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OK. - you manage managers of three teams globally with 6 employees each. - you know that your best IC is about to go on parental leave - three others are eit

OK. - you manage managers of three teams globally with 6 employees each. - you know that your best IC is about to go on parental leave - three others are either leaving or moving to another team in the next year - your european team’s manager is not meshing at all and there’s pressure from all directions to fix it - after shuffling or firing the european manager (who you genuinely like personally,) you suddenly have 8 direct reports you need to meet with weekly and support - new teams form with overlapping responsibilities and you have to create a relationship with that team and its leadership so no one steps on the other’s foot and there isn’t confusing ownership - you hire a new european manager and now you have to fly overseas and train them, while at the same time handling issues for your home team and your own personal responsibilities - in the middle of all this and while your schedule is peppered with interviews to conduct, some random high-visibility initiative with no owner and outside your area of expertise gets assigned to you. I’ve seen directors suddenly get 30 new ICs three levels below them and have to somehow write their reviews. It ain’t all pretty.

ksec 5y ago
Exactly. All of a sudden debugging human problem is 10x harder than trying to debug your codebase. Multiply that by the number of direct report. Not to mention managers that may not have actual power or have their own politics to battle with.
Jach 5y ago
I'm generally supportive of the idea that managers (and managers' managers' managers..) are in many places a value-add and it's hard to get to such roles by coasting, however I also am sympathetic with many of the cynical takes and think there's a lot out there in the world of open source and startups and small businesses supportive of less management. One take is I think management frequently create unnecessary problems for themselves that of course can only be solved with more management. Take for instance: > you suddenly have 8 direct reports you need to meet with weekly and support You really, really don't need to meet each of them weekly. Not even necessarily monthly. Depending on the individual, some you might need to meet more than others, but the idea that you need to meet each one weekly is a self-imposed problem that of course robs you of at least a full work day, and past a certain scale requires more managers to handle. This is ignoring the content of the meetings, which if you get into make the case even worse for management, because so often a short email exchange or even a short Slack exchange suffice for what otherwise would have been 30 mins to an hour. (One of my managers was rather skilled at digging out of me over the course of our 1-on-1s some of the minor problems/issues I felt were present with the team/company that I otherwise wouldn't have brought up in an email/IM (and if I did not more than once), but given that they never changed or went away in 6 years, and that I had already made peace with them, what was the point?) Same thing with conducting a ton of interviews -- delegate to ICs of the team the candidate is likely to join! It's your own doing that you insist on having a screening chat with every candidate, or that you have this many candidates you're considering at once, or that you hire into a general "pool" where team selection/assignment happens later. Same thing with the needing to suddenly write the reviews for 30 people -- the need for those reviews is entirely a self-imposed problem, and could be done away with or altered. (e.g. relying on ICs reviewing each other, or using objective metrics, or having an easier firing process than long PIP dramas, or just bumping everyone's pay regardless to keep up with inflation, or...) Unfortunately system problems can typically only be done away with (rather than 'solved' with management work / more management) by someone at a higher level than you, whose higher role is in part supported by the problems existing in the first place.
- rtlfe 5y ago
  > You really, really don't need to meet each of them weekly. Somebody needs to. It's important to put in the time building relationships so that people are comfortable coming to you with concerns and so that you can recognize their patterns and notice when there's something they're not telling you.
aahortwwy 5y ago
Isn't it fascinating how many of the problems managers deal with are side-effects of a lack of good management? People have babies, people change jobs, new hires don't work out. All of these things are known. You identified them as risks and planned accordingly, right? > some random high-visibility initiative with no owner and outside your area of expertise gets assigned to you Oh, I see.

ksec 5y ago

Exactly. All of a sudden debugging human problem is 10x harder than trying to debug your codebase. Multiply that by the number of direct report. Not to mention managers that may not have actual power or have their own politics to battle with.

Jach 5y ago

I'm generally supportive of the idea that managers (and managers' managers' managers..) are in many places a value-add and it's hard to get to such roles by coasting, however I also am sympathetic with many of the cynical takes and think there's a lot out there in the world of open source and startups and small businesses supportive of less management. One take is I think management frequently create unnecessary problems for themselves that of course can only be solved with more management. Take for instance: > you suddenly have 8 direct reports you need to meet with weekly and support You really, really don't need to meet each of them weekly. Not even necessarily monthly. Depending on the individual, some you might need to meet more than others, but the idea that you need to meet each one weekly is a self-imposed problem that of course robs you of at least a full work day, and past a certain scale requires more managers to handle. This is ignoring the content of the meetings, which if you get into make the case even worse for management, because so often a short email exchange or even a short Slack exchange suffice for what otherwise would have been 30 mins to an hour. (One of my managers was rather skilled at digging out of me over the course of our 1-on-1s some of the minor problems/issues I felt were present with the team/company that I otherwise wouldn't have brought up in an email/IM (and if I did not more than once), but given that they never changed or went away in 6 years, and that I had already made peace with them, what was the point?) Same thing with conducting a ton of interviews -- delegate to ICs of the team the candidate is likely to join! It's your own doing that you insist on having a screening chat with every candidate, or that you have this many candidates you're considering at once, or that you hire into a general "pool" where team selection/assignment happens later. Same thing with the needing to suddenly write the reviews for 30 people -- the need for those reviews is entirely a self-imposed problem, and could be done away with or altered. (e.g. relying on ICs reviewing each other, or using objective metrics, or having an easier firing process than long PIP dramas, or just bumping everyone's pay regardless to keep up with inflation, or...) Unfortunately system problems can typically only be done away with (rather than 'solved' with management work / more management) by someone at a higher level than you, whose higher role is in part supported by the problems existing in the first place.

rtlfe 5y ago
> You really, really don't need to meet each of them weekly. Somebody needs to. It's important to put in the time building relationships so that people are comfortable coming to you with concerns and so that you can recognize their patterns and notice when there's something they're not telling you.

aahortwwy 5y ago

Isn't it fascinating how many of the problems managers deal with are side-effects of a lack of good management? People have babies, people change jobs, new hires don't work out. All of these things are known. You identified them as risks and planned accordingly, right? > some random high-visibility initiative with no owner and outside your area of expertise gets assigned to you Oh, I see.