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Great managers do a lot of things...but I'll talk about a couple of them that matter to me at the moment. Great managers give clear expectations. Even if you o

Great managers do a lot of things...but I'll talk about a couple of them that matter to me at the moment. Great managers give clear expectations. Even if you operate autonomously, they still provide you guidance on "this is what I expect, and this is how and when you should communicate <X> to me". Great managers also make time to clear up any doubt or uncertainty about a task. You should never feel embarrassed or afraid to ask a great manager for clarification or direction, their job is to give you those "good vibes" that make those conversations easy for you to start. Great managers never onboard you by saying "you'll figure it out", or "welcome aboard, you'll find everything in the wiki". Great managers show you the docs, answer any questions you have about using them, and initially shepherd you towards where they need you to end up. This plays into the "clear expectations" quality I mentioned above. Great managers (sometimes subtly) pair you with great teammates. They initiate cross-training themselves, and not by telling you to shoulder your way into someone else's domain. Sometimes they do this by making the other member(say, a DBA) responsible for a task they cannot do without your(the programmer) help. They might make the DBA responsible for documenting your help, or vise versa. This is subtle cross-training, where neither role feels like they are being pushed out or prepared-for-replacement by the other. Instead, you should end the assignment feeling like teammates that both managed to learn something new, from an experienced professional(the other person). That's my two cents. For what it's worth, I didn't realize I had been a bad manager, until I went to work for one. As I found myself thinking of "geez life would be better if he/she did <XYZ>", I realized those were things I didn't do myself in the past. That made me really appreciate what life in the shoes of my reports must have been like. I didn't set clear expectations, it probably felt like a bit of a mystery gamble to the people who worked for me. I hate that for them, and no one could have convinced me I was doing it wrong - until I had gone through this experience myself.

nlawalker 7y ago
> Great managers give clear expectations. Even if you operate autonomously, they still provide you guidance on "this is what I expect, and this is how and when you should communicate <X> to me". In many places, managers are subtly discouraged/disincentivized from doing this by not being given enough power to properly reward their people. Being granted poor rewards or being denied a raise or promotion by organizational powers-that-be for reasons like budget or priorities is a morale killer when your manager has given you nothing but positive feedback and affirmation that you are clearly meeting/exceeding clear expectations. Being able to say "well, you were given a lot of freedom, and you chose to pursue things that didn't have the right kinds of impact" is an easy get-out-of-jail-free card for a manager, and is only really effective if you've been stringing someone along with arbitrary mixed feedback and unclear or constantly shifting goals.

nlawalker 7y ago

> Great managers give clear expectations. Even if you operate autonomously, they still provide you guidance on "this is what I expect, and this is how and when you should communicate <X> to me". In many places, managers are subtly discouraged/disincentivized from doing this by not being given enough power to properly reward their people. Being granted poor rewards or being denied a raise or promotion by organizational powers-that-be for reasons like budget or priorities is a morale killer when your manager has given you nothing but positive feedback and affirmation that you are clearly meeting/exceeding clear expectations. Being able to say "well, you were given a lot of freedom, and you chose to pursue things that didn't have the right kinds of impact" is an easy get-out-of-jail-free card for a manager, and is only really effective if you've been stringing someone along with arbitrary mixed feedback and unclear or constantly shifting goals.