how it's my responsibility to not take things personally and also to help him become a good manager.
nswest23 7y ago
meh...this is like the bare minimum i would expect from a 'decent' manager, quite frankly. edit: that this is the top comment indicates that there are an astonishing number of sub par managers out there.

darepublic 7y ago

Honestly almost every project in my career (admittedly not as long as yours) has involved shit hitting the fan, etc. Often wonder if it's my fault or just the nature of the business.

tty2300 7y ago
At my current job shit has never hit the fan in my time working there. I have also never really been pressured by deadlines and hardly ever get distracted from what I'm working on. I honestly think my manager is a magician because when he talks about all the shit he had to do in the day and stupid phone calls to answer I just think "wow, my day went quite smoothly"
- oblio 7y ago
  I think you should keep that in mind, this should be a two way street. If you notice a great manager, recommend him for positions at new companies. I might be wrong but I get the impression that job mobility for managers is lower than that for developers.

rglullis 7y ago

Yes, thank you! I am seeing so many answers focused on bullet-point lists and completely miss this fundamental principle. I think I mentioned here before, the best managers I had were the ones that their main function was to simply remove any kind of impediments from the developers' path. Get that in order and everything else follows.

kstenerud 7y ago

To be completely fair, there can also be situations where you have a very good manager, but still have to extinguish fires, overwork because of deadlines, etc. And the kicker is that the manager can't tell you that it's because of upper management because that would destroy morale even more, precipitating an earlier collapse than if they'd just kept their mouth shut (not to mention getting them fired). The astute employee can detect this by observing the manager being reasonable in every respect where they can realistically do so despite the chaos. Also, you can sometimes observe them being in the early wave to leave such a company.

bongobongo 7y ago
As a person who was a manager in the situation you describe, I disagree. My obligations are as follows: (1) to my co-workers/reports as fellow human beings; (2) to my work as a professional; (3) to the company that pays me for my professional services. When a company has bad leadership, it makes everybody miserable and often ends in failure—you are screwed twice, first by being exploited/overworked and second by it all being for naught. I will tell my reports when upper management is garbage. I will even encourage them to consider their options. Why? Because they aren’t children. They are adults with lives and families. And I’d be a hypocrite otherwise, because I’d also be considering my options. Edit: I actually now feel pretty strongly that “I have to hide the truth about the company from my reports” is unjustifiable, self-serving nonsense bordering on the unethical.
- twic 7y ago
  To be clear: those numbered points are supposed to be in decreasing priority order, right? Colleagues > community > company.
  - bongobongo 7y ago
    Absolutely.
- bumby 7y ago
  > to my co-workers/reports as fellow human beings I don't want to read too much into your sentiments here, but I'm assuming you would consider upper management as co-workers who you feel deserve to be treated fairly. I would extend this to say they probably deserve not to be undermined by being described as "garbage" any more than those under you deserve to be gossiped about. I'm not saying that's the tact you use, but there's a world of difference in saying, "It's all stupid management's fault!" and saying "I know our team disagrees with management's strategy but here's how I think we can get them on our side." One is proactive, still trying to serve the company/mission and the other is a way to pass the buck and destroy morale.

meerita 7y ago

12 years experience here. I dislike the idea of the manager as "the mayordomo" of the team. I like the idea of being a facilitator, but having in mind the last word is on them. Accountability must be enforced to avoid design by consensus.

ip26 7y ago
The superior always has the last word, but in a high functioning team, I've observed the reports can often anticipate the choices of their leader, which is another step in leadership becoming both more effective & more invisible.
- jdmichal 7y ago
  Absolutely this. I love playing this game: When someone asks me about doing something, I like responding with, "What do I want to know?" or "What am I going to ask you?" It trains them to start anticipating your thoughts and needs, and eventually to your thought processes and decision making.
  - drewda 7y ago
    One of my own techniques as a manager: if I'm not satisfied with an answer to my question, I'll just keep asking more questions. Sometimes my questioning will lead the others to find some unnoticed complexity in their own proposal. Other times, their replies to my questions will lead _me to realize I had an incomplete picture in my own head. Either is a useful outcome--likely a better outcome than if I outright disagreed at the beginning.
    - meerita 7y ago
      I do ask many many questions. Often I realized people fell onto "gut feeling" cases or other kinds of biases where empirical evidence never was presented. That's why it's important to ask.

mikeruhl 7y ago

This is so crucial. I've had managers who were ex-developers and I've had managers who are managers first and not subject matter experts. The unifying quality among the good ones was that they aren't really leaders, they're facilitators. - They get you what you need to do your job. - They shield you from product owners and stakeholders by meeting with them and giving you only the information you need (unless it's necessary you meet with them). - They advocate for you and your work. - They give constructive feedback and insight to help you improve. - They never try to stand between you and the advancement of your career. Again, they facilitate. They facilitate the goals of the team and they facilitate your career development. I had one manager who said his sole mission was to get developers promoted out of his team. He wanted to make developers better. It can be very frustrating to find talent if you can't nurture it but I think great managers create an atmosphere where people thrive and become better in the company of their team.

gaustin 7y ago
> They shield you from product owners and stakeholders by meeting with them and giving you only the information you need I've worked at a lot of places like this, and I'm continually surprised people enjoy it. For me, it always ends up having the telephone game problem. You spend a huge amount of time error-correcting. How do folks scale it? Given the aforementioned error-correction process, the amount of time a manager spends facilitating that process caps with very few engineers. We have gone another way and our engineering teams work with product managers and together they make decisions. The PM deals with gathering feedback from our analytics teams, end-users and clients, and summarizes that for the team. We feel this gives a sense of ownership to individual engineers and allows them to make better decisions without a lot of back and forth communication funneled through a proxy. And it also means we don't need a dozen managers. Good engineers are expensive and hard to find, and I'd say finding excellent managers is just as onerous.
- Azkar 7y ago
  > I've worked at a lot of places like this, and I'm continually surprised people enjoy it. That's been my experience as well. When a manager says they try to "shield you from the bullshit" it's just a lack of transparency that leads me to making my own (often worse) assumptions.

ohaideredevs 7y ago

This is a very good way to put it. When I switched to a bad manager, everything was an emergency, every day.

nerder92 7y ago

I totally see myself in this, finally after 8yr in the industry i had the chance to work with a very good Tech lead (manager) and it's a game changer.

cntainer 7y ago

This! I've been in the industry for 10+ years moving through the ranks in all kinds of setups, from developer to senior management, and I think you expressed nicely the gist of it: The irony is that you don't really notice a great manager. Their job seems like a walk through the park, and you have a "I could do that job easily" feeling Very similar to what you're saying is this quote from Laozi, a personal favorite: A leader is best when people barely know that he exists, not so good when people obey and acclaim him, worst when they despise him. Fail to honor people, They fail to honor you. But of a good leader, who talks little, when his work is done, his aims fulfilled, they will all say, "We did this ourselves." It's a tough path to walk on, as you have to let go of your ego, but seeing the team succeed always makes up for it.

SkyBelow 7y ago
>A leader is best when people barely know that he exists, not so good when people obey and acclaim him, worst when they despise him. Fail to honor people, They fail to honor you. But of a good leader, who talks little, when his work is done, his aims fulfilled, they will all say, "We did this ourselves." I see a potential problem here. This may be true if you have one iteration of needing a leader. But if you have something that needs a leader on a repeating basis, is this really sustainable? It is like good IT that is so good their budget gets cut for lack of visibility.
- cntainer 7y ago
  In general the people being lead do realize they have a good leader/manager after some time, even if they tend to underestimate the effort needed to provide that level of leadership. I was that guy that had a great manager in the beginning of my career for 2 years. At the time I was thinking he's a good guy but not great. Only later (+5 years) did I realize what a great manager he was and what an impact he actually had on my career. But you're right, the biggest risk I've seen for this kind of leader is how upper management perceives you. Not a huge risk though, as in most companies upper management ranks leaders/managers like this: 1. people obey and acclaim him -> best leader 2. people barely know that he exists, but good things just seem to happen in his teams -> ok leader. "He's lucky to have a great team" - Average Joe CEO 3. people despise him -> bad leader Instead, if your company ranks 2-1-3 then you're lucky to be working for a great company, but if your company ranks 1-3-2 then run for the hills. From what I've seen number 2 gives the best results overall with very positive long-term effects on the team, but it takes another good manager to recognize and appreciate that. So you might end up frustrated if you're expecting recognition and accolades from someone like Average Joe CEO that I quoted above. In the wild I think a continuous balancing act between 1 & 2 works best. You're probably a saint if you can pull number 2 all the time while also keeping your sanity. :)

jppope 7y ago

Another way this could be said: You don't work FOR them, you work WITH them.

sidlls 7y ago

If you're in a project where shit hits the fan every time, where you have to extinguish fires, overwork because of deadlines, etc. then this is the managers fault. This isn't always true. Managers also have to deal with the legacy of development that has occurred at a company. In poorly run engineering organizations front-line managers' hands are almost as tied as the team's. In these situations they're also almost certainly fighting fires of their own constantly.

wiz21c 7y ago
I don't know why, but in practice, I'm that manager. I constantly fight to provide planning which I don't have time to prepare, fight for things breaking here and there, fight for people onboarding team, fight with some of my own people who have become hungry of the project before I got in (and think I'm doing a super bad job), etc. That's exhausting, super tough and even if I can say I have improved things a little bit, that's not funny at all.

mabbo 7y ago

I was once on a team where our manager at the time was in another country, three time zones away from us. He was a great manager, but we were basically on our own. Our meetings ran long, got nothing done, and were frequent. Our sprint velocity was bad and always declining. We got a new manager, local and from an external company (which is often difficult) He did... very little, it seemed. But I noticed half our meetings were cancelled and we didn't need them. Our existing meetings, we got more done. Our sprints were better and better. We just accomplished more per hour than we did before to an enormous extent. Good management is invisible and feels like the team is rocking, not the manager.

liam_mccormack 7y ago
"Good management is invisible and feels like the team is rocking, not the manager" - very true, the good managers I've had just let work flow the bad ones (there's been a few) offer a psychological smorgasbord of extreme narcissism, fear of failure, ego, misogynism, inferiority complexes and overt ignorance masquerading as bravado.

bradknowles 7y ago

The other part to this is that you have regular 1:1 meetings with your leadership (like, every two weeks or so), and you’re not terrified out of your gourd when it comes time again for your next 1:1. If you feel like you’re being sent to the Principals Office every time you get called in for a 1:1, that’s a bad sign.

Joof 7y ago
Oh man. I was a junior and had a (non-technical) manager that started as a pushover (yes, do anything you want) then compared me to a factory worker making doors faster. We outright fought in 1-1's for 9 months. Which left me emotionally drained most of the week.
- CanWaxSol 7y ago
  I feel yah. My last 1:1 went for about 5 minutes before my manager started talking to me. He asked me if I had any problems, I said no, not because I'm problem free, but because he never does anything about them. That man sits 10 feet away from me this was the first time he said a word to me in 2 weeks. 1:1 are great if you have a good manager. They're a horrible waste of time if you don't. I'd go to HR again but I'm sick of hearing about how it's my responsibility to not take things personally and also to help him become a good manager.

nswest23 7y ago

meh...this is like the bare minimum i would expect from a 'decent' manager, quite frankly. edit: that this is the top comment indicates that there are an astonishing number of sub par managers out there.