4 ms·

I'm curious about the vocal disdain for 'managers' here at HN. I know it's just a subset of folks voicing these opinions but I'm intrigued by the level of vitr

by jcims 5y ago

I'm curious about the vocal disdain for 'managers' here at HN. I know it's just a subset of folks voicing these opinions but I'm intrigued by the level of vitriol and consistency of the message. I've been filing taxes since 1988 and I've only had one or two managers that I would say are truly incompetent. I would say most of my managers have rusty but relevant technical skills, have been open to my input, are generally willing to negotiate through disagreements and, my favorite, leave me alone. I've had a handful of legendary managers, a word I am tempted to put in quotes because they inspired me, helped me grow, and left me in a much better state than they found me. Having managed multiple teams myself, it can be a fuckin' slog. There have always been one or two extremely high maintenance people on the team, conflicts to resolve, bullshit HR stuff to take care of, commitments to defend, bullshit to block, misses to explain and some amount of time tending to vestigial organizational dependencies that somehow are impossible to shake. And that's without immigration to deal with...that's an entire mess of its own. That is all in addition to actually developing some type of relationship with each member of the team. Trying to get a feel for their communication style, pull(!) out from them some idea of what they see on the horizon, continuously observe their interaction with the team and overall performance at their job. Look for recommendations to help them improve in areas that need it and then run that through what you've learned about them in order to deliver it in a way in which they will be receptive. Mine progress for evidence of efforts from the underrecognized and let them know they are seen. Plan for promos when the time is right, begin evangelizing your employee early on, work on promo package with them, mine your network for support as you educate your employee on what is needed to get it done. Then you have the periodic dumpster fires that 99% of the time are entirely avoidable. Intra and inter-team fights, liars and cowboys breaking shit, last minute disclosures of untenable delivery gaps, HR-issues, extra curricular issues, etc. It's not a particularly easy job and I would say that the combination of technical and interpersonal skills that would be required to meet expectations I see voiced here and elsewhere are in extremely limited supply. I know I have and will continue to fall short of that standard many times. Dunno, maybe I've just been lucky.

legulere 5y ago
You’ve said it yourself that your favorite behavior of managers is to leave you alone. But what’s their use then? If apart from having autonomy you only have negative experiences with management your idea of them ranges from useless to harmful. I haven’t seen what they do in the background and am working for not so long but so far managers have not really impressed me.
- iamstupidsimple 5y ago
  The best managers I've worked with unblock ICs, and defend from company-wide politics. Maybe set direction at a team level. Ordering smart, creative people around just obliterates 99% of their value.
  - runawaybottle 5y ago
    Managers are also like movie directors. I’ve been on projects where smart people can focus on the wrong parts of a project. Sometimes it takes one person to orchestrate the band, hone in one what is the true impactful work. Shepard the sheep through to the finish line, especially if they are headed in an ambiguous direction. Now, what’s all that got to do with having butts in a seat that you can physically see? Jack shit really.
    - gilbetron 5y ago
      I think what you are talking about with the former and technical leads and product owners, not typical people managers. There is overlap, as it gets fuzzy, but most managers I've experienced have terrible technical insights and are instead an active blocker to great results.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  I think it depends on what you want. I don't spend a lot of time dealing with my manager. He leaves me alone. But he also deals with all the stuff coming down from above so my job is just coding. To me that is a win as I don't want to have to deal with anything on his schedule.
- 5y ago
underseacables 5y ago
In my humble opinion I think it might be easier than that: people don’t like to be managed, and people don’t like to have supervisors. It feels more like a personality issue than an actual work problem.
zeruch 5y ago
"they inspired me, helped me grow, and left me in a much better state than they found me. Having managed multiple teams myself, it can be a fuckin' slog. There have always been one or two extremely high maintenance people on the team, conflicts to resolve, bullshit HR stuff to take care of, commitments to defend, bullshit to block, misses to explain and some amount of time tending to vestigial organizational dependencies that somehow are impossible to shake." And that is pretty much what the gig should be.
mdorazio 5y ago
The vast majority of HN commenters are young and have never been managers themselves, so don't have much appreciation for what the role really entails or its difficulties. Also, tech seems to have a higher percentage of bad managers than some other industries I've worked around, possibly because a lot of tech workers don't actually want to be managers but get forced into the role either by promotion or pursuit of money/power.
- bottled_poe 5y ago
  I'm assuming that by "managers" we mean project managers here... These are a few things which come to mind which managers are involved with, which developers are often protected from: 1. Financial decisions 2. Client relationship management 3. Proposal writing 4. Progress reporting 5. Managing changes in scope/schedule 5. Delivery Forecasting 6. Accountability for delivery
MattGaiser 5y ago
It depends on what you think management should be like. In practice, I mostly speak to my boss once every week or two weeks (if even that, I have gone two months without it while remote in a past role). They exist as someone who stops by once in a while and otherwise does not exist. This has been the case for both my current job and my last job. I can't imagine that either had any clear view of what I did day to day. For me, that works. But I have known a lot of co-workers who have an issue with that as to them that impacts their advancement in the organization and they feel unrecognized as their manager couldn't tell someone else what they did that week. I think many want an engaged super champion manager they work closely with.
1123581321 5y ago
You describe the workload of a conscientious manager well. The problem is that the work is largely not necessary. The team would do just fine without you, handling the same problems closer to the source and interacting with the rest of the company directly or through a non-managerial coordinator. All the effort a manager must undertake just to maintain some familiarity with the situation on the ground is an unfortunate waste as it will never be perfect and always will introduce additional steps and noise and need for corrections into the communication chain, or worse, just lead to misrepresentation and flawed personnel calls. It can indeed be amazing to work with an inspiring and challenging person but that does not need to be a manager. Any inspiring manager could probably have been an even greater coworker. Hopefully that makes some sense, and yes, I am criticizing myself as well in this comment.
lmm 5y ago
I've had good managers and bad managers. The damage done by the bad managers was far bigger than the help I got from the good managers; in the worst case the manager lied and forced me out and there was nothing I could do. It's a position where there seems to be very little accountability for doing it poorly and no way of dealing with those who do - see Bezos' famous "You should quit."
gen220 5y ago
For my part, I’ve worked with people who sincerely claim to have never had a good manager like the one you describe, informing their opinion that management borders on expensive futility. I think both experiences are valid. I think good managers are in as short supply as good engineers are, and good people generally. Both hiring markets tend to be markets for lemons. Hyper growth startups that need to fill headcount can’t afford to be choosy, and within companies like this the Pareto principle applies. Unfortunately many people have decades+ of experience with the 80% and have never witnessed the 20%.
afpx 5y ago
Most managers are selected from the "people who want to be managers" pool, not the "people who would be good managers" pool.
gilbetron 5y ago
I have about the same length of a career, and the majority of managers I have had have been poor. Except for one, the best managers just left me alone. The worst are the ones that try to help and be involved and caused great people to leave, screwed up projects, and caused a great deal of damage to organizations. However, on the opposite side, technical leaders are awesome. Most of mine have been great. They are team captains, leading through inspiration and excitement and performance. I love leaders. The push back to the office is at least 50% driven by managers that are freaking out because their uselessness has been revealed. Many orgs and people I know of have been performing better during the pandemic - now it is tough to correlate to overall remote performance, since the situation is different. In normal remote work, you can interact with other people easier, can visit your team on fun trips, and generally be more social, which has the downside that you aren't as focused on your work, either. Also, you don't have your kids at home, which is huge. But if I were running a company, I'd take notice at the fact that many managers can be cut, and that a good chunk of management is merely gaining and holding on to power via social manipulation. I've done management and leadership throughout my career, although predominantly I've been an IC, and I see managers taking credit for the good things that happen and believing they are responsible for them, and the opposite for the bad things. When in reality, many bad things are the managers fault, and rarely do they have much responsibility for the good things. I have a very dim view of management in general, although there are the rare really good ones, but they are almost always the "get out of the way" kinda.

by jcims 5y ago

legulere 5y ago

You’ve said it yourself that your favorite behavior of managers is to leave you alone. But what’s their use then? If apart from having autonomy you only have negative experiences with management your idea of them ranges from useless to harmful. I haven’t seen what they do in the background and am working for not so long but so far managers have not really impressed me.

iamstupidsimple 5y ago
The best managers I've worked with unblock ICs, and defend from company-wide politics. Maybe set direction at a team level. Ordering smart, creative people around just obliterates 99% of their value.
- runawaybottle 5y ago
  Managers are also like movie directors. I’ve been on projects where smart people can focus on the wrong parts of a project. Sometimes it takes one person to orchestrate the band, hone in one what is the true impactful work. Shepard the sheep through to the finish line, especially if they are headed in an ambiguous direction. Now, what’s all that got to do with having butts in a seat that you can physically see? Jack shit really.
  - gilbetron 5y ago
    I think what you are talking about with the former and technical leads and product owners, not typical people managers. There is overlap, as it gets fuzzy, but most managers I've experienced have terrible technical insights and are instead an active blocker to great results.
MattGaiser 5y ago
I think it depends on what you want. I don't spend a lot of time dealing with my manager. He leaves me alone. But he also deals with all the stuff coming down from above so my job is just coding. To me that is a win as I don't want to have to deal with anything on his schedule.
5y ago

underseacables 5y ago

In my humble opinion I think it might be easier than that: people don’t like to be managed, and people don’t like to have supervisors. It feels more like a personality issue than an actual work problem.

zeruch 5y ago

"they inspired me, helped me grow, and left me in a much better state than they found me. Having managed multiple teams myself, it can be a fuckin' slog. There have always been one or two extremely high maintenance people on the team, conflicts to resolve, bullshit HR stuff to take care of, commitments to defend, bullshit to block, misses to explain and some amount of time tending to vestigial organizational dependencies that somehow are impossible to shake." And that is pretty much what the gig should be.

mdorazio 5y ago

The vast majority of HN commenters are young and have never been managers themselves, so don't have much appreciation for what the role really entails or its difficulties. Also, tech seems to have a higher percentage of bad managers than some other industries I've worked around, possibly because a lot of tech workers don't actually want to be managers but get forced into the role either by promotion or pursuit of money/power.

bottled_poe 5y ago
I'm assuming that by "managers" we mean project managers here... These are a few things which come to mind which managers are involved with, which developers are often protected from: 1. Financial decisions 2. Client relationship management 3. Proposal writing 4. Progress reporting 5. Managing changes in scope/schedule 5. Delivery Forecasting 6. Accountability for delivery

MattGaiser 5y ago

It depends on what you think management should be like. In practice, I mostly speak to my boss once every week or two weeks (if even that, I have gone two months without it while remote in a past role). They exist as someone who stops by once in a while and otherwise does not exist. This has been the case for both my current job and my last job. I can't imagine that either had any clear view of what I did day to day. For me, that works. But I have known a lot of co-workers who have an issue with that as to them that impacts their advancement in the organization and they feel unrecognized as their manager couldn't tell someone else what they did that week. I think many want an engaged super champion manager they work closely with.

1123581321 5y ago

You describe the workload of a conscientious manager well. The problem is that the work is largely not necessary. The team would do just fine without you, handling the same problems closer to the source and interacting with the rest of the company directly or through a non-managerial coordinator. All the effort a manager must undertake just to maintain some familiarity with the situation on the ground is an unfortunate waste as it will never be perfect and always will introduce additional steps and noise and need for corrections into the communication chain, or worse, just lead to misrepresentation and flawed personnel calls. It can indeed be amazing to work with an inspiring and challenging person but that does not need to be a manager. Any inspiring manager could probably have been an even greater coworker. Hopefully that makes some sense, and yes, I am criticizing myself as well in this comment.

lmm 5y ago

I've had good managers and bad managers. The damage done by the bad managers was far bigger than the help I got from the good managers; in the worst case the manager lied and forced me out and there was nothing I could do. It's a position where there seems to be very little accountability for doing it poorly and no way of dealing with those who do - see Bezos' famous "You should quit."

gen220 5y ago

For my part, I’ve worked with people who sincerely claim to have never had a good manager like the one you describe, informing their opinion that management borders on expensive futility. I think both experiences are valid. I think good managers are in as short supply as good engineers are, and good people generally. Both hiring markets tend to be markets for lemons. Hyper growth startups that need to fill headcount can’t afford to be choosy, and within companies like this the Pareto principle applies. Unfortunately many people have decades+ of experience with the 80% and have never witnessed the 20%.

afpx 5y ago

Most managers are selected from the "people who want to be managers" pool, not the "people who would be good managers" pool.

gilbetron 5y ago

I have about the same length of a career, and the majority of managers I have had have been poor. Except for one, the best managers just left me alone. The worst are the ones that try to help and be involved and caused great people to leave, screwed up projects, and caused a great deal of damage to organizations. However, on the opposite side, technical leaders are awesome. Most of mine have been great. They are team captains, leading through inspiration and excitement and performance. I love leaders. The push back to the office is at least 50% driven by managers that are freaking out because their uselessness has been revealed. Many orgs and people I know of have been performing better during the pandemic - now it is tough to correlate to overall remote performance, since the situation is different. In normal remote work, you can interact with other people easier, can visit your team on fun trips, and generally be more social, which has the downside that you aren't as focused on your work, either. Also, you don't have your kids at home, which is huge. But if I were running a company, I'd take notice at the fact that many managers can be cut, and that a good chunk of management is merely gaining and holding on to power via social manipulation. I've done management and leadership throughout my career, although predominantly I've been an IC, and I see managers taking credit for the good things that happen and believing they are responsible for them, and the opposite for the bad things. When in reality, many bad things are the managers fault, and rarely do they have much responsibility for the good things. I have a very dim view of management in general, although there are the rare really good ones, but they are almost always the "get out of the way" kinda.