4 ms·

On the other hand, if your boss thinks he can do your job (and do it even better than you), while in fact he can't – you will get the worst nightmare.

Frost1x 6y ago
Is worst nightmare the new normal? Various levels of management often handwave away a task because they understand its function at a high level. True quality management requires a deeper understanding of what it is you're managing. I understand the function of creating, launching, and orbiting a satellite geosynchronously to do GPS so it's easy, right? Yea, not so much. I'm a firm believer that you need to understand everything at least one layer deeper than high level functional descriptions so you can start to reason about the difficulty or amount of skill needed to accomplish something. You understand the real problems (even if only at the surface) and know where opportunity lies. With a pure functional perspective many current managers have, you simply can't reasonably manage and plan and are instead a glorified resource scheduler with whims.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
noisy_boy 6y ago
I'll take it up a notch: all of the above + doesn't lift a finger and finds faults at everything you do. Add a bit of colonial superiority complex and its recipe for a job from hell.
- Sileni 6y ago
  And focuses most of their time and energy into brown nosing. Zero respect in either direction and an adversarial relationship by design any time you need resources from the company/higher-ups. /shudder
devoutsalsa 6y ago
Another nightmare is needing your boss' help & not getting it because your boss simply chooses not to help. Early in my dev career I ended up w/ an smart, unhelpful manager. They were the only person in the company w/ Scala experience, and I needed to touch a Scala service as a fairly green developer. I asked my boss for help, and was denied. I later found out that my boss had recommended against hiring me during my interview, and I was still placed on their team. I did not like that job & quit after a few months.
- nine_zeros 6y ago
  Another experience bin the same vein is if you ask the boss for some help and come review time, they ding you for it. This especially stings if it comes from a team lead because in my mind, the team lead exists to bounce ideas off of and to iron out issues. But if you ever see a team lead or manager dinging you for just reaching out to them, switch teams or quit.
  - devoutsalsa 6y ago
    > This especially stings if it comes from a team lead because in my mind, the team lead exists to bounce ideas off of and to iron out issues. Sounds like the Team Pb XD
- zmmmmm 6y ago
  I'm sorry to hear about that situation. Having said that, I am possibly a bit like your boss. I am a major bottleneck to my employees, and they struggle to overcome technical skill gaps between their knowledge and what they need to work on. Frequently I find they are blocked for days or weeks and when I finally get to sit down or spend time with them, their problem is sometimes solved within minutes. Sometimes I resent it because it's clear to me with some basic effort in learning new skills, they could get over these humps but they seem to take an attitude that if they hit something they don't already know, it's perfectly reasonable to stop progressing it and just declare they need help. It's really alien to me because as a young developer I would never have done that, I would just keep acquiring knowledge until I solve it (possibly taking a lot of time). While I'd never outright deny a direct request for help, I will often redirect where I think they can figure out the problem themselves with some investment in their own learning - "you need to learn about X, do some reading and tutorials, I think that will help", etc. I am curious if you would have advice? Assume you can't solve the problem of actually getting your bosses' help (they simply have too many responsibilities to be helping at a micro level), how could one develop a culture of self-learning and proactive responsibility to progress things?
proc0 6y ago
This seems to the be the norm in tech companies, however I'm not saying it's an easy challenge to solve, since it seems unfeasible that everyone should know how do the coding/engineering job. Inevitably managers have to decide at some point to get off that bus, so to speak, and focus more on management skills, sacrificing the time needed to keep up with tech skills.

Frost1x 6y ago

Is worst nightmare the new normal? Various levels of management often handwave away a task because they understand its function at a high level. True quality management requires a deeper understanding of what it is you're managing. I understand the function of creating, launching, and orbiting a satellite geosynchronously to do GPS so it's easy, right? Yea, not so much. I'm a firm believer that you need to understand everything at least one layer deeper than high level functional descriptions so you can start to reason about the difficulty or amount of skill needed to accomplish something. You understand the real problems (even if only at the surface) and know where opportunity lies. With a pure functional perspective many current managers have, you simply can't reasonably manage and plan and are instead a glorified resource scheduler with whims.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

noisy_boy 6y ago

I'll take it up a notch: all of the above + doesn't lift a finger and finds faults at everything you do. Add a bit of colonial superiority complex and its recipe for a job from hell.

Sileni 6y ago
And focuses most of their time and energy into brown nosing. Zero respect in either direction and an adversarial relationship by design any time you need resources from the company/higher-ups. /shudder

devoutsalsa 6y ago

Another nightmare is needing your boss' help & not getting it because your boss simply chooses not to help. Early in my dev career I ended up w/ an smart, unhelpful manager. They were the only person in the company w/ Scala experience, and I needed to touch a Scala service as a fairly green developer. I asked my boss for help, and was denied. I later found out that my boss had recommended against hiring me during my interview, and I was still placed on their team. I did not like that job & quit after a few months.

nine_zeros 6y ago
Another experience bin the same vein is if you ask the boss for some help and come review time, they ding you for it. This especially stings if it comes from a team lead because in my mind, the team lead exists to bounce ideas off of and to iron out issues. But if you ever see a team lead or manager dinging you for just reaching out to them, switch teams or quit.
- devoutsalsa 6y ago
  > This especially stings if it comes from a team lead because in my mind, the team lead exists to bounce ideas off of and to iron out issues. Sounds like the Team Pb XD
zmmmmm 6y ago
I'm sorry to hear about that situation. Having said that, I am possibly a bit like your boss. I am a major bottleneck to my employees, and they struggle to overcome technical skill gaps between their knowledge and what they need to work on. Frequently I find they are blocked for days or weeks and when I finally get to sit down or spend time with them, their problem is sometimes solved within minutes. Sometimes I resent it because it's clear to me with some basic effort in learning new skills, they could get over these humps but they seem to take an attitude that if they hit something they don't already know, it's perfectly reasonable to stop progressing it and just declare they need help. It's really alien to me because as a young developer I would never have done that, I would just keep acquiring knowledge until I solve it (possibly taking a lot of time). While I'd never outright deny a direct request for help, I will often redirect where I think they can figure out the problem themselves with some investment in their own learning - "you need to learn about X, do some reading and tutorials, I think that will help", etc. I am curious if you would have advice? Assume you can't solve the problem of actually getting your bosses' help (they simply have too many responsibilities to be helping at a micro level), how could one develop a culture of self-learning and proactive responsibility to progress things?

proc0 6y ago

This seems to the be the norm in tech companies, however I'm not saying it's an easy challenge to solve, since it seems unfeasible that everyone should know how do the coding/engineering job. Inevitably managers have to decide at some point to get off that bus, so to speak, and focus more on management skills, sacrificing the time needed to keep up with tech skills.