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As a manager, your main job is to make your ICs effective at doing their work. That means you need to be dealing with poor performers, rewarding with outstandi

• deleted 5y ago
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• gonehome 5y ago
  Yeah, I agree with all of this. Doing this well also requires building relationships with the team and trust. Recognizing little things like how people can be afraid of a project (and that fear can lead to spinning), and how to break things down/prioritize. In software I think there are also system changes that can make individuals happier (often stuff described in books like the Phoenix project and working effectively with legacy code). A lot of which enable the things you described. People are happy when they’re productive and goals are clear/make sense (and they have the space to focus on the work for them) and they get recognized for it.
• ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
  Yeah, well...the consensus seems to be that I was a decent manager. I hated the job, but they kept me for 27 years, so I guess something went well. Glad it's behind me, though.
  • hiptobecubic 5y ago
    27 years is a long time to stay in a job you hate.
    • skeeter2020 5y ago
      I'm an engineering manager with only 4 years in the role, and I think it's more of a lot of things I hate with intense periods of excitement, joy and satisfaction. You might be able to get 20+ years of that, depending on the details. That's why the OP's original analogy of a far less dangerous, corporate version of military combat resonated with me.
    • ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
      Yup. But it wasn't all hate. I worked for a company that I believed in, was a peer with some of the finest scientists and engineers in the world, ran a team of very high-performing engineers, and was proud to be a member of that brand. I felt good about what I did, even though I didn't enjoy it. > 27 years is a long time to stay in a job you hate. This statement shows that we are in a privileged place, indeed. We get to have a career, where we can do work that we enjoy, and make a lot of money at it. The great majority of people don't get that. Most of my friends don't like their jobs. Some, are very good at what they do, and make a lot of money. The job was relatively easy. I liked the company I worked for, and my peers. I felt a great deal of Responsibility towards the company, my peers, and my employees. I made enough to live on, and save. I could have made a lot more money, elsewhere. Despite the obvious sneers and judging that I get, I'm actually no slouch. Nowadays, I work for free, on software that helps others. WFM. YMMV.
  • deltaonefour 5y ago
    Many managers are bad but can keep the job for a long time. This is because it's not the people that you are managing that judge your performance. So you can very well be a bad manager and still keep your job. The key here is that you only need to be a manager that delivers results. You don't need to be a manager that is good.
• giantg2 5y ago
  "trying to improve uneven performers" How do you do that? Apparently I'm an inconsistent performer now.
  • geoduck14 5y ago
    >"trying to improve uneven performers" >How do you do that? Apparently I'm an inconsistent performer now. I'm unsure if you are asking for advice on how to improve because your current manager marked you as inconsistent or if you think GP is calling all people "who are trying to improve as inconsistent" I'm a manager. I want to improve ALL of my team. To rephrase, I want each of my members to work on things that benefit themselves (they improve) and benefit the team - if we can't do that, I zoom out: how can they benefit the team, department, the company, the industry, the world. You might notice this means I may find a better place for them on a different team or even outside the company. All of this. ALL OF THIS is trying to help the person in an area that he/she wants to grow in. Growth opportunities are very diverse: coding a new language, learning at a seminar, teaching at a seminar, side projects, art, games, mentorship
    • giantg2 5y ago
      I was marked as inconsistent.
      • deltaonefour 5y ago
        The earlier guy you replied to was a "bad manager". This guy you just replied to is a good one. He gets it. Note how I said a good manager very much assigns the right task to the right people.
  • _n_b_ 5y ago
    It’s hard. At least for me, this is the hardest classes of employees to manager—-it’s much easier to get rid of somebody who is clearly failing or reward and further develop a high performer. When I say uneven, I’m thinking of somebody who either: (a) is excellent at certain key aspects of their jobs but clearly below expectations in others to the point that it’s an issue, or (b) somebody who performs well but doesn’t always put in enough effort. In both cases, it’s subjective and difficult to determine that it’s to the point where intervention is required, because that’s usually an uncomfortable conversation. Often, you’re the first manager ever telling the person that they need to improve—-even if you’re not the first person to think there’s an issue. Typically, the other person will think you’re an asshole. As another commenter said, they may recognize later on that you were right but normally in the near term, you’ll have strained the relationship. (That’s why managers avoid those conversations. Sometimes it’s cowardice, sometimes it’s deciding that the juice isn’t worth the squeeze today.) As for how to work on improvement, that always has to be case-by-case considering the issue and the personality. Sometimes the “stop doing that” conversation is enough. Sometimes coaching or mentoring or development experiences can help. If those don’t work, can you shift responsibilities around or find a different role that is a better fit? Normally you try to gently do those things anyway before you have the direct conversation, and then hope the direct conversation provides some motivation/insight to take it more seriously. If you’re on the receiving end of that conversation, I guess my advice would be to try to critically self-reflect and see if you can understand where your manager is coming from. If you can, then you’ve both got a common place to start from towards improvement. If you can’t, or you think they’re just being unreasonable about expectations, then it is probably time to move on or hope they move on quickly.
• city41 5y ago
  I agree with all of this. But I can honestly say in my entire career I've only had about two good managers. One of the biggest issues in my experience is knowing who the bad/good performers are. Most managers have no idea. I've seen bad performers just let be, and I've seen great performers fired for seemingly no reason at all. Both kill team morale.
  • skeeter2020 5y ago
    I'll add that if a good manager works with an underperforming IC and makes a meaningful difference, it is VERY UNLIKELY the IC will acknowledge this in a timely way, or perhaps even know it happened. The best case scenario I've ever experienced is several years after the fact. That's a long time to wait for some positive external validation.
    • city41 5y ago
      Oh for sure. My first comment is pretty much me bagging on managers. But in their defense, it's a really hard job. So hard I've never taken it on because I'm positive I wouldn't be good at it. I think my experience of most managers not being as good as I'd like largely boils down to the job being extremely difficult. I'm not surprised to hear a manager's work can go unnoticed. That's unfortunate :(
  • hnthrowaway0315 5y ago
    I think management is like sorcery. There is no fixed rules and most of it is interaction between people. I fully understand why many technical people shun management work (even when it pays more). Good management is really rare. One in five or even ten maybe.
    • ckdarby 5y ago
      One in five to ten for delivering positive business results in a short period of time. AKA these are good managers. They're able to have good results because of themselves. Under promise over deliver. Set lower expectations. One in fifty, achieve the above but are able to produce teams that regardless of their manager in the future would produce good results at minimum. Great managers don't seem to just focus on the business but also leveling up each individual on the team. I think plenty of individuals have had mediocre managers and they would describe them as good. Working with "the best" ICs reshape your perspective of what is a great ICs. Just like managers. Much earlier in my career I used to believe that great ICs were one in 20, then it became fifty and now, two hundred.
• thorwawayrus53 5y ago
  > As a manager, your main job is to make your ICs effective at doing their work. Its a lie manager making dev's effective at their job. All a manager needs to do is communicate the requirements properly most preferably in a written document. That is the only useful thing. Everything else like motivating are just BS which has become very clear in the post covid WFH situation. Now looking back i can feel the needless interference by managers that slowed down the progress of work. The other sad thing is they assume they have power to fire people to some extent which usually junior engineers believe for the first few years. Before concluding i had a bad manager, let me say i have had over 10 managers in the past 20 years and its not manager's fault its the job that's BS.
  • rahimiali 5y ago
    Let’s say that’s the manager’s only job. But “communicating requirements in a written doc” is serious hard work, the same way “typing code in a text editor” is a lot of work. To do the former requires negotiating with other teams, understanding the limits of the audience, estimating effort, and basically developing a rough sketch of the solution in your head to make sure the request is reasonable.
    • thorwawayrus53 5y ago
      > But “communicating requirements in a written doc” is serious hard work Precisely. Hence managers delegate this to devs to figure it out themselves and make documentation easy enough for them to understand on a higher level so they can make it look like they understand whats going on. This is what been exposed with WFH. The important thing that pisses me off is the salary of manager is about 50% higher than IC's. IMO it should not be 70% of IC's salary considering the skills it requires. Manager does not have more responsibility than IC. Manager never takes responsibility for projects failure, its always blamed on IC. Its easy for a manager to get away because usually about 5 IC's will be in a project and one or two failure to deliver features are tolerated. Combine this with attrition its so easy for a manager to not take any responsibility.
  • mmcnl 5y ago
    This is completely the opposite of my expectation. Gathering requirements should not be a manager's task at all, let alone writing them down.