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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.

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.