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Unlike Babies, the Best Managers Come with Instructions
- teddyh 7y agoSee also The Manager FAQ by Peter Seebach: http://www.seebs.net/faqs/manager.html http://www.seebs.net/faqs/manager.html
- sihox 7y agoThanks for this one! Reading his Hacker Faq already...
- jghn 7y agoIMO the best managers learn to change their behaviors based on each report's needs and doesn't request that their reports conform to the manager's needs.
- troymc 7y agoI had to read this sentence twice before understanding that a "report" is a person. Maybe that has become accepted terminology in some circles. I hope not. It's terribly dehumanizing.
- jghn 7y agoWhat word would you prefer to use for "person whom a manager manages"? If one just uses "person" it is unclear if it's any arbitrary person or a person under a manager's umbrella
- yepthatsreality 7y ago“Directs” is another common word I hear used by managers.
- devin 7y agoYes, as in direct _report_.
- jghn 7y agoWhich makes sense as the formal phrase is "direct report". While it was unintentional in my original post, "report" seems to work better than "direct" here as IMO my statement holds for a manager's indirect reports as well and thus "report" covers both direct and indirect. But now I'm just amusing myself with word games :)
- rgoulter 7y agoI've probably seen 'subordinate' used in the same contexts. 'managee' is awful but is at least analogous to 'employer/employee'.
- nostrademons 7y ago"Subordinate" seems even worse to me. That institutionalizes the power differential and the idea that managers are "above" their direct reports.
- buckminster 7y agoYes, you might as well use "underling" or "minion".
- joshuamorton 7y agoBut they are. Like, my manager and I have a good relationship that is usually highly collaborative, but at the end of the day, I'm judged based on doing the things he wants me to do. Why shouldn't we recognize the power differential? It clearly exists.
- nostrademons 7y agoSo I've had perhaps unusual work experience in that when I've worked for other companies it's been either small startups or Google in its engineer-driven growth phase and the rest of my working life has been on my own startups, but I've found that the best managers think of themselves as facilitators. Their job is to ensure that 1) you're working on projects where your success will lead to the company's success; 2) you're happy; 3) your successes are visible to their management so you get promoted and 4) you don't have any roadblocks in your way. That and to handle the various nitty-gritty administrativa like managing vacation time; family emergencies; conflicts between team members; and performance management. In companies where management has to explicitly direct the activity of their employees, something has gone seriously wrong. Either the company is not working on something useful to the market and so management is trying to motivate employees to do something pointless anyway; or the company's vision & strategy hasn't been successfully communicated by the CEO so that everybody knows where they fit in; or a manager on a power-trip was promoted into the position; or my values don't align with the company's and I'd be better off elsewhere. In any of those cases the answer is to leave (or if it's my company, fix the problems before hiring more people) and find a company that there's actually a reason to work for. You have one career and there are ~20 million businesses in America to work for (and you can always start your own if no suitable one exists); make it count.
- bjelkeman-again 7y agoI strongly believe the language we use influences how we think about things and situations. I use the word “people” all the time, even if it means a longer sentence. Being slightly more efficient in expressing my relationship to a person that works for me is not worth the effect of being called a report/resource/direct.
- monocasa 7y agoIt's better than "resource" at least.
- astura 7y agoIt's standard terminology and has been standard terminology across the board for my two plus decades in the workforce. It's not dehumanizing. It's usually written as "direct report" to differentiate from your boss's boss, who you indirectly report to. From the OED: noun: report; plural noun: reports 4.an employee who is supervised by another employee.
- cmdshiftf4 7y agoIt's not really though, it's just a description of a formal relationship within the business context. I'm a manager, I report to someone (my manager, who also reports to someone) and likewise I've people who report to me (my reports). It doesn't change that we're all people, with our own quirks, personalities and emotions.
- jasoncartwright 7y agoPerhaps it's cultural (I'm from the UK), but I can't imagine writing something so painfully self-absorbed - and then expecting people to read it.
- pnine 7y agoWhen I read the hn title I thought the direct reports wrote a readme about the manager. That made a whole lot more sense to me. How many coffees does (he/she) need to drink before it’s ok to approach their desk. How much detail do they require when explaining an issue. These are the features I’d like documented for new hires.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- canada_dry 7y ago> painfully self-absorbed Generally, when someone suffixes their name in a non-scholarly context with "PhD" that's usually the first clue that it's going to be pretentious and/or self absorbed.
- techslave 7y agoFor this guy, it’s at the end of the article. By the first paragraph you have all the clues you need. In fact, even by the title. Putting himself into that circle of “best managers” via logical fallacy: the best do this; I do this; I am the best.
- silvestrov 7y agoDitto. I'm from Scandinavia and I've seen developers snicker at much less self-absorbedness from management. I also cannot understand the obsession with 30 minutes of 1:1 every week. I consider that an extreme version of micromanagement. Give us developers the big picture so we know what we need to work on and can see what's important in which way, and we will find out how it's done. If you don't trust developers to be able to communicate and plan complex jobs without 30 minutes of 1:1, how can you write "excellent communication skills" in the job posting?
- sysbin 7y agoI'm wondering if anyone has been in a manager-less team. I would like to think that's possible and if so what was the experience like?
- katbyte 7y agoI don’t honk that’s possible as someone will always have to do the bureaucratic bits of people management - in my experience most engineers don’t want to do this bit at all and only focus on the tech
- devin 7y agoI’m in one right now. We manage each other I guess. It works well. We recently decided to add a lightweight annual career goal type check in. We have a sort of informal lead that is recognized politically as the person you’d go to if you needed to resolve a dispute or air a grievance. I came from a gig where I was managed being managed very directly and I don’t miss it at all. If people want more structure we can accommodate them, but I think most of us feel like it’s just process we don’t need because our culture highly values trust in one another.
- convolvatron 7y agoit works fine as long as everyone is extremely reasonable, and everyone's primary motivation is the success of the project. unfortunately, this is very unlikely to be true. and increasingly less so as the team size increases. one confounding factor here is the heavy use of religion to guide technical decisions. the decisions we make now about the direction of the product and the attributes of the codebase are largely subjective. there are arguments on all sides of a position. a good team, properly enculturated, understands the process. when the issue is important enough to justify digging in and when its just a personal bias. a good team helps all of its members stay on the path and not end up in giant ratholes. a good team uses its experience to inform future decisions rather than create artificial strictures. a good team has enough time and maturity to interact constructively with the rest of the business and the customers. I shouldn't say 'good' team, I should say 'perfect' good management greases all of these points of potential friction. but I think at the end of the day management is there to address the last point. its natural and expected for engineers to keep a narrow focus on the technical aspects of the project itself. someone's got to make sure its evolving in a direction that's meaningful in an external context.
- Zenst 7y agoTangent here - saw Torch and nostalgia of http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/1039/Torch-Computers-Ltd/ http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/1039/Torch-Computers-... came a flooding.
- PragmaticPulp 7y agoManager READMEs start out with good intentions, but every example I've seen is flawed for multiple reasons: 1) It's manager-centric. Why would you give employees a guide to their manager when you could give them an "Employee README" that is focused on the new employee? When I join a company, I want to know what's expected of me so I can succeed. If the company delivers this in a form of a manager README then I'll still be missing the big picture goals of the company. Managers - Focus on your employees, not yourself. 2) Manager READMEs become an aspirational target. Describing yourself in text is challenging for the ego. I've seen too many manager READMEs that read like a picture-perfect version of what the manager aspires to be, rather than a description of how the person actually operates. 3) The self-promotion aspect. When managers post their README all over internal company chat, public Twitter, their LinkedIn profiles, Medium think pieces, and the company blog (like this article), the document becomes a brand-building exercise. This puts even more pressure on managers to only write down their most perfect, idealized vision for what they want to be. Or they spin their flaws as some sort of superpower with creative wording. I once read a public manager README that was nothing like that person's actual management style, but it read as if that person was a textbook-perfect manager. My recommendation: Skip the manager README fad and focus on your employees. Write an "Employee README" onboarding guide for each of your employees, that you customize with individual expectations and information for each employee before they join the company. Keep it in a shared document that you can update over time to include an up-to-date job description, list of responsibilities, and key expectations for that employee. Don't try to make management all about the manager's personal brand.
- blowski 7y ago> Why would you give employees a guide to their manager when you could give them an "Employee README" that is focused on the new employee? Why not do both? "Hey folks, here's my README, I'd encourage you to write something similar and share it with everybody."
- PragmaticPulp 7y ago> Why not do both? "Hey folks, here's my README, I'd encourage you to write something similar and share it with everybody." When it comes to team building, I think it's much more valuable to say "this is how we operate" instead of having everyone write down "this is how I operate". The former is a mutual guidebook for everyone to work together, while the latter feels like an edict that everyone else needs to work around you.
- aj7 7y agoThis started out well.
- astura 7y agoThis is the silliest, most ridiculous, and self absorbed thing I've read in a while. So much so that I suspect it's actually satire. If it's not then silicon valley sounds like another planet, in my 2+ decades of employment I've never had any sort of issues with management. If I have any questions, I ask, if I have any feedback, I give it. That clears up any ambiguity.
- kingbirdy 7y ago> in my 2+ decades of employment I've never had any sort of issues with management Then you're incredibly fortunate. I've had to deal with management issues at multiple companies in a shorter span of time.
- astura 7y agoSure, but a README doesn't magically fix shitty management, if anything it just a justification for it. Not to mention people are just horrifying bad at seeing themselves as others see them. I think of the scene in A Christmas Story when the kid expects to get a glowing review of his paper but instead got a D grade. It actually reminded me of a family member of mine who got called into his boss's office. He was bragging that he was going to get a bonus or promotion and instead he got a demotion due to poor performance and bad work ethic. I've had five software jobs and five unskilled jobs.
- kingbirdy 7y agoOh, certainly. I think a README could've been helpful from good managers, but it could just as easily make bad managers worse.
- 11thEarlOfMar 7y agoI wrote one for myself that is yet to be published. Will give it a 2nd thought. The reason I thought it would be helpful is that I am not a high feedback person. I seldom praise (need to work on that), I am not expressive, I've been told I 'play my cards close to the vest.' by someone who directly reported to me. That really got me thinking that maybe the circumstances where I am not getting what I want is because my staff really cannot figure out what I'm looking for in general. So I wrote up a 'read me', before I knew there was this trend. I included self-deprecating statements about things like assigning a task to multiple people because I forgot it had already been assigned 'Don't take it personally, just let me know and I'll fix it.' And, if they need me to attend a meeting, make sure it's on my calendar, or, no chance I'll remember. In the end, it's only going to be as helpful as it is 'correct' and clearly described. That depends on each manager's level of self-awareness, combined with their sense of self confidence. You'd hope managers would have both qualities, but if not, this can really be a red herring, or even be used as a dark pattern.
- munchbunny 7y ago> The reason I thought it would be helpful is that I am not a high feedback person. I seldom praise (need to work on that) The reason I would be afraid to standardize manager READMEs is specifically that I do not trust the average manager to publicly acknowledge and privately work on flaws like that. For managers who do that, I’m not that concerned about the exercise because it’s more likely to produce something useful for the employees. For the other type of manager, I’d be afraid of accidentally creating the expectation that the employee needs to adopt the manager’s style, which I would privately recommend to any employee, but which I would vehemently oppose as anything resembling an official expectation.
- lonelappde 7y agoPlease don't cut off your effort communicating with your reports because a bunch of misanthropes on HN hate on people who make an effort.
- nlh 7y agoTo build on what another commenter said, the idea of manager READMEs made perfect sense when they started out a few years ago - here are my quirks, here’s how I operate, etc. The problem is they’ve turned into something that justifies bad behavior more often than not. So many of them have this undercurrent of “I’m an asshole - don’t take it personally!” which is just totally not OK. The solution isn’t to proudly broadcast and justify that you’re an asshole and expect others to adapt — the solution is to not be an asshole. That being said, things like “I tend to work late so if I email you on the weekend, I don’t expect you to reply until Monday” are totally reasonable and I think, on the whole, a good thing.
- lonelappde 7y agoIf someone tells you they are an asshole, the problem isn't that they told you.
- freedomben 7y agoVery much agree with your analysis here. It's like many, many good ideas that have come up in SV (agile/scrum, OKRs, etc), when looked at as a useful tool for the individual that should be utilized on an individualized basis, they are incredibly useful. When made standard and forced into use-cases and personality types they don't work for, they can be mediocre or even counter-productive. They will also be used in ways not entirely desired, such as for self-promotion, self-justification, gaming things, etc. Managers also tend to get overly prescriptive about how to use the tool (usually a sentence that starts with, "here's how we do $TOOL at $COMPANY" is often heading there). I've used OKRs, Kanban/agile and many other tools for me at an individual level and loved them. I've had the exact same tools at companies become a waste of time, a point of contention, and only be a "value add" for management.
- exactchange 7y agoUnpopular opinion: In Silicon Valley, people managers can easily be a waste of time and money, and can cause unnecessary drama on your team. Think about the kind of so-called developer who would rather manage people than write code. We still need founders, executives, directors, advisors, etc. don't get me wrong. But has anyone ever come across an engineering manager worth their salt? Why did we start deploying people managers en masse to engineering teams? I miss the holy trinity setup: Dev, designer, PM. It worked well IMO. Our industry is shooting itself in the foot with Engineering Managers. The ones I've come across are self-obsessed, as evidenced in these cringeworthy READMEs and this article that was written.
- lonelappde 7y agoAny role can be filled by someone bad at that role. There are -10x developers just as there are -10x managers. What is the difference between a manager and an executive? A manager is an executive of a small part of a large org.
- fogetti 7y agoYour message really needs context otherwise it's just a random rant. BTW no-one is deploying managers out of thin air. At least not in startups. What I can often see instead is that someone in the higher-ups needs OKRs, and he also wants to know your performance (and also others' on the team) so that he can decide who deserves a salary raise, and he would like to read a summary report about the highest priority project's progress during last week. Plus he would like someone to represent the team's technical standpoint next week when meeting a prospective client, plus he needs someone who goes around the team and asks what bothers them and what would the team like to see changed in their work environment, plus he also needs someone who hires new team members, plus he would also like to organize the mentoring of the junior members and would like to see someone be involved in the product roadmap discussions from the engineering side to make strategic decisions, plus he wants to build a new team and he wants to understand who would be the best candidate to participate in it, etc. The list goes on and on. So who will do all these things? Most devs absolutely hate doing these things because it's not technical enough for their fastidious taste. Designers and PMs OTOH have no technical knowledge to make strategic engineering decisions on higher level than the individual level (and not even on the individual level many times).
- mharroun 7y agoUgh as someone with 12 years of experience and about 8 ish in a teach lead/management role. This seems super weird to me. An Engineering Manger/Director/VP/CTO's main job is 2 things. - To be the over arching intermediate between engineering and other business units (note: this does not mean walling off engineering, engineers SHOULD understand and work with business units when it makes sense). - To support, mentor, shield, and basically do what ever is necessary for their team/department/org to be as successful as possible. This sounds VERY self centered and I honestly believe product and engineering managers need to be to most selfless people possible to actually be effective. I would call it backwards even... a leader/manager needs to tailor himself and his approach to both his people and his cross-department equals in order to be the most successful.
- Havoc 7y agoIT people really love these kind of forced parallels. Can't really think of another sector that does this. Maybe it's all that "Uber/Airbnb but for X" thinking. Unless your surname is .exe I don't think you need a readme file. You could do the human thing though and discuss expectations with your team though...