11 ms·

Managing People

293 points by kylegill 5y ago

ggm 5y ago
Some of this is easy to say, hard to do. But, I didn't see much to disagree with. Managing people requires patience and you have to learn how to do it (I do not believe people come formed in the womb to lead well, it develops, in some during childhood and in others its learned more formally) I sometimes think Lord Moran's "The Anatomy of Courage" is applicable here. The courage & capacity to stand up for what is right in a "groupthink" meeting, or to confront senior managers and manage upwards is not infinite. Some people have recoverable depths here. Others become a spent force very quickly but can be useful for a precise outcome. Some can't do it. I used to manage people. I found it very hard. Giving people bad news in performace reviews is extremely costly to me, I didn't like it enough to want to continue.
xbpx 5y ago
I identify with much in this blog post. One novelty argument: Managing is hard because it embodies the dialectic between capital and workers. Therefore a deep understanding of the Marxist critique (and exposé) of capital will help provide an analytical framing around what an effective manager needs to do. You can approach it from other lenses but they all break down due to the two polar forces most strongly at play. This has honestly aided me greatly. Your mileage may vary.
- babyshake 5y ago
  How do you feel about labor unions in tech or corporate environments? The labor move seems to have its roots in Marxism.
  - phreeza 5y ago
    The labor movement predates Marxism, even if you exclude pre-industrial incarnations. I believe workers pooling their power is just a result of the dynamic between capital and workers, and Marx started out by describing, rather than prescribing it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_movement#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_movement#History
- aspenmayer 5y ago
  You have any suggested reading or links related to Marxism, especially as it relates to work?
- hohohmm 5y ago
  Very well said. This has indeed helped me too.
- cturner 5y ago
  A difficulty with marxism is that it is thoroughly old fashioned about bucketing people into categories. In a feudal society you were born into a life where you were a serf, or a craftsman, or an aristocrat. Marxism massages the labels but essentially accepts this worldview. The primary handle on each person is a class label, assigned at birth. Talent is irrelevant. One of the challenges of management after feudalism is making the best of the variety of individual contribution. When you are moving rocks around or ploughing, each individual is roughly equivalent. This was obsolete by the industrial era. A factor in Japan’s rise in auto was giving workers direct and individual (ie not union-filtered) feedback into the manufacturing process. Now, the multipliers are higher still. There are regular situations where an aggressively small team has executed where several well funded teams of thousands failed. My view is that capital is nearly irrelevant in mainstream technology now beyond achieving bootstrap and avoiding dumb renumeration errors that alienate talent. Rather, the key tensors are 1. how high you can get the ceiling on your core talent and 2. how small you can get that team, in order that this talent can be engaged with the big picture, in order that they can be identifying and focusing on the most important problems. They are related. The more capable your talent, the more it can participate in the big picture. These dynamics do not resolve easily with the orgchart-centric, bigger-is-better assumptions of traditional worldviews. Possible limit to the view - I have not had exposure to fields with vast ongoing capital cost, or complex cross-discipline stuff like silicon manufacture
  - hnfong 5y ago
    > My view is that capital is nearly irrelevant in mainstream technology now beyond achieving bootstrap Wasn't that true for traditional businesses as well? Beyond bootstrap, the company itself (revenue streams, assets, etc.) is the capital. I mean, if I wanted to be a landlord in the middle ages the only capital I need is a bag of gold coins to buy enough land and build a fort and "bootstrap" my lordship... (and maybe a fake birth certificate :)
    - cturner 5y ago
      "Beyond bootstrap, the company itself (revenue streams, assets, etc.) is the capital." Thanks for this correction.
engmgrmgr 5y ago
20% of the job that applies 80% of the time.
chromejs10 5y ago
OK post overall, but I will say that the line "Chaos is felt less by the people creating it" is so incredibly accurate.
- twayt 5y ago
  Yea this point alone hit me like a freight train. I have to reflect on this. As a corollary I would also add that the fact that the chaos is felt is often not overtly communicated. Intuitively you'd expect people to react like the house is on fire, but it is closer to when the music stops and people no longer know what to do. That's what real chaos looks like.
twayt 5y ago
> Chaos is felt less by the people creating it. This is a super important point if you're a founder who has never been an employee before. It is impossible to understand it unless you've been in this situation yourself.
pleb_nz 5y ago
He makes it sound as if you can just fire people at will.
- romanhn 5y ago
  Presumably he is US-based, in which case you can. I did find the verbiage of "discontinuing" people rather unsettling, but otherwise it's a thoughtful piece that resonated with my experience.
  - wreath 5y ago
    I see he is based in Berlin, Germany (according to his LinkedIn) where it's extremely hard to fire people (especially for reasons he mentioned in the post) once they are past the 6 months probation period. This smells like he is giving advice that he didn't do himself. Firing people is a pain for all parties involved.
    - tjungblut 5y ago
      You'd be surprised how many folks (many people on bluecard visas) take such severance "offer" without any legal consultation. Many tech immigrants in Germany do not know of their worker rights.
      - wreath 5y ago
        Yes! The difference between how German employees who got laid off deal with the situation compared to bluecard visa holders, is stark, but not surprising.
  - makach 5y ago
    I also noticed the language. I have been thoroughly downvoted as a consequence. I am however glad to see that there are multiple other in this thread also commenting on the same.
- mrweasel 5y ago
  Well, can't you? Sure it depends on country, but the problem normally seems to be that companies want to fire people and not compensate them. I think most countries allows you to fire people pretty much when even, it's just that it can be rather expensive. You can't fire pregnant women, that's almost impossible, you can't fire because of skin color, religion, handicaps (unless it prevents you from doing your job), but other than that you can normally just fire people if they aren't a good fit, in terms of both skills and personality.
hohohmm 5y ago
This is gold. Concise and to the point. A lot of self-reflection must be put into this.
wreath 5y ago
The author mentions firing people in almost every point. Is firing people in the US so easy that it is a go-to solution to solve these problems?
- choilive 5y ago
  Yes, most states are "at-will", which means you can be fired for any non-illegal reason at any time, barring any existing contracts.
  - xupybd 5y ago
    Wow it's next to impossible here in NZ.
    - sgt 5y ago
      Here in South Africa it's challenging but certainly not impossible. If you provide 3 or so written warnings and set up sessions to try to allow the employee to improve, you may go ahead and dismiss the person. But you can't simply fire at will unless it's gross misconduct or similar.
  - wreath 5y ago
    But is that at the will of your direct boss or there is a process that they have to go through? Like, if for some reason I piss off my manager, they get mad and fire my ass on the spot? How common is this in tech companies?
    - skj 5y ago
      Pretty uncommon at tech companies, but it's entirely based on the company's policy. The company can fire you at any time (as long as it's not one of several specific bad reasons like racial discrimination), but it's the company that employs you, not your manager. So only the company can fire you. Generally big tech companies don't give your manager the authority to blindly fire you, but only because that's a decision the company made.
    - 5y ago
Simon_O_Rourke 5y ago
> Don't load your work onto others in the company. I've seen this at companies small and large, especially where you might have a "politically" appointed manager, rather than someone a bit more useful. It's also a favourite ploy of sociopathic but useless individual contributors, find someone to do your work for you, then repackage it as your own!
- actually_a_dog 5y ago
  > It's also a favourite ploy of sociopathic but useless individual contributors, find someone to do your work for you, then repackage it as your own! It seems like that could only work once or so per individual, unless there's some other kind of power dynamic in play. I know I wouldn't be put in that situation where someone takes credit for work I did more than once.
  - Simon_O_Rourke 5y ago
    Nobody would let it happen if they knew what was going on. And generally the types of people who get up to it don't go broadcasting it around. Two particular examples stick in my mind. One was a serial desk dropper who would get snippets of information from everyone individually, then package it up as their own to report to a boss. The second was an IT consultant, working for a major consulting firm, who would lean on junior team members for docs and slides, then just outright steal them to use in reports. The thinking being that junior team members don't get to read reports for management.
    - tdeck 5y ago
      It's like the old parable of the stone soup. You get 8 different people to "help" you with parts of the task, then present the completed task as your project. I have seen this done before although thankfully not very often.
  - GoToRO 5y ago
    You are not part of those meetings where this happens.
slowmotiony 5y ago
> you hired (or did not fire) the wrong people Right, what if I didn't hire them? Am I supposed to break the laws of my country and just shitcan people willy nilly?
biren34 5y ago
I see a lot of comments about firing and chaos, but the single most important point to me is "you manage processes and lead people". So many managers get this wrong that just fixing this one thing probably gets most startups 60% of the way there.
- wppick 5y ago
  I wonder how much of the "managing processes" part could be delegated to software tools? How many of these processes could be automated, or "managed" by some sort of workflow software. Would it be possible with the right software product to essentially distribute the role of manager across the team/company?
  - starky 5y ago
    The problem is that a lot of processes still leave a lot to interpretation, or many scenarios have grey areas on how to apply a process. The author mentions it a few sections later, you don't want the processes to have a ton of overhead, rather make it clear the expectations on how to interpret the situation or know they should come to the manager to provide direction.
    - wppick 5y ago
      Yes, but some processes ARE well defined, and you want to ensure the steps of it are all met correctly each time. This could be similar to the checklists airplane pilots use, or surgeons as extreme examples.
kqr 5y ago
> And you got more information than they do, always This sounds like a dangerous thing to think. If the rest of my team does not have more information than me, I have failed to convey the important things I know. My team, on the other hand, has lots of information from the trenches that I might lack. > In every discussion/project/problem/situation, it needs to be clear who makes decisions While I understand where this is going, I disagree with the literal translation. Ideally, in a well-run democracy, people will come to reasonable agreement on the next step forward without one single person having to make a decision. Only when the democratic process of discussion and negotiation fails does a person have to step in and make a decision. ...or at least force the discussion onto the relevant subjects.
- tchalla 5y ago
  > This sounds like a dangerous thing to think. If the rest of my team does not have more information than me, I have failed to convey the important things I know. Two points 1) I think the advice is for small teams / startups where I can easily see this happen and 2) One can tweak the advice to "And you got more *context* than they do" for larger organisations
- okl 5y ago
  > This sounds like a dangerous thing to think. Very one-sided and superficial, for sure. > Only when the democratic process of discussion and negotiation fails does a person have to step in and make a decision. ...or at least force the discussion onto the relevant subjects. One important tool to help the team come to the "right" decision for a project is to provide a vision and associated goals that can be used as a yardstick to evaluate the benefits of each alternative. The "debate" should flow into the same direction.
- itsdrewmiller 5y ago
  If they have information that would help make a good decision, you can ask them. It's not so easy for them to ask your bosses for the same. If they have information that would have been helpful and didn't share it, who screwed up in hiring and/or training them?
makach 5y ago
This article should be obligatory reading material for everyone. Considering how it focuses on empathy and leadership I find it a little odd that they use the terminology "hire/fire" which in my opinion is hostile/negative loaded words. Imo it would be better to use something like allocate/re-allocate assign/reassign delegate/replace on-boarded/off-boarded hired/let go words have meaning and should be used carefully when writing and discussing. especially if you are a leader. Fear based management is a real thing and something that is easy to fall back into if any issues and you are unwilling to accept responsibility. it is always so easy to blame someone ease. A true leader/manager knows this and accepts responsibility. This is also the essence of the article and why I think some of the words used is ... a little off ... *edit, I'm European and rules are a little different here, firing someone is very hard to do. When you get fired it is usually because of something very serious.
- locallost 5y ago
  Words have meaning so people feel better about being offboarded instead of fired.
  - makach 5y ago
    yes. where I live, only when you have done something really bad - you can get fired. If you are fired it might be very difficult to find a new job. If you get offboarded, or let-go, then it is different. You haven't done anything bad that could potentially block your future; there is a better narrative for you to use when looking for new employment.
    - locallost 5y ago
      I'm also European and do not notice a difference between being fired and let go. In both cases your contract is terminated by your employer. If it's about meaning, the meaning is the same. Since we likely do not live in English speaking countries (I don't at least), it's difficult to map these words to any concepts that might exist somewhere else and say one is better than the other. A more European thing would be to actually forbid the employer to signal in any way why your contract was terminated, so that it interferes with your future career.
thejackgoode 5y ago
>As a manager, everything is your fault This is a low quality solution for ownership and only works for some types, leads to burnout in others. It also contradicts one of the good points in the article: "Burnout comes from a felt loss of control and/or impact". You cannot expect from yourself to be able to correct processes for everything. In my experience, better solution is (when it is possible) to have shared ownership. This is possibly an even bigger topic than burnout though and deserves its own discussion.
- shaftoe 5y ago
  I think a better way to phrase his point is that responsibility rolls upward. You cannot delegate responsibility for an outcome, though you can share it.
- xupybd 5y ago
  In NZ we basically have this in law when it comes to safety. If someone gets hurt it's Management's fault. If they pulled all the safeties off the machine and stuck their hands in while it was running, then it's your fault for not training them not too. Unless you have paperwork to prove you did train them not to.
TameAntelope 5y ago
Maybe it’s just the mood I’m in, but I found this list/notes style basically impossible to parse. Why are any of these things true? Credentials alone are not going to get me to blindly accept any of this; maybe some reasoning would help, a few anecdotes, conversations with other experts (or at least quotes) so I can relate this content to other content and start to fit this info in with everything else I already know… This reads like tacit knowledge, a series of immensely complex if/else statements, that don’t really come across well in text without immense effort, and that effort was not taken here.
- afdsasdfe 5y ago
  Worked fine for me. The brevity is exactly what I need instead of wading through tons of often unnecessary text. It's all common sense - which too many of my bosses just didn't have - and the summary form help bring them to focus. IMO it's good. YMMV, I appreciate.
  - xelxebar 5y ago
    Not OP, but "It's all common sense" is exactly the problem, as I see it. Common Sense usually means Big Hairy Ball of Experience-Grounded Implicit Knowledge Wrapped Up Into Pithy Statements, in my experience. Sure, each point in the article may sound reasonable, but there are also 1000 other bullet points that also make sense. How do you sort out all the "good" Common Sense from the "bad"? Not to mention that every bullet points also has tons of Gotchas, where it works 80% of the time and enumerating the remaining 20% cases turns into another giant bullet list which must also be internalized as Common Sense to be effectuated well.
    - afdsasdfe 5y ago
      Do you find no value in this at all? Let's take this then > Common Sense usually means Big Hairy Ball of Experience-Grounded Implicit Knowledge I don't agree, here's some very straightforward 'common sense' statements that I've seen not followed at so many companies Don't micromanage. Do trust, but verify. Treat your staff like humans, not like crap. If the staff you employed know more than you, listen to them. Focus on business outcomes, not the tech. All good rules with few if any gotchas. All horribly broken at various places I've worked.
frankgrimesjr 5y ago
> It's hard to get people to own a problem space fully At least in my experience this is because a manager doesn't want to give their reports full ownership over something. That is, responsibility for the outcome and (much more importantly) decision making authority for how they deliver results. Managers (almost) always want people to take responsibility, but don't want to give up authority.
- NAHWheatCracker 5y ago
  I've come to think that the words "responsibility" and "ownership" usually means "blame" in a corporate setting. The words only get used when something isn't going well and the managers don't want to look bad.
  - darkerside 5y ago
    I don't think this is typical. I'm sure there are dysfunctional organizations where it is true. Please consider including nuance in a statement like this, or you end up with self fulfilling prophecies. In many organizations, taking ownership and responsibilities are indicators of individual contributors stepping up, and are pathways to greater success, promotions, and results.
throwaway7464 5y ago
I have given up on providing feedback to managers. I realized people does not change much. Most managers want to assert power and as an IC its hard for me to accept authority of manager considering my skill level compared to my manager. The best way to deal with manager is always discuss the requirements and nothing more. Your teams feed back is more worth than manager feed back on performance rating. I don't know who came up with this practice but I am grateful to them. This junior developers don't realize for a long time. Any one who has not demonstrated as a good developer is unfit to be a developer's manager.
specialist 5y ago
Nice writeup. Agreed with all. Yes and: > You manage processes; you lead people > Processes are expectations made explicit I way I learned it was "Structure + Processes = Outcomes". By me focusing on S and P, I was able to delegate emotional ownership of O to my team. IMHO, that sense ownership is a "critical success factor". Which you touch on further down your list. Journey of the Software Professional: The Sociology of Software Development, Luke Hohmann [1996] https://www.amazon.com/Journey-Software-Professional-Sociology-Development/dp/0132366134 https://www.amazon.com/Journey-Software-Professional-Sociolo... The other crucial bit of life advice I got from Luke, which may not be in the book, was: "Sometimes you have to let people fail. Just have Plan B ready to deal with the aftermath." But that's a much longer story. -- Again, nice writeup. Is it too much to hope that your common sense regard for the process of software development is early evidence that our industry might finally be moving past the Agile cargo cult era? (Hot damn, it's been a lonely, frustrating two decades, remembering how things were before Agile.) -- PS- I've recently heard (read) the "First Pancake" metaphor for first effort, maybe a dozen times. Another gem I had first heard from Luke, back in the day.
A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
I will admit that the 'everything is your fault' resonated with me. The best boss operated exactly this way ( and I hope I will be able to emulate him one day ). I am obviously not talking about self-flagellating. In a corporate environment, it can easily backfire. Still, the moment you are the boss, it really is your show.
ziggus 5y ago
This is a pretty good list, in particular the section on 'Feedbacking People' is an excellent summary of the importance of using performance reviews to actually review how systems and processes are hindering or helping someone's performance, versus just trying to review performance without any context.
gwbas1c 5y ago
> Avoid back and forth > Processes are expectations made explicit Processes should avoid back-and-forth. They need to ensure that clear communication happens when work is handed off from one person to another. Assuming you're working on tickets, do you need to ask 200 questions every time you get an incoming ticket? That's a process problem; the process should ensure that whoever created the ticket puts in the information you need to do their work; and the process should ensure that whoever created the ticket knows how to fill in the information you need. IE: If QA is filling out a ticket, they should know how to write a bug report, steps to reproduce, and how to collect diagnostic information that's unique to the product. If support is filling out a ticket, they should know how to clearly explain the customer's problem, and what questions to ask the customer to collect diagnostic information that's unique to the product.
- thaneross 5y ago
  That sounds like a pretty siloed way to work. Conversations with the people involved is much high bandwidth and full-duplex which increases the odds of understanding the underlying problem and building what people actually want.
  - gwbas1c 5y ago
    > Conversations with the people involved is much high bandwidth and full-duplex That's impossible when working with people in different timezones, or when working with customers. Specifically, regarding support: The people in support need to know how to support their product, and that includes knowing what information to collect if they believe they will need to escalate. They just can't randomly pull engineers into a support call. You also can't have a support organization that expects "high bandwidth" communication with a customer. (IE, support can't go back to the customer for every ^%$#^#$ question the engineer asks.)
jimmyvalmer 5y ago
Typical of most management primers: 2,000 words of hand-wavy psychobabble, none of it actionable, all of it music to other psychobabblers.
- fsociety 5y ago
  What words do you consider psychobabble here? It was written in a plain and simple manner.
motohagiography 5y ago
If I had a personal API both as an IC and as a manager, it would look something like this. Thank you, this is magnificent.
skeeter2020 5y ago
>> Expect more from managers that report from you >> * By default, mistakes are not their team's fault but theirs As a middle manager I hear this all the time. Unfortunately the "shit flows upwards" mantra seems to stall out before it hits the top of the pyramid, so any talk of "owning fault" leaves me skeptical at best.
dtjb 5y ago
There's some good stuff in here, but I feel like a lot of valuable context was left out to accommodate the author's unique formatting style. Not everything needs to be reduced to a one-line zinger.
etempleton 5y ago
When you are a manager you need to learn to put your ego to the side. Everyone thinks they can do this, but most people can’t. You have look at some one else’s work and say, “I wouldn’t do it like that, but that is okay their approach is valid and good too.” Sometimes it isn’t or you could provide valuable feedback on how to do something better, but often you just want it done the way you want it done and that is waste of everyone’s time. Another way to say that you manage process not people is to say your job is to remove challenges your employee might have in accomplishing their job. You aren’t managing them, not ideally, you are acting as a producer making sure they have what they need to succeed. Doesn’t matter what that is. One minute it could be advocating on your team’s behalf, the next it could be making sure there is a clear process for how to handle a project. First time managers often think they need to provide their vision for every piece of work, or tell others how they want the job done.
ahaferburg 5y ago
I love that URL.

293 points by kylegill 5y ago

ggm 5y ago

Some of this is easy to say, hard to do. But, I didn't see much to disagree with. Managing people requires patience and you have to learn how to do it (I do not believe people come formed in the womb to lead well, it develops, in some during childhood and in others its learned more formally) I sometimes think Lord Moran's "The Anatomy of Courage" is applicable here. The courage & capacity to stand up for what is right in a "groupthink" meeting, or to confront senior managers and manage upwards is not infinite. Some people have recoverable depths here. Others become a spent force very quickly but can be useful for a precise outcome. Some can't do it. I used to manage people. I found it very hard. Giving people bad news in performace reviews is extremely costly to me, I didn't like it enough to want to continue.

xbpx 5y ago

I identify with much in this blog post. One novelty argument: Managing is hard because it embodies the dialectic between capital and workers. Therefore a deep understanding of the Marxist critique (and exposé) of capital will help provide an analytical framing around what an effective manager needs to do. You can approach it from other lenses but they all break down due to the two polar forces most strongly at play. This has honestly aided me greatly. Your mileage may vary.

babyshake 5y ago
How do you feel about labor unions in tech or corporate environments? The labor move seems to have its roots in Marxism.
- phreeza 5y ago
  The labor movement predates Marxism, even if you exclude pre-industrial incarnations. I believe workers pooling their power is just a result of the dynamic between capital and workers, and Marx started out by describing, rather than prescribing it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_movement#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_movement#History
aspenmayer 5y ago
You have any suggested reading or links related to Marxism, especially as it relates to work?
hohohmm 5y ago
Very well said. This has indeed helped me too.
cturner 5y ago
A difficulty with marxism is that it is thoroughly old fashioned about bucketing people into categories. In a feudal society you were born into a life where you were a serf, or a craftsman, or an aristocrat. Marxism massages the labels but essentially accepts this worldview. The primary handle on each person is a class label, assigned at birth. Talent is irrelevant. One of the challenges of management after feudalism is making the best of the variety of individual contribution. When you are moving rocks around or ploughing, each individual is roughly equivalent. This was obsolete by the industrial era. A factor in Japan’s rise in auto was giving workers direct and individual (ie not union-filtered) feedback into the manufacturing process. Now, the multipliers are higher still. There are regular situations where an aggressively small team has executed where several well funded teams of thousands failed. My view is that capital is nearly irrelevant in mainstream technology now beyond achieving bootstrap and avoiding dumb renumeration errors that alienate talent. Rather, the key tensors are 1. how high you can get the ceiling on your core talent and 2. how small you can get that team, in order that this talent can be engaged with the big picture, in order that they can be identifying and focusing on the most important problems. They are related. The more capable your talent, the more it can participate in the big picture. These dynamics do not resolve easily with the orgchart-centric, bigger-is-better assumptions of traditional worldviews. Possible limit to the view - I have not had exposure to fields with vast ongoing capital cost, or complex cross-discipline stuff like silicon manufacture
- hnfong 5y ago
  > My view is that capital is nearly irrelevant in mainstream technology now beyond achieving bootstrap Wasn't that true for traditional businesses as well? Beyond bootstrap, the company itself (revenue streams, assets, etc.) is the capital. I mean, if I wanted to be a landlord in the middle ages the only capital I need is a bag of gold coins to buy enough land and build a fort and "bootstrap" my lordship... (and maybe a fake birth certificate :)
  - cturner 5y ago
    "Beyond bootstrap, the company itself (revenue streams, assets, etc.) is the capital." Thanks for this correction.

engmgrmgr 5y ago

20% of the job that applies 80% of the time.

chromejs10 5y ago

OK post overall, but I will say that the line "Chaos is felt less by the people creating it" is so incredibly accurate.

twayt 5y ago
Yea this point alone hit me like a freight train. I have to reflect on this. As a corollary I would also add that the fact that the chaos is felt is often not overtly communicated. Intuitively you'd expect people to react like the house is on fire, but it is closer to when the music stops and people no longer know what to do. That's what real chaos looks like.

twayt 5y ago

> Chaos is felt less by the people creating it. This is a super important point if you're a founder who has never been an employee before. It is impossible to understand it unless you've been in this situation yourself.

pleb_nz 5y ago

He makes it sound as if you can just fire people at will.

romanhn 5y ago
Presumably he is US-based, in which case you can. I did find the verbiage of "discontinuing" people rather unsettling, but otherwise it's a thoughtful piece that resonated with my experience.
- wreath 5y ago
  I see he is based in Berlin, Germany (according to his LinkedIn) where it's extremely hard to fire people (especially for reasons he mentioned in the post) once they are past the 6 months probation period. This smells like he is giving advice that he didn't do himself. Firing people is a pain for all parties involved.
  - tjungblut 5y ago
    You'd be surprised how many folks (many people on bluecard visas) take such severance "offer" without any legal consultation. Many tech immigrants in Germany do not know of their worker rights.
    - wreath 5y ago
      Yes! The difference between how German employees who got laid off deal with the situation compared to bluecard visa holders, is stark, but not surprising.
- makach 5y ago
  I also noticed the language. I have been thoroughly downvoted as a consequence. I am however glad to see that there are multiple other in this thread also commenting on the same.
mrweasel 5y ago
Well, can't you? Sure it depends on country, but the problem normally seems to be that companies want to fire people and not compensate them. I think most countries allows you to fire people pretty much when even, it's just that it can be rather expensive. You can't fire pregnant women, that's almost impossible, you can't fire because of skin color, religion, handicaps (unless it prevents you from doing your job), but other than that you can normally just fire people if they aren't a good fit, in terms of both skills and personality.

hohohmm 5y ago

This is gold. Concise and to the point. A lot of self-reflection must be put into this.

wreath 5y ago

The author mentions firing people in almost every point. Is firing people in the US so easy that it is a go-to solution to solve these problems?

choilive 5y ago
Yes, most states are "at-will", which means you can be fired for any non-illegal reason at any time, barring any existing contracts.
- xupybd 5y ago
  Wow it's next to impossible here in NZ.
  - sgt 5y ago
    Here in South Africa it's challenging but certainly not impossible. If you provide 3 or so written warnings and set up sessions to try to allow the employee to improve, you may go ahead and dismiss the person. But you can't simply fire at will unless it's gross misconduct or similar.
- wreath 5y ago
  But is that at the will of your direct boss or there is a process that they have to go through? Like, if for some reason I piss off my manager, they get mad and fire my ass on the spot? How common is this in tech companies?
  - skj 5y ago
    Pretty uncommon at tech companies, but it's entirely based on the company's policy. The company can fire you at any time (as long as it's not one of several specific bad reasons like racial discrimination), but it's the company that employs you, not your manager. So only the company can fire you. Generally big tech companies don't give your manager the authority to blindly fire you, but only because that's a decision the company made.
  - 5y ago

Simon_O_Rourke 5y ago

> Don't load your work onto others in the company. I've seen this at companies small and large, especially where you might have a "politically" appointed manager, rather than someone a bit more useful. It's also a favourite ploy of sociopathic but useless individual contributors, find someone to do your work for you, then repackage it as your own!

actually_a_dog 5y ago
> It's also a favourite ploy of sociopathic but useless individual contributors, find someone to do your work for you, then repackage it as your own! It seems like that could only work once or so per individual, unless there's some other kind of power dynamic in play. I know I wouldn't be put in that situation where someone takes credit for work I did more than once.
- Simon_O_Rourke 5y ago
  Nobody would let it happen if they knew what was going on. And generally the types of people who get up to it don't go broadcasting it around. Two particular examples stick in my mind. One was a serial desk dropper who would get snippets of information from everyone individually, then package it up as their own to report to a boss. The second was an IT consultant, working for a major consulting firm, who would lean on junior team members for docs and slides, then just outright steal them to use in reports. The thinking being that junior team members don't get to read reports for management.
  - tdeck 5y ago
    It's like the old parable of the stone soup. You get 8 different people to "help" you with parts of the task, then present the completed task as your project. I have seen this done before although thankfully not very often.
- GoToRO 5y ago
  You are not part of those meetings where this happens.

slowmotiony 5y ago

> you hired (or did not fire) the wrong people Right, what if I didn't hire them? Am I supposed to break the laws of my country and just shitcan people willy nilly?

biren34 5y ago

I see a lot of comments about firing and chaos, but the single most important point to me is "you manage processes and lead people". So many managers get this wrong that just fixing this one thing probably gets most startups 60% of the way there.

wppick 5y ago
I wonder how much of the "managing processes" part could be delegated to software tools? How many of these processes could be automated, or "managed" by some sort of workflow software. Would it be possible with the right software product to essentially distribute the role of manager across the team/company?
- starky 5y ago
  The problem is that a lot of processes still leave a lot to interpretation, or many scenarios have grey areas on how to apply a process. The author mentions it a few sections later, you don't want the processes to have a ton of overhead, rather make it clear the expectations on how to interpret the situation or know they should come to the manager to provide direction.
  - wppick 5y ago
    Yes, but some processes ARE well defined, and you want to ensure the steps of it are all met correctly each time. This could be similar to the checklists airplane pilots use, or surgeons as extreme examples.

kqr 5y ago

> And you got more information than they do, always This sounds like a dangerous thing to think. If the rest of my team does not have more information than me, I have failed to convey the important things I know. My team, on the other hand, has lots of information from the trenches that I might lack. > In every discussion/project/problem/situation, it needs to be clear who makes decisions While I understand where this is going, I disagree with the literal translation. Ideally, in a well-run democracy, people will come to reasonable agreement on the next step forward without one single person having to make a decision. Only when the democratic process of discussion and negotiation fails does a person have to step in and make a decision. ...or at least force the discussion onto the relevant subjects.

tchalla 5y ago
> This sounds like a dangerous thing to think. If the rest of my team does not have more information than me, I have failed to convey the important things I know. Two points 1) I think the advice is for small teams / startups where I can easily see this happen and 2) One can tweak the advice to "And you got more *context* than they do" for larger organisations
okl 5y ago
> This sounds like a dangerous thing to think. Very one-sided and superficial, for sure. > Only when the democratic process of discussion and negotiation fails does a person have to step in and make a decision. ...or at least force the discussion onto the relevant subjects. One important tool to help the team come to the "right" decision for a project is to provide a vision and associated goals that can be used as a yardstick to evaluate the benefits of each alternative. The "debate" should flow into the same direction.
itsdrewmiller 5y ago
If they have information that would help make a good decision, you can ask them. It's not so easy for them to ask your bosses for the same. If they have information that would have been helpful and didn't share it, who screwed up in hiring and/or training them?

makach 5y ago

This article should be obligatory reading material for everyone. Considering how it focuses on empathy and leadership I find it a little odd that they use the terminology "hire/fire" which in my opinion is hostile/negative loaded words. Imo it would be better to use something like allocate/re-allocate assign/reassign delegate/replace on-boarded/off-boarded hired/let go words have meaning and should be used carefully when writing and discussing. especially if you are a leader. Fear based management is a real thing and something that is easy to fall back into if any issues and you are unwilling to accept responsibility. it is always so easy to blame someone ease. A true leader/manager knows this and accepts responsibility. This is also the essence of the article and why I think some of the words used is ... a little off ... *edit, I'm European and rules are a little different here, firing someone is very hard to do. When you get fired it is usually because of something very serious.

locallost 5y ago
Words have meaning so people feel better about being offboarded instead of fired.
- makach 5y ago
  yes. where I live, only when you have done something really bad - you can get fired. If you are fired it might be very difficult to find a new job. If you get offboarded, or let-go, then it is different. You haven't done anything bad that could potentially block your future; there is a better narrative for you to use when looking for new employment.
  - locallost 5y ago
    I'm also European and do not notice a difference between being fired and let go. In both cases your contract is terminated by your employer. If it's about meaning, the meaning is the same. Since we likely do not live in English speaking countries (I don't at least), it's difficult to map these words to any concepts that might exist somewhere else and say one is better than the other. A more European thing would be to actually forbid the employer to signal in any way why your contract was terminated, so that it interferes with your future career.

thejackgoode 5y ago

>As a manager, everything is your fault This is a low quality solution for ownership and only works for some types, leads to burnout in others. It also contradicts one of the good points in the article: "Burnout comes from a felt loss of control and/or impact". You cannot expect from yourself to be able to correct processes for everything. In my experience, better solution is (when it is possible) to have shared ownership. This is possibly an even bigger topic than burnout though and deserves its own discussion.

shaftoe 5y ago
I think a better way to phrase his point is that responsibility rolls upward. You cannot delegate responsibility for an outcome, though you can share it.
xupybd 5y ago
In NZ we basically have this in law when it comes to safety. If someone gets hurt it's Management's fault. If they pulled all the safeties off the machine and stuck their hands in while it was running, then it's your fault for not training them not too. Unless you have paperwork to prove you did train them not to.

TameAntelope 5y ago

Maybe it’s just the mood I’m in, but I found this list/notes style basically impossible to parse. Why are any of these things true? Credentials alone are not going to get me to blindly accept any of this; maybe some reasoning would help, a few anecdotes, conversations with other experts (or at least quotes) so I can relate this content to other content and start to fit this info in with everything else I already know… This reads like tacit knowledge, a series of immensely complex if/else statements, that don’t really come across well in text without immense effort, and that effort was not taken here.

afdsasdfe 5y ago
Worked fine for me. The brevity is exactly what I need instead of wading through tons of often unnecessary text. It's all common sense - which too many of my bosses just didn't have - and the summary form help bring them to focus. IMO it's good. YMMV, I appreciate.
- xelxebar 5y ago
  Not OP, but "It's all common sense" is exactly the problem, as I see it. Common Sense usually means Big Hairy Ball of Experience-Grounded Implicit Knowledge Wrapped Up Into Pithy Statements, in my experience. Sure, each point in the article may sound reasonable, but there are also 1000 other bullet points that also make sense. How do you sort out all the "good" Common Sense from the "bad"? Not to mention that every bullet points also has tons of Gotchas, where it works 80% of the time and enumerating the remaining 20% cases turns into another giant bullet list which must also be internalized as Common Sense to be effectuated well.
  - afdsasdfe 5y ago
    Do you find no value in this at all? Let's take this then > Common Sense usually means Big Hairy Ball of Experience-Grounded Implicit Knowledge I don't agree, here's some very straightforward 'common sense' statements that I've seen not followed at so many companies Don't micromanage. Do trust, but verify. Treat your staff like humans, not like crap. If the staff you employed know more than you, listen to them. Focus on business outcomes, not the tech. All good rules with few if any gotchas. All horribly broken at various places I've worked.

frankgrimesjr 5y ago

> It's hard to get people to own a problem space fully At least in my experience this is because a manager doesn't want to give their reports full ownership over something. That is, responsibility for the outcome and (much more importantly) decision making authority for how they deliver results. Managers (almost) always want people to take responsibility, but don't want to give up authority.

NAHWheatCracker 5y ago
I've come to think that the words "responsibility" and "ownership" usually means "blame" in a corporate setting. The words only get used when something isn't going well and the managers don't want to look bad.
- darkerside 5y ago
  I don't think this is typical. I'm sure there are dysfunctional organizations where it is true. Please consider including nuance in a statement like this, or you end up with self fulfilling prophecies. In many organizations, taking ownership and responsibilities are indicators of individual contributors stepping up, and are pathways to greater success, promotions, and results.

throwaway7464 5y ago

I have given up on providing feedback to managers. I realized people does not change much. Most managers want to assert power and as an IC its hard for me to accept authority of manager considering my skill level compared to my manager. The best way to deal with manager is always discuss the requirements and nothing more. Your teams feed back is more worth than manager feed back on performance rating. I don't know who came up with this practice but I am grateful to them. This junior developers don't realize for a long time. Any one who has not demonstrated as a good developer is unfit to be a developer's manager.

specialist 5y ago

Nice writeup. Agreed with all. Yes and: > You manage processes; you lead people > Processes are expectations made explicit I way I learned it was "Structure + Processes = Outcomes". By me focusing on S and P, I was able to delegate emotional ownership of O to my team. IMHO, that sense ownership is a "critical success factor". Which you touch on further down your list. Journey of the Software Professional: The Sociology of Software Development, Luke Hohmann [1996] https://www.amazon.com/Journey-Software-Professional-Sociology-Development/dp/0132366134 https://www.amazon.com/Journey-Software-Professional-Sociolo... The other crucial bit of life advice I got from Luke, which may not be in the book, was: "Sometimes you have to let people fail. Just have Plan B ready to deal with the aftermath." But that's a much longer story. -- Again, nice writeup. Is it too much to hope that your common sense regard for the process of software development is early evidence that our industry might finally be moving past the Agile cargo cult era? (Hot damn, it's been a lonely, frustrating two decades, remembering how things were before Agile.) -- PS- I've recently heard (read) the "First Pancake" metaphor for first effort, maybe a dozen times. Another gem I had first heard from Luke, back in the day.

A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago

I will admit that the 'everything is your fault' resonated with me. The best boss operated exactly this way ( and I hope I will be able to emulate him one day ). I am obviously not talking about self-flagellating. In a corporate environment, it can easily backfire. Still, the moment you are the boss, it really is your show.

ziggus 5y ago

This is a pretty good list, in particular the section on 'Feedbacking People' is an excellent summary of the importance of using performance reviews to actually review how systems and processes are hindering or helping someone's performance, versus just trying to review performance without any context.

gwbas1c 5y ago

> Avoid back and forth > Processes are expectations made explicit Processes should avoid back-and-forth. They need to ensure that clear communication happens when work is handed off from one person to another. Assuming you're working on tickets, do you need to ask 200 questions every time you get an incoming ticket? That's a process problem; the process should ensure that whoever created the ticket puts in the information you need to do their work; and the process should ensure that whoever created the ticket knows how to fill in the information you need. IE: If QA is filling out a ticket, they should know how to write a bug report, steps to reproduce, and how to collect diagnostic information that's unique to the product. If support is filling out a ticket, they should know how to clearly explain the customer's problem, and what questions to ask the customer to collect diagnostic information that's unique to the product.

thaneross 5y ago
That sounds like a pretty siloed way to work. Conversations with the people involved is much high bandwidth and full-duplex which increases the odds of understanding the underlying problem and building what people actually want.
- gwbas1c 5y ago
  > Conversations with the people involved is much high bandwidth and full-duplex That's impossible when working with people in different timezones, or when working with customers. Specifically, regarding support: The people in support need to know how to support their product, and that includes knowing what information to collect if they believe they will need to escalate. They just can't randomly pull engineers into a support call. You also can't have a support organization that expects "high bandwidth" communication with a customer. (IE, support can't go back to the customer for every ^%$#^#$ question the engineer asks.)

jimmyvalmer 5y ago

Typical of most management primers: 2,000 words of hand-wavy psychobabble, none of it actionable, all of it music to other psychobabblers.

fsociety 5y ago
What words do you consider psychobabble here? It was written in a plain and simple manner.

motohagiography 5y ago

If I had a personal API both as an IC and as a manager, it would look something like this. Thank you, this is magnificent.

skeeter2020 5y ago

>> Expect more from managers that report from you >> * By default, mistakes are not their team's fault but theirs As a middle manager I hear this all the time. Unfortunately the "shit flows upwards" mantra seems to stall out before it hits the top of the pyramid, so any talk of "owning fault" leaves me skeptical at best.

dtjb 5y ago

There's some good stuff in here, but I feel like a lot of valuable context was left out to accommodate the author's unique formatting style. Not everything needs to be reduced to a one-line zinger.

etempleton 5y ago

When you are a manager you need to learn to put your ego to the side. Everyone thinks they can do this, but most people can’t. You have look at some one else’s work and say, “I wouldn’t do it like that, but that is okay their approach is valid and good too.” Sometimes it isn’t or you could provide valuable feedback on how to do something better, but often you just want it done the way you want it done and that is waste of everyone’s time. Another way to say that you manage process not people is to say your job is to remove challenges your employee might have in accomplishing their job. You aren’t managing them, not ideally, you are acting as a producer making sure they have what they need to succeed. Doesn’t matter what that is. One minute it could be advocating on your team’s behalf, the next it could be making sure there is a clear process for how to handle a project. First time managers often think they need to provide their vision for every piece of work, or tell others how they want the job done.

ahaferburg 5y ago

I love that URL.