3 ms·

> ... I would guess that a manager I think of as excellent is at least 99.9%-ile. How to find such a manager is a long discussion that I might turn into another

by WJW 5y ago

> ... I would guess that a manager I think of as excellent is at least 99.9%-ile. How to find such a manager is a long discussion that I might turn into another post. Please do! A lot of discussions regarding workplace morale, both here on HN and elsewhere, seem to boil down to "your manager is very good/bad and that explains everything else you mentioned". I tend to agree; having a good manager can make a huge positive difference and having a bad manager a huge negative one. However, I'd be very interested in better ways to detect managerial quality upfront rather than when it is already too late.

elliekelly 5y ago
What’s that saying? People don’t quit their company they quit their manager. I think there’s a lot of truth to that.
- pm90 5y ago
  That’s very true but it also represents one extreme of the spectrum. You may have an ok manager; they’re not that good but they’re not annoying either and you can generally work with them. Ideally you would want to work with a manager who can accelerate your career and learning and that’s not always easy to find. There are socially inept managers who might fail in most places but succeed at certain orgs, or vice versa I.e their success is a combination of personal skills and the org environment. It’s really difficult to know (imo) without working with the person for a little while.
  - _ea1k 5y ago
    I completely agree. The environment that your manager works in often matters at least as much, sometimes even more. I've been at places where manager churn was constant. Almost all of them were good to work for, but the environment for them was really toxic.
- itsmemattchung 5y ago
  So true. I've been very fortunate to have mostly great managers throughout my 12+ year career, managers that actually care about their staff (as humans, not just fungible resources). In fact, that's why I joined AWS 5.5+ years back, a great manager (plug for @thomas_cantrell). On the flip side, I left because of irreconcilable misalignment with my previous manager.
- stonemetal12 5y ago
  Yeah, but how much of that is your manager is the face for the faceless bureaucracy behind him? When your manager asks you to work overtime with unrealistic deadlines etc, getting angry at your manager is shooting the messenger, not the actual dumbass making decisions.
  - ranit 5y ago
    > getting angry at your manager is shooting the messenger Well, a manager being (only) messenger (in this situation) is one of the traits of bad manager, isn't it?
    - chucksmash 5y ago
      Indeed. Part of being a good manager is shielding your team from demands that are unreasonable.
groby_b 5y ago
Detecting managerial quality up-front is a rather hard problem. I believe it's mostly rooted in the fact that anything meaningful you do as a manager plays on a long timescale (months & years), so you can't directly verify. And it's sufficiently fuzzy that in a short conversation, managers can lay down enough smoke screen to make it hard to see flaws. So, what you need is getting some kind of long-term view on that manager. There are a couple of ways: * If you can get it, data. Retention/Turnover, how well people grow, internal surveys. That's almost exclusively available if you transfer within a company, so limited usefulness. * References. Find people who worked for that manager and ask them. Even better if it's ex-reports, since they tend to be more frank. * Are they listening? When you have a conversation with them, are they paying close attention to what you have to say, or are they busy delivering a message? You want listening :) * Can they communicate clearly? Are they able to express what their team does, and what their main challenges are, in a coherent way? In less than a minute? Communication is a managers main job. If they fail at that, you'll have a horrible time. * And finally, gut check. How do you feel around that manager? If you're in any way uncomfortable, see it as a warning sign. That doesn't even necessarily reflect on their skill as manager - there are just some people we're feeling good around, and some who make us miserable. Skip the miserable part. (If you have a skilled manager, they can minimize the misery somewhat, but you'll still both be miserable.)
- borroka 5y ago
  "Are they listening? When you have a conversation with them, are they paying close attention to what you have to say, or are they busy delivering a message? You want listening :)" - This is common advice anytime one talks about relationships and communication. Listening is a skill, listen 10, talk 1, almost to the point that is difficult to understand who's doing the talking if everybody is getting the same advice of listening. Then you have those, and some HR people came to my mind--just to keep things professional--, who listen and listen and then you realize they just did not (or did not want to) understand. Now, my question is: if it is common knowledge that listening to your reports is important, along with being pretty cheap and not particularly challenging to do, why so few managers do it? Incompetence or there is an advantage in not listening much?

by WJW 5y ago

elliekelly 5y ago

What’s that saying? People don’t quit their company they quit their manager. I think there’s a lot of truth to that.

pm90 5y ago
That’s very true but it also represents one extreme of the spectrum. You may have an ok manager; they’re not that good but they’re not annoying either and you can generally work with them. Ideally you would want to work with a manager who can accelerate your career and learning and that’s not always easy to find. There are socially inept managers who might fail in most places but succeed at certain orgs, or vice versa I.e their success is a combination of personal skills and the org environment. It’s really difficult to know (imo) without working with the person for a little while.
- _ea1k 5y ago
  I completely agree. The environment that your manager works in often matters at least as much, sometimes even more. I've been at places where manager churn was constant. Almost all of them were good to work for, but the environment for them was really toxic.
itsmemattchung 5y ago
So true. I've been very fortunate to have mostly great managers throughout my 12+ year career, managers that actually care about their staff (as humans, not just fungible resources). In fact, that's why I joined AWS 5.5+ years back, a great manager (plug for @thomas_cantrell). On the flip side, I left because of irreconcilable misalignment with my previous manager.
stonemetal12 5y ago
Yeah, but how much of that is your manager is the face for the faceless bureaucracy behind him? When your manager asks you to work overtime with unrealistic deadlines etc, getting angry at your manager is shooting the messenger, not the actual dumbass making decisions.
- ranit 5y ago
  > getting angry at your manager is shooting the messenger Well, a manager being (only) messenger (in this situation) is one of the traits of bad manager, isn't it?
  - chucksmash 5y ago
    Indeed. Part of being a good manager is shielding your team from demands that are unreasonable.

groby_b 5y ago

Detecting managerial quality up-front is a rather hard problem. I believe it's mostly rooted in the fact that anything meaningful you do as a manager plays on a long timescale (months & years), so you can't directly verify. And it's sufficiently fuzzy that in a short conversation, managers can lay down enough smoke screen to make it hard to see flaws. So, what you need is getting some kind of long-term view on that manager. There are a couple of ways: * If you can get it, data. Retention/Turnover, how well people grow, internal surveys. That's almost exclusively available if you transfer within a company, so limited usefulness. * References. Find people who worked for that manager and ask them. Even better if it's ex-reports, since they tend to be more frank. * Are they listening? When you have a conversation with them, are they paying close attention to what you have to say, or are they busy delivering a message? You want listening :) * Can they communicate clearly? Are they able to express what their team does, and what their main challenges are, in a coherent way? In less than a minute? Communication is a managers main job. If they fail at that, you'll have a horrible time. * And finally, gut check. How do you feel around that manager? If you're in any way uncomfortable, see it as a warning sign. That doesn't even necessarily reflect on their skill as manager - there are just some people we're feeling good around, and some who make us miserable. Skip the miserable part. (If you have a skilled manager, they can minimize the misery somewhat, but you'll still both be miserable.)

borroka 5y ago
"Are they listening? When you have a conversation with them, are they paying close attention to what you have to say, or are they busy delivering a message? You want listening :)" - This is common advice anytime one talks about relationships and communication. Listening is a skill, listen 10, talk 1, almost to the point that is difficult to understand who's doing the talking if everybody is getting the same advice of listening. Then you have those, and some HR people came to my mind--just to keep things professional--, who listen and listen and then you realize they just did not (or did not want to) understand. Now, my question is: if it is common knowledge that listening to your reports is important, along with being pretty cheap and not particularly challenging to do, why so few managers do it? Incompetence or there is an advantage in not listening much?